14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dear Parish Family,

As we celebrated July 4th this past week, we reflected on the freedom of our country that was established by victory in the Revolutionary War. This freedom was a realization to make a government for ourselves, independent of another ruling body. I don’t think there is any arguing that we are grateful for our Independence. Yet, taking this idea of freedom and applying it to our individual selves can become problematic. And this is a prevailing idea in our culture: that freedom is the ability to choose for myself and do for myself whatever I want. Essentially, the idea that freedom means to “make myself.”

But we have been made by Another! Our life is a gift. We have a responsibility to recognize our life as gift, and from there, to understand the way the gift that is my life is meant to be lived. God knows. We have been made for him. Our freedom will only be true when we place ourselves under his dominion and allow him to direct our lives. We choose to be dependent on him. Discerning the will of God, rather than following my own, is what makes for true freedom. Freedom for God.

How do we know God’s will for our lives? Firstly, by prayer and surrendering ourselves in an intentional way to God’s designs. We ask him every morning to guide our thoughts, our words, and our actions. We strive to conform all of that to the teaching of Christ as found in Scripture and Tradition. We trust that what God has decreed is actually good for us – indeed, the best for us. We allow God to take control. We allow him to make us. “For freedom, Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1). Free for himself, not for our own selves alone.

-Fr. Kennell