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Buenos Aires, Sunday, July 9, 2006

Father Oscar Pezzarini

Independence and liberty

There's no doubt we can reflect a lot on the issue of liberty in different ways. I'm not going to refer to freedom just from the Homeland Independence standpoint that different countries either have achieved or are fighting in order to achieve it, of which we are sure it is a right of peoples. Where to does freedom lead? To “lack of restraint” so I can do what I want, thinking and acting by rejecting elementary rules of human coexistence or of an organized society? Or does it lead to the respect owed to the rules set up in order to allow us to live in a world which tries to respect the dignity of all human beings, but in a way which does not reject or embarass what God's wisdom has established in Nature? Freedom is a “wonderful gift” given to us, but in order to exercise it we must start respecting the objective truth of things, respect Nature and respect ourselves and others, else we will end up “freely becoming slaves”.

In Argentina July 9th is Independence Day, the date we remember a group of those we include in our list of “National Heroes” who in the year 1816 declared that from that moment on we were a “free” country.

There's no doubt we can reflect a lot on the issue of liberty in different ways. I'm not going to refer to freedom just from the Homeland Independence standpoint that different countries either have achieved or are fighting in order to achieve it, of which we are sure it is a right of peoples.

I want to refer to freedom as a gift of God who made us “in His image” beginning with the gift of having the chance of free coice in our lifes. This “gift” of God is what makes us resemble Him and gives us a starting point for finding explanations to many of the situations Humaniity goes through, even surprising Humanity because God in His respect of this gift He gave Man seems as if He were a “mere spectator” of attitudes displayed by Man which in many cases seem to guide Man to “slavery” or even to his own destruction.

“We are free, we are independent” and thus “have the right” to behave in this or that way, these are expressions we often hear and use ourselves... but, are we “really free”?

Where to does freedom lead? To “lack of restraint” so I can do what I want, thinking and acting by rejecting elementary rules of human coexistence or of an organized society? Or does it lead to the respect owed to the rules set up in order to allow us to live in a world which tries to respect the dignity of all human beings, but in a way which does not reject or embarass what God's wisdom has established in Nature?

Freedom is a “wonderful gift” given to us, but in order to exercise it we must start respecting the objective truth of things, respect Nature and respect ourselves and others, else we will end up “freely becoming slaves”.

Father Oscar Pezzarini
Provincial Superior of the Work of Don Orione in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Mexico

Father Oscar Pezzarini together with Fr. Leonardo Abregú makes us reflect on Saturdays from 8 to 12 AM (GMT-03:00)with "VENTANA A LA VIDA", the Don Orione radio program he conducts on FM PROVIDENCIA, 90.3 MHz together with some residents of the Claypole Cottolengo (Raúl Romero, María Laura Andrada, Alberto Zoroch, Américo Torres), with the production of Roberto Beluzzo and Ignacio Cavalli as technical operator. You can also listen to FM PROVIDENCIA by clicking here.

Pequeño Cottolengo Don Orione 0800-333-6746 in Argentina, or +54 (11) 4268-7722 from abroad.

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