As St. Ambrose said, "Where there is faith, there is liberty." Freedom is called a paradox because freedom is only found in recognizing our relationship of dependence on the infinite, the creator. Here is how Luigi Giussani puts it: "The human being -- the concrete human person, me, you -- once were not, now we are, and tomorrow will no longer be: thus we depend.
"And either we depend upon the flux of our material antecedents, and are consequently slaves of the powers that be, or we depend upon What lies at the origin of the movement of all things, beyond them, which is to say, God.
"Freedom identifies itself with dependence upon God at the human level: it is a recognized and lived dependence, while slavery, on the other hand, denies or censures this relationship.
"Religiosity is the lived awareness of this relationship. Freedom comes through religiosity!
"Religiosity is the single hindrance, limit, confine to the dictatorship of man over man, whether we are referring to men and women, parents and children, owners and workers, party chiefs, and rank and file. It is the only hindrance, the single barrier and objection to the slavery imposed by the powers that be." The Religious Sense, pp. 91-92.
Yesterday I saw a picture of hundreds of people lined up waiting to enter the new casino in Des Plaines. Then a picture of a room full of hundreds of slot machines with a person sitting in front of each one. The article said the managers of the casino were having to encourage people to stay away and come back another day as the casino had reached its crowd limit. I asked myself, slaves or free?
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