From pastor’s desk on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, year B
The fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time occurs this year on the Fourth of July, the Independence Day in the United States of America. Myself being an immigrant, I always think what a glorious day it is, not only because of the airshows, fireworks, or barbecues for the beginning of the summer vacation. This day has much deeper meaning, of which we all must be reminded. Namely, freedom and independence from oppressive powers must constantly be protected.
I grew up in Poland, my native country that over two centuries experienced a great deal of oppression from foreign supremacies. And only the last few decades my native nation can enjoy real political and economic freedom. This does not mean that Polish people were not free. As a matter of fact, many people during the regimes of Nazism and Communism seemed to be freer in their souls and heart than many people today under the spell of consumerism and political correctness who are afraid to believe in God and profess the truth.
In this context let us be reminded that freedom of the nation cannot be understood as a license to do whatever we want as individuals, as a group of interest or as a political party. Rather the freedom of the entire nation must be seen the freedom of each individual in his or her conscience under God. This means that we must be rooted in the truth that God has revealed to us. We cannot create a “new” reality at will—that is a dangerous tendency in today’s world. People of power and money (aka “Big Tech”) tend to reinvent the reality that is far from the revealed truth about human beings. We begin to see more and more of, what the Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI called, the dictatorship of relativism. In this context the objective truth does not count as an ideology created by a small group of people and imposed on the masses by the means of social media.
If we are truly believers and followers of Jesus Christ, we must adhere first to Him and His Church—His Mystical Body—to find the truth and authentic freedom. For us Catholic Christians it means to be rooted in Jesus Christ first and to follow humbly the teaching of the Church, even if we do not understand some things in the beginning. (Did you understand everything as a child? We are all immature children in understanding our faith.) Only then we will be truly free, when we embrace Christ’s way of living, as it was attested by our Lord Jesus in the gospel of John (8:31-32):
If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Saint John Paul II commented on this gospel passage in his encyclical Redemptor Hominis (no. 12) stating:
These words [of Jesus] contain both a fundamental requirement and a warning: the requirement of an honest relationship with regard to truth as a condition for authentic freedom, and the warning to avoid every kind of illusory freedom, every superficial unilateral freedom, every freedom that fails to enter into the whole truth about man and the world. Today also, even after two thousand years, we see Christ as the one who brings man freedom based on truth, frees man from what curtails, diminishes and as it were breaks off this freedom at its root, in man's soul, his heart and his conscience. What a stupendous confirmation of this has been given and is still being given by those who, thanks to Christ and in Christ, have reached true freedom and have manifested it even in situations of external constraint!
Let us pray that our freedom and liberties be truly guarded, but also that they may be always based on our faith and God’s commandments!
Happy Independence Day! God bless America! Have a blessed summer!
Fr. Janusz Mocarski, pastor