LIBERTY.-
“Acts of men” and “human acts”, there
is a diference wich is that human acts are those that fall under the concience
and due to it are moral or inmoral, and
acts of men, are those simple things as taking a glass of wáter, or having a stroll,
that are not subjct to moral judgement. We are going to see a the human acts
under various points of vieu, and circumstances, specially in relation to the
responsability of them and to our salvation. Liberty has to be seen as a
faculty of our soul, our will, and not determinism, we consider it as our free
will to do things wether they are appropiate, correct, or wrong. Here I would
like to make clear that thare is not “absolute liberty” for mankind and along
the next paragraphs, it will be clear.
This free of will is a distintion
of humans, not animals, since all they have is instint and whatever they do is because
of it. Humans can choose among diffrent ways of aproaching our acts, that is
oposed to following instint, wich we have, but can or can-not follow it,
animals fatally have to follow it. Besides instint, us, thinking humans have
the moral side of human acts.
“Thank you Father, because you
have given me the privilege, and the decision
of following your steps, or offend thy”. With this words S. Josemaría, give us one of the
aspects of our freedom of will. This takes
us to the dichotomy of doing what is moraly good ot not. That way it is our decisión to do the things
that will put us in the path of salvation, if
our acts are acording to the will of God. For acomplishing this we count
with the help os Jesus Christ and our Mother in Heaven the Holy Mary. God helps
us though the practice of our virtues, especially if we pray for them. If we
fall in sin, we are sin slaves, it is proper to remember “The truth will make
you free”. (J, 8-32) This in reference of the sapience that the Jesus, teaches us. Liberty makes us
responsable of our acts, and, we are in Christ. On the contrary sin is against liberty, because
in spiritual sense, instead of being in Christ we are in the devil.
Chistianity makes us try to do
well and refuse bad, but there may be circunstances that make us do wrong, such
as scareness, violence, ignorance, this attenuate the wrong doing. Another
facet would be the wrong that we do that could be avoided, like the man that
produces a car accident being drunk, if sober the accident would not had
happened. The catholic formation gives us a profound sese of responsability and
this promotes our liberty, taking us to its exercise. So in our inner being we
become freely responsibile. Humanity
starts with Adan and Eve, they were created with a liberty much greater
than our atual liberty, but due to their sin, they lost it, so in us the heirs,
our liberty is very limited, and the slavery of sin could ony be rescued by God
himself, so given his love for us, the only creatures made to his image and
likeness, in the perfection of his love, Thy sent his oun son to rescue us, and
institute his Church and the Sacraments that allow us to be in “Grace of God”,
and to aquire the sense of freedom. That way we are free to reject sins as,
divorce, abortion, sins against purity, eutanasia, eugenics, in vitro
gestation, or not carring out the Commandments, etc.
About our actions, we say that they
are free, when in accord to our will we discard determinism, and admit that
they come from volunty, the error in wich Luther and Calvin fell was precisely
determinism, Luther tougth that men could not avoid sining, that we humans are
not capable of avoiding to sin, great error, God gives us the tools and the
capacity, to avoid sin and in the case of needed recuperation of the state of
grace, if we fall in sinful behavior, the Sacrament of confession. King David
pleads with God “Restore to me the joy
of my salvation, and uphold me with willing spirit” he wrote this after he
had fallen into the sins of murder and adultery, as we can see it is repent and
the virtue of hope, that he shows the Creator.
The acts of our will do not come
casually, they proceed from our inner consciense, from our casuistry. All the time we are taking decisions,some
of them are inconsequential, like taking a “siesta” on Sunday, or in front of a
fruit salad to pick first the bannana or the water melón. But others are important
in our every day life, like pricing our merchendice, or picking a film between
one that is profane or other that is decent, these acts are subject to moral
judgement, others are so important that afect our existance, like who to marry
with, or what career to study in the university, one difference that is
important to manage consists in using our free will to do things that are in
the sphere of our decisions, according to Gods will, and being happy in this
life is in first place, or doing what “I feel like it”, without worrying in any
way, wich is debauchery.
We have to be carefull to not invade
others rights, to be pure, to comply with just laws, to be in favor of morality
in general, our own and that of others, those are acts of liberty, due to our
acceptance of them, as examples of mistakes in this área, we could say: I am
married but if I decide to have an intimate relation with an other woman, I can
do so, to this we can say, you have the phicological liberty to do it, but you
do not have the moral liberty. Here we see these two kinds of opossed
liberties, expressed in plain lenguage: “I
can do it, but I should not do it” like
this example we can find many. On other point of vieu, we can take the example
of transit laws, they do not realy decrease our liberty, because we decide
freely to obey them, as we consider that they are for the good af all of us. It
is positive election, not repression, but confirm that there is not absolute
freedom.
Lets ask the Virgin Mary to help
us use our liberty to better serve the will of God.
Jorge Casas.
