LIBERTY.

 

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.