FR. FIRMO “JUNJI” BARGAYO, SJ
Presiding at our community Mass today, I was struck again by the Gospel’s call to take responsibility for the harm we have caused our neighbor. Jesus invites us not only to admit our faults but to seek forgiveness, mend what has been broken, and pursue reconciliation with sincerity of heart. In Matthew 5:20‑26, He reminds us that true righteousness is not measured by external observance but by the courage to restore relationships wounded by anger, neglect, or pride. Reconciliation becomes the path where mercy flows and where the heart learns to breathe freely again.
This image of a hot‑air balloon may not seem like the typical symbol for such a reflection, yet the word printed on it, “Liberty,” opens a deeper meaning. Liberty is not merely a privilege granted to persons deprived of liberty (PDL). It is the deepest longing of every human heart. There is a difference between liberty as something one enjoys and liberty as something one lives. The former can be taken away, but the latter is woven into the very dignity God has given us. To live in liberty is to live in the truth of who we are before God, unbound by fear, resentment, or guilt.
From the beginning, God created humanity in freedom. Life itself was meant to be an experience of freedom, and freedom was meant to be the breath of life. Yet when sin entered the story, life remained but liberty was wounded. The human heart became burdened, limited, and no longer fully free. Instead of moving lightly in God’s presence, humanity learned to toil, to labor, to struggle toward the freedom it once received so effortlessly. Sin did not erase life, but it dimmed its spaciousness. It made liberty something to be regained, not simply enjoyed.
I remember a moment early in my prison ministry when a PDL approached me in tears. He asked me to pray that the Lord would make his crying stop. For a week he had been weeping after receiving a simple note from his complainant: “I forgive you.” He kept thinking about the many missed chances to face his wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness earlier. He wondered if his case might have been dismissed had he sought reconciliation sooner. I gently suggested that perhaps his prayer could shift. Instead of asking for the tears to stop, maybe he could ask for the grace to accept his situation and savor the mercy being offered to him. A week later he returned, still crying, but now with a different heart. His tears were no longer from regret but from the overwhelming sense that he did not deserve such mercy. In that moment he discovered a paradox: even within prison walls, he felt free. His tears were the tears of a man tasting liberty. As St. Paul writes, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Freedom is not a place. It is a presence.
Looking again at the hot‑air balloon, I see how it rises, lifting people into a wider horizon, expanding their view of the world. It is a fitting image for the liberty that God desires for us. When forgiveness is received, when reconciliation is embraced, when mercy is allowed to enter the heart, something rises within us. The world becomes larger. The soul becomes lighter. Even if our circumstances remain the same, our interior landscape expands. This is the same freedom the PDL discovered, the same freedom Jesus speaks of in the Gospel, the same freedom God intended from the beginning.
When all is said and done, liberty is not simply the absence of chains but the presence of grace. It is the movement of the heart toward God and toward one another. It is the courage to face our faults, the humility to seek forgiveness, and the openness to receive mercy that we know we do not deserve. When we allow God’s Spirit to lift us, like a balloon rising into the morning sky, we discover that true freedom is not something we wait for but something already offered to us. It is the gift that transforms our tears, enlarges our hearts, and restores us to the life God always intended us to live.
My Prayer
Lord, grant us the grace to be free. Not only the freedom to choose what we want, but the freedom that restores the life You first breathed into us. Free us as we learn to ask for forgiveness and mend the wrongs we have done, so our hearts may open again to Your mercy. Lift from us the fear and burdens that keep us from living as Your beloved. Fill us with Your healing love and lead us into the freedom that only Your Spirit can give. Amen.