Freedom is not doing whatever one wants. Sure, the world tells people that being able to do that is freeing. Yet the things the world calls freeing are sometimes the very things that become the snares we get stuck in, keeping us from God.

SHOW NOTES — REFERENCES & CALLBACKS

Callback: Episode 1 — Our Longing to Be Happy (the younger son's departure, the far country, "when he came to himself").

Luke 15:12 — "Father, give me the share of property that falls to me." (RSV-CE)

Luke 15:17 — "when he came to himself." (RSV-CE)

Luke 15:18 — "I will arise and go to my father." (RSV-CE)

Matthew 11:29 — "Take my yoke upon you." (this Sunday's Gospel, RSV-CE)

St. Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1 — "Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee." (trans. F. J. Sheed)

Catechism of the Catholic Church §1733 — freedom ordered to the good (paraphrased in the reflection).

Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum (1888), §6 — the possibility of sinning is not freedom but slavery; the sinner "is moved by another." (The argument the Catechism §1733 line compresses.)

Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum (1888), §11 — God's law does not diminish liberty but "protects and perfects it"; God is the end our freedom is made for.

Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (1899) — Leo cites this Sunday's Gospel, "Learn of Me, because I am meek and humble of heart" (Matt. 11:29), as the precept given to every age. (Leo's older rendering; the episode keeps the RSV-CE "Take my yoke upon you.")