Freedom of Conscience

The Feast of the Assumption celebrates Mary's assumption to heaven.  But it also a feast that is a celebration of freedom.  It is celebrating Mary's freedom, humankind's freedom, your freedom, and my freedom.  A celebration of freedom's choices and the freedom that allows us to obtain the same reward.   

Mary's freedom was her ability to say "yes" to God.  Humanity's freedom is in the reason and will that allows growth and maturity in truth.  Our freedom is perfected in our ability to direct it towards God in a "yes" to the divine will. 

Freedom, however,  is hampered by our own fallibility.  The fallibility of sin and refusal of God's plan of love that results in an unjust exercise of our freedom.  Freedom has given humanity a history of oppression and wretchedness from our denial God, forgiveness, and salvation.  Here we find humanity's fallible exercise of freedom that denies the just freedom of others.

One of the most basic attributes of our freedom is the development of a conscience.  The root of the word is from Latin "to know". This conscience is how we make the decisions of our freedom.  Your conscience is the process by which you make the choice between good and evil, right and wrong, moral and immoral choices.  With a just freedom your conscience is going to point to the good, the right, or the moral choice. 

So when a person says they have made a conscious choice it does not mean that it is a choice of conscience.  Conscious means awareness.   If it is a choice that is against the teaching of the moral truths, then it is a conscious choice made without or against conscience.  It is an anti-conscience choice.   It is a denial of what is good, right, and moral.  A choice saying "no" to God.

Mary was given a choice.  It was a choice made in freedom.  A  choice of conscience to say "yes" to  God.  A choice that celebrated her freedom.  It was a choice that has magnified the freedom of others in self dignity and love.  If she had made a choice of conscious based on self, it would been an act of her freedom, but contrary to a just exercise of freedom that God seeks. 

Mary's assumption resulted from Mary's freedom.  She continually said "yes" to God even to the foot of the cross.  The assumption of Mary into heaven is a promise to all of us of what is possible by saying "yes" to God.  A true celebration of freedom is the conscience decision in our conscious choice answers "yes" to God.