Dependence Day

One

Today we celebrate our national freedom and independence from the tyranny of King George III of England.

The ultimate tyranny comes from enslavement to sin and the devil. God has given us the Commandments and the teachings of Jesus that come through the Church to keep us free individually and as a nation. 

The Book of Exodus opens with the Israelites having been in slavery in Egypt for 400 years.

They did not become slaves all at once. When they first came to Egypt under Joseph they had all the freedoms they could want. But little by little they gave into the culture of the Egyptians, forgot their faith in God, and turned away in disobedience from the moral law. Then they became just like the Egyptians and began to worship all the idols of the Egyptians. So, the Israelites became spiritually enslaved to sin, resulting in their physical slavery to the Egyptians. 

But you must grasp this, the spiritual slavery came first and the physical slavery came as a consequence. 

When we forget about God and ignore his moral law, we become less free, not more. 

Two

In the Exodus God set the Israelites free, he made them a nation, and then he gave them their national constitution - the Ten Commandments. 

The Ten Commandments are the moral principles that will preserve their freedom and guard them from tyranny!

As long as the Israelites remain faithful to the Ten Commandments they remain free. When they abandon the Commandments they become spiritually enslaved and then physically enslaved to tyranny. 

This cycle unfolds ten times in the book of Judges and then continuously throughout their history until they are totally subjugated by the Romans.

The temptation is to think we will have freedom and success by abandoning the moral law.

How many times do we have to learn the lesson?

Three

How many times have you heard people say, “The Catholic Church has too many rules.”?

Too often people see commandments and laws as a limitation on our freedom. 

This is one of the essential weapons of Satan. He wants us to see the moral law as God’s way of suppressing our freedom, of making us slaves to him. Then we are tempted to rebel against God as a slave to a Master. 

Pope Benedict XVI addressed this saying, “This was also the great temptation of the modern age, of the past three or four centuries.  More and more people have thought and said, ‘But this God does not give us our freedom; with all his commandments, he restricts the space in our lives.  So God has to disappear; we want to be autonomous and independent. Without this God we ourselves would be gods and do as we pleased.’”  

The Ten Commandments are not limitations on our freedom, but principles that preserve and in fact, give our freedom.  

Four

The commandments are our design. It is you. 

But we erroneously think the moral law or the laws of the Church are restrictive, they give us less freedom, not more. 

Imagine I just bought a new car – a red Ford Mustang. As soon as I got it home, I read the owner’s manual which told me to: Change my oil every 3000 miles, inflate the tires to 35 psi, and use unleaded fuel only. 

Then, imagine me flying into a rage: “Who does Ford think they are? This is my car, I own it. I am free to do whatever I want with my car. And you know how expensive gas these days is. But hey, wait, the grocery store down the street is selling Kool-aid for 24 cents a gallon. So, I use my freedom and my last fumes of gas. And I drove to the store and buy enough green Kool-aid to make 15 gallons and I put it in my gas tank.

Was I free to do this? Yes. But now what am I? A pedestrian!

Ford wasn’t trying to deny my freedom by giving me the owner’s manual. Ford designed the car. They knew how it worked. Ford wanted me to know what I needed to do so the car would reach its full potential. So that I would be happy and tell other people to buy a Ford.

The moral law is a reflection of ourselves, of our design. If we break the moral law, we break our design, we break ourselves. In the end, we are less free, not more.  

Five

The Ten Commandments are an expression of the way God designed the human person to live to be happy.

The first three commandments help us see that we will be happy if we know and love and do the will of God because united to him we have everything we need for supreme unending happiness. 

The next seven commandments tell us that we will be most free and happy individually and as a society of people who have to live together if we listen to our parents and care for them when they are older and need our help. That we will all be happy if we don’t kill one another. That we should be faithful to our marriage vows and not take another person’s spouse and wreck marriages and families. That we should not steal or lie or gossip. That we should respect the personal property of other people and not desire in a disordered way what they have which leads to envy, resentment, and hate.

God’s design for the human person and society as it is expressed in the Ten Commandments is really good. Jesus has made it even more clear with the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus continues to teach us and give us clarity by His teaching through the Church. 

Our job is to learn it, to trust it, and to live it. That is the way to real freedom and happiness.