Tuesday, November 20, 2012
366. What place does human freedom have in the plan of salvation?
(Comp 366) Our freedom is weakened because of original sin. This weakness is
intensified because of successive sins. Christ, however, set us free “so that
we should remain free” (Galatians 5:1). With his grace, the Holy Spirit leads
us to spiritual freedom to make us free co-workers with him in the Church and
in the world.
“In brief”
(CCC 1748) "For freedom Christ has set us free"
(Gal 5:1).
To deepen and
explain
(CCC 1739)
Freedom and sin. Man's freedom is
limited and fallible. In fact, man failed. He freely sinned. By refusing God's
plan of love, he deceived himself and became a slave to sin. This first
alienation engendered a multitude of others. From its outset, human history
attests the wretchedness and oppression born of the human heart in consequence
of the abuse of freedom. (CCC 1740) Threats to freedom. The exercise of
freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything. It is false to maintain
that man, "the subject of this freedom," is "an individual who
is fully self-sufficient and whose finality is the satisfaction of his own
interests in the enjoyment of earthly goods" (CDF, instruction, Libertatis conscientia 13). Moreover,
the economic, social, political, and cultural conditions that are needed for a
just exercise of freedom are too often disregarded or violated. Such situations
of blindness and injustice injure the moral life and involve the strong as well
as the weak in the temptation to sin against charity. By deviating from the
moral law man violates his own freedom, becomes imprisoned within himself,
disrupts neighborly fellowship, and rebels against divine truth.
Reflection
(CCC 1741)
Liberation and salvation. By his
glorious Cross Christ has won salvation for all men. He redeemed them from the
sin that held them in bondage. "For freedom Christ has set us free"
(Gal 5: 1). In him we have communion with the "truth that makes us
free" (Cf. In 8:32). The Holy Spirit has been given to us and, as the
Apostle teaches, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom"
(2 Cor 3:17). Already we glory in the "liberty of the children of
God" (Rom 8:21). (CCC 1742) Freedom and grace. The grace of Christ
is not in the slightest way a rival of our freedom when this freedom accords
with the sense of the true and the good that God has put in the human heart. On
the contrary, as Christian experience attests especially in prayer, the more
docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom and
confidence during trials, such as those we face in the pressures and constraints
of the outer world. By the working of grace the Holy Spirit educates us in
spiritual freedom in order to make us free collaborators in his work in the
Church and in the world: Almighty and merciful God, in your goodness take away
from us all that is harmful, so that, made ready both in mind and body, we may
freely accomplish your will (Roman Missal,
32nd Sunday, Opening Prayer: Omnipotens
et misericors Deus, universa nobis adversantia propitiatus exclude, ut, mente
et corpore pariter expediti, quae tua sunt liberis mentibus exsequamur).
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