Don't Let Yourself Be a Slave

Human life is the greatest gift received from God. It is an immense grace to be able to exist and say: I am! I exist! After life, the greatest gift we receive is freedom. Freedom is what enables us to fulfill our greatest vocation: to love and be loved. Without freedom, love is impossible. Only those who are free can love, can give themselves to the other, can prove their love through sacrifice and donation.

We are born free externally; that is, we are not slaves, owned by anyone. However, inner freedom, that which enables us to love, needs to be achieved. We were born tied to our desires and our whims: selfish, slaves to our own selves. The Catholic Church teaches that this happens because we were born with “original sin.” In that sin, man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned Him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully "divinized" by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to "be like God," but "without God, before God, and not in accordance with God" (Catechism of the Catholic Church § 398)

Pope Benedict XVI explains that original sin is a relational sin, since it rejected and damaged the relationship between the Creator and his creature, because it wants to make the human being a god. Each of us enters a situation in which relationality has been hurt. Consequently, each person is, from the very start, damaged in relationships and does not engage in them as they should. Sin pursues the human being, and he or she capitulates to it.[1]

To get rid of these consequences of sin, we need to fight to restore the order God wanted for human nature: the condition of being a child of God must dominate our intelligence and will, which must dominate our instincts. When we are born, our instincts (hunger, cold, fear, and so on) dominate our being entirely. As we grow and mature, we need to learn to master these instincts and allow the light of grace to illuminate our intelligence to distinguish what is good for us and strengthen our will to act on that inspiration.

Only with this exercise of mastery of instincts will we really be free to be able to love and be happy. It is not a matter of "repressing" desires or living as if those desires did not exist, but of directing and ordering them. Imagine a person who cannot see a piece of cake without "needing" to eat it. It does not matter if she suffers from diabetes or another evil derived from the consumption of sweets: when she sees the cake, she goes and eats. Is this person free, or has she become a slave to her desire for sweets? Another person "explodes" in rude ways at the slightest annoyance that comes her way. Whoever lives with her is always walking on eggshells, anxiously waiting for the next explosion. Is that person free or dominated by circumstances?

Love requires that we come out of ourselves to give ourselves to another. In this way, those who are slaves to their own desires find it very difficult to love, and those who do not love cannot be happy. This struggle must begin first with the decision to overcome these instincts. Then, we must choose only one point to be tackled with a very concrete purpose, the fulfillment of which can be assessed at the end of the day. When we have mastered that point, then we move on to the next. And so we continue until the end of life! For example: those who have difficulty controlling instinct of eating, can, at least for one meal of the day, renounce to eat something they like or exchange juice for water during the meal or even eat only what served the first time on the plate. When that is no longer so difficult, you can increase to two meals a day, then to a stronger renunciation, such as not eating sweets during the week or exchanging a meal during the week for bread and water. Finally, it is advisable that we write down our purpose somewhere and every day; before going to bed, check whether we have fulfilled it or not. It also helps us to remember what we are committed to doing.

Other attitudes that we can have during the day to strengthen our will and to control our instincts are adding small annoyances, such as waiting a few minutes before drinking water when you are thirsty, waiting a little before turning on the air conditioning, taking a shower a little bit colder than you would like, wait a few minutes before looking at your phone in the morning, control the urge to comment on a publication, and so on. There are countless little things we can do to make ourselves stronger and freer.

It is very important to say that, without the help of grace, we will not advance. We need to ask insistently that our Lord Jesus Christ, who loved so much and was truly free, help us on this journey. We still need help to persevere, not to be discouraged when we fall and fail to fulfill our purpose. The essential thing is to get up and keep fighting! So, go ahead! Do not be enslaved by your own whims! We were created to be free and to love!

[1] Ratzinger, Joseph, In the Beginning – A Catholic understanding of the story of creation and the Fall, Ed. Ressourcement, 1995, USA, pg. 72-73