FREEDOM WHICH ENSLAVES

ALINA CZERNIAKOWSKA

How often we meet people who waste their talents, health, life of their whole families. We, ordinary observers, often find it difficult to understand why a man aware of everything, a graduate of a university, physically fit, loses his family, work and gets degraded through his life choices, behavior. Lifestyle far from any kinds of principles, both the Divine and human ones, mistaking the evil as the good, using freedom in the way ‘do whatever you want’ – all these types of examples of adults are copied by the youth and children who want to be modern, trendy, ‘cool’. Alcohol in various forms became an inseparable attribute of people’s life in various age groups and social, profession categories. Nobody is surprised by a drunk ‘artist, creator or politician’, speaking publicly, making a clown out of themselves, the caricature out of the society, and it is even perceived as a trump card, a kind of freedom and style. Young people see it and are copying it. It is particularly easy for people from divorced families, far from God, in conflicts, using vulgar language and wicked lifestyle, based on mutual hypocrisy and betrayal to take such examples. Recently I have been observing a great professional in film editing, a clever man but completely lost psychically, for whom only alcohol remained, the only help for him. Everything failed, nothing makes sense – the border of freedom has been crossed – life without God. Looking at degradation and helplessness of this man, one would like to help him but how? ‘One cannot create fiction of freedom which allegedly frees, but, in fact, it enslaves and degrades him!’ – John Paul II explained and spoke so to us. When one thinks carefully, reasons for evil derive from pathologies of homes. These are where characters are created, children are brought up, and then in adults’ life they copy examples brought from home, often even unconsciously, against themselves. They cannot ‘live in a good and wise way, require from themselves, defend holiness of soul and body’ – which was often mentioned to the young by their friend John Paul II. So many young married couples get divorced, live in the so called free relations, hurt children – all this can and should terrify. There is a text of Somebody who really loved us, read and thought through carefully, which can be help for each of us: ‘I ask you to trust, despite your weaknesses, to look for spiritual power in the One, in whom so many generations of mothers and fathers found it; so that you would never go away from Him, or lose this freedom of spirit to which He frees the man; so that you would never detest the Love which is the greatest, which was expressed through the Cross, and without which human life does not have any roots or sense. I ask you for it’. (John Paul II, Kraków 10 June 1979)

AA

„Niedziela” 16/2016

Editor: Tygodnik Katolicki "Niedziela", ul. 3 Maja 12, 42-200 Czestochowa, Polska
Editor-in-chief: Fr Jaroslaw Grabowski • E-mail: redakcja@niedziela.pl