30 June 2026 – BELOVED FAITHFUL, the Sommerfrische (a period of summer rest or spiritual retreat, ed.) which you may spend with your family is often a time of stepping away from many of the outward obligations of daily life. In this atmosphere of freedom, people often rediscover the awareness that many things in our lives ought to be different. The unfinished dreams of our lives awaken once more.
Soon afterwards we return to circumstances in which we experience once again the sombre reality of having to submit ourselves entirely to the relentless pace of everyday life. Are we truly so radically unfree, we ask ourselves, and is escape the only way out?
Both questions must be answered with a clear no. We are not unfree, and we must not flee. Rather, we must once again take hold of the balance and the perspective of our lives.
The feeling of being unfree arises from a lack of virtue or from virtues that are too weak. A person without virtue is blown about by the changing circumstances of the moment. One who is firmly established in virtue possesses the means to govern his own life. This frees him from the desire to escape. A virtuous person seeks to move forward, and this brings us to the perspective of our existence. Towards what is my life moving? This movement has several levels: the temporal and the eternal.
The temporal perspective calls me to accept the responsibility entrusted to me for my family and household and, more broadly, for my people and my country, that is, for the duties laid upon me. Fulfilling those duties allows me to experience that I am not unfree, but able to choose what is good and true, without being consumed by what is imperfect or evil.
The eternal perspective is the recognition that everything ultimately finds its true meaning and fulfilment in God. This recognition removes our fear of the uncertainty of the future and makes us men and women of hope and magnanimity.
I hope that you will take the time, in the quiet of summer and during these days of Sommerfrische, to reflect upon these things.
† With my priestly blessing,
Fr Martin Kromann Knudsen, FSSP