Faith and Freedom

There has been a lot of discussion lately about rights and responsibilities, faith and freedom. On this holiday weekend, we remember those who built our country on freedom and Christian beliefs.

Freedom, biblically and in the tradition of the church, is not simply the ability to do what one wants, but instead the ability and decision to choose what is good and what is right. Anything that we choose that is not good or is harmful to us or others, enslaves us.

This weekend, let us remember to choose good, to choose right, to choose truth and to choose love. In our travels, our prayers and our relationships, let us ask God to help us see the next right thing. Our life as disciples of Jesus calls us to something higher than our right or our responsibility - it calls us to love. Abundant love that surpasses all human definitions.

“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

- St. John Paul II

“Human dignity requires one to act through conscious and free choice, as motivated and prompted personally from within, and not through blind impulse or merely external pressure. People achieve such dignity when they free themselves from all subservience to their feelings, and in a free choice of the good, pursue their own end by effectively and assiduously marshalling the appropriate means.” -

Gaudium et Spes 17; Veritatis Splendor 21, documents of the church