April 1, 2007

We cannot overestimate the gift of the Resurrection, which frees mortal humanity from eternal death. This is the ultimate freedom. All other desires to be free in one form or another, which are the natural urgings of man to realize his dignity, are metaphors for freedom from death.

During Lent, the civil calendar marked the two-hundredth anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which would be prelude a couple of generations later to abolition in our country. The crucial figure in that movement was William Wilberforce, about whom an excellent film is now being shown. It touches on, but not enough, I think, the Christian inspiration for his endeavors. He was an evangelically inclined member of the Established Church of England. Of his four sons, three became Catholic, and important figures in the Oxford movement. I was privileged to know his great grandson, a devout Catholic gentleman.

Slavery took many forms throughout history, and is wrongly understood simply as a racial phenomenon. In most forms of slavery over the ages, people were enthralled by members of their own race, and in many times slaves were important educators and had political influence. Slavery in all its forms degrades the enslaver by its assumption that one of God's children has a right to "own" another of God's children.

Where Christianity was disdained, slavery flourished. Many people defended slavery in the name of a twisted concept of Christianity. The abolition of slavery was a Christian achievement and where it obtains today in the world, it is promoted by enemies of Christianity.

The great St. Anselm, an Archbishop of Canterbury who was born of Burgundian parents in Tuscany, held a church council in London in 1102 which abolished slavery in no uncertain terms. "Let no one hereafter presume to engage in that nefarious trade in which hitherto in England men were usually sold like brute animals." Offenders of this abolitionist decree were subject to excommunication.

The mysterious and-for the lukewarm-unpleasant reality is that if we allow ourselves to be enslaved to mortal sin by the Prince of Lies, we are excommunicated for all eternity, and the word for that is damnation. In the first Eucharistic Prayer, we pray to be saved from this damnation. Christ saves us from that. Our parish is dedicated to Our Saviour, and churches are not dedicated to platitudes. We need salvation. To be enslaved to sin is worse than to be enslaved to some ancient Persian overlord or more modern Simon Legree. On Palm Sunday Our Saviour entered the Golden Gates of Jerusalem to break the chains of death and abolish eternal slavery. This is the world's greatest joy, and in these holy days all the solemn ceremonies, by their very solemnity, celebrate the intensity of that immeasurable triumph which Christ won by his own blood.

Fr. George W. Rutler