The gift of Free Will: The Eucharist

Free will—many people deny it, most take it for granted,
Often we abuse it, seldom do we take responsibility for it
But always does God give it and respect it
Hoping that we will use it for the other, to Love.

When you really stop to think about it free will is a marvelous thing.
Truly a wonder, a miracle in fact!

When we hear proclaimed on Holy Saturday night
At the Mass of Light the 27th verse of that first chapter 
of the Book of Genesis:
God created mankind in his image;
in the image of God he created them;
male and female* he created them.

Do we realize that physically, we do not look like God, 
Who is after all pure SPIRIT?  

Do we realize that the image of God is, as St. Augustine teaches,
This ability that no other animal shares to make choices 
free from the demands of our mortal nature?

Do we realize that free will is the image, 
and our correct use of this freedom, the likeness
of God, which he carved in our souls on the day of our creation
and which He restores tonight during this Sacred Triduum?

Why is this night different from every other night?  
Why is it different from every other of Passover night since God delivered His people out of Egypt? 

Because tonight is the night when the Lamb of God 
Chooses to fulfill God’s plan,
Chooses to bind his free human will to the Divine Will.

You see Jesus is True God, but also True Man,
This means that although He shares His Divine intellect 
and will with the Father and the Holy Spirit,

His human nature, means that he has human intellect and a human will.

Tonight is the night, where humanity is reconciled to divinity
Because God who became man, showed us that human nature, 
the human will, is strong enough to unite itself to God.

In short:  you can choose to love
You can choose to give God everything He gives you.
 You can choose to be a SAINT.

In the reading from Exodus we hear that 
every family must procure a lamb, a prefect lamb,
and slaughter it, marking their doors with its blood, 
and eating its flesh prepared as if on a journey.

By this we understand, that the Passover is not just a meal,
it is a sacrifice, and a sacrament (a sign), 
which prepares man to do God’s will
to make a journey, into the desert, to encounter God.

The problem is the lamb is just a lamb, tasty I am sure,
but only a symbol of what we owe God.

It’s a symbol, furthermore that can be lost, 
because we are commanded to eat the Lamb.
Imagine if Uncle Sam were as loving as our God,
asking us to sacrifice our tax dollars,
but then letting us keep them.

For God it’s the right use of free will that He cares about,
After all, as the psalmist quips,
“Do you thing [God] eats the flesh of rams, 
or drinks the blood of goats?”

Like the Sacrifice of Issac, the beloved son of Abraham, 
the Sacrifice that is offered is not the thing sacrificed, 
it is the CHOICE Abraham is asked to make
a choice to “do the will of the Father”

As Jesus’ says in the Garden: “…but not my will but thy will be done.”

Abraham, offers his beloved son, and seeing his willingness, 
God provides a substitute.

In the story of the Sacrifice of Issac, it was a ram, caught in a thicket,
But today that foreshadowing is accomplished.

Jesus is the Lamb, not caught by His horns in a bush, but completely free
who chooses to accept God’s plan, and to do the will of the Father.

He does so, experiencing everything that we experience,
Uncertainty, fear, pain,

But making a choice, in love, to TRUST IN GOD,
To allow God’s will to be done: to, and in, and through HIM.


On the night He was betrayed, He took Bread, 
and said THIS IS MY BODY 
And He took the Chalice and said: THIS IS MY BLOOD

In doing so He is not just having a meal 
or satiating human hunger and thirst

Our Catholic Faith teaches us, 
that by the power of the Holy Spirit, 
what looks, feels, and tastes like bread is bread no more
and what smells, moves, and seems like wine is truly His Blood.

And this is not just a parlor trick, 
he takes bread and wine and changes it into His Body and His Blood
So that by doing so He can give us a symbol, a Sacrament,
of His choice, made in complete human freedom,
to give everything to God, for you and for me.

Jesus, God, who became Man, 
is now the man who in freedom, which is the image of God
chooses freely, to become like God.

By doing so, not just by dying, but by FREELY choosing to die
He washes us of our iniquities, and cleanses us from our sins.

If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, 
you ought to wash one another’s feet.


Through the graces He wins for us, by this choice,
He invites us to do the same.

Jesus invites us all, when we enjoy bounty to praise the Lord
when we achieve great things to praise the Lord
when we work great marvels to praise the Lord
But also when we fail to praise the Lord
When we fall down to praise the Lord
When we are persecuted, especially for His sake, to praise the Lord
And when we must suffer, and perhaps even die
To suffer and die in PEACE, not lamenting our fate, 
but praising God as Jesus does today. 

This is the image of God, 
whose likeness Jesus restores to us in Baptism.

I have given you a model to follow, 
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.