I'll share with you a little incident that happened this past week.  I was concelebrating a funeral mass for the deceased sister of one of our Diocesan priests.  So the procession came in with the casket, and he stood up, the priest, the brother of this deceased lady, and he said, "A miracle has happened here this morning.  My sister is in time for mass." So don't wait for your funeral to be on time for mass, okay?

Well, next Sunday we celebrate Independence Day, and there will be parades, and speeches, and fireworks, and many of the speeches will extol the words and deeds of the Founding Fathers, the signers of the Declaration of Independence.  You know, many of those 56 men who signed that document, many of them, lost everything they had.  Their homes were looted and their lands were destroyed, devastated.  But they were prepared to give up everything to achieve the vision of freedom that inspired them.

There's a story told about one of them, Charles Carroll, who, by the way, was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration, and was a relative of John Carroll, who was the first American bishop.  But as they were standing, one of the other signatories said to him, "You know, we all could be hanged for this if the British catch us.  But you don't have to worry, because there are so many Charles Carrolls in Maryland, they won't know which one to arrest."  So he took the pen and he signed "Charles Carroll of Carrollton" to make absolutely sure they knew who he was. He was prepared to stand by his signature.  He was prepared to suffer, as they were all prepared to suffer, for their beliefs and their vision of freedom.

Some years ago I was on a camping trip.  I went up to the northeastern part of Oregon, a little town called Baker.  And just outside the town there's a magnificent visitor's center marking the famous Oregon Trail.  And in fact just outside the center you could see the marks, the ruts in the road made by the wheels of the wagons as the pioneers came west.  And inside you get a good idea of the sacrifices that those pioneers made to achieve their goal and their dream of a new land, a new life, new possibilities.  They left St. Joseph, Missouri, with their wagons piled high with all of their household goods.  But the trail across the Great Plains was strewn with tables, and chairs, and bed frames and even pianos, things they decided that they didn't really need, that they could dispose of because the weight was slowing them down and was an obstacle to their achieving tha goal of a new life.

Now, as we look forward to celebrating Independence Day and reflect on the sacrifices made by the founders and the pioneers of our country, let us transfer our reflections and our feelings to Jesus Christ, the founder and the pioneer of our Christian way of life.  He sacrificed His life that we might be free, and  He's asking us to be prepared to make sacrifices in order for us to preserve that freedom.  We've just heard Paul write to the Galatians and say, for freedom, Christ has set us free, so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.  You are called for freedom. Serve one another through love.

What endangers our freedom?  Well, before I give some answer to my own question, let me make it very, very clear I am not in any way suggesting that Gregory Lane be strewn with tables, and chairs and pianos.  I'm not even suggesting that finally, finally, you get rid of all that stuff in your garage that you are definitely going to need next year.  And by the way, how do you dispose of those old-fashioned long-playing records?  Any collector here, you're welcome to mine.  But I am suggesting that we lighten our hearts.

What is endangering our freedom, our freedom to be the fully mature human beings made in the likeness of Christ through baptism?  What is slowing us down on our spiritual journey?  Now, it certainly could be our addiction to material things.  

But it is far more likely to be the anger that is festering in our hearts, the bitterness towards a fellow worker or a boss, the lack of patience with children, the lack of communication with a spouse, that one drink too many, that addiction to Internet pornography, that subtle or perhaps not so subtle racism. These and similar human failures are what weigh us down, tie us down, rob us of the freedom to be the truly great human beings that we're capable of being and that we're called to be as Christians.

Christ sacrificed himself, died, that we might have that freedom.  Paul said, "You are called for freedom; serve one  another in love."  Yes, for Paul, service through love was the mark, the staff of being truly free, because it results from our being free from selfishness, from self-interest, self-absorption or self-glorification.  It is these that we have to discard. These are the things that we have to dump along the way, along that trail that leads to new life and new possibilities for us as Christians.

And, you know, Jesus says we really don't have too much choice. He says we can't turn back.  So we put our hands to the plow.  We can't turn back.  We must be pushing forward all the time, pushing forward on that journey, that spiritual journey with Jesus.  We have to tackle this individually, tackle our failures and the obstacles that we ourselves place on the road, on the trail.

Now, that could be a very lonely struggle, but it doesn't have to be, shouldn't be.  Just look around you.  Look around you this morning.  We've a community here.  We're all in this together.

We're making this journey together, and we should be supporting one another in prayer, and by our example and our commitment to this new way of life that Jesus shows us and asks us to follow.  Above all, we have our Founder and our Pioneer,  
the One who walked this road before us, Jesus himself, to encourage us and to give us strength.

Amen.



cml