In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.

Being unemployed is a strange freedom. There's a certain sense of liberation, of being on vacation—to not have things to do. All of a sudden your day is yours. What do you feel like doing right now? Relax. Play around. Go travel. Just sleep in. You have no boss to tell you what to do. But this kind of strange freedom that seems at first maybe like a little benefit, slowly sinks in as aimlessness, pointlessness, worthlessness.What am I here for?

And there comes a need to recognize that whether you're employed today or not, whether someone is giving you a paycheck today or not, whether you have a boss or not, you need to find the way to discover purpose for today. What are you going to do with it to bear fruit?

About this time in the 19th century, the early 19th century, this man, a Frenchman named Tocqueville, visited America to explore what was going on in this new country with this strange new independence that it had won for itself. Because people in Europe were sure that it was on the brink of utter disaster. Because you can't possibly throw off your king and have a republic.

We know from history that when you have democracies, when you have republics, that they inevitably end anarchically in rebelliousness continually, and violence and wars, lawlessness and licentiousness. So what's happening here in this new country? Tocqueville, as he visited these lands,  found many people who still remembered the efforts they themselves had made in their younger days to throw off tyranny.

But he was also struck by how many of these people that he met preserve freedom by zealously pursuing virtue. That was their highest standard. That freedom was not something that was good in and of itself, but only if it was manifesting virtue—what the scriptures would call righteousness, the way of God. And Tocqueville concluded that this country of America was flourishing because its people prized this virtue, this righteousness.

Now when we look around the country today, we can ask with a real point: What value is virtue held, righteousness, self-restraint today? Doesn't seem to have that much of a prize to be won through these things. And the result is a very unhealthy republic where we have great divisions, contempt for institutions and the people who lead them. And it seems that the leaders that we do have are degraded by lack of virtue, lack of a zealous pursuit of true righteousness—starting with holding themselves to account.

Now to go back to this thought of the strange freedom, this unfamiliar, unexpected gift. This is what the church of the Corinthians were experiencing when the Apostle Paul writes to them as we hear today. These were new Christians who were very excited to have thrown off slavery. Some of them literally throwing off slavery, being made literally free citizens as part of becoming Christians. But all of them knew that they had been slaves to sin.

And as St. Paul reminds them at the end of the reading, all that they had been laboring for under that tyranny was leading from sin to death—was no good. And so they were glad to be made free, to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven, children of God. But they didn't know how to use this freedom to bear good fruit.

They were thinking to themselves, "We have no boss. We have it made now. There's nothing more to work for. Let's play around. Don't worry about rules and responsibility of any sorts. We can instead fight amongst each other of who’s right, who's better, who's more prestigious." They can indulge themselves at the expense of one another.

And St. Paul reminds them of their true purpose in all: to bear good fruit.

Now, we often tell ourselves in our daily lives that I've been working really hard. I deserve a break. You know what? I'm going to make things easier for myself by just cutting this corner over here. I know that I should do it this way and people are expecting me to follow this way and it's something that is of benefit to other people and their priorities and the expectations of whatever it is that we're talking about—whether it's the family, my workplace, the neighborhood, general society. No one's looking. Who really cares? Let me just cut this corner. And maybe nobody notices. Maybe nobody catches you in this way.

But the truth is that all these corners that we're cutting as we say to ourselves, "Well, who's going to hold me to account? There's no boss looking right now"—those corners we're cutting are coming off our soul. We are slowly whittling away at the substance of our own selves, losing integrity because there's always God watching. God always sees what it is that we do, even in our secret hearts. And we're never hiding anything from him.

And all that we are doing is either leading us closer towards him and his kingdom or leading inevitably to hell, filling ourselves up with the wages of sin leading to death and destruction. There's no middle way. Either we are laboring to bear fruit for the kingdom of God or we are laboring for our own destruction.

And so, brothers and sisters, we need to stop cutting the corners in this way, but rather protect our consciences, protect our souls, nurture it, nourish it so that it can grow by God's grace. It needs to be enlarged. Needs to be very large indeed because it is meant to hold a great gift which is eternal life. And brothers and sisters, to cooperate in this great work, to be able to be this fruitful that we can bear fruit into this everlasting kingdom—this requires daily discipline and care, endurance, faithfulness.

We need the spirit of the centurion that we heard of in the Gospel today who calls out for the Lord to help him and to heal his desperately ill servant. But when the Lord promises to come to his house to heal him, he says, "I am a man under authority. I'm not worthy you should come under the roof of my house, but only speak a word and my servant will be healed."

Brothers and sisters, if we can welcome and foster and practice that spirit of the centurion, that faithfulness, that zealous pursuit of God and his righteousness, using this strange freedom that we have received, not as a license to sin, but rather as an invitation to bear fruit in the kingdom of God—then we also like the centurion will hear the Lord answer us: "Go your way and as you have believed, so let it be done for you."

Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.