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The Evangelist Luke tells us that “as the time approached when he was to be taken from this world,” Jesus “firmly resolved to proceed toward Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51).
In the phrase “firmly resolved,” we can glimpse Christ’s freedom. Indeed, he knows that in Jerusalem, death on a cross awaits him, but in obedience to the Father’s will, he offers himself for love. It is in his very obedience to the Father that Jesus achieves his own freedom as a conscious decision motivated by love.
Who is freer than the One who is the Almighty? He did not, however, live his freedom as an arbitrary power or as domination. He lived it as a service. In this way he “filled” freedom with content, which would otherwise have remained an “empty” possibility of doing or not doing something.
Like human life itself, freedom draws its meaning from love. Indeed, who is the freest? Someone who selfishly keeps all possibilities open for fear of losing them, or someone who expends…
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