Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on SoundOn
Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
Galatians 4:22–24, 26–27, 31–5:1
Saint Paul reads the Old Testament with the eyes of Christ.
He sees that the old stories are not only old stories.
They carry a hidden light.
They point forward.
They prepare the way.
Saint Augustine later expressed it in a famous sentence:
The New Testament is hidden in the Old,
and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.
This is how Christians read Scripture.
Israel’s journey from Egypt to the Promised Land
speaks about our journey from slavery to freedom,
from sin to holiness,
from death to life.
The manna in the desert points toward the Eucharist.
Jerusalem points toward the heavenly Jerusalem.
And today, Paul looks at two women in the story of Abraham:
Hagar and Sarah.
Hagar was a slave woman.
Sarah was free.
Hagar gave birth to Ishmael.
Sarah gave birth to Isaac,
the child of promise.
Paul uses this story to speak about two ways of living before God.
One way is slavery.
The other is freedom.
One way tries to live only under the weight of the law.
The other lives from the promise fulfilled in Christ.
Paul tells the Galatians:
You are not children of the slave woman.
You are children of the free woman.
In other words:
You are not slaves.
You are free.
You have been reborn in Christ.
Through baptism,
through the Church,
through the Holy Spirit,
you have become children of God.
This is why Paul ends with such a strong sentence:
For freedom Christ has set us free.
So stand firm,
and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
This was the danger for the Galatians.
They had received the Gospel.
They had received the Spirit.
They had become free in Christ.
But now they were tempted to go back,
to live as if Christ were not enough.
Paul will not accept this.
Christ did not come to make us slaves.
Christ came to make us free.
But we must understand this freedom well.
Freedom in Christ does not mean:
I can do whatever I want.
It does not mean living without truth,
without love,
without moral responsibility.
Freedom in Christ means that sin no longer has to rule us.
Fear no longer has to rule us.
The need to prove ourselves no longer has to rule us.
We are free to love God.
Free to love our neighbor.
Free to live as children of the promise.
So today, let us stand firm.
Christ has set us free.
Let us not return to slavery.
Biblical Reflections on the Gospel of Matthew
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition,
copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Content License
© 2025 Krakus.
Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
(Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial).