TRUE
FREEDOM
Mario
D’Couto
Freedom is something that is basic to human living and
without it, human life would not be
possible. Today being 15th
August is the day when India celebrates its independence day, a day when we
remember all those great men and women who fought for the freedom of India. But
are we truly free? This question has a universal appeal because in as much as
many other countries too would be celebrating their own independence day at
different times of the year, the understanding of human freedom in its truest
sense is paramount if we ever want to make sense of our lives irrespective of
where we may be from.
So what is freedom? Many would want to think that freedom
is being able to do what one wants, whenever they want, however they want. To
put it in one phrase,
‘without any restriction’. But if such were the
case, what difference would there be between us and an animal who acts on its
instinct? When it is hungry, the animal goes looking for food or when it is
mating season, it looks out for a potential
‘partner’ to do the job.
There is no pre-conceived thought process about if it is the right time, is it
morally right, is it sensible and so on. I guess my point therefore is that if
we ever want to make sense of what human freedom truly is, it is always a
‘freedom
for’ something rather than a
‘freedom from’ something; it
is about what one ought to do that is right. It’s such a wonderful coincidence
that the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady also falls along on this
auspicious day and I firmly believe that the example of Our Blessed Mother
shows us by Her own actions about what true freedom really is.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen once described Mary’s gift of
self as ‘the freedom of total abandonment to God.’ He wrote, “Our
free will is the only thing that is really our own. Our health, our wealth, our
power – all these God can take from us ….. because our freedom is our own, it
is the only perfect gift that we can make to God” and when we offer our
freedom back to God as a gift, when we live as servants of the Lord like Mary
did, our lives are not deprived but are rather enriched. Left to our own
selves, we make decisions based on a limited vision of life. We pursue our
fallen, disordered lives. We are enslaved by a thousand fears, insecurities and
weaknesses. Yet we think we are free and in control of our lives.
It is only in learning to give up our freedom to do
whatever we, in our fallen human nature, want and by entrusting our lives
entirely to God who knows what is truly best for us and desires our happiness,
that we discover the deeper freedom to live life to the fullest – a freedom
that is possessed only when we live totally in the Lord’s plan.
St. Francis De Sales writes that humility is necessary at
every moment and for all, even the most perfect. In like manner, the Church
frequently repeats the words of St. Augustine on the need of humility who said,
“Do you intend to begin to build up a high building of sanctity? First of
all, think of putting a solid base of humility because the higher the building,
the deeper the foundation must go.”
There is a difference between verbal humility and experiential
humility. It is easy for someone to say, “I am weak. I am a sinner. I
need God in my life” but it is completely different to experience at the
core of one’s being, the truth about how weak we really are, how totally
dependent we are on God. Our Blessed Lord Himself said, “Apart from Me,
you can do nothing” (John 15:15). The humble person knows how true this
statement is and he knows this is not just an abstract spiritual principle but
it is his own personal experience.
St. Teresa of Avila would explain it the following way
when she said, “Humility is nothing but truth itself” which is
the truth about ourselves. Humility is the answer to this twofold question, “Who
God is?” and “Who am I?” From the answers to these
questions follows a knowledge of our lowliness compared with God’s greatness;
of our nothingness to the strength and power of God.
Humility is a state of mind, an awareness of God in our
lives and our dependence upon Him. It does not mean a denial of any gifts or
talents which He may have given us but it certainly does forbid that we glorify
it as if we alone were responsible for the gifts and talents that we may
possess as St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians,
“What have
you that you have not received and if you have received, why do you glory as if
you had not received” (1 Corinthians 4:7).
Some people may want to think of freedom from purely a
socialist standpoint which is to say that those who lack the basic necessities
of life like food, clothing and shelter cannot be completely free and while no
doubt it is true to an extent, the choice and the freedom still remains whether
to remain in that state which he is in or he can choose to make a difference in
his life positively by taking action. This therefore raises the question, as to
how do we define a slave? If we look up on Google, we find that a slave is
defined as a person who is forced to work for and obey another and is
considered to be their property; an enslaved person or someone who is
controlled by another. But at its root, if we dig further, a slave is basically
one whose freedom of choice is limited in scope. Hence, to increase his freedom
would mean to increase his awareness of the options from which he could choose.
Achieving this would entail changing the structure of the world in which he
lives so as to offer him more real possibilities for choice. The same could be
said of a man immersed in poverty, not just materially or financially but also
in terms of psychological, emotional and spiritual, who has fewer choices and
therefore fewer possibilities and so applying this in the context of sin, when
we say a person is a
‘slave to sin’ whether that is through being
addicted to pornography, alcohol, excessive shopping or any other vice or thing
that is harmful and unproductive, he is basically creating his own walls and
thus limiting his possibilities.
Thus, I think true freedom can be best understood in the
words of St. Augustine who said,
“Our hearts are restless until they rest
in You (God)” which is to say that true freedom makes sense within a
moral framework which is ultimately in God who is the source of all that is
good. Secularist versions of modernism have found it difficult to accept this
standpoint, not because they want to deny it but because they cannot see a way
to include an underlying realm of value in their overall account of human
reality. If a person is committed to the world view that holds the universe as
having no ultimate design or purpose to it or that human life was a random
accident due to the blind forces of physics operating by means of the evolutionary
process, it is hard to see how he can arrive at any theory of morality from
such a view. The problem, then, is not how can we be inspired to live a moral
life based on the valueless view of human existence and the universe but how
can we justify our moral theory based on this view? This therefore goes to
point that there is, indeed, a transcendent aspect to human existence because
it is already endowed with value which no individual has ever brought to or
created but which we recognize will exist even after we are gone. This
experience of transcendence is the affirmation of God.
The dogma of the Assumption of Mary is the solemn
assertion that one of our race, that She who is the type of the whole Christian
people does indeed live, here and now the eternal life with Christ as the
Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner put it, “She who by faith has received
salvation for Herself and for us all, has received it totally, for it is the
salvation of a whole human being.” Our Lady understands the truth of
the human condition. She understands how small She really is. She knows that on
Her own, She is nothing and that She is completely dependent on God. Our Lady
thus exhibits Christ’s teachings that the humble will be exalted. In Her we can
already see our destiny. In Her glorious Assumption, we have the assurance that
our death is a going to the Lord, to be with the Lord forever and so we can
thus infer that for the Christian, there is the firm hope of life beyond death
as the Assumption of Our Lady is a promise of heaven.
Only
when we are convinced, like Our Lady was, of how little we can really do on our
own and how utterly dependent we are on God, can the Lord begin to act in
magnificent ways in us and through us and that is what true freedom really is!
God love you! Stay blessed!
