RIMINI, Italy, AUG. 24, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Freedom is not «doing what you feel like,» but rather is a relationship with the transcendent infinite, says Father Julián Carrón, the leader of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation.
«We are faced with an enormous desire for freedom, but at the same time with the incapacity to be truly free,» the priest said Monday before an audience of more than 10,000 participants at the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples, being held this week in Rimini.
«We can say that freedom today is a good as precious as it is scarce,» he added.
The priest, who succeeded Monsignor Luigi Giussani as head of Communion and Liberation, addressed the topic «Freedom Is the Most Precious Gift that the Heavens Gave Men,» a phrase taken from «Don Quixote.»
In his address, Father Carrón said that «to be free is not to do what one feels like, it is not the simple satisfaction of an immediate and partial desire.»
In fact, «freedom is a desire for totality and infinity, as men are attracted by beauty, goodness, and what is real,» he said.
Toward the transcendent
«Man tends toward something that is beyond, always beyond, something transcendent,» the priest continued. «In this way, conscience perceives the existence of God from the mystery. God is the maximum limit toward which man’s desire tends.»
According to Father Carrón, «The fact that we were created in the image and likeness of God, means that we are called to a unique relationship with him. The vocation of life is this relationship.»
«And this impedes man’s being reduced to his biological, psychological and sociological history,» he contended. «Man cannot be reduced to the ensemble of internal and external circumstances.»
The ultimate reason of man’s greatness is his direct relationship, irreducible, with the infinite, said the priest. Because of this, «freedom is adherence to Being, to the Mystery that constitutes us,» said the president of Communion and Liberation.
«By adhering to this Mystery in each thing, man becomes free. There he can satisfy his desire for totality,» said Father Carrón.
In his conclusion, Father Carrón remembered Monsignor Giussani, who died at 82 last February, and affirmed that the best homage to his memory is to «be witnesses to all those we meet that the only possibility of real freedom is acknowledgment of the Mystery present.»
