Freedom

Day's Saints
Edwold the Hermit
John the Baptist

Gospel Mk 6:17-29
Herod was the one who had John the Baptist arrested and bound in prison
on account of Herodias,
the wife of his brother Philip, whom he had married.
John had said to Herod,
"It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife."
Herodias harbored a grudge against him
and wanted to kill him but was unable to do so.
Herod feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man,
and kept him in custody.
When he heard him speak he was very much perplexed,
yet he liked to listen to him.
She had an opportunity one day when Herod, on his birthday,
gave a banquet for his courtiers,
his military officers, and the leading men of Galilee.
Herodias' own daughter came in
and performed a dance that delighted Herod and his guests.
The king said to the girl,
"Ask of me whatever you wish and I will grant it to you."
He even swore many things to her,
"I will grant you whatever you ask of me,
even to half of my kingdom."
She went out and said to her mother,
"What shall I ask for?"
She replied, "The head of John the Baptist."
The girl hurried back to the king's presence and made her request,
"I want you to give me at once
on a platter the head of John the Baptist."
The king was deeply distressed,
but because of his oaths and the guests
he did not wish to break his word to her.
So he promptly dispatched an executioner with orders
to bring back his head.
He went off and beheaded him in the prison.
He brought in the head on a platter and gave it to the girl.
The girl in turn gave it to her mother.
When his disciples heard about it,
they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

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I urge you as fellow lovers of Christ, to pray for the country in which you live, so that it is not disgraced by fools and madmen. Through the instigation of God, that country worked to liberate the world, and evil has been at work ever since devising ways to use its institutions against it. If it is lost, the world will regret it, because it is a sin to discard the liberty it has attained through the mercy and grace of God.

To disregard the sacrifices made by so many would be a sin beyond all measure, because freedom is a gift from God, and all too often is bought at the price of blood, pain and death, and our nation has been no stranger to any of these things.

God made us all, and there is no way He intended that the divisions among us were meant to be. Those who love evil and lawlessness and hatred are not Americans, but their country is in hell, and if you doubt it, do nothing, do not even pray a single Rosary to save it, and you will have your wish, but be certain that as many as the adherents of evil are, the number of those who are faithful to the things that made us great are like a great cloud illuminated by the glory of God because of His ardent love.

Political parties are part of being human beings, and since God made us all different and unique, we cannot function or even fathom how, to make our way in life with only a single voice. But the voice of God reverberates through the great cloud of those who love Him, drawing them to Him to enkindle the great fire that will  usher in the Kingdom of God in which will reside all those who love the Lord.

He made us to converse with one another, and to sit down in the hall of decision, and discuss the business of the country. Those who will not abide by the results of the people's choice, who wish to overthrow their decision will go down in history as great losers, who threw out the great blessing of the Lord's freedom. Use the freedom of God to to preserve human liberty which is so precious a gift, to do and seek His Will, otherwise only errors and failures will ensue to our great shame.

If you doubt and hesitate, ask the dead who gave their lives to preserve our freedom, what to do, and you cannot do wrong. Otherwise, you are saying that their sacrifice was wrong, and the evil one who hates liberty and humanity so much was right, and the hatreds and violence through which we have trod with such ardor and weariness will have been negated and may never return.

May the Lord of Heaven and Earth, Jesus Christ commune with us, imparting knowledge of His Will to us so that we may inherit what He wishes so ardently to be ours. He gave up His freedom to allow Himslef to be sacrificed by crucifixion, so that we would know freedom, and its cost. His cost is our gain, but the cost of evil is eternal disgrace that our pettiness should have prevailed at a time when men should have united to serve God and seek His Will so that we might gather as brothers and sisters united in God Himself.

Freedom is not in sexual indulgence, unholy marriages or the salughter of unborn children for the sake of convenience. Freedom is not in ways of devising the means of enslaving our brothers and sisters, and our country will not persist if its constituents pursue the path of slavery so that power might be had. That power will enslave all who enslaved others, because God will not permit enslavers to be free at the cost of slavery imposed on brothers and sisters. Those who seek to enslave will be disgraced and shamed forever. That pertains not only to our country, but to every country that seeks to enslave others by virtue of conquest and intimidation, killing opposition and forbidding brothers and sisters from thinking and acting in accord with truth and freedom.

Our status of being brothers and sisters to one another is a manifest of the Will of God. Political parties are not greater than Will of God which tells us "Love one another as I have loved you." Remember what His love cost Him and realize what we were born into. Rights and privileges must extend to all equally since God treats us all in equality. It is our humanity that is important, and not our privileges or our rights, for in seeking to preserve rights, all too often we find it necessary to step on the rights of someone else. There is no right to do evil, to  kill infants or to enslave other human beings, because our status as children of God is the origin of freedom, and so long as we seek God's Will in the things we gather ro discuss and decide as fellow citizens, we will reap the protection of our rights from God, and live in freedom to do His Will. 

It is shameful that those who have been elected and sat in decision making should decide to throw away everyone's freeom because they cannot abide the freedom all of a sudden, anymore. To do so is to repudiate the sacrifice of so many lives to preserve what we have, and to defend the right to live. Neither Stalin nor Hitler could impose their will on all human beings, and God stirred up His children to oppose and destroy them in order to protect freedom into which they were all born.

Freedom is not for the acquisition of things. Freedom is not for the enjoyment of pleasure. Freedom is not for the killing of innocents who have a right to live, once they have been conceived. Freedom is not for the killing of members of different races. These things have been told us by God who insists that we observe them so that everyone may pass through life and death to live and love forever. Those who have been freed, have no right to destroy others or destroy what others have worked so hard to create and preserve. But without vigilant and diligent concern for one another, none of us can be in the freedom of God. It exists in His love and nowhere else. Thus, to ignore the needs of others whose lives are in danger of extinction because they lack food, water and shelter, is to be like those who nailed the Savior to the cross.