Hello my dear Campers.
Today we celebrate freedom. Liberty! And it is not the absence of boundaries, but the capability to do what we should do, to do as we ought to do. Let us start with God.
Christianity teaches that apart from Christ, human beings are naturally in a state of bondage—often physical, often psychological, but always spiritual. Through the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ our God, believers are liberated from several tyrannies.
Bondage of Sin: Freedom from the ultimate power, grip, and control that destructive, sinful desires have over human behavior.
The Penalty of the Law: Believers are freed from the spiritual condemnation and eternal punishment of God’s moral law by Christ’s sacrifice and love.
Fear of Death: Liberation from the psychological and spiritual dread of mortality and hell.
Man-made/Delusional Religions: Freedom of the conscience from man-made religious rules or legalistic traditions that attempt to create problems that do not exist, and sell the solutions to those non-existent problems.
Our liberty should not make us libertines! Our freedom has a purpose!
We see the first example of this in Exodus 9, where God commands Moses to tell Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.” The phrase “Serve me” means to worship God through holy rituals and to transfer one’s ultimate allegiance, labor, and life from Pharaoh to Yahweh. It establishes that the Israelites were not being freed to achieve absolute, autonomous independence, but were claimed by God has His people, that they may worship Him in a ritual covenant.
Likewise, liberty to love our neighbor, for they are made in God’s image as well. As the holy Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5:13, Christians must not use liberty to indulge the flesh, but to “serve one another humbly in love.”
In these God is glorified! And we should talk about glory! St. Paisius tell us that our nation will be Orthodox one day. America, brave and free, will become holy – because we become holy, thankful, and rich in grace.
On this festive national commemoration, let every one of us give thanks to God for this, our homeland, the land of the free and home the brave, and be bold in our thanksgiving to the Eternal God who gave His Son that we may know, love and serve Him in this life, and be happy with him forever in the next.
Live your life in liberty, and love your family and freedoms, and thank God for it all.
Finally, I leave you with what I consider to be the greatest song to ever come out of America. Ever.
In Christ, with love for all of you,
Fr. John
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the faithful lightning of his terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! (X3) His truth is marching on!
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps.
His Day is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! (X3) His Day is marching on!
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.”
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! (X3) Since God is marching on!
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat:
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! (X3) Our God is marching on!
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! (X3) While God is marching on!
