ADVICE TO SACRIFICE OUR FREE WILL TO GOD
I add to the sacrifice of St Charles [Borromeo] that of the great Patriarch Abraham. It is a living image of the strangest and most loyal love that we can imagine in any creature. Indeed, he sacrificed all the strongest emotions of natural love he could have on hearing the voice of God telling him: Go from your country and your kindred and your fathers house to the land that I will show you (Gen 12:1). He went out immediately and promptly, set out on the way, not knowing where he was going (Heb 11:8). The warm love of his native country, the sweetness of the company of his close relations, the delights of the paternal home did not shake him at all. He sets out boldly and earnestly and goes where it pleases God to lead him. What self-sacrifice, Theotimus! What detachment! We cannot love God perfectly unless we renounce the love of transient, impermanent, perishable things.
This is nothing in comparison to what he did later on (Gen 22). God called him twice by name, saw his readiness in responding to the call and said to him: Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I shall show you ( Gen 22:2). Here he is, this great man suddenly sets out with his most beloved son so much loved by him. They make three days journey. He reaches the foot of the mountain. He leaves behind servants and the ass there. He loads on Isaac the wood needed for the burnt offering. He carries the sword and the fire. As they climb, this dear child says to him: My father. And he replied: What do you want, my son? The child says: Here are the fire and wood but where is the victim for the burnt offering? To which the father answers: God himself will provide the victim for a burnt offering my child (Gen 22: 7-8).
As soon as they reached the mountain, Abraham made an altar, arranged the wood over it. He bound his Isaac and laid him over the pyre. Then he extends his right hand, seizes and draws the sword. He raises his arm. As he is ready to strike for immolating the child, an angel calls to him from above:
Abraham, Abraham!
He answers: Here I am.
The angel says to him: Do not kill the child. It is enough. Now I know, that you fear God. You have not spared your son for love of me (Gen 22:11-12).
On hearing it, Isaac is untied. Abraham takes a ram which he sees caught in the thicket by its horns and sacrifices it.
He who looks at his neighbour’s wife, Theotimus, to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart (Mt 5:28). He who binds his son so as to sacrifice him, has already sacrificed him in his heart. Ah! See then, what a sacrifice this holy man made in his heart! It is a sacrifice beyond compare, a sacrifice which we can never praise sufficiently! O God! Who can discern whose love was the greatest? Is it that of Abraham who to please God sacrifices such a loving child? Or is it that of Isaac who to please God desires to be immolated? Is it that of the son who to be sacrificed allows himself to be tied, to be laid on the wood and peacefully waits like a little lamb the death blow from the hand of his beloved father?
As for me, I prefer the father for his long suffering. But I boldly give the prize to the magnanimity of the son. On the one hand, it is indeed a wonder. But it is not so great to see Abraham, already old and a past master in the science of loving God, and strengthened by the recent vision and the word of God make this final attempt at loyalty and love towards a Master whose loving kindness and providence he had so often felt and tasted. But Isaac, at the prime of his youth, still an apprentice and novice in the art of loving his God offers himself only on the word of his father. To see him offer himself to the sword and to the fire to be a burnt offering of obedience to the divine will is something that transcends all admiration.
However, do you not see, Theotimus, that Abraham reflects and turns over in his mind for three days, the bitter thought and decision of this painful sacrifice? Do you not feel compassion for his fatherly heart when climbing alone with his son, this child more simple than a dove asked him: My Father, where is the victim? And he replied: My son, God will provide. Do you not think that the gentleness of this child carrying the wood on his shoulders and afterwards piling them on the altar melted with tenderness the heart of his father? O heart which the angels admire and God exalts!
Lord Jesus, when shall it be that after sacrificing all that we have, we shall immolate all that we are to you? When shall we offer you our free will, the only child of our spirit as a burnt offering? When shall it be that we bind our free will and lay it on the pyre of your cross, of your thorns, of your lance, so that as a little lamb it may be a pleasing victim to your good pleasure to burn and die in the sword and fire of your divine love? O, free will of my heart, how good it is for you to be bound and laid on the cross of the Divine Saviour! How desirable it is for you to die to yourself and burn for ever as a burnt offering to the Lord!
Theotimus, our free will is never so free as when it is a slave of the will of God. So too, it is never so enslaved as when it serves our own will. It has never so much life as when it dies to self. Our free will is never so dead as when it lives for self alone. We have the freedom to do good or evil. But to choose evil is not to use but to abuse our freedom. Let us renounce this unhappy freedom. Let us subject our free will for ever to divine love. Let us become slaves of love in which slaves are happier than the kings. If ever we were to make use of our freedom against our decisions to serve God eternally and unconditionally, O, then for the sake of God, let us sacrifice our free will. Let us make it to die to self so that it may live to God. He who wants to keep it for self-love in this world shall lose it for eternal love in the next. The one who loses it for love of God in the world shall keep it for the same love in the next (Mt 10:39; Jn 12:25). He who gives it freedom in this world shall make it a bonded labourer and slave in the next. He who makes it serve the cross in this world shall have it free in the next. There immersed in the enjoyment of divine Goodness, freedom will be turned into love and love into freedom but a freedom of infinite sweetness. Without toil, without pain, without any reluctance whatever, we shall love without any change forever, our Creator and Saviour.