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Today we
celebrate Independence Day. If my mathematical calculations are
accurate (and, oftentimes, they are not because my mathematical
abilities are, at best, deficient), this is our nation’s 228th
birthday.
When people talk
about Independence Day, they oftentimes will state that our national
celebration on Independence Day focuses upon our “freedom.” To support
this assertion, people will describe how the colonists’ desire for
liberty freedom from the yoke of servitude to the English crown and,
especially, its taxation policies, led to the Revolutionary War.
Even the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA, describes the
focus of Independence Day in these terms!
All of this
suggests that “freedom” and “liberty” are synonymous. I beg to differ
because, for Jesus’ disciples, there is a distinction between the two
terms with a big difference.
What we celebrate
each year on Independence Day is not “freedom” but the “liberty” the
colonists won for themselves and their fellow citizens, for their
children, and for future generations. I say this because, as
Christians, we must never forget that “freedom” is not the human
achievement liberty is, as Patrick Henry noted when he said “Give
me liberty or give me death!” No, freedom is God’s gift to his children.
Our freedom
was not restored through a war against an earthly king by the name of
George III who wore a crown crafted of gold and studded with fine
jewels. No, our freedom was restored almost 18 centuries earlier
through the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ who wore a crown crafted
of thorns.
I’m pursuing this
distinction—and the differences between “liberty” and “freedom”—not
simply because many people are fuzzy about the meaning of these
two terms. I especially want to pursue this idea because a minority of
our fellow citizens has forcibly argued during the past three decades
that they possess what they call an “inalienable freedom”—namely, the “freedom
of choice,” they call it—to do many things which our faith teaches are
morally evil. The evil of abortion is one glaring example. But, the
recent drive to expand the legal meaning of the word “marriage” to
include persons of the same-sex provides perhaps the most helpful example to
consider a fundamental principle. That principle, roughly stated
is: Although we as American
citizens possess the liberty to see laws enacted which are contrary
to the tenets of Judaeo-Christian morality, we are never free to do so.
Reflecting upon this particular distinction is important because it has
very much to do with our witness as disciples sent by
Jesus into the world with these words: “Go on your way; behold, I am
sending you like lambs among wolves. Carry no money bag, no sack, no
sandals….say to them, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand for you.’ ”
We quite rightly
celebrate liberty on Independence Day. Liberty and our desire for
liberty is found somewhere deep within the human spirit. But, what is
this “liberty,” properly speaking?
Liberty is a
triumph of the human spirit, secured whenever human beings successfully
achieve release from any form of slavery, imprisonment, captivity, or
arbitrary control. Recalling the time of our nation’s founding, this is
precisely what the Revolutionary War was all about. Liberty was what
the nation’s founding fathers were willing to lay down their lives for
and, in particular, liberty from the servitude being forced upon the
colonists by the English crown through its taxation policies which
allowed the colonists no representation in the English Parliament. For
the nation’s founding fathers, Jesus’ commission to say “The kingdom of
God is at hand for you” meant confronting King George III in order to
secure the blessings of liberty not only for themselves, their fellow
citizens, and for their children but also for future generations.
Viewed in this way, addicted persons secure their liberty when they
overcome their addictions and develop the self-governance needed to lead
a healthy lifestyle.
Furthermore,
liberty is the sum of all the rights, privileges, and exemptions that
citizens of a community, state, or nation possess in common. By virtue
of the liberty the citizens of the United States of America possess, we
can pursue our lives and seek our happiness as we see fit, not as some
earthly sovereign dictates. The only caveat, of course, is that we do
not violate the law as we exercise our liberty. For example, we possess
the liberty to imbibe in adult beverages, but not if we are underage.
We possess the liberty to drive a car, but not if we are legally
intoxicated or do not possess a valid driver’s license. We possess the
liberty to protest legislation we do not agree with, but we do not
possess the liberty to violate that law. For the nation’s founding
father’s, Jesus commission to say “The kingdom of God is at hand for
you” meant providing women and men the right to pursue their lives and
to seek their happiness as they saw fit, not as the King of England
dictated.
As an expression
of the deepest aspirations of the human spirit, liberty is a uniquely
human expression that is made evident in the ways we express our
liberty. As citizens of our nation, each of us possesses the liberty to
formulate and, and if we form a sizeable enough majority, to enact
legislation, statutes, and public policies that either correspond to or
are stand in direct opposition to Judaeo-Christian morality. We possess “liberty of choice”
and bear ultimate responsibility for the choices we make. As a human invention, then, liberty is
very fragile because it can be directed towards good or evil ends. It
is so easy to take our liberty for granted and unthinkingly to allow
ourselves or others to trample upon, to erode and, ultimately, to
expropriate liberty to themselves and to make slaves of us. Liberty,
then, is something we must cherish, guard, and protect.
If liberty is
that expression of the human spirit which seeks release from any form of
slavery, imprisonment, captivity, or arbitrary control and is the sum of
all the rights, privileges, and exemptions that citizens of a community,
state, or nation possess in common, what, then, is “freedom”?
Simply put,
“freedom” is “the quality or state whereby someone or something fulfills its
essential nature.” Freedom is not an expression of the yearning of the
human spirit but is, instead, a gift of God essential to the nature of
everything God has created.
Perhaps a couple
of analogies might help to clarify this abstract notion.
Take an acorn.
Given appropriate environmental conditions, an acorn is only free to
become an oak tree. Likewise for a sunflower seed. Planting it,
watering it, and tending it will yield a big, yellow sunflower, not a
purple tulip, a yellow daffodil, or a blue hydrangea. Or, the
successful unification of a human ovum and sperm. The resulting cell is
only free to become one thing, namely, a human being. It cannot become
a pine tree, a horse, or a cauliflower.
This definition
of freedom traces its origins to the time of creation when God endowed
everything He created with an essential nature, a “purpose,” if you
will. Freedom, then, is achieved only as the purpose for each thing God
created is brought to its proper fulfillment. A stately oak tree, a
garden in full bloom, and a fine race horse like Smarty Jones, are
beautiful to behold. In expressing their freedom, each of these created
things reveals an aspect of their Creator’s perfection.
But, standing in
stark contrast to everything else He created, God chose to breathe into
humanity His own divine image and likeness. God has chosen us to be
like Him. We are only free, then, to become that which God has created
us to be, namely, His sons and daughters who discover their purpose and
fulfillment in becoming the image and likeness of their Creator.
Through obedience to God, we—like that stately oak tree, a garden in
full bloom, and fine race horses like Smarty Jones—are wonderful to
behold when our lives reflect God’s image and likeness.
Think about it:
·
Is
there nothing more beautiful than a husband and wife—whom God has
created to be a father and a mother—beholding their newly born baby?
·
What
about a soldier who willingly offers to place one’s life in harm’s way
in order to preserve the lives and liberties of fellow citizens?
·
Is
there nothing more beautiful than an absolute stranger who comes to our
aid when we are in need?
·
How
about a teacher who patience enables us to understand things we don’t
believe that we’d ever be able to understand?
While we possess the liberty to act contrary to our essential
nature—after all, we can pursue our happiness in every person, every thing, and every
place other than God—we are never free to do so. To choose to act
contrary to our essential nature is to direct our liberty toward evil
ends and to violate that unique personhood God has breathed into us. This helps to
explain why sin—the selfish desire to live as sovereigns rather than in
obedience to God—has such devastating effects upon us and our lives.
Now, this is
really Good News!
God has created us to be free so that we might share
in God’s life.
But, the Good News doesn’t end there.
No matter how far
we wander away from God through liberty of choice, God will welcome us
back. All we have to do is to recognize where our true freedom is
to be found and to embrace that as our way of life. This was the message
the prophet Isaiah delivered to the people of Israel who exercised their
liberty to worship false gods and, as a consequence of their
disobedience, had forsaken their freedom as God’s chosen people.
Moreover, as St.
Paul noted in his letter to the people of Galatia, the key to our
freedom is the cross.
We may not
oftentimes think about it, but Jesus possessed the liberty to turn his
back on Jerusalem, to deny his purpose as God’s only begotten Son and,
ultimately, to avoid his passion and resurrection. Being human
like us in all things but sin, Jesus could never have avoided death but,
by turning his back on Jerusalem, Jesus could have rejected his purpose,
something no human being is ever free do to. Instead, by being
“obedient unto death, even death on a cross,” Jesus became the Exalted
One whose resurrection demonstrates how human freedom consists in
renouncing self-centeredness and personal ambition in favor of being
obedient to our essential nature as people who have been created in God’s
image and likeness.
We possess the
liberty to refuse and to reject the cross, but we are never free to do
so. We are only free to accept the cross, as Jesus did, and to
boast in it, because obedience is the only way by which we become the
persons God has created us to be. This is an absurdity to those
enslaved by sin, namely, that through obedience and
walking the Way of the Cross, human beings discover their freedom.
“You have made us
for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You, O
Lord,” is how St. Augustine described what he had learned about the
concepts of liberty and freedom after he—like the people of
Israel centuries before him—exercised his liberty and turned away from God. Like the young
Augustine prior to his conversion, we also possess the liberty to turn
away from God and to discover our happiness in every person, every thing, and in every
place but in God. But, as Augustine slowly discovered over the course
of more than one decade of decadence, we also will find that other
persons, things, and places might make us happy
temporarily, but they only make us restless. We are free only to become
God’s child. To experience the peace of God which is the by-product of
obedience, requires obedience to our essential nature. We are not
free to turn away from God because we are only free to bring to
fulfillment who we are by nature.
While we
celebrate our independence from the yoke of servitude today and are
grateful that our nation affords its citizens many so many liberties,
Jesus has told us to proclaim to our fellow citizens that “the kingdom
of God is at hand for you.” As our fellow citizens exercise their
liberty to legislate statutes and public policies that stand in direct
opposition to Judaeo-Christian morality, not only our liberty but also
our freedom are under assault. Our challenge, as we heard in today’s
gospel, is to evangelize and catechize our fellow citizens about where
our true liberty and true freedom are discovered. America will only be
the “land of the free and the home of the brave” if people of faith
accept their responsibilities as disciples and exercise their liberty to live in true freedom as God’s sons and
daughters. |
HOMILY
