Yesterday was the Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist. A day set aside in the Church’s Liturgical calendar to remember the death of John the Baptist.
In today’s Liturgy of the Hours Morning Prayer, one of options for the hymn was Faith of Our Fathers. It is a hymn I am sure many are familiar with. However, there is a line in the second verse that really struck me as I sang it today. The line goes:
Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, Were still in heart and conscience free.
There is such a profound truth expressed in these words. These men, these fathers, physically confined, imprisoned in darkness, were in that moment experiencing the pinnacle of freedom: able to experience that because, despite their physical straights, their hearts and minds remained free. Their hearts and minds remained free because they remained in the truth. The truth lived out courageously by Saint John the Baptist. The truth that our physical life is but a moment in time. Our eternal life is our true identity and our focus must always be on preserving that.
In the Gospel of Luke Jesus tells the disciples, “Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell.” (Luke 12:4-5) Our Lord is telling his disciples that they should fear no earthly power as all an earthly power can do is take away their earthly life. They need to fear God as God has the ability to cast them into hell for all eternity. As Ambrose of Milan puts it, “Death is the disappearance of earthly punishment, but the death of the soul is eternal, and God alone is to be feared.” Not man, but God alone is to be feared.
What Saint John the Baptist knew, what the Apostles came to understand, and what countless Saints throughout the history of Christianity understood is that once you realize that the point of our earthly life is not to cling to it unceasingly but rather to use it to glorify God so that we may spend eternity in Heaven with him: once you understand that, only then are you truly free. True freedom comes from no longer living life in fear of losing it because you understand that you are in this world but not of this world. Therefore, regardless of what physical condition you find yourself in, as long as you continue to fear and serve the Lord you remain free.
In our modern society we often view freedom through the lens of earthly choice. I am free to travel where I want to. I am free to pursue the career I want to. I am free to marry who I want to. All of these “freedoms” can be stripped away by earthly power. However, they can’t strip away the freedom we have to fear and serve the Lord and to proclaim the truth boldly. Now, making that choice, speaking the truth, may come at great physical costs. We may be fired, ridiculed, beaten, jailed, or even executed. But through all that, if we keep saying yes to the Lord, we remain free.
The Apostles went to the ends of the earth boldly proclaiming the Gospel. They were beater, imprisoned, and all but one martyred. Yet they were fearless because they held onto the truth. They remained in the lord and their hearts and consciences remained free.
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