We present a new more general way to combine ab initio quantum mechanical calculations with classical mechanical free energy perturbation approach to calculate the energetics of enzyme-catalyzed reactions and the same reaction in solution. This approach, which enables enzyme and solution reactions to be compared without the use of empirical parameters, is applied to the formation of the tetrahedral intermediate in trypsin, but it should be generally applicable to any enzymatic reaction. Critical to the accurate calculation of the reaction energetics in solution is the estimate of the free energy to assemble the reacting groups, where the approach recently published by Hermans and Wang (J. Am. Chem. Sec. 1997, 119, 2707) was used. A central aspect of this new approach is the use of the RESP protocol to calculate the charge distribution of structures along the reaction pathway, which enables us to circumvent problems in partitioning the charge across a residue that is being divided into QM and MM parts. The classical mechanical free energy calculations an implemented with two different approaches, "Cartesian mapping" and "flexible FEP". The similarity of the results found by using these two approaches supports the robustness of the calculated free energies. The calculated free energies are in quite good agreement with available experimental data for the activation free energies in the enzyme and aqueous phase reactions.