FREEDOM A PRECIOUS GIFT
We are a blessed and free people by knowing the treasure we have
received in Jesus.
Deacon John Ruscheinsky
We as Americans are
blessed to be a free people. Freedom is so precious that the founders of this
country were willing to sacrifice anything in order to achieve it. This
nation's struggle for freedom is so fundamental to human dignity that every
person passes through stages, often painful and confusing, in their growth into
a free person.
Freedom is not the
right to do anything we please; rather, it is the context in which we have the
ability to do what God pleases. Confusion about freedom leads to slavery, as
St. Paul today warns us. When indulging one's weak aspects, giving in to
temptation, refusing to accept a discipline based on moral principles, a person
becomes addicted to that which would separate one from God and ourselves and
those we love. Sin becomes something of a compulsion. God's will recedes from
consciousness and becomes a blur.
I believe we as
Christians truly know that we are a blessed and free people by knowing the
treasure we have received in Jesus. In the Gospel Jesus loved to tell stories,
many which ended with a dramatic and unexpected change of circumstances.
In the Responsorial
Psalm we acclaim - Father in prayer who can take away our darkness and brings
us to his wonderful light/life.
We were rescued
like a bird from the fowlers' snare; Broken was the snare, and we were freed.
Our help is in the name of Lord, who made heaven and earth.
Points to Pray and Ponder: Has God's will become a blur to you at times? Can
you imagine a thief calling ahead to tell their victim when they would strike?
Do you know the treasure God has entrusted to you?