Positive freedom through renunciation

Renunciation doesn’t make sense to most people who are after getting all the pleasures and advantages out of life. We have a dual set of desires in our being, which should be our endeavor to bring into a harmony – possessing and emptying, sorrow and joy, death and life. In the region of our physical nature, we have one set which we are conscious of always. We wish to enjoy our food and drink; we hanker after bodily pleasure and comfort. These desires are self-centered; they are solely concerned with their respective impulse.

But we have another set which is the desire of our physical system as a whole. It is the wish for health. We have a greater body — the social body. We want our own pleasure and license. This is negative freedom which in fact is slavery. We want to pay less and gain more than anybody else. This causes scramblings and fights unless in the depths of our social being, we wish for the welfare of society. This transcends the limits of the personal.

He who is wise tries to harmonize the wishes that seek for self-gratification with the wish for the social good, and only thus can we realize our higher self. On this score, there is the ruthless attempt to have more distinction than all others.

The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health; that of our social being in attaining goodness, and of our self in attaining love. Christ knows that the extinction of selfishness in the function of love. Thus we find in perfect love the freedom from selfishness. That only which is done for love is done freely, however much pain it may cause. In fact, our nature is obscured by work done by the compulsion of want or fear. The mother reveals herself in the service of her children; so our true freedom is not the freedom from acting but the freedom in action.

Everything else raises the question "why" in our mind, and we require a reason for it. But when we say, "I love" then there is no room for the "why"; it is the final answer in itself. Thus, the demand of Christ to deny ourselves, to take up the Cross if we must follow Him. Doubtless, even selfishness impels one to give away. But the selfish man does so on compulsion. But when one loves, sacrifice, denying oneself, becomes a matter of joy. Because of the ceaseless gravitation of our selfish desires, we cannot easily cast what we cling to away; they stick to us like a second skin and we bleed so we detach them. But when we are possessed by love, its force acts in the opposite direction. The things we adhere to lose their adhesion and weight. Far from being a loss if we give them away, we find in that renunciation fulfillment of our being.

This is the reason Christ preaches a harmony that can exist in denying oneself but finding all, saying: "Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it" (Mt. 16:25).

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Matthew 16:21-27.