I think of the "tether" as the link between the inner "I" -- our true identity -- and the absolute who founds us. This chord is at the heart of our being, anchoring us to the source of our being, the God who made us. With that source of strength, the source also of virtue, we can be free to perform in the world. This is true freedom.
I recently came across a sign of what this freedom means in practice.
In J. Brian Benested's Church, State, and Society, a treatment of the Church's social doctrine, the author discusses a book by Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed (1840). In it Manzoni depicts a virtuous churchman. Benested states, "A remarkable trait possessed by Cardinal Borromeo was his independence from the opinions of others. . . . Despite the pressures of the culture and corruption within the Church, [Cardinal] Borromeo was able to avoid unwise accommodation to the spirit of the age." p. 141.
What I take this to mean is that our faith, and the virtues or strengths that it helps us to develop, can keep us from being slaves to the "spirit of the age." This is a "freedom" available to those who are "tethered" to their God in faith.
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