Given that is Independence Day weekend, for those of us in the United States today's Gospel reading is appropriate insofar as it pertains to being liberated from heavy burdens. But political liberation, whatever that might mean, is far from sufficient for our humanity in terms of being truly free. Life can be and often is very burdensome. If this life is all there is you are faced with two choices: carrying the heavy load or just dropping it and walking away. While choosing the latter may lighten your burden for a while, the freedom doesn't last. As a result, can't satisfy our longing. The idea of just carrying a load to the end turns such an end into a bitter one.
Properly considered, freedom is positive (i.e., freedom for) and not negative (freedom from). Sure, there are things from which one must be freed from before freedom can be positively exercised. Just as sea-going vessels inevitably accumulate barnacles, we acquire burdens sailing the sea of life. It doesn't take much wisdom to figure out that repeatedly dropping everything and moving on is not the road to happiness, fulfillment, or satisfaction.
Saint Paul, in the passage that serves as our second reading, taken from his Letter to the Romans, gives some insight into what we might call "the spiritual dynamics of human liberation." Once again, I think looking at a couple of terms from the original language in which the apostle wrote (Koine Greek) is useful. To really grasp what Paul was saying and to avoid a common mistake concerning what he was not saying isn't easy when reading an English translation. The reason for this is that there are two nouns that Paul uses to refer to distinct phenomena that are often mistaken as having the same referent, namely the body. In Greek, the term for "body" is soma and the word for "flesh" is sarx. The mixture of soma, sarx, and pneuma in several Pauline passages has proven to be a accelerator for a peculiar form of Christian gnosticism.
Like "flesh" in English, sarx can refer to the soft tissue, infused with blood, attached to the bones of living bodies. But Saint Paul typically used sarx to refer to another of its meanings: our sensuous nature that causes us to sin. Soma, by contrast, is the word the apostle uses to refer to the human body. This distinction is important because in nowise can Christianity, a religion rooted in the Incarnation of the Son of God, reject the human body.
According to any genuinely Christian anthropology, bodies are good. So good, in fact, yours will be resurrected. Stated simply, you are your body! Of course, the Greek word pneuma refers to spirit or, in this passage, the Spirit. According to Paul, it is the Spirit's power that empowers you to overcome "the flesh," in the sense he used it in this passage, through your body. This a very complicated way of saying that whether you live according to the flesh or the Spirit is about how you live your life, particularly how you think about, approach, engage, and relate to others. By "others," I mean "the other," the person who is not like you. The one who is the Jew to your Samaritan or vice-versa.
To live according to the flesh is something akin to living unreflectively and without intention. Following Jesus requires you to constantly examine your assumptions in the light of his teachings and example. He loves you too much to allow you to revel in smug assertions because to live that way is to close yourself to the beauty of the mystery you inhabit.
Losing your sense of wonder is to cease being one of the "little ones" to whom the Father unveils, by means of the Spirit, "hidden things." Therefore, the Gospel bids you to challenge yourself, to become aware of, engage, and with the help of the Spirit, overcome your hidden biases and your smug assertions. Being human means being a debtor to the flesh.
Because it is universal, Christianity must not be conceived of as tribal. You are not Christian because you come from a certain ethnic or national background. To be a "Catholic" or "catholic" Christian is to definitively reject all forms of sectarianism. Being Christian means rejecting tribalism, rejecting your all too natural tendency to strongly identify with your "in-group" to the exclusion of all "out-groups." Failure to do that is to remain in the flesh.
When read from a Christian perspective, the reading from the prophet Zechariah is a prophecy about Jesus. What it says is that God's reign, initiated and sustained by the Spirit, is not established by force or violence. It through meekness that Jesus conquers the world by first conquering our hearts. This is the Father whom reveals.
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