TRUST LEADS TO FREEDOM
Once, in the Old Testament, men behaved like animals, they did not preserve any sign of their dignity as children of God, their Father. So to make them realize that I wanted to raise them to the great dignity of God's children, I sometimes had to show Myself as dreadfully severe. Later, when I saw some of them were endowed with sufficient reason to understand, eventually, that it was necessary to distance themselves from the animals., I then began to lavish benefits on them, to give them victory over those who were still unable to recognize and preserve their own dignity.
And as they were increasing in number, I sent My Son to them. He was adorned with all the divine perfections because He was the Son of a perfect God. It was He Who showed them the ways to perfection. Through Him I adopted you in My infinite love, as real children. Since then I have never called you simply "creatures", but "children".
I clothed you in the true spirit of the new law which not only distinguishes you from animals, like the men of the old law, but raises you above those men of the Old Testament. I raise you all to the dignity of children of God. Yes, you are My children and you must tell Me I am your Father. But trust in Me as children do, because without this trust you will never be truly free.
Everything I am saying to you is intended to make you realize that I come to carry out this work of love, to give you powerful help to cast off the tyrannical slavery which imprisons your souls, and to let you enjoy real freedom, whence real happiness comes. Compared with this freedom, all earthly joys are as nothing. Raise yourselves to the dignity of the children of God and learn how to respect your own greatness. I will then be your Father more than ever, the most lovable and merciful of fathers
(BROMAR4)
Well, what really strikes me in this reading is when He ( God Our Father ) says, “trust in Me as children do, because without this trust, you will never be truly free”. He’s telling us that trust is a mechanism, a precursor to freedom, that initiates that sense of being free. Trust can only do this because it relieves us of this kind of ultimate responsibility for everything because we trust there is a Father who loves us, who cares for us and who desires to provide our every good.
Trust is very difficult for many people, especially if they’ve been maltreated; been treated severely. In the beginning of this particular reading, He says that He was severe in the old testament when people had strayed so far from their dignity that they needed something, some big show of power and might, in order to get them to recognize that their dignity is greater than that of the animals. He said that without that, they would’ve continued being animals. So when people have been treated severely, it tells me that they have understood that they’re not children, they’re not humans. It’s taught them that they were less than human, that they didn’t have ( act from) the dignity that God created us with. But God wants to reverse that and to reverse that in his children. We have to see ourselves as children, in order to really see ourselves as children, we have to be able to trust Him so even though trust is very difficult for those who have been treated so severely, God has great compassion on people who’ve been abused and He’s willing to teach them, He’s willing to come to them and teach them that He is not their abuser, that He is the remedy for abuse. that He is the love that they lacked, He is the good that they sorely lacked in feeling and experiencing as children.
It is the natural state of man to be happy and abuse robs people of that natural ability, the natural state of content and peace and calm. Abuse creates anxiety, fear, worry, even in many cases paranoia because the opposite of trust is distrust and distrust leads to paranoia. That is a horrible way to live but our Father wants to remedy all of this and I know that people that have been abused and often feel like they’re being treated unjustly by God even because they experience life as, well, in their own experience as someone who is being punished is being treated severely, because the abuse, until fully healed, is just under the surface… it can be triggered but again God wants to remedy that and the remedy, that sense of having a sense of freedom, is to trust, so how does a person trust? (sigh) ….I believe that one has to come to the Truth because truth does set us free and that truth is that God is the creator. He created man therefore He is above man. He is not simply a man….a man with all his flaws, all his defects, all his errors, all his ability to sin. God has none of that. And though we call him Father, He’s not like earthly fathers. He’s not an earthly parent who has self interest, who has so many things within them, maybe their own abuses in their own mal-treatment and all the things that put together a person that is filled with so much dysfunction, so much that doesn’t work right in their person. They don’t think right, don’t behave right, don’t love right, they may not even know what love is.
I believe a person has to come to this acceptance of the truth that God IS NOT MAN. He created man and because He created them with the ability to love, He also created them with the ability to sin. Unfortunate but true, you cannot have one …without …the …other; another truth that must be accepted or else a person will blame God for everything.
God is not to blame for what He allows. Allowance is not Will. It just isn’t! But also God has the power to heal. He has the power to do miracles. He has the power to reverse. The whole story of Joseph in the Old Testament is all about God intending something really good even though men, Joseph’s own brothers, intended an evil. God allowed it because He knew He could do something, so that’s “why” God allows it and this may be a truth that is miserable to the human person to hear, but it is another truth that must be understood, God allows “only” because He knows that He’s going to do something good in the future. That’s the only reason He allows evil to exist. He allowed the devil to tempt Adam and eve, He allowed him to sin and immediately afterwards He tells them He’s going to bring a Savior to undo it all. That is a Father. That is our God. And these truths somehow, by the grace of God, by the good desire of a soul, must be understood or one will never come to trust and if one never comes to trust according to our good Father, they will never come to freedom. It is the precursor, it is the mechanism, that turns on the ability to be free, to feel that freedom, to feel that dignity that we are created with, to know our true inheritance, to experience that God is love “always”… even when we’re suffering.
God is still love. And these are not the Old Testament times and He is not being severe with people and punishing them in order to get them to be more than animals. There’s a new Covenant and that Covenant is the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the new covenant, the new and perpetual Covenant till the end of time.
But, that will be difficult to believe unless we can trust Him and we can trust that His words are true and we can trust that His words are Life because His words “are” life, because His Word “is” the Son of God. His Word is made flesh and dwells among us and even dwells in us.
That is the love of a father, the Father that gave his only begotten Son to us, for us, to dwell in us, to be more united to us, to raise us to a dignity that even the angels, it is said by many of the saints, even the angels envy because they cannot receive His Body and Blood. That dignity of being a child of God.
if we could only believe it, if we could only trust it, we would have true interior freedom and that interior freedom would live out in exterior freedom better.
May God our Father infuse in all His children this great gift of trust. This great gift of freedom, that we could all believe and trust in our true inheritance as children of our Father and all that that means.
May God bless you Mary keep you
Pax et Bonum