Freedom has a cost

Whoever has always claimed that freedom means living on a mountain far from everyone has completely missed the true meaning of living.

Let me explain it to you myself, since together with my wife we started not only this site that talks about freedom but surely a guide written by passengers of this life. Yes, because in the end we are not the ones driving this life, we learn it. We learn how to live and we learn what our freedom is.

Why should we care about freedom if we are well off, healthy and nothing is missing in our homes?

Simply because what is missing is a knowledge that frees us from everything that sooner or later can bind us. In fact the motto of our site is "Freedom is not leaving everything behind, but having knowledge even in the midst of suffering".

As I anticipated in the last article published, no one would ever take a medicine before knowing they are getting sick, and likewise no one would prepare for an action unless it presented itself.

Today is an example of this. We were at peace in our lives, we lived carefree, we went out and did everything that felt freeing. We even still thought about helping the third world out of its poverty with charitable donations and prayers to redeem those peoples.
Here is today's reality: we are no longer at peace in our lives, we are no longer carefree, we cannot fully go out and about, and we cannot do what is not freeing; on top of that, we risk becoming a fourth world, almost about to live on charitable donations because of suspensions from work. And the prayers? Those are now said inside vaccination hubs, asking: is this vaccine really good for me?

People die, we will die anyway, and in any case whoever chose to be inoculated once, twice, three times cannot help thinking they may have shortened their time on this earth. I already know the answer: fine, never mind, I did what the law says.

It is precisely the law that made us know what is wrong and what is good. Obviously my reference is also biblical, since it was God's law that pointed out what is not right. An Italian saying I was always told as a child was: once the law is made, the loophole is found. That's because you cannot escape the far too many laws that now loom over our lives. The apostle Paul, in the letter to the Romans, says exactly this: he became aware of a sin precisely because there was a law forbidding that particular thing. It means that if there were no law against theft, stealing or taking something from someone would be legal.

All this law, which today has turned into a constant narrowing of the individual's freedoms, is leading people to exasperation. And yet it is a law, improperly called law, since these decrees do not replace the laws already approved, nor the laws of the European Community, but are supposed to regulate a national state of emergency that currently does not exist but that is convenient to keep going.

So much talk about laws and current affairs! Because I ask you: are we doing the right thing? In the light of what we have lived through in these two years, with or without the vaccine, have we done the right thing? I really believe NOT!

What freedom has all this brought us? None. So many questions and so many obvious answers in this time, after spending the worst days locked up at home.

Yet no one set out to study whether what was happening was right or not. Only now are the cards starting to be revealed and the games becoming clear to the population.

But who is living free, and who has paid or is paying the price of redemption? And what would this price of redemption be? Certainly that resistance to being inoculated. Something like this even sounds subversive, but going back to a biblical point I must also say that either we believe in a law or in a Grace. Yes, exactly, because as soon as it was confirmed that things were becoming confusing, everyone pulled out the mark of the devil. Strangely, everyone referring to a demonic game.

How come everyone recognises Satan's tricks and no one ever wonders about God's purposes!?

What if it was God Himself who allowed all this so that the Italian people would open their eyes a little? What if God had put a people in difficulty to see whether it would answer His call?

Don't worry, I am not talking nonsense. If you have ever touched the Bible even once in your life, you will surely have read in all its books how God loved His people and also got angry with them for their disobedience.

Italy, a Catholic people with nothing Christian about it. It claims to have the Bible and to have read it (but as a best seller), it declares that it has sacraments (but received them as a child, when it was not even able to choose, not even to say it was doing it to grow in Christ), it declares that it respects this and that (but behaves like the Pharisees). People who say they have not read the Bible and never will, all because their way of doing things is better than that of those who want to help them change a perspective they have held for years towards the wrong things.

It is true that you never become perfect in this life, but what matters is to remove from your life's path whatever weighs most on your way of behaving. If my greatest fault is being proud, and I wanted to improve, I should reduce my percentage of pride and make it go away.

People's stubbornness is not my concern; my effort is to understand whether a person wants to be helped to change, to make room within themselves for an eternal life that is not free of difficulties. Two things alone would be enough: listening and the will to act.

An age like this, seen from the vantage point of the Old Testament, is represented by "the age of the prophets". I mean that, just as back then, in this time too there have been people who revealed the truth of what the coming times would be, and no one believed them. Many, frightened, kept going into unsuitable centres to be inoculated, all chasing a fear that was about money. Because today no one intends to give up their good life. So the prophets, or let's call them those "raised up" to speak words of truth, were mocked, isolated, killed.

Today everyone is looking for the truth, even the resigned multi-vaccinated, those who supported the government line, all looking for news that goes against the tide; but freedom has a cost, which is paying in advance with a sacrifice and also afterwards with your own life. In both cases you receive Grace, and what repays sacrifice and repentance is receiving eternal life, even after a death caused by a vaccine.

Do you know why, and then I'll conclude? Because true freedom is not owning things and holding them tight, but letting them go. Jesus Himself told a rich man that he should give all his riches to the poor and follow Him, but the man could not get past this, his last obstacle, and that is why Christ said: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Everything you have tied yourself to down here is not freedom, even if it were your relatives, who by the way do not believe these truths. In this case too Jesus, to a person who wanted to follow Him but first wanted to go and bury his loved ones, answered: let the dead bury their own dead. Do you know why? Because whoever is bound to the things of this earth will die forever, but whoever binds themselves to the things of God may die in this body, but not to life.

Now are you willing to Believe? What do you choose, Grace or death? Baptism at your age? Acknowledging today that Christ died and rose again? Now it is time to choose.

How good God is to Israel, how good to the pure in heart! I almost stumbled, one moment more and I would have fallen. When I saw the success of the wicked, I envied them, those arrogant people. They have no worries about death, their body is whole and healthy, they do not know the troubles of men, they do not suffer like others. Pride is their ornament, violence is their habit. They are full and grow proud, wickedness overflows from their heart. They mock everyone and say evil things, they look down on you and threaten you. With their mouth they reach the sky, their tongue goes all over the earth. That is why the people follow them and drink without measure from their spring. They say: "What does God know? Does the Most High know anything?" These are the wicked: they gather riches and live well. In vain then have I kept my heart upright, and washed my hands as a sign of innocence, if every day I am corrected and every morning I receive a punishment. If I said I wanted to reason like them, I would betray the generation of your children. I wanted to understand all this, but it was too hard for me. I understood what their end will be when I went into the sanctuary of God. Behold, you make them slip, you bring them to ruin. In an instant they are destroyed, finished and swept away by terror. Like a dream, when one wakes up their image has vanished, Lord. When I was full of bitterness and my heart was tormented, I was only a fool, I did not understand you, I was as stupid as a beast. But I am always with you: you have taken me by the hand, with your counsel you will guide me and then you will receive me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? With you, I desire nothing else on earth! Even if my body and mind fail, you are the rock of my life, my riches forever, O God. Whoever is far from you is lost, and you destroy those who abandon you. But for me it is good to be near God: I find my refuge in the Lord, so that I may celebrate all his works.

Psalm 73

This Psalm speaks of the presumption of the wicked. I leave it to you to meditate on your own thoughts about what may be relevant today and what these words inspire in your heart.