Monday, October 8, 2007

Self-giving rooted in Freedom



For John Paul II, Adam and Eve’s experience of original nakedness was deeply rooted in their freedom and capacity to give and accept themselves as mutual gift to one another. We can give ourselves as a gift to another person, as well as we can receive the other person as a gift, only if we are truly free to do so. The purity and simplicity of our giving and receiving will be measured by how free we truly are in the act of giving and receiving. But what do we mean by freedom? By being free?

For the Holy Father, freedom is not just freedom from, something that constrains us from doing what we like to do. Rather, genuine freedom is freedom for the truth and the authentic good. This is the kind of freedom that makes one capable of truly making a gift of himself to the other by means of his/her body. Freedom is not given to us so that we may do anything we want. We have been created free, so that we may give ourselves from within. Freedom renders us capable of giving ourselves with our full consent. Our freedom is our capacity for giving. This is the freedom that lies at the root of Adam and Eve’s experience of original nakedness, and of their consciousness of the nuptial meaning of their bodies. This is the kind of freedom that brings true joy and happiness.

There is another name for this authentic freedom: self-mastery or self-determination. Self-mastery, self-determination, connote that we are in total possession of ourselves, and because we possess ourselves, we are truly masters of ourselves, and so are able to totally and freely give ourselves to the other. In their mutual self-donation, Adam and Eve who were, before the entry of sin and lust, free from the compulsions of lust, were free, says John Paul II, “with the very freedom of the gift.”

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