How does the love of God make a soul free?

"Love is a mystery that transforms everything it touches into things beautiful and pleasing to God. The love of God makes a soul free."
(Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, paragraph 890). 
Love is a mystery. Needless to say, this seems self-evident. Love, in the deepest sense of its meaning, cannot be explained. It is not rational. True love does not seek self-preservation; rather, love tends to self-abnegation, and at times, self-annihilation, all for the sake of the Other. The True Lover is willing to lay down his or her life for the Beloved. 

 The world does not want to love like this! The world "loves" by seeking its own fulfillment. What will "I get" from this relationship? How can this person "please me"? Where will this job "take me" in 5-10 years? Love in our secular age is selfish and self-seeking. This "love" is insular. It collapses in upon itself, turns in on itself, like an armadillo. Afraid, it slinks away from the Other... 

This is antithetical to the model of love upheld by Christianity: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). Christians (I hope...) see and know this love to be exemplified in the death of Jesus Christ. Love, total life, given not for self-gain, but for salvation (more than just mere preservation! but salvation, transformation) of the other! Instead of holding back the great gift of His divinity, God initiates and wills a complete self-emptying of all that He is, taking on the form of a slave, being born in human likeness through the incarnation, offering us new life, forgiveness, and true peace through the reconciliation offered in the great love made manifest on that blood-stained wood (Philippians 2:6-11; Colossians 1:20). 

 What a paradox! This exemplification of love is Christ's bitter death and sorrowful passion. How could it be that the Savior of the world would will (would freely choose!) to die for us, yes we who have abandoned Him, we who like his eleven other apostles, have fled from Him? Love is not merely represented by the Thanksgiving dinner table or the newlyweds sharing their honeymoon... Love, the power and nature of God, is made perfect not simply in weakness, but in complete self-offering, complete abandonment, "Into your hands, Lord, I commend my Spirit..." (2 Corinthians 12:19; Luke 23:46). 

Love: An Exchange of Gifts

This love is not an isolated action. Jesus's act of love on the cross is given, is physically poured forth in blood and water (John 19:34), is spiritually released ("Into your hands..."), in order to be received. True love, then, following Christ's example, is communal; it is an exchange of gifts. All gifts demand relationship. Jesus returns His life to Love; He returns Love to Love: He gives all He is to God the Father. But more than that, Jesus offers His blood for His disciples, for His Church (Matthew 26:28)... He is the Lamb of God given to reconcile us to the Father, to take away our sins so that we might learn to not only live, but to love! And as we learn to love, so we learn to live. (John 1:29)

 At the core of this exchange of love, this exchange of gifts, is a reflection on the very nature of God as Trinity. "But St. John goes even further when he affirms that "God is love": God's very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 221).

What a mystery... that Golgotha, the place of the Skull would be a place of communion and transformation. Jesus was clearly transfigured on the mountain before James, Peter, and John... there He appeared in the cloud, manifest in His glory. But the glory of the Transfiguration cannot and does not come to pass until Christ endures the disfiguration of the crucifixion. It is not suffering in and of itself that manifests the glory and goodness of God... suffering, just like any action, without love is nil, empty, meaningless. 

 Christians believe that suffering is redemptive by the very example of Jesus and the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit within us; joined to Him by our very Baptism, we not only make up for that which is "lacking" in His Body (Colossians 1:24... Yes to my Protestant readers this is from St. Paul's epistles!) but we also come to share in the newness and fullness of life promised in the Resurrection and the Ascension (1 Corinthians 5:17). 

 The cross is the threshold of our freedom as a People of God. The cross liberates because it confiscates and condemns the power of death. Death is conquered in the example of Jesus. 
"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:37-39).
These words from Saint Paul must be our anthem! Death will not separate us from the love of God. The present trials or our future fears cannot bar us from the embrace of the Father! The love of God truly makes us free because the love of God has been poured forth into our very hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). 

Finding Freedom, Finding Love

The true freedom we await as Christians comes through our relationship with God, specifically our reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17)! Until we come to experience a personal, profound, and intimate relationship with God, moreover an intimate relationship with God as made known to us (as much as we can "know"...) through His Holy Spirit, we will be slaves. We will be confined to our fears. We will be confined to our bills. We will be enchained to our passions. We will be prisoners to our emotions. We will be slaves to our society. We will be banished to our 9-5 routines, that seat at the bar, or that image of who we think we used to be or ought to be... 

 There can be no freedom, there can be no love, unless we come to embrace and accept the FREE gift of Love offered to us through the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus. This Love is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is "the promise of the Father" (Acts 1:4). The Holy Spirit is what compels St. Peter to preach on the day of Pentecost where 3000 souls are convicted and converted (Acts 2:41)! The Holy Spirit compels the early Church to truly live the life of Jesus. The Holy Spirit enables them, just as It enables us, to live the lives that Jesus died for us to have... 

 Without the Holy Spirit in our lives, we are slaves to the spirit of the world. This "spirit of the world" is the antagonist that seeks our destruction. It stirs us to hatred, jealously rivalry ...these are the "deeds of the flesh," or one could say, the reality of our human brokenness and weakness (Galatians 5:19-20). The reality we live at the cost of original sin. Yet God offers us freedom, a life in the Spirit. Where there is anxiety, the Spirit stirs peace; depression, the Spirit enlivens with joy; hatred, the Spirit consumes with love; greed, the Spirit overwhelms with generosity... These fruits of the Holy Spirit are indicators of God's Love made real in us, alive and at work through us (Galatians 5:22-23). 

 And this isn't some Burger King advertisement for a "cheap meal" or a quick-fix... these fruits are real! How often do we feel as if there is no joy in our lives? If we are truly unfulfilled, this is a mere indication that we have been made to be fulfilled!!! Who looks at an empty bucket and laments the fact that it is empty? It's not "just an empty bucket" but it is a bucket that has been made to be filled! The same is true of our souls! And Love is of the utmost importance... without Love, the cross is destruction. But in Love, because of Love, the terror of the cross promises hope. It promises life. It offers a second chance. 

 We fool ourselves if we simply seek "peace" or "happiness." When we pray we should not only pray for these gifts happiness, peace, joy, but we must prayer for the Giver. We must first receive the Giver in order to accept His gifts... 

 The Love of God makes a soul free because the Love of God is the very freedom of our soul. The Holy Spirit, the Love exchanged between the Father and the Son, is the very Love that God provides to animate our lives.

 Warning: Love is an all-consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). It is demanding. It makes us free, but it also calls us on to be responsible lovers. How can a husband love his wife if he is never home? If he never calls her? How can a child know her mother if they never spend time together? The love of God makes us free, and the love of God is freely available to us... are we freely available to Him? 

"Come, Lord Jesus." (Revelation 22:20)

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