Hi, my name's Fr. Mike Schmidtz ... that was fast... I'm gonna start over again.
Okay, sorry, sorry. I’m just so excited to talk about Little Mermaid.
Hi, my name's Fr. Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So, um, it is Independence Day today — Fourth of July.
Or it's another day, and you just happen to be watching this video on a different day.
Maybe it's not even July; maybe it's snowing outside where you are right now.
Or maybe you're in a different country and you're like “Fourth of July? What the heck?”
Fourth of July is a day that we in the United States celebrate our independence from Great Britain.
Um, hey everyone in the UK! Miss you! *Laughs*
I mean that in the best possible way, right? Here we are. It's our current reality.
I thought, what better day than Independence Day to talk about the Little Mermaid?
Because it just makes sense, you guys. And it's gonna make sense in just a second.
I'm gonna slow down a little bit because I am super excited to talk about freedom.
We talked about — in a different video before — a lot of times in our modern world,
freedom can be defined as ‘license,’ right?
So a lot of people think freedom is ‘I can do whatever I want to do.
I have freedom, I can do whatever I want.’ That's license, it's not real freedom.
Saint John Paul II, or John Paul the Great, he defined freedom in this way: he said,
“Freedom is not just the ability to do what I want. It's the power to do what I ought.”
With freedom comes responsibility.
That's why I want to talk about The Little Mermaid.
Because I remember watching this movie when I was...
I was in high school when I watched The Little Mermaid the first time.
And I remember being blown away by like, “These graphics! This is so cool!”
And the songs and the whatever. “Great movie for kids,” I thought when I watched it.
And then I went back and rewatched it and thought “This is a terrible lesson.”
Here's Ariel, who is doted upon by her father, King Triton, absolutely. She could have anything she wants.
She is the princess of the king of the sea.
He says, “Don't do this thing.” “I forbid it,” he says, you know, in a very... no wait.
Is that from Beauty and the Beast? Anyways.
He is very clear: don't do the thing. It's whatcha do. She does the thing.
She makes a deal with Ursula the Sea Witch,
and she gets legs but she doesn’t have a voice, right?
And so she basically says to her dad, who seems to be relatively loving —
I mean he did destroy her stuff... that was kind of an over-reaction on his part.
The whole rest of the story is all about her doing ‘the thing’ because she wants to do it:
“I want to do what I want to do.” Remember, license: I get to do whatever I want.
“I am the daughter of the king. I made a deal with the sea witch.”
And now everyone else has to pay for her stuff, right?
So you have this one point — her dad's gonna die,
the ocean is gonna belong to King Urs— King Ursula? Queen Ursula (you know, formerly Ursula the Sea Witch).
And that's not the ridiculous part! The ridiculous part is, after all that happens,
Ariel gets everything she wanted, no consequences.
And everyone's happy for her.
Did you notice this? Like, even her dad and her sisters are like,
“Yeah, see ya Ariel. So happy for you.
So happy you disobeyed my orders and my wishes as a father who loves you.”
It is very disappointing.
Why?
Because she used her freedom simply for license, and there were no consequences.
That's why I actually like Hans Christian Anderson’s — I don't really *like* Hans Christian Anderson's version —
but do you know, in the end of the non- Disney version of the story, Eric chooses the other gal to marry.
And Ariel ends up — or The Little Mermaid — ends up becoming sea foam.
Just foam, on the sea, for a hundred years.
And she has to spend another year as sea foam for every tear a child cries throughout the world.
That’s a long time, maybe infinite time.
Now [laughs] it's like, “Wow, this is kind of a downer.”
It totally is a downer. You know why?
Because freedom is not license (the ability to do whatever I want with no consequences).
Freedom is rooted in responsibility, and freedom is rooted in “I have the power to do what I ought.”
And there's going to be consequences. And I think there's something really powerful about this.
Because one of the things it reveals is: I am free to make my own choices,
but I am NOT free to choose the consequences of those choices.
Ariel? Yep, no consequences. Got off scot-free. Did whatever she wanted. (License)
True freedom — the power to do what we ought — entails this incredible responsibility,
but that responsibility comes from one massively important principle:
you matter.
You matter and your choices matter.
You were created as a free agent.
Now, we're not entirely free, right? Because we’re bound by our circumstances.
We’re bound by internal stuff, maybe even, you know, bound by our fallen human nature.
But we still are moral agents. We're still moral actors.
And that agency — that action, the things we can choose — they matter,
and there's consequences for every one of the choices we make.
And I think that's really, really good news.
Yes, there's consequences to my choices that can be really negative.
There's also consequences to my choices — and to your choices — that can be incredibly positive.
And that's an incredibly powerful truth to embrace
and really powerful truth to live out.
This 4th of July, this Independence Day, this day of freedom, I invite you —
wherever you live right now, even our brothers and sisters in the UK,
wherever you are in the world right now,
on this Independence Day —
actually you what? Any day!
Any day, right now, if you're a human being,
if you have been given freedom in Christ, this day - whenever you're watching this - is an Independence Day.
It's a day to act in freedom: the power to do what you ought,
knowing that there's consequences to those actions.
Why? Because you matter, and they matter.
So make good choices.
Don't become sea foam.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name’s Fr. Mike. God bless.
And go watch The Little Mermaid — it's a super fun movie, right? Man.
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