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July 4, 2022

Dear Loyola community,

What a gift today is!

Today offers the gift of time to those fortunate enough to be on holiday. Taking time for rest and re-creation makes us imitators of God’s own rest on the seventh day of creation in the Book of Genesis. Today we might savor time and be on the lookout for those grace-filled moments with which this day surely abounds.

Today we can also reflect anew on our country’s ideals. A recent Sunday’s reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians offered me insight into one of those ideals—namely, freedom. Paul asserts “you were called for freedom.”

Paul often wrote letters to clear up misunderstandings. When his audiences initially heard his talk of freedom, many assumed he was giving permission for an exaggerated freedom from, that is, a kind of “autonomy” (which is derived from Greek words meaning “self” and “law”). At its extreme, this word implies freedom from all external constraints and a singular focus on the self as source of meaning—don’t tread on me!

For Paul, faith does free us from anxiety about death and from worry about salvation (it’s a gift!). Such freedom from should then give way to another, more transformative kind of freedom, one that acts for love of God, neighbor, and creation.

On Independence Day 1965, Martin Luther King  on the equality of all people and “the amazing universalism” at the center of the American dream. What a gift this dream is!

Now as then, our country is riven by inequality and division. Yet, Independence Day 2022 can be an occasion for considering how to exercise our freedom more effectively in enacting the American dream, which, at its best, reflects God’s dream for the flourishing of all people and all creation.

Tom Ryan
Interim Vice President for Mission and Identity