Children of the Free Woman

Most of us would like a guarantee from God. Some of us want it as a rule: a checklist we can keep, so we know for certain we’re in good standing. Others want it as a sign: one clear answer to prayer, one unmistakable nudge, and then we’ll commit. Both requests sound humble. Underneath, they’re a way of staying in control. A rule I can keep lets me measure my own standing, and a sign on my terms lets me decide when God has done enough to earn my trust. In either case, fear is doing the asking, and fear is how a servant relates to a master.

Today’s readings expose both demands. In Galatians, Paul is writing to converts who are about to be circumcised and take on the law of Moses because new teachers have told them faith in Christ isn’t enough. He answers that claim with a daring reading of Genesis, two mothers and two sons, and then issues them a command: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” In Luke, the crowds are pressing in, and Jesus calls them “an evil generation” because they want a sign. He offers them only one: the sign of Jonah, a prophet whose preaching was enough for a pagan city to repent.

Franciscan Media’s saint for today is Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos, a Redemptorist who preached across the Midwest and the East in two languages and died of yellow fever, caught while visiting the sick. His liturgical feast falls on October 5, which is also the Memorial of Saint Faustina Kowalska. So here’s the question these readings put to you and me: are we living as children of the free woman, or are we still asking God for papers?

The Readings

First Reading: Galatians 4:22-24, 26-27, 31–5:1

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise. Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar.

But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written,

“Rejoice, O barren one that dost not bear;
break forth and shout, thou who art not in travail;
for the desolate hath more children
than she who hath a husband.”

So, brethren, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Gospel: Luke 11:29-32

When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, “This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the men of Nineveh, so will the Son of man be to this generation. The queen of the South will arise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”

Scriptural Analysis

Paul has been arguing with the Galatians for three chapters, and here he reaches for one more argument from Scripture. He opens by asking whether those who want to live under the law have actually listened to it (Galatians 4:21). The teachers in Galatia had almost certainly used Abraham’s two sons against him: Isaac was the son of the covenant; the covenant was sealed with circumcision (Genesis 17:10), so be circumcised and join Isaac’s line. Frank Matera, in the Sacra Pagina commentary, thinks that’s exactly why Paul takes up the story. It was common ground, and Paul turns it around. Cardinal Albert Vanhoye and Peter Williamson admire the move: “The way Paul interprets the Old Testament in the light of Christ shows both insight and a wonderful creativity.”¹

“Now this is an allegory.” Matera explains that Paul’s verb comes from two Greek words, allos (AL-los), “other,” and agoreuein (ah-go-ROY-ain), “to speak,” so its basic meaning is “to say something other.” This is its only appearance of that verb in the New Testament. Vanhoye and Williamson point out that Paul uses “allegory” for what we would call typology: real people and events that prefigure later realities in salvation history. Hagar and Sarah were real women, and their story carries a meaning beyond itself.²

So Paul sets up two columns. On one side stand Hagar the slave woman, Mount Sinai where the law was given, and “the present Jerusalem,” which “is in slavery with her children” (Galatians 4:25). Matera notes that Paul’s word for “corresponds,” systoichein (sis-toy-KAIN), means to stand in the same line or column, “like soldiers.” On the other side stands “the Jerusalem above.” Vanhoye and Williamson notice the surprise. We expect Paul to contrast the present Jerusalem with a future one, and he contrasts it with the Jerusalem above, “a qualitative rather than a chronological contrast.”³

“But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.” Vanhoye and Williamson describe Christians as this city’s children, “conceived through her preaching and born in her through baptism.” Saint Thomas Aquinas reads the mother two ways, as the Church Militant who bears us now and the Church Triumphant whose children we are becoming: “we are so generated in the present Church Militant as to arrive at the Triumphant.” The Catechism takes the phrase straight into its teaching on the Church, which “is called ‘that Jerusalem which is above’ and ‘our mother.’”⁴ Isaiah’s song fits her. Matera notes that Isaiah 54:1 was first spoken during the exile and promised Jerusalem’s restoration; Vanhoye and Williamson picture the empty city as a barren wife suddenly surrounded by children. Paul sees the promise kept in a city open to every nation.⁵

A word of care is needed, because this passage has been misused. Vanhoye and Williamson are careful about exactly what Paul says: the covenant of Sinai was prefigured in Hagar. They reject the theology that treats the Church as Israel’s replacement, since God will never give up on his chosen people (Isaiah 49:15; Romans 11), and they write, “Christians respect Jews as our older brothers in the faith of Abraham.” Matera reads the allegory as an argument inside the early Church, aimed at the teachers who wanted to circumcise Paul’s Gentile converts: “Paul is not talking about Jewish people in general.”⁶

So what makes one son a slave and the other free? Aquinas gives an answer that reaches well past the first century. “The new law engenders the feeling of love, which pertains to freedom: for one who loves is moved by his own initiative. The Old, on the other hand, engenders the feeling of fear in which is servitude; for one who fears is moved not by his own initiative but by that of another.”⁷ A slave obeys because someone is watching. A son obeys because he loves his father.

Then the Lectionary jumps to the line that sums up the whole letter: “For freedom Christ has set us free.” Matera explains that the Greek tē eleutheria (tay el-yoo-theh-REE-ah) can be read “by freedom” or “for freedom,” and he prefers the second: Christ set us free for the purpose of being free. Vanhoye and Williamson observe that Paul usually describes salvation with words like “ransom” and “rescue,” which look back at what we were saved from. “Set free” looks forward, to “the excellent standing that we have received, corresponding to our dignity as sons and daughters of God.” The Catechism quotes this verse when it teaches that Christ won salvation for all and “redeemed them from the sin that held them in bondage.”⁸

“Stand fast therefore.” Matera says the verb, stēkete (STAY-keh-teh), is almost entirely Paul’s, and here it most likely means “remain constant in the freedom you have received.” Aquinas pictures a man standing upright: “with your faith firm and feet planted, persevere in freedom.” Then the warning: “do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” The phrase is zygō douleias (ZOO-go doo-LAY-as), and Vanhoye and Williamson notice that Paul writes “a yoke,” with no definite article. That widens the warning. Christians should not submit to any religious system or rule of piety “that claims to determine a person’s standing with God.” Rules of life have a real place, they add, but they “can never be allowed to substitute for the only true foundation of a right relationship with God,” which is faith in Jesus, crucified and risen.⁹

The Gospel. Earlier in Luke 11, some in the crowd tested Jesus by asking for “a sign from heaven.” (Luke 11:16) In today’s passage, he answers them. Pablo Gadenz notes that “this generation is an evil generation,” likens the people who reject Jesus to the generation in the wilderness that never entered the promised land (Numbers 32:13; Deuteronomy 1:35). They had seen the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, and the manna given in the desert, and it was never enough.¹⁰

“No sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” Matthew explains the sign as the three days in the belly of the fish, a figure of the death and resurrection (Matthew 12:40). Luke tells it differently. Gadenz explains that, coming right after “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:28), the reference points “more to the preaching of Jonah than to his sojourn in the whale’s belly.” The sign is “the preaching of Jesus,” and then the preaching about Jesus by his disciples, which would lead even the Gentiles to repent (Acts 11:18), as the Gentile people of Nineveh did. Luke Timothy Johnson agrees that Luke points to “Jonah’s specifically prophetic function of preaching God’s word.”¹¹

In the Catena Aurea (kah-TAY-nah OW-ray-ah) of Saint Thomas, Saint Ambrose hears mercy inside the warning: “For by the example of the Ninevites both a punishment is denounced, and a remedy promised.”¹²

Then come two witnesses for the prosecution, and both are foreigners. The queen of the South, the queen of Sheba, traveled from the ends of the earth to hear Solomon (1 Kings 10:1-10). The men of Nineveh, Israel’s enemies, repented at one short sermon (Jonah 3:4-10). Johnson notices that here, as elsewhere in Luke, “those outside Israel are more positively portrayed than those within.” Gadenz adds that Jesus is himself the wisdom the queen came to hear. Saint Bede says she will condemn this generation “by the contrast of a better deed.”¹³ The Catechism counts “something greater than Jonah” and “greater than Solomon” among the claims that only “the divine identity of Jesus’ person can justify.”¹⁴

Put the two readings side by side, and they make the same diagnosis. The Galatians wanted circumcision as a guarantee. The crowd wanted a sign as a guarantee. Both wanted God to meet a condition they had set, and that’s the logic of the slave woman’s house, where everyone is moved by fear and by someone else’s hand. The Ninevites had no guarantee at all. They had a reluctant prophet and a forty-day warning, and they repented on the chance that God might relent (Jonah 3:9). They acted like children of the free woman before they knew her name. And the sign Jesus gives is the free woman’s own gift: a person preaching, crucified and risen, who asks to be believed and loved.

Daily Application

The interior movement these readings ask for is to stop bargaining with God. Stop asking for signs and guarantees and start living as a son or daughter who is already free. That’s harder than it sounds, because the demand for a sign is usually dressed up in language that makes it appealing. It often sounds like prudence. I’ll forgive him when he shows he’s changed. I’ll go to confession when I’m sure I won’t fall again. I’ll pray seriously once I know God is listening. Each of those sentences puts a condition on God. Each is spoken by a servant who’s afraid of the master.

So name the sign you’ve been waiting for. Then look at the sign you’ve already been given. Jesus is greater than Jonah, and his word is preached to you at every Mass. You have the Gospels, the sacraments, and the risen Lord himself in the Eucharist. If you’re holding out for more evidence before you repent and change your ways, remember Bede’s queen: she crossed a desert to hear Solomon, and she’ll want to know why you wouldn’t cross the room.

Then consider what yoke you’ve picked up. Vanhoye and Williamson’s warning applies to good Catholics as much as to the Galatians. Devotions, fasting, and a rule of life are gifts, but they can quietly turn into a ledger we keep to reassure ourselves. If you finish your prayers feeling safe because you completed them, and anxious when you miss a day, your devotion has started to work like the old law. Keep the practice and change the motive: do it because you love him. The one who loves, Aquinas says, “is moved by his own initiative.” And the Catechism promises that grace is no rival to our freedom: “the more docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom and confidence during trials.”¹⁵

Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos lived that freedom. Franciscan Media tells how he left Bavaria for the United States in 1843 to serve German-speaking Catholics, assisted Saint John Neumann in Pittsburgh, and preached for years in English and German. Assigned to New Orleans, he caught yellow fever visiting the sick and died in 1867. Franciscan Media says he “preached about the works of mercy and then engaged in them, even risking his own health.”¹⁶ He preached like Jonah without Jonah’s reluctance, and he spent his freedom on other people.

Stand fast in the freedom Christ won for you. Take the sign you’ve been given, and live today as a child of the free woman.

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Notes

1. ↑ Frank J. Matera, Galatians, Sacra Pagina 9 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 174-175; Albert Vanhoye and Peter S. Williamson, Galatians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 160.
2. ↑ Matera, Galatians, 169; Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 161.
3. ↑ Matera, Galatians, 170; Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 162.
4. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 163; Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Galatians, chap. 4, lect. 8, nos. 258, 264, at aquinas.cc; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 757.
5. ↑ Matera, Galatians, 171; Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 164-165.
6. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 168, 170; Matera, Galatians, 178.
7. ↑ Aquinas, Commentary on Galatians, chap. 4, lect. 8, no. 260.
8. ↑ Matera, Galatians, 180; Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 172; Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1741.
9. ↑ Matera, Galatians, 180; Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Galatians, chap. 5, lect. 1, no. 277, at aquinas.cc; Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 172-173.
10. ↑ Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 228.
11. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 228; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 187.
12. ↑ Saint Ambrose, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, vol. 3, St. Luke (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), on Luke 11:29-32.
13. ↑ Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 185; Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 229; Saint Bede, quoted in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, St. Luke, on Luke 11:29-32.
14. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 590.
15. ↑ Aquinas, Commentary on Galatians, chap. 4, lect. 8, no. 260; Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1742.
16. ↑ “Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos,” Saint of the Day, Franciscan Media, accessed October 7, 2026, franciscanmedia.org.

Books Cited

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• Frank J. Matera, Galatians, Sacra Pagina 9 (Liturgical Press, 1992)
• Albert Vanhoye and Peter S. Williamson, Galatians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2019)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Doubleday / Image)
• Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2018)
• Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Liturgical Press, 1991)
• Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels