Thirteenth Sunday of the Year, C - June 27, 2004

    Strange as it may seem, here in the second reading today, St. Paul is discussing something that is of the keenest interest in modern times, something that most people perhaps would never dream that such a Churchman as St. Paul would be really occupied with. For in our view of history this is something that we, of more recent times, have a monopoly on. I’m talking about freedom. The whole idea of freedom. And yet here’s the Apostle Paul, over two thousand years ago, discussing this idea of freedom with the Christian believers of Galatia. And not only discussing it, but actually advocating it, urging these young Christians not to forsake freedom. He writes: “It was for liberty that Christ freed us.”
    Now freedom is not the first thing that most people today think of when they hear of the Christian faith or of the Catholic Church. And that may be for a number of reasons: the Christians they know aren’t very free, or they are rather ignorant of what the Church really teaches, or perhaps -- and here’s the big one -- they have a wrong idea about freedom.
    A friend of mine told me of an interview he once heard on the radio. It was on Memorial Day, I believe, and the reporter was in the Arlington Cemetery. There a number of young people were sticking American flags on the graves of soldiers. The reporter asked one of them whether he had thought much about what he was doing, honoring these men who had been killed in battle. Did these young people feel strongly about what these brave soldiers had sacrificed for other Americans? Yes, was the response. Because they fought for freedom. Freedom. And what do you think of when you think of the freedom for which these men died? continued the reporter. Hmmm. This was a bit tougher. Finally one young adult offered, Well, the freedom we have to choose the clothes we want to wear.
    And there is the root of the modern understanding -- or really, misunderstanding -- of freedom: freedom is that which occasions choice. Freedom is the condition of having a choice before you and things to choose from. And, of course, the more things the better. Now, there is some truth to this. But choice cannot be at the root of freedom; choice cannot be the essence of freedom, especially as St. Paul means it here. For people can, and do, sometimes choose something very much like slavery. People can, as a result of their choices, become less and less free. We see this most clearly in our modern day drug culture. Sometimes with some powerful drugs one choice is enough to forfeit a whole life of freedom and bring on a hellish enslavement. If we are not careful, we forget that some choices can destroy freedom.
    And here is the key to understanding what Christianity, the Church, has always meant by freedom -- far from being merely an occasion of choice, real freedom is the fruit of a certain kind of choice: when the human intellect recognizes the truth and the human will desires -- and appropriates -- the goodness of the truth. Freedom, more and more freedom, follows upon such choices. The negative side of this idea Jesus expressed when He said, “To sin is to become a slave to sin.” To choose evil is to become a slave to evil. To be in what we call temptation, struggling between two options, one good and one bad (or even one good and perhaps another better), is not to be in a real state of liberty. The dilemma of choice, the anxiety of being swayed one way or another, is not freedom; it is freedom struggling to be born. And it does come alive, and continues to grow, as we choose -- and keep on choosing -- the good, the true, the noble. Freedom, real, true freedom, mature liberty, is the fruit of choices of a noble character.
    Such a person who does this is known as a virtuous person. They have been set free because they have refused to be enslaved by evil. They know that to be mastered by sex is to be a slave of lust. They know that to be ruled by fear is to shrivel up as a coward. They have realized that to be governed by thoughtlessness is to be a prisoner of impulse. Contrary to popular opinion, it is chastity, courage, prudence, humility -- all the virtues -- that set us free, because they keep us from being pulled about here and there by low appetites.
    Freedom, then, is not in having so many choices but in choosing the right thing in the right way. It is the fruit of habitually choosing the good and true and noble and beautiful; and behold, after a while, the choosing becomes less strenuous, less marked with temptations to sin and disorder. And so the Christian faith insists that it is not accurate to think that we are “free” to sin; rather, Christ has for us destroyed the power of sin so that we might choose the good and in so doing become free, more and more free.
    But this stuff all sounds strange coming out of the first century -- two thousand years of celebrating Christian freedom. And it’s all even stranger in this present age where we have seen one theory after another paraded out to explain all human behavior as if we were anything but free: we are completely controlled by pleasure/pain mechanisms; we are at the total mercy of chemicals in the brain; we are genetically pre-programmed to either be murderers or philanthropists. And on and on it goes, the attack on human liberty.
    “It was for liberty that Christ freed us,” St. Paul wrote so long ago. The message of the Gospel has never been one of seeking to limit human freedom but to teach us all what freedom really is. It is connected to, essentially connected to, the good, to the truth, to pursuing, knowing, loving and doing the good. Again, to quote from our Lord as He instructed His disciples about freedom: He said, “If you obey my commands [that is, choose the good], then you will be my followers. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” That’s why Pope John Paul II named perhaps his greatest encyclical The Splendor of the Truth. Truth is a splendor, and is felt to be so, because in knowing and doing the truth, we are set free, far freer than an abundance of choices could ever give us.