I want to speak today about freedom in Christ. I’m going to begin with a message that I found extremely powerful from Bishop Barren in his talk “The Threat of Totalitarianism”. Totalitarianism is the dominance of the entire society by the arbitrary will of those in power.

He starts with a quote from a 20^th century German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt.

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, that is the reality of experience, and the distinction between the true and the false, that is standards of thought, no longer exists.

I.e., the ideal citizen for a totalitarian ruler is a person for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, and the true and the false, no longer exists.

I’m going to look at 2 points that he makes.

The first is that the roadway if you will, the gate that opens the way for totalitarian rule is the rejection of a belief in the objectively true and good. This he argues is the biggest threat to western society today. We think that to be truly free I need to decide for myself what is true and good. Don’t try to impose your objective truths on me. That’s slavery. If I’m going to be free, I need to decide for myself what is true and good.

The reality is just the opposite. Let me give one little example.

This comes from David Currie in his great book, Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic. He mentions how in college he was reading in Zechariah 12 about sacrificial worship and he knew from his studies that this section in Zechariah is describing the messianic era, and for a Protestant Christian there is no sacrificial worship after Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross. So, he asked his college professor about this dilemma and his professor said, evangelical Christianity has no answer for that. Years later when he learned about the Eucharistic sacrifice in the Mass, he was ecstatic. He immediately jumped out of his chair and ran in to another room and told his wife his discovery. He saw the truth and he was enthralled. That’s what objective truth does. We discover it, we see it, and it’s like wow, this is so amazing, and we have to share it. This is liberating, not enslaving.

On the other hand, if there’s no longer a distinction between the true and the false, between fact and fiction, then you have your truth and I have my truth and inevitably that leads to a clash of wills and the most powerful one wins and imposes his truth on everyone else.

The second point is that in every totalitarian regime of the 20^th century what we have seen is a strict censorship of ideas. Any thought that is not in accord with the ruling party is immediately silenced. Does this sound familiar? Any appeal to objective truth or goodness, i.e., something outside of us and above us, is a threat to their control.

Perfect example is Pope Saint John Paul II in Victory Square in Warsaw, 1979. He began speaking the truth about God, and human persons, and freedom, and salvation, and the people began chanting “we want God”, “we want God”. For 15 minutes, a million people chanted “we want God”, and it was the beginning of the end of communist oppression.

Jesus said to those Jews who believed in Him, “you will know the truth and the truth will make you free”. John Paul II was asked one time that if he could pick one quote in Scripture that he wanted people to know, what would it be, and this was it.

I’d like to offer a couple personal reflections on Christian freedom.

That quote I just read from Jn 8 is speaking about freedom from the slavery of sin. Many of us know about the slavery of sin. When Joni and I went to one of our Unbound training sessions, there was a priest there who shared with us that he had a priest friend who was stuck in sin. Every week he would confess the same sin and it’s like he was stuck in a rut. This priest who was at the conference said to his friend, let’s try Unbound. So, he led him through the Unbound prayer. Two weeks later he called his friend and his friend told him that he hadn’t had any issues with that sin since the Unbound prayer. So, if you’re stuck in a rut, talk to Joni or me about Unbound. It could help.

Another thing when I think of Christian freedom, I think of freedom from fear. Heb 2 says this: “Jesus himself likewise partook of the same nature (human nature) that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.”

Jesus frees us from the fear of death. Remember that everyone of your days is numbered. God already knows when He’s going to call you home, pandemic or not. That doesn’t mean we can be irresponsible, but we don’t have to fear. God’s got us.

On vacation this past August, I asked my kids, including Fr. Chris about this amazing text in Acts 4:29. It’s a prayer from Christians who are being persecuted. Saul and company are hunting them down and here’s their prayer: “And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness.”

This really struck me because of what they didn’t pray for. There was no mentioned of being protected or kept safe. It’s like they didn’t care about that. What mattered to them was that they would speak His word with all boldness. I turned to my kids and asked them how can we be like that? I want to pray like they did.

So, here’s a couple ideas.  

First, and this ties into today’s gospel where Jesus says, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off, and so on. Sin separates us from God, so one way to think of this is to say anything that separates us from God, cut it off. For me, reading news articles that aren’t necessary and I know aren’t going to help and are just going to make my angry, separate me from God. I’m trying to cut them off. But there could be others, this I borrow from Fr. Holmer: if your eye-phone separates you from God, throw it out. If your facebook chats or entertainment or money separate you from God, cut them out. The only way to be really free is to live in Christ, in His presence so if we want to be free, we have to get rid of all these things that separate us from Him.

The second is grow our trust in Jesus. Joni says that many years ago when we first came back to Bowie, she was going through a lot of fear, and she talked with a wonderful mentor about it, and her friend gave her this advice: on your refrigerator, write the note, fear is useless, what is needed is trust. And then repeat that prayer over and over until you believe it.

I’m doing something similar. I got this from my daughter Kaitlyn. It’s the surrender novena which you can get online. I got it from CatholicExchange.com. It comes from a priest who was the spiritual director to Padre Pio. Each day, there is a brief reflection, spoken in the name of Jesus in which He describes what surrender to Him looks like. Then after the reflection, you say 10 times “O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!”

Jesus says to us “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

God bless you all!