Authentic Freedom: Are you free to be you?
"I am Who I am" [1] are the words God used to describe Himself to Moses in the Book of Exodus. We have an undisputed origin. “In the beginning God created...”[2] we know God created things good and very good. We may have heard that we are made in His Image and likeness, but can you say about yourself “I am who I am”? Can you speak these words about yourself with full knowledge, FULLY aware of yourself and everything in you and around you?
Before ‘the fall’, before our first parents, Adam and Eve, chose to turn from God and become a creation of their own making, we, humanity, all could say with God, "I am Who I am". Imagine that! We knew who we were, we knew FULLY our purpose. We were ordered toward Good in all things. We had Authentic Freedom! Our nature was ordered toward love of God and love of neighbor and we knew our relation to ourselves and to others. We did not have the inclination to sin. We were man and woman and we lived it well!
I speak of this as a past reality because it is, it is our undisputed origin, but it is not our present reality. We toil, struggle, sin and die because of THE original sin. Original humanity, man and woman (a.k.a. Adam and Eve) were disposed to be good, had full self-mastery, no evil inclinations and they CHOSE to be...selfish. So now we toil, struggle, sin and die because we put ourselves first. We were not created to look at ourselves but to look towards the Creator. Now look! We have turned away from what our Creator created as original man. Scott Hahn, in ‘Lord, Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession’ [3] writes: ‘What was required of Adam and Eve was a sheer act of will—uniting their own will with God’s will—and thus sacrificing all the lower desires of their bodies and souls, hearts and minds.’ We now struggle day in and day out to make this same act which requires the same sacrifice.
Most of my life has been filled with the questions ‘who am I’, ‘what is my purpose’? I am able to say fully with St. Paul, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” [4]. About twelve years ago I would often put my whole heart (or at least I thought so) into singing at the top of my lungs in my car with my window rolled down, a song by an artist who helped My Creator place the desire in me to fulfill the very words I sang “I’m Free to Be Me” [5]. God listened to my prayer in ‘spiritual song’ [6] and being the good Teacher, and much more, that He is, I had to learn two fundamental truths before I could act and truly be free to be me.
Truth #1: What is freedom?
Truth #2: Who am I?
What is freedom?
Sister Clare Crockett from Derry, Northern Ireland, a Servant Sister of the Home of the Mother who passed away during the earthquake in Playa Prieta on April 16, 2016 [7] was so authentically honest about herself and her struggles. In reading Sister Clare’s biography, we learn that she was made for Hollywood, at least she thought that's who she was and what her purpose was. We have maybe all thought this once or twice, we may have even said it out loud...maybe. Either way, our purpose in life and understanding of ourselves may not quite be what we thought it was during our early years. Like Sister Clare, these misunderstandings may be leading, or have led us on a road in which it is not our Creator who is leading the way. Sister Clare in her notebook quotes from many of what l would like to call ‘big guns’ of our modern day, Father Raniero Cantalamessa (now Cardinal), Sr. Josefa Menendez and Fr. Walter Ciszek. In Fr. Ciszek's book “He Leadeth Me” she underlined the following parts: “The greatest sense of freedom, along with peace of soul and an abiding sense of security comes when a man totally abandons his own will in order to follow the will of God.” ...she reflected more and more on this and on how “true freedom meant nothing else than letting God operate within my soul without interference.” [8]
Four months before Sister Clare professed her final vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, after she had already given all, she still battled with freedom and its essence. She writes, “It is clear that if man is not free (does not possess himself), he cannot love (which is to give himself). But it is also clear that if he does not love, he cannot be really free. Freedom is meant for love and freedom without love makes little sense and is practically worthless. Am I conscious of the freedom God is giving me?” [9] Some years later after giving everything day in and day out, giving herself, she was able to write in her notebook on something I now unite with her in saying gives us true freedom-obedience. “I experienced that through obedience, when I do God’s will, I am truly and authentically FREE. In every act of obedience, the Lord asks me the same thing He asked Adam and Eve: to unite my will to His and sacrifice the lowest desires in me in order to make my heart grow. Obviously, there are acts of obedience that are hard for me, but I understand they are always for my own good. If I want to ‘put on the mind of Christ’, I have to disappear.” [10]
Who am I?
Disappear! What? I thought I was free to be me!? This is the crux of the matter and this is what goes on in my head thanks to ‘the fall’. Like St. Paul, we are not original men and women, but Christians preaching a crucified Christ. Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world in the year 1 A.D. as the model and example of freedom and identity and He said GIVE! Pour yourself out, die to yourself, take up your cross daily and walk to cavalry and die, I have to disappear so that Christ may appear.
“The wall [of self-confidence] needs to be broken down in order for you to truly know God and know yourself. This was one of the hardest things for me personally to do: To let God take off all my masks and show me who I really was.” [11]
-Sr. Clare Crockett
When we freely give ourselves as a gift to God, and to others, then, we are truly free. BUT I can’t give myself unless I possess myself. Makes me think of that ole’ familiar phrase, ‘you can’t give what you don’t have’. Saint John Paul the Great takes us back to the beginning and gives us a good image of how we can know ourselves better, both man and woman...” man and woman are free with the very freedom of the gift. In fact, in order to remain in the relation of the “sincere gift of self” and in order to become a gift, each for the other, through their whole humanity made of femininity and masculinity...they must be free in exactly this way. Here we mean freedom above all as self-mastery (self-dominion). Under this aspect, self –mastery is indispensable in order for man to be able to “give himself”, in order for him... to be able to “find himself fully” through “a sincere gift of self”.” [12] If I don’t possess myself then I am not free.
To be free with the freedom of the gift.
To find myself through a sincere gift of myself.
To know myself as God knows me and to know others as God knows.
“Man cannot “fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self”.” [13]
I can’t help but conclude with a monologue I found while surfing the internet during my final project in a class on gender identity. Now that twelve years have passed, the Samaritan Woman in the Gospel of John taught me, personally, a lot about who I am as a woman in relation to the Man, Jesus. Though we see and hear just the woman in this monologue, we vividly get a sense of what she is longing for from the Man. Just as Adam found himself alone before God, and he needed a person like himself to give his gift for (not give his gift “to” but give his gift “for”), I too have found myself alone before God. A woman, a sinner, hiding behind masks, searching for freedom, love, and the purpose of my life. This woman who stands for all sinners makes a simple declaration-"to be known is to be loved". [14] In order to be who you are meant to be you must first be who you are. She no longer worried about who she was, but thought "I am who I am." I am loved as I am.
This woman expresses what it is to be seen by God. “I see you,” says your Creator. She is finally looked at by another and she is now known outside of herself, thus, she wants to give love away. "Your being increases in the measure that you give it away", says Bishop Barron. Woman, "you've been running to these stupid wells all of your life" and finally "He cracked the code of her life".[15]
What is freedom? Freedom is obedience to the Will of God.
Who am I? You are a Gift. You are a gift to God and a gift to others.
As I sit at the desk in the convent (the building which protected and nourished authentic freedom within me) I look up to see a picture on the wall of St. John Paull II with a quote that seems worthy of being repeated:
“Man is the only creature on earth ‘which God willed for its own sake...’ Man ‘cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self.’”
-John Paul II citing the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, 24
Authentic Freedom = Gift of Self
Footnotes:
[1] Exodus 3:14
[2] Genesis 1:1
[3] Lord Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession — Dr. Scott Hahn - The Official Site
[4] Romans 7:15
[5] (19) Francesca Battistelli - Free To Be Me (Official Music Video) - YouTube
[6] Ephesians 5:19
[7] Brief Biography - Sister Clare and Companions
[8] Sr. Clare Crockett: Alone with Christ Alone | newhopeproject2 (newhope-ky.org)p.229
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid. p.361
[11] Ibid. p. 79
[12] St. John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media 2006), 15:2. Italics in the original.
[13] Gaudium et Spes, 24: 3