Homily for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Most of us go through life making choices thinking that these choices are FREEDOM: Pepsi or Coke, Nike or Adidas, Comcast or Verizon...
We make thousands of decisions like this each day and so when we hear the word freedom, we are so sure we have it, that we equate it with these choices.
We equate freedom to the ability to do what we want when we want to, to seek pleasure and avoid pain as we see fit, and for the most part, that’s ok.
It’s ok to make a thousand inconsequential choices based on whim, because whether we drink Pepsi or Coke, doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. However, some things do matter, and it’s these things that require real freedom. These are the fundamentals of being human that our forefather’s fought for two centuries ago.
It is almost laughable to think of Patrick Henry saying: give me liberty or give me death, over some of the silly things we equate with freedom.
On this day in 1776 our founders risked everything to cast off a tyrant and gain the freedom every man needs to pursue happiness—a God given right the Declaration notes. And while many people would like us to think that our revolutionary war was nothing more than a tax revolt I would like to purpose that our founding fathers saw in America the potential for good, inherent in free men acting freely; something that may have been lost in much of Europe, and they refused to let America to become another Europe. I think it was this potential that the founders saw in the fledgling society of the 13 colonies, that made them think that maybe it was worth the risk to break from Britian and Europe.
Alexis DeTocqueville, the famous French political commentator who travelled the US just two decades after our Country was born searching for the secret of the Success of Democracy in America, noted this cultural difference from European society.
American’s helped one another, and used their freedom not as a vehicle for selfishness but as an opportunity for self-sacrifice and charity. DeTocqueville credited this difference with a deep religiosity,
Which he noted had created a culture of civil religion. Contrary to what many would have us believe today religion, or rather faith, is essential to true freedom, because its only by being able to answer the BIG QUESTION--that WHY QUESTION, which, if you have been paying attention to my homilies over the past year, I keep coming back to--that we can be truly free.
If we go through life making all our choices based on our animal instinct to pursue pleasure and avoid pain even if we never ask the WHY question we are effectively living as if there is no God, there is no purpose to life; our life is a mistake, a fluke of chance, and we need to make the best of it.
This is the theological and philosophical point of view that people try to sneak in the doors of our schools along with the scientific theories of Charles Darwin. They say—no religion in school, but then use Darwin and Evolution to make a religious point.
Science shows that creatures evolve, and that often the best designs win out in this evolutionary processes—Darwin called this, “survival of the fittest,” a perfectly reasonable scientific theory, which does not conflict with the Christian faith.
The problem is Darwin and his disciples said therefore things evolve by random chance, as if evolution was a proof that God isn’t needed and therefore doesn’t exist.
At a car factory many different car designs are purposed, the best are manufactured, and the best sellers are retained for years to come. This is essential the same as “survival of the fittest.” Is there any logical reason to believe that “random chance” is in control of car companies?
Survival of the fittest may explain change in species over time, and it may even explain the genesis of life, but if it does, it only does so because this is the way natures laws work! And the question remains: WHY?
Whether nature works the way it does by random chance, or because it is guided by the hand of God, is a theological question.
In FACT, it’s the WHY QUESTION, the most important human question, that cannot be answered by science because it’s answer rests on an immaterial reality, the existence of God.
Darwinism, not the science, but the philosophy, an atheistic pseudo-religion, undermines the possibility of freedom, because while it’s all well and good to make thousands of inconsequential choices, acting as if God didn’t exists in times of peace and prosperity, what about when “it” hits the fan?
How does one live freely when there is no way to avoid pain? And moreover, how does one choose to make the sacrifices necessary for the common good, and for the very existence of freedom without any purpose for your existence?
CS Lewis the famous author, who suffered greatly in life, used to say that suffering is God’s megaphone by which He forces us to confront the WHY Question and reminds us the truth that we are made for more than just a pleasant existence in this world and then death. Suffering, in truth, sets us free to truly love, to choose the good of another even when our reward is guaranteed to be pain or discomfort!
This is the freedom that our founding fathers sought and chose when they signed the Declaration of Independence. By declaring independence they effectively signed their own death warrant, they guaranteed personal financial losses far greater than any tax, they embraced years of hardship and pain, all for the chance to create a more perfect union, a place where people could be free to pursue happiness, which can only come from knowing, loving, and serving God.
Finally, turning for a moment to today’s Gospel: The Truth sets us free to respond to God’s call to serve him in the vineyard of the world. Its only when we realize that we were made of eternal life that we can transform our daily work into cooperation with God’s plan of creation, into a vocation. Only by realizing that we are made for heaven are we set free to choose the “work” of parenthood, or the work of celibate religious life, or even the work of Jesus Christ, the priesthood. Vocations are the ultimate pursuit of happiness and the ultimate freedom.
Today as we pray for our country, we pray that the Master of the Harvest might set many of our country men free to respond to their vocation and thus seek and find happiness.
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