Devotion for today: and the truth will set us free

Today is Independence Day in the United States of America. Today we celebrate our freedom. Let us study the Catholic Church’s concept of freedom by looking at the Bible, the Catechism and some really great men and women.

John 8:31-32: “If you live according to my teachings, you are truly my disciples; then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

James 1:25 “But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it--he will be blessed in what he does.”

Galatians 5:1, 13"For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery... For you were called to freedom... only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1731: 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. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude. 1733: The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to “the slavery of sin.” (Romans 6:17).

Cardinal Timothy Dolan: “Is genuine freedom the license to do what we ought or the ability to do whatever we want? … Is law tethered to objective truth, or is it ruled by a 'dictatorship of relativism'?”…. “Should laws be tailored to suit changing wants, demands, or recently discovered 'rights'?”  “Or should wants, demands, and novel rights be tempered by law to uphold the sacredness of life, the common good, and the objective moral law?”

Pope Benedict XVI: "We think we are free and truly ourselves only if we follow our own will. God appears as the opposite of our freedom. We need to be free of him – so we think – and only then will we be free. This is the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the fundamental lie which perverts life. When human beings set themselves against God, they set themselves against the truth of their own being and consequently do not become free, but alienated from themselves. We are free only if we stand in the truth of our being, if we are united to God. Then we become truly “like God” – not by resisting God, eliminating him, or denying him. "

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta: “The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance.
It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.”

St. Edith Stein: "There is a rest status in God, where every activity of the mind is suspended, in which you can’t plan anything anymore, or make any decision, or do anything, but in which one is transported with his own destiny, after having committed all his future to the divine will....At first it was the silence of death. Then you can feel a sense of intimate safeness, of liberation from all that is anxiety, duty, responsibility in connection to action. And while I am transported with this feeling, little by little a new life starts to fill me and – with no strain of my will- to push me to new realizations."

Blessed John Paul II: “True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.” “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” “When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.”

Let Freedom Ring, by Bill Gaither http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmuvt_fnYDk

Deep within the heart has always known that there was freedom
Somehow breathed into the very soul alive
The prisoner, the powerless, the saved have always known it
There’s something that keeps reaching for the sky
Even life begins because a baby fights for freedom
And songs we love to sing have freedom’s theme
Some have walked through fire and flood to find a place of freedom
And some faced hell itself for freedom’s dream
Let freedom ring wherever minds know what it means to be in chains
Let freedom ring wherever hearts know pain
Let freedom echo through the lonely streets where prisons have no key
We can be free and we can sing --- let freedom ring
God built freedom into every fiber of creation
And He meant for us to all be free and whole
When my Lord bought freedom with the blood of His redemption
His cross stamped pardon on my very soul
I’ll sing it out with every breath, I’ll let the whole world hear it
This hallelujah anthem of the free
That iron bars and heavy chains can never hold us captive
The Son has made us free and free indeed
Let freedom ring down through the ages from a hill called Calvary
Let freedom ring wherever hearts know pain
Let freedom echo through the lonely streets where prisons have no key
You can be free and you can sing let freedom ring.
Let freedom echo through the lonely streets where prisons have no key
You can be free and you can sing let freedom ring
You can be free and you can sing --- let freedom ring --- let freedom ring