More About Freedom
I thought I would make a little addendum to my post on freedom for excellence, as taught by Father Servais Pinckaers. There, I spoke about the difference between freedom of indifference (it doesn’t matter what you choose, what matters is choice) and freedom for excellence (the one who chooses the good is more free than the one who chooses evil).
I stick by what I wrote there, but just wanted to add something that I found very helpful, that Father Michael said at the National Diaconia for Communion and Liberation.
As Catholics we often pooh-pooh (that is the technical term) the idea that freedom is to do “whatever you want”, because it sounds an awful lot like that kind of freedom is indifferent to the goodness or evil of the choice. But Father Michael pointed out that as we learn to judge our experiences, to learn from life, to desire more and more, “whatever you want” and “love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul, and strength” grow closer together. That is, life is the discovery of “what I want”, the journey from smaller-case “g” goods to the Good, the Good that is not a “what” but a “who”. “What I want is You, O God.”
Here is how Father Giussani puts it in Chapter 8 of The Religious Sense:
You, daughter, go to your father and say to him, “Will you let me go away for the weekend with my friends?” Your father, his hands full with so much work and many other concerns, has always held the opinion that modern parents must be permissive with their children. Therefore, to you, young lady, he has never, not even one single time in living memory, said no. That evening, however, driven crazy by his secretary, he answers, “No, you are not going!” It would be impossible for you not to feel oppressed, imprisoned, suffocated, without freedom. If, on the other hand, you are unsure of your father’s answer and he replied, “Yes, by all means go!” your experience of freedom would have been greater because your desire was strong.
Experientially we fee free when we satisfy a desire. Freedom becomes experience in our existence as the realization of a need, or an aspiration, as fulfillment. And it is in this sense of the word that we find the truth in that trite phrase: “being free is doing your own thing.” Imagine not just being free for a weekend, and evening, one one hundred, two hundred, a thousand occasions, but always—to be really free, that is to say experience freedom, not just a moment of freedom.
“Doing your own thing” sounds a lot like freedom of indifference. Father Giussani, and the best of the Catholic tradition, trusts that we human beings have a truth detector, the human heart, that can judge when “doing your own thing” truly satisfies and when it doesn’t. As we begin to judge, we get more in touch with what our heart truly desires, what Giussani calls “elementary experience”: the desire for truth, beauty, justice, love.
The Church also educates us to true desire by helping us encounter true, beautiful, just, and loving things, most particularly in the Scripture, in the lives of the saints, in the beauty of art and music. In this way, desire is educated little by little to seek after great things. With hearts made wide with desire, we will not settle for less. We do not have to fear the many mistakes along the way because there is forgiveness and mercy for all of our “ironic attempts”. To return to Giussani’s example above, I learn through experience that a weekend away with my friends is a good but not the Good. Even (and especially) the most excellent weekend away with my friends pushes me “Farther! Farther!” as I seek out the most excellent thing.
I have learned something really interesting in my journey with our Lord. The discovery of those most excellent things, those experiences of true beauty and love, do not obliterate the smaller “g” goods but rather give them back to me in a new way. When I make that smaller “g” good my Good, it slips out of my hands, or I kill it in some way. But when I hold lightly to everything else and hold tightly only to the highest Good, I receive even those smaller goods in their truth.
Of course, this does not happen all the time. I frequently hold too tightly to things that are not God. That is called sin. But it is always possible to learn from this. Moral life then becomes the seeking of the highest Good, not just the giving up of things that the Church tells me are wrong (but that secretly I want more than God). This is freedom for excellence.
Two last thoughts:
The discover of the highest Good is not a human achievement. We have been found by this highest Good who came in the Flesh as “the way, the truth, and the life". To have discovered this Good is not something to boast about, but to humbly and joyfully receive as the greatest of all gifts.
Freedom to “do my own thing” becomes a path to freedom for excellence only if I have the courage to risk myself in action, to try new things, to be stretched beyond my own limitations, and to learn from my many mistakes. Giussani says in Chapter 1 of The Religious Sense: “Let us begin to judge. That is the beginning of liberation.”
Imagine not just a moment of freedom, of the satisfaction of one desire, but a whole life of freedom, the satisfaction of my greatest need, for truth, for beauty, for love, found in Jesus Christ, “who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20)!