True Freedom
Understanding the Fourth of July in a wider context
We in the United States have just finished a long Fourth of July Weekend, and an interesting one it was. Here where my family and I live, fog rolled in the evening of the Fourth, obscuring what would have been a tremendous view of fireworks in every conceivable direction.
That’s sort of the state of the country right now, isn’t it? We are in a presidential campaign cycle that isn’t very exciting and is, in fact, rather worrisome and clouded over. There’s a sense in the country that we are not sure of the direction in which we are moving, and that the elites of the nation are working against the interests of ordinary people in order to enhance their own power and wealth: trust is at an all-time low. Even the Supreme Court and the legal system, once the most trusted branch of Government, is taking a battering, as partisans on both sides of the aisle claim that their opponents have politicized the courts.
Those are just the highlights.
If you look at the Preamble to the Constitution, it seems we are falling far afield of its goals. If you sense the insecurity, nervousness, and economic pressures on most people in the country — citizens and non-citizens alike — well, the country doesn’t seem so free right now, and there isn’t much to celebrate.
We contemplatives have a broader, deeper, and richer view that allow us to locate our freedom in an entirely different source: we locate it in its Source. The freedom Christians possess does not depend upon external circumstances. I’ve met men in prison who are free — truly free, despite the limitations under which they live. I’ve met men and women who are sick, poor, or both, but who are free: their lives are joyful, they radiate peace and hope, they bless others by their simple presence. I’ve met businesspeople and professionals who are entirely at home in their work, not at all non-plussed by all the external factors threatening their businesses and their individual performances. I’ve met unemployed people who are joyful in God, confident that He is their security, their Rock, and their provider.
This is the meaning of freedom: to be free of worry about the present or the future, free of resentment for the present and the past, hearts and minds fully engaged in the tasks at hand, performed with ease and enjoyment.
Those who live this way are virtuous people, to be sure. A good acquaintance of mine, Dr. Andrew Abela, Dean of CUA’s Busch School of Business, is now publishing here on Substack excerpts of his forthcoming book Superhabits , and I commend them to your attention. Possession and exercise of human virtues surely make life easier and more enjoyable, and we do well to acquire and exercise them. Their possession and exercise do make us freer, as does a singular focus to live our values and pursue our goals come what may: moving forward toward a freely chosen goal or ideal organizes our lives and makes them less prone to conflict and confusion.
But here’s the thing: the world takes away its peace. Step out of line, watch yourself be cancelled, and see how hard your life becomes. If you’ve built your life on friendship with the world and the world withdraws its friendship, the turmoil will be both interior and exterior. Marcus Aurelius spoke in his Meditations to this point: if you live your values with integrity, come what may, you’ll still live in peace. I think he is alluding more to equilibrium than to peace, however. Peace, the peace that comes from a right relationship with God, is much richer and much more vibrant and resilient than equilibrium in the face of whatever life throws your way, valuable though the equilibrium be.
Hear the words of the Savior: “Peace I leave you; my own peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn 14:27).
True freedom is found and exercised by the soul at peace, the soul that has accepted the peace that only Christ can give. This peace is different to the world’s peace, because, unlike the world’s peace, it is not conditioned upon anything we do. It is a gift, not an achievement. We need only accept it.
When we are not living the peace He gives, it’s because we have refused it. Sometimes the refusal is knowing — we want what we want, and we live in a culture that celebrates autonomy as the ultimate goal and value: “I will not serve” is its battle cry, “let others serve me, because I am entitled to service!” Sometimes the refusal is unknowing: we think we are doing God’s will. Maybe we are, but not in the right way. Maybe we aren’t but think that we are.
Those men I have met in prison; the sick and the poor; businesspeople gainfully employed or not: they all share in common that they live the peace of Christ. Fr. Walter Ciszek, SJ writes of finding freedom in the Soviet Gulag. A Chinese prelate imprisoned in a box for some 18 years kept his sanity and his freedom by praying the psalms and readings he had memorized over decades of praying them daily. A woman I met in coastal Georgia, surrounded by dire poverty and hardship, glowed with joy: she found the purpose of her life and named her company after it: JC Vision. It is the contemplation of Christ and obedience to his directions that brings us true freedom. Those who contemplate Christ and who seek and obey his will for them discover how to live “free to worship Him without fear, holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our lives,” as the Canticle of Zechariah has it.
Peace is Christ’s gift to us: it is given to us in Baptism, strengthened in Confirmation, and deepened in our every meritorious (= praiseworthy, noble, righteous) act, be it reception of Holy Communion, of Confession, or another sacrament; be it an act in accord with the duties of our states of life — daily prayer and worship; daily work and duties. I repeat we have this gift of peace already.
But few of us live it, or else we live it partially knowing that there’s more and frustrated that we cannot access it. Is there a way forward for us?
It turns out, there is: just before St. Paul tells us in Philippians that “the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” he writes to the Philipppians and to us, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance.”
Before we unpack that, let’s note that St. Paul does not go on to say, “and then the peace that passes all understanding will be given to you.” No: that peace has already been given.
From, “Rejoice in the Lord always…” St. Paul continues, “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” Note again, he does not say “and then your requests will be answered as you wish,” or “then peace will be given to you.” He says instead that the peace of God — which is His own peace — will keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus — Christ Jesus who suffered; Christ Jesus who asked at Gethsemane that the cup be taken from Him, and who accepted when it wasn’t; Christ Jesus who submitted to the ignominy of the Cross in order to defeat sin and death thus to rescue souls from slavery to them; Christ Jesus who rose triumphant on the Third Day and commissioned his followers to spread the Good News that “in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose….[nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ro 8:28, 37: I recommend the reading and contemplation of the entire passage).
The secret to living the peace already given to us is to rejoice. Everything we have, and don’t have, is ordered to our salvation, whether by God’s active or permissive will. It is to live forbearance — not to demand those things we have right to, like a good name, adequate food and housing, meaningful work, but rather willingly to go without those things to which we are or think ourselves entitled. Work for them: yes, if we can. Demand them of others: not so much. It is to live in patience with our own faults and foibles and those of others; to be lenient towards those who wrong us —, to ask humbly for what we and others need, with thanksgiving.
People not at peace will ask, “what have I to be thankful for?” I suggest that it falls to each one of us to discover it: then the thanksgiving is real rather than formulaic and feigned. You can ask yourself why a prisoner would be thankful. If he’s discovered the secret, he will tell you that his sins — which he knows to be many — are forgiven him, and he can live at peace with and in friendship with God and thus with himself, accepting his circumstances as from God for his benefit, and then discovering that he is a benefit to others. A prisoner I once knew wondered why people inside thought him wise. When I asked him how much he read the Bible daily, he responded, “about eight hours.” (!) He accepted forgiveness in the concrete circumstances of his life and responded to that forgiveness by seeking to know more of God and more of God’s expectations of him. In accepting forgiveness and love while incarcerated, and in accepting his mission — to know God and to know himself in God, then to share God’s peace with others — he lived a peace that even he did not understand, possessing a wisdom that he knew was not his.
St. Paul continues, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you.”
In the end, living in peace is a choice. The choice is more than a simple decision to live in peace; it is to do the things that make for peace, the doing of which opens us to the God of peace and the peace He has given us and longs for us to activate. Rejoice, forbear, give up anxiety, pray, think rightly — then the circumstances of our lives, our external physical and political arrangements, won’t be so much of a bother and will instead, whatever they are, become the motors of our sanctification. “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
Do you want to be free? Give thanks.