Advent Quote of the Day 2

Man's creaturely condition sets the standard for his activity in the world. However, creation sets in motion a story of love and freedom. This entails a risk: "As the arena of love [the world] is also the playground of freedom and also incurs the risk of evil." Man is created with freedom, which implies that he is capable of sinning. At the very heart of sin is the refusal to accept one's creatureliness, and the standards and limitations implicit in it...

[Those] who consider dependence on the highest love as slavery and who try to deny the truth about themselves, which is their creatureliness, do not free themselves; they destroy truth and love. They do not make themselves gods, which in fact they cannot do, but rather caricatures, pseudo-gods, slaves of their own abilities, which then drag them down...

Jesus' obedience, which is the standard for creatureliness, is the context for our freedom. Dependence on God, which creatureliness implies, is not an imposition, but the condition for true freedom and true joy.


- Msgr. Joseph Murphy, Christ Our Joy: The Theological Vision of Pope Benedict XVI