Chapter VI. Exemplar for Our Free Will: Christ's Impeccable Liberty
"Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin . . . if therefore the son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed."
A life of union with God implies the use of our liberty in such a way that it becomes more and more confirmed in its choice of God, modeling itself on our Lord's impeccable liberty, a subject now to be considered in relation to die interior life.
The Church has defined that Jesus has two wills, as He has two intellects, a divine and uncreated will proper to His divine nature, and a human will proper to His human nature. Indeed if Jesus had not, below His divine will, a human will, He would not be really man and He could neither obey nor merit, for obedience and merit presuppose submission of will to another and higher will. The human will of Jesus contains a great mystery and a great lesson.
The great mystery consists in this, that, although our Lord's will was impeccable even while on earth, it was perfectly free in meriting, not merely with the kind of freedom admitted by the Jansenists, which is nothing else but spontaneity (lib-
331 THE LOVE OF GOD ertas a coactione), but with the true liberty required for meriting.2 Jesus could not have disobeyed His Father; yet He obeyed Him freely. How can obedience be free and meritorious when disobedience is not possible? So great is this mystery that some theologians, not seeing how they could avoid contradiction in admitting both truths, have maintained that die Father gave no command to Jesus and laid no obligation upon Him to die for us but merely proposed the sacrifice to Him, and He freely accepted it.
This solution is foreign to the doctrine of the great masters and has no foundation in Holy Scripture. On the contrary, more than once in the Gospels Jesus speaks of having received a command from His Father to die for us: "No man taketh it [life] away from Me: but I lay it down of Myself, and I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of My Father." 2 After the Last Supper, just before the Passion, our Lord again says: "I will not now speak many things to you. For the prince of this world cometh, and in Me he hath not anything. But that the world may know, that I love the Fadier: and as the Father hath given Me commandment, so do I. Arise, let us go hence." 8
St. Paul refers to an order and not simply to a counsel when he says to the Philippians that Jesus Christ "humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross." 4 Besides, other divine precepts constituted an obligation for our Lord's human liberty: "If you keep My commandments, you shall abide in My love; as I also have3 kept My Father's commandments, and do abide in His love." 5 How then could Christ be at once impeccable and perfectly free in His obedience? This mystery will always remain obscure to us in this life, but it seems impossible only to those who entertain the world's idea of liberty radier dian the saints'. The saints consider liberty freedom for good ; as such Christ possessed it in a sovereign degree; whereas the world looks upon liberty as freedom for evil just as much as freedom for good. Here a light is given to us for contemplation and for action, a great lesson on the relationship between free will and deliverance from sin.
The better to understand it, let us see: (1) the world's notion of liberty; (2) Christ's liberty on eardi; (3) die liberty of the saints.
The world holds liberty to be the ability to choose between good and evil, between duty and the whims of egoism, the power to wididraw from law and authority. The world then readily puts opposition between freedom and authority and seems to feel itself at liberty only when it has escaped from some obligation, from what it terms servile obedience, believing itself really free when it can say with Satan, "I will not serve, I will not obey." Or, if it achieves some good, it desires to do so not because God has commanded it but because it results in some satisfaction or entails the development of the natural faculdes.
What the world calls liberty has no patience with restraint
or rule, flees the wise directions of authority, and rushes toward real servitude, toward a fall, and sometimes into vileness. We escape God's holy commandments only to be made slaves of our own passions, which throw off the rule of reason and soon become its masters: "Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin." The sinner is no longer led by right reason, but allows himself to be driven by inordinate inclinations and, wherever he goes, he carries his slavery with him.
In one of His most beautiful parables, Jesus has shown us the world's view of liberty and to what a downfall it leads. 6 The prodigal son, impatient to use his freedom to throw off his father's authority, asks for his share of the inheritance, and his father gives it to him. "And not many days after, the younger son, gathering all together, went abroad into a far country: and there wasted his substance, living riotously." Liberty was not enough for him; he had to have license, and license leads to misery. "And after he had spent all, there came a mighty famine in that country: and he began to be in want. And he went and cleaved to one of the citizens of that country. And he sent him into his farm to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with die husks the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him."
The story of the prodigal is re-enacted daily in the realm of the spiritual. How many souls who had faith, hope, and charity and lived in their heavenly Father's house, have asked Him for their share of the inheritance that they might use their liberty as they liked! They have given up being directed by faith in order to direct themselves, to be guided, so they say, by reason; but then they fall below reason into egoism, pride, and sensuality. Their passions enslave them, take turns
EXEMPLAR FOR OUR FREE WILL 335 at ruling them and make war upon one another. They become slaves of this poor world, bound by conventions that are often ridiculous. Unwilling to submit to God's holy laws, they find themselves obliged to bow down before the silly caprices of those who set the fashion in artistic, intellectual, and moral matters. It would be bad enough if there were nothing worse than absurdity in such fashions, but they harbor sacrilege and blasphemy as well. The liberty of this world is the most abject slavery.
The story of the prodigal is repeated by entire peoples who have abandoned the faith and obedience to the commandments of God and the Church in order to follow the principles of modern liberalism. And what have they received from liberalism in return ? It has led to tyranny, to the oppression of the good by the wicked, who make whatever laws they deem fit, as dictated by their egoism, their religious indifference, or their positive hatred for all that is great and good.
In the liberalism that rises up against the authority of God and of the Church we find in its fullness the world's conception of liberty. Liberalism is essentially a doctrine that man and society have no obligation to receive divine revelation, no matter how evident its confirmatory signs may be. Each man is free to live without religion or to choose among religions the one that he prefers, as if God had no absolute right to be believed when He speaks and confirms His utterance with unmistakable signs; as if it mattered little whether God has spoken or not; as if man could be saved without faith in the divine word ; as if contradictory religions could both be equally true and divine; as if states should and could remain neutral toward truth and error, religion and and blasphemy, the Church and secret societies.
The heresy of liberalism consists in the denial of God's rights and the proclamation of the absolute independence of human freedom, which is thus placed above God and wears an air of charity and of generosity toward the cult and faithful of all sects alike. 7 Here we have no partial heresy but the rejection of all religious obligations, the acting as if God had no rights whatever, as if divine authority were only a vain word. We can clearly see in a society ambitious to be called modern the aberrations stemming from the world's notion of liberty. Assuredly, if we understand liberty thus, we cannot understand how Christ was free, for He never withdrew from die divine authority and could not exempt Himself from nor escape the commandments of His Fadier.
Christ's liberty on earth
Looking at Christ's liberty from below, we find it incomprehensible to us; looking at it from above, as a reflection of the divine perfections, we become enlightened by it. Christ never had freedom for evil, but only for good; His human will was the most perfect and die greatest living image of the divine liberty on earth.
From all eternity, infinitely above the false liberty of the world, the principle of all servitude, there exists a most holy liberty, the principle of all freedom. God in His infinite happiness and holiness is sovereignly impeccable and sovereignly free. If He sinned, He would no longer be God; to sin is to
7 Ada Leonis XIII, Encyclical Libertas, June 20, 1888, Dcnzingcr, no. 1932; likewise Encyclical Immortale Dei. November 1, 1885, Denzinger, no. 1866, 1874, 1880; Acta Pii X, Encyclical Pasccndi, Dcnzingcr, nos. 2093, 1995.
EXEMPLAR FOR OUR FREE WILL 337 turn away from the Sovereign Good. How could God turn away from Himself? He is absolutely impeccable and neverdieless infinitely free, free not in relation to Himself, because He necessarily loves Himself, but in regard to creatures, whom He can create or not, and whom He can thereafter fill with His gifts according to His own measure.
"The Spirit breathes where He will" with sovereign liberty. The divine seed which He implants in different souls has not all the same life and beauty but is given according to His good pleasure. Why was Joseph chosen rather than any other man of Nazareth to act as father and provider for Jesus? Why was he predestined before birth for diis high mission ? Because such was God's good pleasure. God is perfectly free to choose whom He pleases as an instrument of His mercy. He is free to call workers at the last hour to labor in His vineyard and to give diem as much out of His bounty as He gives those who worked the whole day long. He defrauds no one, but freely and gratuitously gives more to some than to others. His sovereign liberty renders account to no man, and is yet plainly and fully reconciled with absolute impeccability. God cannot turn away from Himself, but He is perfectly free in regard to everything created. He has no liberty for evil, like ours, which indicates our defectibility, but He has freedom for good in absolute plenitude.
Regarded in relation to the heights of divine liberty, the mystery of Christ's human liberty becomes wonderfully illumined for us. Not only as God, but also as man, Jesus is impeccable. He could say to His enemies, "Which of you shall convince Me of sin ?" for not only had He never sinned in fact, but He could not sin, having no freedom to do evil.
Jesus was impeccable during His lifetime on earth for three
33 8 THE LOVE OF GOD reasons. First of all, He was impeccable because He was the Word made flesh. If He had sinned through His human will, the sin would have been attributable to the Word made flesh. Actions are attributable to the person who places them, and a culpable act could not be attributed to a divine person. It could not be said widiout absurd impiety, without blasphemy, that God made man was capable of sinning. The Word could indeed bear in our stead the evil of punishment; He could be crucified for us; but He who came to blot out sin could not commit the evil of sin. "Ecce Agnus Dei qui tollit peccata mundi."
The greater the sanctity, the farther it is from all deordination and weakness; now the sanctity of Jesus consists in a personal, substantial, indissoluble, and closest possible union with divinity. As a mass of iron reddened and kept hot in a glowing furnace cannot cool off while held in die fire, so Christ's holy soul, personally united to the divinity of the Word and wholly penetrated with His splendor, could not have become sullied.
A second reason why Christ's human will was impeccable even in this world is that His soul received the fullness of habitual grace; and this fullness He could not lose, for it flowed from the personal union of His humanity with the Word as its necessary consequence. He always had, too, efficacious actual grace for the accomplishment of the commandments and counsels.
Thirdly, while on earth Jesus was impeccable because He possessed the beatific vision as the saints enjoy it in heaven. But a soul that has an immediate vision of the divine essence perceives so clearly God's infinite goodness diat it cannot turn away from Him, nor prefer anything whatever to Him. Sin is impossible in heaven, and even while in the world Christ's soul opened out upon heaven.
During His earthly life, Jesus' human will was perfectly subordinated to the divine will and therefore impeccable. His two wills were united in a theandric activity, being unified in the person of the Word acting through bodi natures. 8 Because of His impeccability, which admitted no possibility of disobeying, how could Jesus be free to merit widi real liberty, with something other than mere spontaneity? He had no freedom for evil such as we have as a concomitant of our defectibility, but He had full freedom for good. To turn from His Father, whom He saw face to face and loved above all things widi a love greater than all the saints' in heaven, He could not. He had nonetheless liberty for good in regard to creatures, everything attractive or forbidding in the created order.
He held free mastery over sensible goods and honors. They could not captivate Him, precisely because His soul, being full of grace, adhered immovably to the Sovereign Good. He likewise rose above the threats of His enemies. They could not intimidate Him. Jesus was also at liberty to call to the apostolate His first twelve disciples rather than any other fishermen of Galilee. He freely chose Peter rather than some other apostle to be His vicar, the head of His Church, and He freely called John to a friendship of predilection.
In the very accomplishment of His inevitable duty, Jesus was free. He could not have disobeyed, nevertheless He was freely "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Of His life He said, "No man taketh it away from Me: but I lay it down of Myself. . . . This commandment have I re-
/ ceived of My Father." 0 How was Jesus free in this instance and in what is His liberty to be found ? Under one aspect, the deadi awaiting Him was terrible; under another, it was good for the salvation of mankind, for the deliverance of souls. Of itself it had no invincible attraction for Jesus as the face-to-face vision of His Father's goodness had. In one way it attracted Him, but in another it repelled and terrified Him, inspiring aversion in His sensitive appetite, in His whole human nature. The will of Jesus intervened to make one rather than the other of these contrary aspects prevail, freely giving preference to the good, to heroic sacrifice. His will is completely upright, it always intervenes as it should, 10 and here it interposed freely because the death of the cross was not in itself an invincibly attractive good; far from it. But the human will of Jesus intervened impeccably and infallibly because it is the will of the Word made flesh, illumined by
10 Cf. St. Thomas, Ilia, q. 18, a. 4, ad 311m: "The will of Christ, though determined to good, is not determined to this or that good. Hence it pertains to Christ, even as to the blessed, to choose with a free will confirmed in good."
On this article see the commentaries of lohn of St. Thomas, on q. 15, a. 1; also of the Salmanticcnses, Gonet, and Billuart. They show that in this life Christ of necessity loved the ultimate end, God seen face to face, and all the means of themselves intrinsically necessary to the last end; He chose freely the means which had only an accidental connection (in virtue of an extrinsic precept) with the last end. He had indifference of judgment in regard to the goodness of these means considered in themselves. The object, the death on the cross in particular, seemed good under one aspect, frightful under another, and to overcome this indifference, the free will had to intervene; and confirmed in goodness, it always intervened as it should have done, most holily.
It is objected that the command to die for us is irreconcilable with Christ's liberty. The answer to be given is that a precept properly so called certainly takes away the moral freedom to act against it but docs not do away with psychological freedom; on the contrary, it is given in view of an act to be performed freely and, if it should destroy psychological liberty, it would destroy the very nature of the command. Now before the command Christ had impeccable psychological liberty, a pure image of God's freedom; and His freedom was not destroyed by His Father's command, otherwise the command would destroy its own proper nature.
the beatific vision, full of habitual grace, ever receptive of strong and sweet actual graces, which do no violence to the will's freedom but lead liberty to exercise itself as it should. 11
Christ merited by His free acts in this world because He had not yet reached the end of His mission, did not yet possess all that He was going to conquer hereafter. Merit signifies die right to a future recompense. On earth Jesus merited for Himself and for us: for Himself, His glorious resurrecdon, His ascension, the exaltation of His name; for us, all the graces necessary or useful for our salvation and sanctification. In heaven Jesus remains free in regard to creatures, but He no longer merits, for He has reached the end of His course and now possesses His reward, communicating it to all who do not resist Him but seek their salvation through Him.
This imperfect explanation of the mystery of Christ's obedience and the reconciliation of His impeccability and freedom can be summed up in a few words: Jesus had no freedom for evil but He had, like His Father, full liberty for good. However obscure this mystery may remain, it contains great light for contemplation and a great practical lesson. To indicate this, let us look at the liberty of die saints and then consider what our own should be.
The saints enjoy liberty in regard to the things of this world because they have been freed from them by renunciation; and they are not constrained by God's commandments
11 Cf. St. Thomas, Ilia, q.15, a.i; la, q.105, a.4; la Ilae, q.io, a.4; q.113. a-35 De malo, q.6, a. I, ad 311m.
because they bear them with love. Even as our Lord, the saints are at liberty in regard to all created goods, and the more they love God the freer they are. The stronger their love of God is, die more ably it delivers them from die slavery of the passions and of the world with its maxims and prejudices. They indeed have understood Christ's words: "If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." 12 "The trudi shall make you free." 13
Divine truth delivers them from error, from anxiety, from small and foolish ideas, giving them instead the great thoughts of God. The more the saints love God, the richer they are spiritually, having no need for the vanities of the world, being indeed too great for them. They are spiritual millionaires: the promise of a few small coins cannot attract them.
The saints likewise overcome the threats of the world, the persecution of the impious, and the snares of the devil. Their enemies serve diem, even in their persecution of them giving them the boon of martyrdom. Martyrdom is die transfiguration, the Thabor, of liberty, for the most terrible physical sufferings cannot bind liberty. Who was ever freer than St. Agnes or St. Cecilia bowing their heads to the swords of their executioners ?
Above all, the saints become masters of themselves through the liberty coming to them from God; they are no longer, as we, prisoners of their own ego, captives to their egoism and self-love. They conquer vain complacency, and their hearts dilate in the one thought of God's glory and the salvation of souls. An immense liberty of spirit diey find in the
observance of our Lord's words: "Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you." 14 Who, then, can prevent die saints from seeking the kingdom of God, if God gives Himself especially to those who suffer persecution for His sake ?
Who can limit or constrain the saints' freedom ? Do God's commands or His grace compel them ? The more the saints advance, the more liberty they find in accomplishing the Lord's commands, because diey regard them not merely as precepts, as rigid laws, but as expressions of God's love for us. And they respond to diem with love as well as with obedience. To follow God's ways merely to satisfy our feelings falls below obedience; to follow God's ways through the generous impulse of charity rises above mere obedience. And die more charity grows, the more the heart is enlarged in die way of the commandments : "I have run the way of Thy commandments, when Thou didst enlarge my heart." 15
Souls can reach a degree of sanctity in which they are so possessed by God's love that they reject immediately and as if by instinct whatever would lead to sin. Although not yet confirmed in goodness, they draw near this goal, where nothing will henceforth have power to encompass their downfall. They are borne toward God with all the energy of perfect charity, yet obey Him freely and can therefore merit.
Shall we perhaps find that grace violates the liberty of the saints? Far from violating freedom, grace acts strongly, sweetly, and steadily to release and deliver them from the slavery of sin. The saints desire to subject themselves perfectly to grace and not to know any other initiative than that
born of grace. They no longer seem to think for themselves, to make their own deliberations, to organize their lives for their own ends, to act of themselves, but rather to abandon themselves to the divine action within them. They embrace a kind of slavery for God's sake and so attain the highest liberty possible in this life, walking in the ways called passive.
At prayer they feel themselves interiorly prompted to make God the absolute master of their hearts, to renounce everything for Him. They are not concerned more with one practice dian with another but do everything for God's love, using their liberty to second the divine modon, never allowing natural eagerness to make them anticipate it. God, by His continual acdon on the soul, by the practices that He requires of it, by the interior trials that He sends it, insensibly purifies it of its faults and impresses upon it all that it exercises by His help, without thinking about its virtues, or even being conscious that it has any. 16
No one has possessed so high a degree of holy liberty as the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was her privilege to be confirmed in goodness while still on earth; she never committed the smallest venial sin and always received such strong and sweet grace that she accomplished the will of God with utmost freedom. She was free in her obedience; she therefore merited; and she merited more by her easiest actions than all the saints together by their most heroic deeds. Surely Mary was free at
18 Father Grou, S.J., Maximes spirituelles , ed. 1915, p. 25, 2nd maxim. This is a remarkable chapter, in which we see that the author, probably without a distinctly Thomistic intellectual formation, comes through progress in the interior life and the direction of people of prayer, to speak of grace and fidelity to grace in the same way as St. Augustine and St. Thomas. The same striking fact can be remarked in the writings of Fathers Lallcmant, Dc Caussadc, and Surin, who follow the same direction, quite different from that of Rodriguez and Scaramelli.
the foot of die cross when saying her sorrowful fiat, when offering her dear Son to God, an oblation which she knew as both crucifying and salutary. She spoke her grief-filled fiat on Calvary with die same freedom that she pronounced her joyful fiat at the annunciation. Grace drew her to it strongly but wiped away none of its loving suffering, even increasing it to proportions that no other creature has ever endured on earth.
In heaven the saints, confirmed in goodness by the beatific vision, love God of necessity, because they are invincibly attracted to infinite Goodness unveiled. Their beatific love is sovereignly spontaneous but necessitated in die sense of being above liberty and not below it like mechanical action. 17 However, in heaven the saints freely carry out God's orders in regard to creatures, having in such things freedom for good, not for evil. 18 They no longer merit, not because they lack freedom in obeying God's commands, but because they have reached the end of their course, already enjoy dieir supreme reward, and have nothing more to merit.
Our practical conclusion should be to ask our Lord to take away from us our freedom for evil, which is only an aspect of our defectibility, and give us more freedom for good. Our whole desire should be never to abuse our freedom, to make it as much as possible like God's, like Christ's, by loving the good and hating evil. The more strongly we are drawn to the good through our growth in charity, the more like to God we shall be, for He is necessitated by His nature to the good. 19 Divine truth, the commandments of die Lord, and
17 Cf. St. Thomas, la Ilae, q.4, a. 4; q.5, a. 4. 13 Cf. St. Thomas, Ilia, q. i8, a. 4, ad 311m. 19 Grou, op. at., p. 20.
34 6 THE LOVE OF GOD
His grace serve to liberate us more and more from our servitude to sin and self.
During our lifetime we always run the unhappy risk of throwing off our Lord's yoke, no matter how light it may be, and resisting His grace. This misfortune is the more to be feared when our will pretends to be its own master instead of abandoning itself to divine Providence; for the perfection of the will consists in placing itself in God's hands, in making use of its own proper activity only to become more dependent on Him, in being always docile to grace. Let us offer our liberty to Jesus through Mary and try never to take it back again; in this holy slavery we shall find deliverance and a most sure road to heaven. 20
30 Rom. 6: 20, zx: "For when you were the servants of sin, you were free men to justice. ... But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end life everlasting." Slavery to sin is real slavery and means liberty only to the world, whereas the slavery of love for God is true freedom, the liberty of the children of God. Cf. St. Thomas, Ila Hac, q.183, a. 4, c. See also Blessed Grignon de Montforfs True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the excellent summary which he himself has given of it in The Secret of Mary.
Footnotes
Chapter 33 of 37