The Homepage of Fr. Cornelius O'Brien

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Fr. O'Brien's writings and recordings will be available on The Catholic Primer at http://www.catholicprimer.org/obrien. Fr. O'Brien has agreed to continue to contribute more writings and recordings to that site from his home in Ireland. Two new recordings will be posted there in the coming days.

Message from Fr. O'Brien

Dear Friends,

We must remember that parting need only be a spacial reality. Deep matters of the soul transcend space, and we gather together in the moment of our coming from God. The good things experienced by us in the past live on within us into the future. It is so in friendship. It is very much so in Christ.

My life as a priest for fifty-one years has been filled with joy. You have given me the opportunity to pursue my love of truth, and the honor of working with some of the finest people in the world. You have been most generous in expressing your gratitude and praise for my poor efforts among you. You will be in my mind as I attempt to put on paper the splendor of the human person.

Now I wish to thank the priests, who have been my companions, the Sisters who have been so faithful, but especially you, the people, who are the reason for our existence, and who have cooperated so well in our efforts to bring you closer to Christ, the Truth.

Finally -- again, remember that we, who have together loved and served Our Lord, can part only if we depart from Him. With His help we will not leave Him.

So, farewell until we meet again. Until then and forever, may God keep us in His safe hands.

Fr. O'Brien

Fr. O'Brien to Return to Ireland in Retirement

By ANGELA E. POMETTO
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of June 29, 2006)

On the floor of his office, there are dozens of books that made the cut for a trip “across the pond” to Ireland at the end of June. Father Cornelius O’Brien, retiring pastor of St. James Church in Falls Church, points at his books with affection and explains with his soft Irish brogue that these are his research material for the book he hopes to write.

With a touch of sadness in his voice, he explains that he is leaving the majority of his “library” at the parish to remain open for all the priests of the diocese. There is only one condition to borrow those books.

“They have to read what they take,” he said.

Father O’Brien was born Jan. 16, 1932, in Ireland. He attended St. Patrick Seminary in Carlow, Ireland, and was ordained by Bishop Thomas Keogh on June 5, 1955. He moved to America and started serving in the Diocese of Alexandria, La., before he moved to the Arlington Diocese in 1976.

After 51 years as a priest, Father O’Brien is now retiring and returning to the land of his birth. The way he sees it, he is switching from the active ministry of pastor to the active ministry of writing.

For more than 50 years, including doctoral work at the Catholic University of America, Father O’Brien has studied the Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas. During his retirement, he hopes to write a book about the philosophy of the human person, based on St. Thomas.

Father O’Brien is a teacher and a preacher.

“Our Lord said … the truth will set you free,” said Father O’Brien. “That is why I teach. I teach Christ who is the truth.”

He has taught metaphysics and history of philosophy at universities, given retreats for priests and nuns, taught for the diaconate program, and also lectured within the diocese. He was involved with the birth of Christendom College in Front Royal, where he served as chaplain for 25 years.

Father O’Brien is known for the seminar programs he has offered on many topics — the Summa, the cardinal virtues, the human person, the Shroud of Turin and, his favorite, the philosophy of St. Thomas.
“Anything that is the truth deserves to be taught,” he said. This is true of his homilies as well. If the people in the pews can understand the truth of the faith, they will live fuller lives, he said.

From the pulpit he has discussed issues such as the sanctity of life from conception until natural death and the beauty of temperance, especially in regards to sexuality. He is not afraid of pulling out the fire and brimstone homily when necessary. Father O’Brien preaches this way because he does not want to explain his failures to Christ when he meets Him face to face.

Before being incardinated into this diocese, he served in Louisiana. In 1976, former Arlington Bishop Thomas J. Welsh asked Father O’Brien to become part of the newly formed Arlington Diocese, and he agreed.

He was assigned as parochial vicar at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More from 1975-79, and at St Agnes Parish from 1980-83, both in Arlington. He served as assistant at St. Lawrence Parish in Alexandria, 1980-83, and was pastor at St. Timothy Parish in Chantilly, 1983-99. He became pastor of St. James in 1999.

According to Servant of the Immaculate Heart Sister Teresa Ballisty, principal of St. James School, Father O’Brien is an “advocate of Catholic education.”

He always welcomed the classes at daily Mass and added extra Masses for holy days and special school events. He has worked to keep the tuition affordable to families and offered his advice to the administration when needed.

“I hope he’s able to enjoy that little piece of heaven in Ireland,” Sister Teresa said, adding that she hopes that he is able pull his years of research together for his book.

“He’s a very deep thinker,” she said. “He has much to share with people.”

Father O’Brien is also famous for his priestly fishing trips. A day off with Father O’Brien meant a day near a river or lake with fishing rod in hand. Over the years, many priests in the diocese have spent time fishing with Father O’Brien.

“He taught me how to fly fish and to appreciate Thomas Aquinas,” said Father Christopher Mould, pastor at St. Lawrence Church in Alexandria, who served with Father O’Brien at St. Timothy Parish while he was still a seminarian in 1987. He has remained in contact with Father O’Brien since then.
“He has been a great friend and mentor to me, and I wish him well in writing his book,” Father Mould said, adding that he will buy a copy when it comes out.

“The diocese will have a loss when he leaves,” said Father John De Celles, parochial vicar at St. James, who also served a summer as a seminarian with Father O’Brien at St. Timothy Church. “There are not many like him.”

Like something from a poem by W.B. Yeats, he will return to his home in West Cork, Ireland, to a little valley far away from cities and villages. A river flows through it where wily sea trout and salmon await encounter with man and where Father O’Brien can reflect on the mystery of permanence and change.
He will live with his sister and be near the rest of his family. It is the place of his parents and grandparents, and now of the eighth generation of O’Briens.

“It is home in so many ways,” he said. He will find peace there.

Father O’Brien asks that people continue to pray for him. He hopes to return to the diocese occasionally to visit his many friends.

Being separated by an ocean does not make a difference to Christians, he said. “We’re all one in Christ.”

Angela E. Pometto can be reached at apometto@catholicherald.com.

Copyright ©2006 Arlington Catholic Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Retirement of Fr. Cornelius O'Brien

It is with bittersweet pleasure that I relay the following announcement made at today's Masses at St. James Catholic Church:

Fr. Cornelius O'Brien will retire on June 28, 2006, and will be returning to Cork County, Ireland, at the beginning of July 2006.   Replacing Fr. O'Brien as pastor at St. James will be Fr. Patrick Posey, current pastor of St. Frances de Sales Church in Purcellville, VA.   

On a personal note, Fr. O'Brien is a wonderful theologian and priest and one of the most well-studied Thomistic scholars that I have had the pleasure to know personally.  Fr. O'Brien has told me that he will devote his time in retirement toward the completion of his book on the Human Person, which will be supported by years of research that he has done in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and later Thomistic theologians.

Please keep Fr. O'Brien and the task that lies ahead of him in your prayers.  And likewise, please keep Fr. Posey in your prayers as he assumes his new responsibilities at St. James.

Easter 2006

It is surely not by chance that Easter is celebrated in the springtime. Christ chose His "Hour" fittingly during Passover. It seems certain to me that he who loved the lilies of the field and the mustard seed whose power would provide nesting places for the birds of the air, chose spring also for its symbolic beauty and significance.

Spring is the new flourishing of life, when the deepest vitality in all living things brings bloom and leaf and youth. Vitality is its name.

I fear that we, who should learn from spring's symbolism, respond instead with, sometimes, sad sentimentality. We, whose deepest vitality should ever be at work, are mostly satisfied with superficial levels of consciousness, sprinkled with occasional moments of prayer. Our act of existing, which is the deepest source of our vitality, rarely comes to mind. We exist at the surface levels of consciousness. We are hollow men, to use Eliot's phrase. If nature followed our example, instead of God's design, there would be no spring.

We, who are blessed with the gift of Intellect, should be at home in the house of Truth. We should know it and love it as our own place. Our lives should be shaped according to the principles of its sublime architecture. We should grieve when we dishonor it, and rejoice and experience real joy when we honor and obey it.

How are you and I to enter the house of Truth? Two brief sentences in Aquinas are fundamental. They are: "I am" and "Will it." The first pertains to the act of existence, which is God, and the other is the beginning of sanctity. To live in Truth I must command my mind to do the necessary spade-work. The "I" that I am springs directly from my act of existence, which is "the direct and proper effect of God's creative act." All that I am is constituted by it. All that is true in me flows from it. By nature I am made in the image of God and my life should and can consist of an effort to use mind and will, in co-operation with God, to bring about the unity and beauty which my very existence promises.

Because of sin, "by myself I can do nothing," but "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me." Christ did not come to replace our nature, but to fulfill it, and to raise it to levels of unity with His Father beyond our ability to understand. He prayed to His Father, after instituting the Eucharist, for His apostles and for us "that they all may be one as Thou Father in me and I in Thee, that they may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me." Today the world does not seem to believe. Our belief should therefore be the stronger.

During Easter let us ask God to give us deeper insights into the mystery of His love. Put aside our worldly concerns or, rather, put them in His Hands, lest we become like the man so fascinated with the bulb that he could not see the light.

Have a Blessed Easter.

Advent 2005

by Fr. O'Brien

It has been too long since my last communication with you. The reason is (among others!) that I have been reading St. Thomas deeply, and he makes my efforts to express the great truths of our faith so trivial in contrast to his splendid power. However, I must agree with Chesterton that "what is worth doing is worth doing badly."

Our Advent season is almost half way through its course. It is a time of great grace in the growth of our interior life, which is the perfection of our life. Of course, it is the calling to mind of the great event of our Redeemer's first breath of our daily air, and of the intimacy of His involvement with us that that breath expresses. It also involves memories of our childhood, mixed sometimes, I fear, with sadness—for we seemed more capable of joy then than now. For this the fault is ours, not His.

Our fault consists precisely in this: that we fail or, perhaps, refuse to see that Advent is an event in our own lives; that the Christ, through whom we exist and have our being, is, in a special way at this time, attempting an advent into our life of consciousness. He would show us the way to our full maturity, and enable us to achieve the joy of complete perfection—a joy that no one else can give and which no one else can take away. But like Jerusalem whose children he would gather "as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings," we procrastinate or refuse. Our excuses are many.

There is, first, the intimidating fact that many learned scientists not only reject Christ, but reject the very possibility of the existence of God. They have supporting them a mighty propaganda machine. But there are many other scientists, eminent in their fields, who know that their probes cannot reach even the internal structure of the atom. They know that there are vast areas of truth, including the existence of the atom itself, which cannot be touched by their methodology. These are the men who are guided by reason in their experiments and in their expressions. The others are children playing dangerous games in the marketplace of man. They need supervision.

The most formidable obstacles to our welcoming of Christ are within ourselves. They are our worldly and uncontrolled passions, and the sins that flow from them. Concupiscence leads us to prefer pleasures of the body and the table over God, and fear in the pressure of evil and the absence of anger to enable us to fight for the good result from the irascible passions. The capital sins are pride, covetousness, lust, abusive anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. In Eden these passions and sins were subject to reason. In our fallen state we are outgunned without Christ.

First, speaking to us as a fellow human being, He reveals to us the love of His Father, His own love for us, and finally His identity with His Father. The Gospels and the messianic prophecies must become part of our minds, for in them is revealed, more perfectly than Shakespeare could do, the Person and personality of Christ. St. John gives the reason: "these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, you may have life in His name." In Him all things are centered; from Him all things flow: our existence, our gifts, all that we have and are, all the good that we do. Even our sins He took upon Himself on the Cross.

From the Cross through Mass and Sacraments He enriches and elevates us through the riches of His grace. Through the indwelling of His Spirit He makes us one with Himself as He and the Father are one. He raises us to the splendor of the supernatural through the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. He enables us to be at home in the supernatural through the gifts of His Spirit. He give us delight in the things of God through the fruits of His Spirit. Through the indwelling of His Spirit, He also raises to the supernatural level of the acquired cardinal virtues, which we have tried to develop.

Because we are true secondary causes and His essential collaborators in the work of our salvation, we must make watchful efforts to avoid evil and embrace good in our daily lives. We cannot avoid all evil in a world as lost as ours is, but we must not, like fools, desire encounters with evil. They who willingly desire evil have exiled themselves from the love of God and from all that it involves. Choices determine the very structure of our nature, even the very "wiring" of the brain itself—according to recent scientific research.

As causes of our own state of being, we should read good spiritual writings, pray, study and practice the virtues, and thus permit the joy that our faith can bring to take root and to flourish in us. If we work as true partners of God our lives will be more orderly, i.e., more beautiful, our passions will learn obedience to the truth, and we will, even here on earth, become more like Christ, for we will begin to see Him as He is—a condition that St. John used to describe Heaven! St. Thomas teaches that if we permit grace, with its virtues, gifts and fruits of Christ's Spirit to come to us, we will be able to avoid sin completely. We may never reach that glorious state, but is should be our objective.

Christ's Advent is all that I have attempted to describe. Some of you may think that is a strange way to express Christmas joy. It is not. If what I have described were impossible, my world would be cruel. But the special joy of Christmas is found in the fact that all I have described is possible in Christ and, in fact, is described by Him as easy—for He said "my yoke is easy and my burden light." The child will grow to be a man, will suffer and die and rise from the tomb to show His love for us and to open for us the gates of heaven, closed by Sin.

Let the warmth of our hearts compensate for the cold of the stable, and so provide for Him the dwelling where He wishes to be.

May you truly be blessed this Christmas.

Priesthood

by Rev. Cornelius O'Brien

The most amazing thing about being a priest is that we were called by God from Eternity in Christ, as Peter was—and Judas. We were called to be transformed ourselves and to be the instruments of the transformation of others. Today, as we celebrate the anniversary of our calling, it is wise to recall how our Lord dealt with His first priests. The first thing to notice is that He called them by name. He did not wait to be introduced to Simon. He called his name and changed it. He saw Nathaniel under the fig tree and won his friendship immediately, and began already to reveal Himself as the Son of Man on whom the angels of God would ascend and descend. The establishing of a personal relationship with each of them is His first act in their formation.

It is so with each of us. The personal relationship with Him of faith and love is the first and essential element of our priesthood. As was the case with His apostles, the deepening of that personal bond with Christ must be the very heart of our seminary experience and of our priesthood. Otherwise, we are "sounding brass and tinkling cymbal."

Look again at the scripture story. See how He deals with those simple men, chosen by Him to be the foundation of His church. How He defends them; how He corrects and reprimands them; how He nicknames them—"Peter," after all, is partly a nickname, and James and John become "Sons of Thunder." Peter and Judas are the best subjects for our study.

Peter from the beginning is special. With James and John he is part of everything from their first meeting to his shameful denial during the trial. He participated in the Tabor experience and in the most dramatic miracles. He alone is involved in the humorous event of the fish with the gold piece in its mouth. He alone, during a nasty storm on the lake, says, "Lord, if it be you, bid me to come to you on the water," and Jesus says, "Come," and the "Rock" walked on the water—until he lost sight of the face of his Lord. It was Peter who boasted at the last supper that he would die for his Lord, and was warned by his Lord of the danger of vain boasting. "Simon, Simon, Satan has desired you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith fail not." And it did not fail at the terrible moment of denial—but I am sure that ever afterwards his heart missed a beat when he heard a rooster crow. Every priest should know Peter very well.

Every priest should also know Judas. Judas is the career priest. He had his own plan. He was profoundly impressed by the great power of Jesus. He would use that power to free his people from Rome's tyranny. His faith in Jesus did not grow. He was too occupied with his own plans. He was the only one at the Last Supper who did not call Jesus, "Lord." St. Paul tells us that only through grace can one call Jesus, "Lord." Judas has refused both grace and friendship with Christ. When his plan failed and he saw that Jesus was submitting to death, he had nothing to save him from suicide. He should have known, after three years in His company, that Jesus would forgive him—but he had never really listened. He was too busy with his own plans. Yes, every priest should know Judas very well.

It was at the Last Supper, after He had instituted the Eucharist—and after Judas had left—that Our Lord reaches magnificent levels of eloquent love in His discourse and prayer when He speaks of union he seeks with His priests. "Do not let your hearts be troubled … In my Father's house there are many dwelling places … I go to prepare a place for you and I shall come back again and take you with me, that where I am you also may be." "I will not leave you orphans … I will ask the Father and He will send you another Advocate, the Spirit of Truth … You will know Him because He dwells with you and is in you." "I am the Vine, you are the Branches."

In His prayer He asks His Father to preserve His apostles from harm "that they may be one as We are one." "And not for these alone do I pray but for those also who through their words will believe in Me, that they all may be one as Thou, Father, in Me and I in Thee, that they may be one in Us, that the world may believe that Thou has sent Me."

The magnificence of our union with Him that He likens to His union with His Father is beyond our wildest imaginings—but we must realize that, simply because He wishes it, it is there for us, if only we open our minds and hearts. It is His gift, not our achievement. If we accept His great gift, then our lives are transformed, and our priesthood becomes an irresistible force for the transformation of our people. We are not effective if we are only channels of graces. We must be overflowing reservoirs. Our people will sense our love for Christ in the way we say Mass and preach and pray and live, and they will be moved by this, more than by any merely human eloquence.

On this, the anniversary of our priesthood, let us deepen our love for Him, and for the people whom He loves.

Local Priests Mark Jubilee Anniversaries

Herald Staff Report
(From the issue of 5/12/05)

The following diocesan and religious order priests are celebrating special jubilees this year. Bishop Paul S. Loverde will celebrate a special anniversary Mass on May 17 at St. James Church in Falls Church.

Fifty Years

Fr. Cornelius A. O’Brien

Father Cornelius O'Brien was born Jan. 16, 1932, in Ireland. He attended St. Patrick Seminary in Carlow, Ireland, and was ordained by Bishop Thomas Keogh on June 5, 1955.

He arrived in the Diocese of Arlington in 1976 and was excardinated from the Diocese of Alexandria in Louisiana and incardinated in the Arlington Diocese in 1979.

He was assigned as parochial vicar at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More, 1975-79, and St. Agnes Parish, 1979-80, both in Arlington. He was pastor of St. Lawrence Parish in Alexandria, 1980-83, and St. Timothy Parish in Chantilly, 1983-99. Father O’Brien has been pastor of St. James Parish in Falls Church since 1999.

He completed coursework for a doctorate in philosophy at Catholic University in Washington. From 1976-79, he was director of the Notre Dame Institute, now the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College, in Alexandria. He was also a chaplain at Christendom College in Front Royal.

Father O’Brien was a co-founder of the Adoremus Society, which promotes renewal of the liturgy.

... [others]

Guest Book

Congratulations, Fr. O'Brien!

We wish you all the best on the 50th anniversary of your ordination. 

[Comments to this Post have been closed.  All comments received have been forwarded to Fr. O'Brien.]

Liberty And Freedom

Rev. Cornelius O'Brien

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The unabridged Oxford Dictionary, that nigh-infallible guide to proper usage, sees little, if any difference between the words liberty and freedom. They are considered to be practically interchangeable. If true, this is strange. It is a contradiction of a rather basic rule in language development. Fundamental things are expressed precisely in one exact term: love is love, hate is hate, belief is belief, opinion is opinion. Each is precisely itself. The rule governing proper usage of these terms is that they cannot be replaced in a sentence with a synonym without changing the sense of the sentence. If liberty and freedom are interchangeable, we are confronted by an awkward anomaly.

Since English is a hybrid language, we are dealing with words whose roots come from different linguistic sources. Liberty is from a Latin root meaning "unbound." Freedom is from a Welsh or Sanscrit root meaning "love"—hence "friend," meaning one who is loved. The roots of the words liberty and freedom clearly point to decidedly different things.

What we might call the "mood" of the words in common usage also suggests different meanings. Liberty suggests libertine, or uncommitted, or guillotine. Freedom suggests devotion and self-sacrifice. One could almost wish that Patrick Henry had said, "Give me freedom or give me death," especially since that is surely what he meant! It may be, however, that he saw beyond the superficial identity of the words. Then he would have known that although liberty may be given, freedom can only be achieved.

Yet another indication that there exists a real difference between liberty and freedom is found in the fact that whereas freedom is property predicated of God, liberty never is.

Liberty has the sense of being loose, unbound, unfettered. It is essentially a negative condition. In its better sense it means to be free of external restraint, as when the bird is uncaged or the man is loosed from bondage. In its worst sense it means to lack all restraint. This latter is the unqualified sense. We can call it absolute liberty. It excludes all relationships, all commitments. It denotes a world of mere possibility. To make room for reality, absolute liberty must be curbed.

In the real world, the existence and perfection of each thing involves a rejection of absolute liberty. Elementary chemical combinations shatter absolute liberty by expressing a law of relation. The world of living things, in its magnificent variety, destroys absolute liberty. It is this world and while it is so, it cannot be otherwise. It is for the moment at least, "committed," not "at liberty." Each thing within the world is also, for the moment at least, committed to its own nature or law. By an inner necessity, each thing reaches for its own perfection and has "appetite" only for that. It fights everthing which would distract or impede it. With remarkable concentration and industry, the DNA in each living thing, unique in each individual, conducts the symphony of life, relating and controlling molecules to produce this tree, this tiger, this flower. And if there is a larger symphony of relations between individually perfect things it is only because there is a wider law which is obeyed.

Cause of Beauty, Harmony

Beauty and harmony in things are caused by a tension of relatedness, we might say of commitment—a relatedness not found in the ordinary understanding of liberty. Liberty must be there as the matrix or atmosphere in which the beauty of the individual thing grows. But the formative energy is something other than liberty. It is the inner directed appetite of the thing itself. It is the "love" of its own perfection in being which drives and energizes every existing thing. This singularly non-libertarian passion for being is the law of the universe.

Man's physical life is governed largely by the laws of nature. The DNA works its magic in him as in the flower and the bee. The passion for being has built him to a wonderful perfection before he has a notion in his head of what perfection is. As the philosophers say, man finds himself already in existence. His liberty is limited by the fact that he had no choice in the matter of his coming into being. He lacks the liberty not to be. He is!

The world of consciousness has a beauty and depth compared to which the beauty of the animate world is mere shadow. Anyone who has experienced that resonance of spirit called joy in the grasping of a profound truth knows this. So does the one who has known the exquisite torture of love. It is a world whose beauty is achieved, as in the world around us, by transcending mere liberty. The passion for being throbs here, too, but here it takes the form of will or love. It is an intellectual power, therefore free, which consciously reaches for perfection.

Our ordinary experience is full of examples of the transcending of liberty in the interest of achieving maturity. When a man goes shopping for a stereo, he immerses himself in the vast variety that the market provides. By a process of elimination and decision, he chooses one. Before decision, he is in a state of liberty. Decision terminates that state. A similar thing happens when a man chooses a career or a vocation or a wife. Liberty matures into decision. The very word decision means "cutting off." One thinks of "pruning." Much cutting off is done in the journey to mature perfection. The alternative would be a sick dilettantish immaturity.

The pruning knife of decision is not wielded wildly in the life of consciousness. There is a law which guides it. It is a law written at the very deepest level of our being. The law of our physical being is written in the DNA. At the single-cell stage of our life, that law is fully written. Our biological life is a process in which we become what we already are.

Evidence of Transcendent Principle

Could it be that there is in us, from the beginning, a level of identity, a governing spiritual principle, which the DNA but manifests in time/space? Evidence for the existence of this transcendent principle of spiritual identity is available. Reflect on your own past. Remember when you were five. You were smaller then, different in many ways—but you were you! Your years have changed you in many ways, but your fundamental identity remains inviolate. Beyond time and space God spoke your name and you came into existence, in your perfect uniqueness. Your spatio-temporal experience began. You formed a body so that mind and will could grasp the world and yourself. Following the impulse which comes from God's creative act, you will prune and grow until, in quiet moments when the noise of the world is stilled, you will hear faint echoes of God's voice as He speaks your name. Then you will experience the "freedom of the children of God."

The historic life of man is rightly called a project. One might think of it as a projectile, a modern target-seeking missile. With built-in radar it seeks its target, who is God. This is expressed beautifully by St. Augustine when he says: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts will never rest until they rest in Thee."

Man does not select the goal of his strivings. He is made to walk the paths of truth and goodness which lead to God. Even if he is trapped in something other than God, it will be because he is persuaded that, for the moment at least, the trap is somehow good. St. Thomas says that the will chooses evil only sub specie boni, because it mistakes it for good or dresses it up as good.

It is only when God is being sought and means that lead to Him are being chosen that man's being resonates with the perfection of freedom, freedom that will be complete when we see God in the face and all liberty ends. Through real freedom, all the discordant and centrifugal elements of one's nature are brought together in harmony, as the idiosyncratic natures of the orchestra's instruments are united to sing the symphony. It takes much discipline and love, and obedience—and pruning!

The beauty and discipline of art and poetry are admirable in themselves; so are the courage of the hero and the self-abandonment of the martyr. All are admirable in themselves. Yet, they are but copies. They are copies of the Victim Christ Who cast aside all liberty so that He could sing His song of freedom and love: "Father, into Thy hands I give my spirit."

The purpose of this brief essay is to raise the problem of liberty and freedom in the mind of the reader. It seems that there is a very real difference in the meaning of the words. While liberty is necessary in human behavior, its necessity is precisely that of an atmosphere in which freedom can grow. Liberty is for freedom and reaches its maturity in freedom's transcending action. Like the Baptist, it must decrease while freedom increases. Its perfection is achieved in its death, when God is grasped with perfect freedom in the Beatific Vision.

With the genius of the poet, Francis Thompson has summed it all up in two lines:

Hardest servitude has he that's jailed in arrogant liberty
And freedom, spacious and unflawed, who is walled about with God.

"Ode to the English Martyrs"

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Orignially published in The Linacre Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4, November 1979