Oblates of St. Francis de Sales

New DeSales World Newsletter - Summer Edition

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (June 27, 2004)

Suggested Emphasis

"Remember that you have been called to live in freedom...out of love, to place yourselves at the service of one another."

Salesian Perspective

The American Heritage Dictionary defines freedom as "the condition of being free of restraints; the liberty of the person from slavery, detention or oppression; the capacity to exercise choice: free will."

God created us with free will. God created us to live in freedom.

The Salesian tradition - for that matter, Christianity - makes a distinction between free will and freedom. In his Treatise on the Love of God, St. Francis de Sales wrote: "Our free will can stop or obstruct the course of God's inspiration. When the favorable wind of God's grace fills the sails of our soul, it is within our power to refuse consent, thereby impeding the effect of that favoring wind. But when our spirit sails along and makes a prosperous voyage, it is not we who cause the wind of inspiration to come to us. We neither fill our sails with it nor do we give movement to the ship that is our heart: we consent to its movement. It is God's inspiration, then, which impresses on our free will the gentle, blessed influence whereby it not only causes the will to see the beauty of the good but also warms it, helps it, reinforces it and moves it so gently that by its agency the will turns and glides freely toward the good." (TLG, Book 4, Chapter 6)

To be sure, you and I have the power to make choices: we can use our free will to do what is right and good in the eyes of God. By contrast, we can use our free will to do what is sinful and shameful in the eyes of God.

Our free will makes us truly free only when we use it to cooperate with God's grace and inspiration, to "out of love, place ourselves at the service of others." When we use our free will to obstruct or turn away from God's grace and inspiration, we are not living in freedom at all: we make ourselves (and sometimes, by extension, others) slaves of sin.

Bottom line? Our "free will" isn't freedom at all unless we use it to pursue a life of truth, a life of righteousness, a life of justice, a life of reconciliation, a life of service. Our "free will," as it turns out, isn't really free at all; rather, it brings with it an awesome responsibility: to feed, to nourish, to heal, to challenge, to raise up one another in imitation of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the model of what it means to truly live in freedom. He always - always - made choices that were consistent with the Father's dream and destiny for him. His free will was truly freeing because Jesus faithfully placed his ability to choose at the disposal of his Father, at the disposal of the Kingdom of God, at the service of his brothers and sisters.

We indeed have free will. Are we using it - like Jesus - in ways that make us - and others - truly free?

Michael S. Murray, OSFS, is Executive Director of the De Sales Spirituality Center at Childs, MD