Freedom, Fulfillment and the Infinite
Michiel Peeters - Good afternoon! Welcome to those who are here for the first time, and welcome to all who have found their way back after Summer! I hope each of you feels in this moment, at the beginning of this new academic year, this new year of your life, a desire to live: that this year you may live.
As we heard in the first reading: “Hear [what] I am teaching you…, that you may live, and may … take possession of the land which the Lord … is giving you.” That you may live, this year, more than ever. That you may be yourself, ever more, in the circumstances you will go through. That you may walk freely in reality,breathing to the fullest. “Possess the land”: that you may own reality—the circumstances, the stretch of road you walk on—walk freely through a reality that is yours, for you and yours! How can one be free in the circumstances? What does “being oneself” mean for man who does not make himself? Who has a need so great that whatever he grasps never fully satisfies him—even though he spends for it all his energy and time? What is man’s “formula”? How can man live? The “formula” of man is to be a free relationship with the infinite. We are made, and made with an infinite need. Our hearts need the Infinite. And we become ourselves when we live this. We are all invited to verify this this year, in each moment of this year: that we become ourselves, can breathe, when we freely live our relationship with the Infinite; when we feel all our desire and then realize and appreciate that the one who makes us, is there, more so: cares about us, is our friend: for the Word was made flesh and dwells among us. “What great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him,” whenever we look for Him? My heart is glad because you live, oh Christ.
But what happens? Even after experiencing this, we tend to “can” this relationship in small boxes, to“control” it, to make a scheme of it. This is what Jesus accuses the Pharisees of doing: “This peoplehonors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” They had reduced religiosity, man’s free relationship with the infinite, to a system, a set of rules. And their “charity” was to control if all followed those rules. Instead of stirring up the hearts of their fellow men so that they could recognize God’s presence!
But we all have a tendency to entrust our happiness to what we can control. However, even if you come to Mass on Sundays, do school of community and charity work, but without self-awareness, without your heart, then in all those signs, all those tools, you won’t recognize and enjoy the Infinite. With all the boredom, irritation and looking elsewhere that this entails.
What can help us? A company that doesn’t tire of reminding us of ourselves. What do you really want? Are you free in the circumstances? Aren’t you actually looking for something infinite? For then we can perceive the infinite again in the sign: when our heart is itself, when we are aware of the infinite need we are.
That’s the company our Chaplaincy wants to be: a group of people who remind each other of what they really are: made; and made as infinite desire. Then, we can also recognize if there is something present that responds to that desire: if the Word was made flesh and dwells among us. And the unmistakable characteristic of one who is awakened to true self-awareness is that he is free, living in the circumstances: “That you may live, and … take possession of the land.”
20240901 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time B (Dt 4:1–2, 6–8; Mk 7:1–8, 14–15, 21–23) (Homily by Fr Michiel Peeters, Tilburg University Chaplaincy).
The author has not revised these notes.
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