Today’s Second Reading is one of the most important, most beautiful, and most mysterious passages of Sacred Scripture.  The first part of Philippians Chapter 2 is known as the “Hymn to Christ’s Humility” and it’s an extraordinary thing.  I encourage you to go back and read through it a few times later on.  It points to exactly who Christ Jesus is.  He is equal to God the Father: meaning, he also is God.  By rights and in justice, he was owed all glory and dominion.  But he did not regard equality with God as something to be clung to.  He was in complete control and had complete power, and he choose to empty himself anyway, to humble himself, to take on the appearance of a slave.  He took on human nature and became completely obedient, obedient to everything human nature involves, even death.  The source of all life entered into death, at the hands of those to whom he had given life.  Through this intense, ironic humility, he is exalted.  He is exalted.  And not just him.  Through his intense, ironic humility, we are exalted as well.  Because that servitude and obedience that he experienced, that mortal likeness that he took on, is our likeness, our nature.  He swooped down into the deep ocean of our fallen nature, grabbed us on his way out, and carried us with him to glory on high.  Our human nature stays united to the Lord as he bursts forth from the tomb, and we are lifted up with him to share in the life of God.  What was lifted up from lowliness has been exalted.  We have been exalted, with him. 

St. Paul says, “Let this mind, that was in Christ Jesus, also be in you.”  Imagine the humility the Lord had, to make himself obedient to all of the weakness and pain and suffering involved in human life, obedient to Joseph and Mary, obedient to all these things in life that he had no obligation to subject himself to.  But he did it out of love.  Love for us and for his Father.  Obedience is a hard thing for us.  It’s been a hard thing since the Garden of Eden.  We just don’t like to be governed.  “You can’t tell me what to do.”  We’ve been saying that since Adam and Eve.  And at times it’s the right thing to say, in the face of tyranny or oppression.  But when it comes to God’s law, his commands, the demands of charity and justice and peace, obedience is the greatest of virtues.  True obedience is an act of freedom and paradoxically leads to even greater freedom.  When you drive down the road, you’re preserving your freedom and that of others by being obedient to the speed limit and lanes.  Imagine how quickly your freedom would disappear if you said “I’m not going to be a slave to those white and yellow lines.”  You’re not the boss of me, road!  A mountain climber doesn’t feel unfree by tying himself to his fellow climbers.  His freedom is assured by doing that.  A piano player isn’t unfree because he obeys the rules of harmony and good technique: his freedom to make something beautiful is expanded by his obedience to those realities.  Just so, our obedience to the law and commands of God frees us to live our lives with joy. 

A critical part of true Christian obedience is love.  Christ obeyed the will of the Father and submitted himself to the struggles of humanity, not because he had to, but because he wanted to, out of love for us and for his Father.  Love made his obedience truly me.  Love makes our obedience to God truly free and truly life-giving for us and for those in our lives.  All this made possible by our Lord.  Who has received the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.