There have been many slogans relating to freedom down through the centuries. Perhaps the most notorious and cruel was the Nazi slogan “Work makes you free” that hung over the gates of the concentration camps. In John 8, 31-42, Jesus declares, “The truth will make you free.” A little later in the Gospel, Jesus will say of Himself, “I am the truth.” Jesus, in other words, is declaring Himself to be the source of true freedom.
Indeed, it is only through Jesus that we can enter into what St. Paul calls “the glorious freedom of the children of God.” It is Jesus (by the working of His Spirit) who frees us from sin and all that diminishes us, and empowers us to live as God intends us to live, in ways that correspond to what is best and deepest in us.
Lent has been trying to teach us, day after day, that true freedom is the freedom to love, the freedom to give of ourselves to others as Jesus gave of Himself to us. It is for this freedom we pray during these final weeks of Lent.
