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SAW 8: Architecture of Freedom
What does an arch have to do with interior freedom?
Everything! Interior freedom is a spaciousness made possible by structure. Just as an arch balances the forces of compression and tension to open the greatest possible space, interior freedom supports a relaxed balance in the carrying of life’s daily loads. As an arch directs force down into the ground, doctrine, obligation and liturgical forms direct the impact of our trials to the Ground of being – to God.
What do bones have to do with freedom?
An internal skeleton gives us a significant advantage, in terms of freedom of movement, over creatures with exoskeletons. The rigid-but-finely-articulated system of bones is very like the law God gave His people to raise them up into freedom. Like any children, the Jews had to internalize the parent’s external laws over time in order to grow up.
Bones are also an amazing structure, with a light, open matrix design (instead of thick, heavy solidity) that suggests interior spaciousness as one quality of a strong support for freedom of movement.
Bones continually revive us with the manufacture of new blood cells – supporting life itself, and protecting life via the white blood cells fighting for us in the immune system. Bones require the pull of muscles for their healthy development, just as we all must act in freedom to strengthen our capacity for freedom.
Fulton Sheen said, “Free will is a gift, but freedom is a conquest.” We create our freedom by every act of freedom.
Another wonderful ‘bone thing’: Jesus’ bones were, conspicuously, not broken, in fulfillment of a prophecy that had been made about the Messiah, but also, perhaps, in a metaphorical allusion to the fact that He came not to abolish/break the Law, but to fulfill it.
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