Dear Friends,

Recently I heard the following short story, which I believe can be readily applied to our Christian faith.

An Indian trader goes to Africa and discovers 1,000’s of talking, colorful parrots. He captured one, brought him back to India, kept him in a cage and treated him well.

Two years later he decided to travel back to Africa. He asked his parrot what he should tell his friend in Africa. The parrot said, “Tell him that I’m very happy here living in a cage.”

When the trader arrived in Africa, he delivered the message. Tears welled up in the bird’s eyes. He keeled over and died. The trader assumed that they had been very close and that the bird died because he missed his friend so much.

The trader returned to India and told his parrot how his friend in Africa had died. Immediately tears welled up the bird’s eyes, and he keeled over and died.

The trader assumed that his bird was emotionally taken by the death of his friend. So he took the dead bird out of his cage and threw him out onto a trash heap. Suddenly, almost miraculously the bird came back to life and flew up to a tree branch.

The trader asked him what happened. The bird responded that his friend in Africa sent him a important message, “If you want to escape from your cage, you must die while you are alive.”

So how do we apply this story to our daily Christian life? First of all, in order to live for Christ, we must die to this world. In other words, we need to reject the allurements of the material world. Name the object: cars, computers, boats, home entertainment centers, our homes, the list goes on (even that little high tech gadget whose value dropped from $800 to $300 in just two weeks) - they will all eventually lose value, break, rust, fall apart and be reduced to dust. Real freedom involves being freed from the love of and attachment to material objects. True happiness comes when Christ is the true focus and love of our lives.

To carry this teaching a bit further, true freedom comes not from doing as we please, but rather by living to please God. This freedom has to do with killing our sinful tendencies, particularly pride and as it’s more commonly referred to these days, our egos. It does not take a degree in rocket science to see that each of us, in varying degrees, is imprisoned by our egos. Imagine what great works could be accomplished in the spreading of the good news of salvation throughout the world, including works of love, compassion and forgiveness!

Take a stand today and work on conquering the ego. Let’s be a Christ centered people rather than egocentric. Our Holy Church provides the tools for this: the sacraments of reconciliation with fasting and Holy Communion. We need to constantly recognize our sins and strive to conquer them and see Christ in every individual whom we encounter in our daily lives; and to act and speak accordingly.

Finally this teaching on true freedom is found in the gospel that we read at each funeral as well as during the Rest Office prayed before going to bed: Whoever loves his own life will lose it and whoever hates his own life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

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With prayers.
Hayr Simeon
September 23, 2007