“You were called to freedom…”
Last week I had the unique pleasure of
attending a mission trip with 26 of our parish high school students and nine
other adults. We took off on Saturday morning (July 14) and headed off for
Davison, MI to a Catholic Heart Work Camp. The week was full of adventure, hard
work, sacrifice and great fun but the details of all of that will have to wait
for a future article.
As we traveled along on the bus, Rhonda
(youth minister) handed out a page with several Scripture passages on it and
asked each of us to choose the one that best described our attitude and
expectations of the upcoming week. Of the nine choices any one of them could
have fit for me but the one from the 5th Chapter of Paul’s
Letter to the Galatians spoke the most clearly to me: “For you were
called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not turn your freedom into an
opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole
law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.’”
What a wonderful definition of true
freedom! Instead of the cultural tendency to define freedom as licentiousness,
St Paul reminds his readers that true freedom comes from serving others.
Instead of freedom being the throwing off of rules and regs, St Paul tells us
that TRUE freedom exists in TRUE love. Not love as the world defines it (sex,
romance) but a love that emulates the way God loves us. In the ways we set
aside our own interests, desires, and wants and put the needs, wants and
desires of others first, we become an icon of God's love on earth.
With that in mind, how would you define
freedom? As Americans, we pride ourselves as being among the freest people in
the world, but what does that really mean? For me, that definition has changed
as I have aged. I went through the stage of thinking that true freedom meant
doing what I wanted, whenever I wanted. As I have experienced marriage,
parenting, the deaconate and good friendships, that definition has
"matured". True freedom, for me, is living my vocation as a married
man, a deacon, and a human being. As I pour myself out for the good of the beloveds
in my life I enjoy the freedom of a child of God. As I live in ways that are
true to God's will for me I become the person God intended. How much more free
could a person be than to live in harmony with his or her Creator?
But isn’t that peculiar? By this
definition it seems that freedom is not about throwing off impediments and
limitations but instead, living them in love and sacrifice. Think of it this
way – is a train really free since it can only move on rails? In one way we
could say ‘no’, the train is only free if it can go where it wants when it
want. In order to make that happen, the train would have to be changed
dramatically. It would need new wheels, it would have to be shortened and it
would need an engine in every car. Wait a minute - it would no longer be a
train, it would be a truck!
The very same can be true of us humans.
In order to do whatever we want, whenever we want with whomever we wish we can
become something our Creator never intended us to be. We become inhuman because
in these conditions because we lose our freedom. Would you say that the drug
addict is free because he is taking all of the drugs he wants? Of course not.
We would say he is not free at all but a slave to his own bad choices.
The beauty of human freedom comes from
the element of choice. Indeed, without choice there is no freedom. In other
words, if we are forced to love God and live the way God demands than we are
not free. Just as Adam and Eve were free to choose obedience to God or to
choose the “tree” we are free to make that same choice now. Each day we are
presented with many options. Some of them honor the dignity of who we are as
human beings and some of them clearly do not.
Before you go to sleep tonight consider
all the choices you made today. Examine them in the light of prayer and
honestly decide if they have led you closer to God (virtues) or if they have
led you further away from God (sin). Did your choices exhibit love of self (narcissism)
or the true love of others (self-giving)? In freedom, did you choose true love?
Remember, as a beloved child of God Almighty, “You are called to freedom to
love and serve one another”.
No comments:
Post a Comment