Daily reflection _ freedom a precious gift


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?