As we prepare to celebrate the freedom that our country is known for—the freedom that so many brave men and women fought for—it behooves us to take a moment and reflect on the true meaning of freedom.
Freedom, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is “liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another.”
But when we look to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we find a deeper definition:
Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. . . . Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.
Freedom attains perfection when it is directed toward God. Let that sink in.
God doesn’t give us rules to constrain us. He gives us rules to illuminate the path to Him. And if we don’t follow His laws, we succumb to evil. We start to blur the lines of what’s important and what’s not, of who’s important and who’s not. We attempt to justify evil actions. We put ourselves before others. And we begin to believe the lies that humans are expendable or that they are commodities that can be bought and sold.
To truly be free, we must orient our lives toward the good or we will become slaves to what’s evil.
Here in America, we enjoy freedoms that many other citizens around the world are not blessed to have. Yet over the last several decades, we have made ourselves slaves to the evil that tells us that some people—the sick, the preborn, those with disabilities—do not matter. We have bought into the lie that somehow the healthy, the born, and the “perfect” are more valuable and more important than those who are vulnerable.
In Scripture, we read, “Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour” (1 Pet 5:8).
Indeed, he is, but we must understand that the devil doesn’t always announce himself with a roar. Most of the time he comes with a whisper, with words of enticement, or with admonishments that we “deserve” whatever our hearts desire—that thing we think is a good but that really isn’t. Satan—the father of lies—not only makes us believe the lies but encourages us to truly buy into them so that we can repeat them and poison others. And so we find ourselves saying things like “euthanasia is compassionate killing” and “abortion is healthcare.”
But this is not freedom. This is slavery—slavery to the wicked ways of the world. And the only way to gain our freedom is by adhering to the path that God set out for us.
To do that, to truly experience freedom from the oppression of sin and sinful behavior, we must orient ourselves to the good.
How will we accomplish that? We do it through prayer, through education in the Faith—of ourselves and our families—and we do it through a conscious effort to do good and to love the others around us.
When we realize the truth that love is more than a feeling, that it’s also willing the good of another, we are free to love and free to give of ourselves. This love drives us to work toward what’s best for the other person and to prevent harm. It drives us to protect the life of the vulnerable, of the preborn, and of those who are sick and who live with disabilities. It motivates us to speak out about the value and worth of all people. Most of all, it gives us the courage to lead. And in so leading, we break free from the lies binding the world, and we take one step closer to heaven.
While independence from a tyrannical ruler was a good thing, if we deny God and His truths and embrace the lies that life is not valuable, that certain people are expendable, and that we don’t need God, we are trading a tyrannical ruler for one even more nefarious. We are giving up our freedom to choose good and are welcoming the evil that will become not only our own downfall, but the downfall of our society.
True freedom requires surrender—surrender to the will of God, for we know that His abundant love and mercy serve as guideposts so that we can freely choose to live with Him for all of eternity. This is what God wants for us. And so again, we say, Freedom attains perfection when it is directed toward God.
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“As we prepare to celebrate the freedom that our country is known for—the freedom that so many brave men and women fought for—it behooves us to take a moment and reflect on the true meaning of freedom.”
Freedom for a plane means it can fly to many places — but flying straight into the ground, or maybe a mountain, is not freedom for a plane, but the end of a plane. Likewise true freedom for any Christian is not without restrictions, but the restrictions are themselves what extinguish freedom.
I would like to point out, however, that very few men died in WW2 to make America free to embrace FDR; instead, they wanted to make sure that the likes of Hitler never got close to their home towns, let alone their families. They did not have to pretend that the government in Washington was perfect to decide that it was worth, if necessary, the ultimate sacrifice to reject the governments in Berlin and Tokyo. This was, from a political perspective, more negative than positive, more a refusal than a submission. It was wiser and better than the positive version that is usually presented to us.