The word freedom has an evocative magic of its own. Often, the contemporary cultures romanticize it with a strange mix of lofty ideas and cloudy aspirations, where everything is made to ring genuine and authentic. In this seedbed of new paganism, the misguided champions of freedom embark upon a vigorous march of enunciation of freedom and liberty with ferocious enthusiasm, ruthlessly advocating promiscuity, blatantly advertising hyper-effective tablets, and endorsing murderous abortions and mindless homicides in all its forms, as sanctioned means to desired ends!
A mistaken notion of freedom and liberty seems to be the silent epidemic invading the whole of our social fabric. At times we are shocked by the exponents of the non-logical logic of liberty, clamouring for the blood of others in the name of liberty! There is a widespread and insatiable hunger for superfluous liberty, which is ever ready to defy even the very basic moral fibres. In an age of the glorification of unbridled freedom, and an age that venerates slavery in the garb of freedom, the first casualty is always the youth, the most rich and the most vulnerable part of the human society. Drunk by the myth of an unrestrained freedom, they engage in a crazy pursuit of lofty liberty, endangering themselves and others at the same time.
“O liberty! How many crimes are committed in thy name!” It has been proved alarmingly accurate that most number of crimes is committed in the name of liberty. It has created a vast graveyard of human rights and human dignity. Liberty is not individual license but personal benevolence. True liberty consists in the privilege of enjoying our own rights rightly, not in the destruction of the rights of others. It is being quietly firm with one’s own just ways of living. True freedom is celebrating the irrepressible spirit of being human. It is to realize that endless possibilities lie waiting in freedom, that liberty is eternal delight, that the human race can flower best only in conditions of liberty, where liberty and harmony become intermingled and mutually illuminating.
True freedom bears divine legitimacy. Human beings are endowed with inalienable rights by the Creator, which simultaneously include also the innate duties towards every other being. The spark of liberty in the mind and spirit of people cannot be long extinguished. Liberty is our eternal birthright, an inheritance for eternity. It is ancient at its birth, as ancient as the stars. The meaning and mystery of freedom can be totally understood and lived only in its communitarian aspect. And as such, what we must strive for is not independence, but interdependence. Honest freedom is freedom in search of service and servitude to another.
What is liberty without wisdom and virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils. An imbalanced and excessive desire for freedom is symptomatic of certain inner inadequacies. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that people of intemperate habits cannot be free. Their passions forge their own fetters. There is no liberty to people whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to persons in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to individuals who know not how to govern themselves.
Authentic freedom is fidelity to the pursuit of truth and to the truth when found. Liberty is not an end in itself but a means that should be pursued for the highest good of all in the society. It must be forever remembered that liberty can only be retained by the eternal vigilance, which has always been its price. The condition upon which God has given liberty to men and women is eternal vigilance - a vigilance that begins first and foremost with and over one’s own self. If this condition is not fulfilled, we become slaves to our own selves, and before long, slaves to our servants, and to everyone and everything around us.
Fr. T.C. Joseph Sdb
Salesian College, Dimapur.
