I know I'm not the first to take note of this, but one of the consoling aspects of this prolonged "stay at home" season has been the remembering of important relationships that too often get neglected. On Easter Sunday I got emails from three of my first cousins (all siblings) who live in California. I have not heard from nor reached out to them in more than a decade. They had tuned in to the Live Stream Mass at Pax Christi and just wanted to wish me greetings for the holiday. It was a rare moment to remember together that we matter to one another, and that we are bound by ties of history and DNA, as well as by affection and friendship. And I've found myself writing notes to people that I otherwise would not normally. I'm remembering especially some friends and relatives who are at particular risk of this virus because of age or infirmity, and I want them to know that I care. Thankfully, I've been receiving some of those notes, too. It matters.
 
A more concerning part of this whole drama, however, has been observing how some of our fellow citizens have been interpreting the idea of "freedom" in America, which is not nearly the same thing as what the bible describes as Christian human freedom. The Catholic theological tradition has understood this distinction for a very long time, but it's rarely been so evidently in need of clarification as it is now.  
 
Often the immediate American understanding of the word freedom is something like "the uninhibited liberty to do whatever I want for whatever reasons I choose."   It's been kind of baked into our culture for a few hundred years. But it's not Christian—sorry! Instead, when Jesus and Paul and Peter and others in the New Testament speak about freedom, they talk about the ability to embrace the kind of life that we are all summoned to, without the restrictions that sin or law impose upon us. Biblical "freedom" means that there is nothing that can keep us from knowing, loving, and following God, and from finding our place in the community of our fellow human beings. Jesus' teaching on freedom does not devolve into a consideration of "me and what I prefer."  It is much larger than that. It's about the uninhibited ability to do as I should, in Christian responsibility—which necessarily includes the welfare of all others around me, and of creation.
 
There's been a disturbing amount of "freedom equals me" cropping up lately, amid the stress of all that we are enduring just now. That may be understandable in a moment of fear, but it is our responsibility as believers to respond with something better than that, something more Christian.