What Makes You a Mason?

 

What Makes You a Mason?

 

When asked, “what makes you a Mason?”, every Brother understands his response should be: “My Obligation”.

The most unfortunate aspect of the English language is how concise use can be very assumptive in its application and eventual understanding. Very short responses do not often do justice to what is actually being communicated.

 

This response, “My Obligation”, is one such case. When a Brother expands upon this to provide a stronger foundation as to what is implied, the sentence would state something like this:

 

It is my being true to the Obligation to which I bound myself, and doing so without reservation or excuse, living moment to moment making every conscious effort to live what it is that I gave my word to do that makes me a Mason.

 

To take upon oneself any Obligation is to live it, not give lip service and wear it as a cloak to hide what is clearly unsupported underneath.

 

To live such an Obligation, one must be Capable of both Knowing it well enough to examine the words and then Executing them when situations call for them to be adhered to. One cannot do this when one has not committed them to memory.

 

At the very least, the answer to the question is: Living true to my Obligations!

 

(SOURCE: Pages 124-125, Building Free Men - Volume 8; 

Building Better Builders Series of Uncommon Masonic Education books) 

found here: 

 

http://www.coach.net/BuildingFreeMen.htm