Americans love our annual Independence Day break in the first week of July as we stretch the national holiday through its closest weekend getting as many hours out of it as is permitted.  Whereas our nation’s oldest holiday, Thanksgiving, is a day of dependence—upon God, blessings of nature, hard work, camaraderie, and generosity of others—this is a time to reflect upon our independence, freedom, and liberty. 

At food pantries and social agencies across this great land, members of households with basic physiological needs, like food, are welcomed by social agents and encouraged to advance from dependence to independence to interdependence.  In Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we get reminded that necessities are foundational to all else.  When those basic needs are met, we can seek higher, safety needs that protect, then belonging needs that integrate.  As the process grows from alienation and dependence to support and inclusion to promotion and amalgamation, it can even lead to self-esteem and possibly self-actualization. 

Independence is not just freedom from something but freedom for something: something that makes our lives better, something that realizes goodness is not about ourselves but about our relationship with one another and with God, who authors the freedom.  As clients move from dependence to independence to interdependence, they also move, as Pope Francis says, from a state of separation to welcome to protection to promotion to integration.  In this process, our acts that assist the physiological needs of the downtrodden are more than acts of charity; they are acts of authentic justice.  And justice is always guided by being in right relationship with God, self, others, and, indeed, the universe in which we exist.

In summer months, food in neighborhood pantries tends to diminish, partly because children are at home more than at school.  If you can contribute to the inner-city parish pantries, I will receive donations at my garage in south Kansas City (301 East Santa Fe Trail).  We are most in need of cereal and healthy breakfast foods, fruit, pasta, peanut butter, rice, beans, or typical items you might find on sale.  Saint James Parish runs a thrift shop (Troost 39 at 3922 Troost Avenue) that also receives household items (clothing, furniture, utensils, books…) and Saint Therese Little Flower (5814 Euclid Avenue) is conducting a Christmas-in-July program that receives gifts for children, teens, elderly, and households (sheets, towels, pots/pans…) as well as $25 gift cards for gas or shopping.  Troost 39 has a truck and can pick up at your house or you can always drop items off at mine.  Sometimes people just need a little boost to get through tough times.  Some people are capable of overcoming a state of dependence while others seem to be forever in a cycle of poverty.  Nevertheless, we are privileged to help when we can and blessed to accompany others as we’re able.  That, too, is tied to the freedoms we enjoy and the justice we know.  Any day that we can help a family or person advance in a state of grace or to a state of independence is a good day, a day of liberty and freedom.