Freedom is one of the
most central values of our society. When
we celebrate the Fourth of July, we call to mind that our way of life is
founded on the core values of “life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.” We honor those who have
pledged their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” to establish and uphold these
ideals. The responsibility left to us is
to conduct ourselves as worthy recipients of the sacrifices in the past and
those being made today to safeguard these values and allow us to live according
to them.
A primary challenge of
our current culture is that the very values we hold dear are being undermined
because we allow them to be withheld from others according to our own
preferences and desires. We voice our
support, but in practice they are not given their due.
Life is the first
value. We are in a world now where it
has become commonplace to deny the rights of those at both ends of the
spectrum: those in the womb and those who are approaching the end of life. We are in a world where the fundamental
dignity of the human person as a human being, created in the very image and
likeness of God, is denied for those whose lives include special hardships –
illness or handicaps that are deemed as making their lives not worth living.
Liberty, which is a
capacity to do what is right and to live in accord with the truth, is changed
to mean license, the ability to do whatever I want without reference to
morality or to the effects my choices have on others. We are in a world that is consciously
separating decision-making from making any reference to the Creator and to a
purpose beyond this world. We are in a
world where might, majority perception – without a need for accord with truth –
and personal opinion are given full authority.
We are in a world that has the illusion of being capable of making
ourselves out to be whatever we desire to be rather than what we ought to be.
The Pursuit of
Happiness, which is meant to include the good of the whole person and all of
society, is reduced to the effort to seek pleasures and activities that are
fleeting on the basis of whim, rather than a well-thought-out plan or a
response to a higher calling. We are in
a world that claims that we create our ourselves by deciding for ourselves what
will make us happy. We are in a world
where advertising tries to put material goods above spiritual goods and
relationship with God.
Our Faith can rejoice
in the core values we hold dear. But we
also have to allow them to be lived according to the Gospel. Anything less creates a world that is without
life, liberty and happiness, because we have not corresponded to who we are
created to be. We are human beings,
children of God, brothers and sisters to Jesus, Who paid the ultimate price for
us; and we are empowered by the Spirit of the Living God to reach for the
highest Good, which allows us a life in this world that is in accord with God’s
Will and opens to us the gift of Eternal Life.
We are destined for glory, sharing in the very Life of God, Freedom to
enter into the Mystery of self-sacrificing Love, and to the Happiness that will
never end.
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