Freedom, Sempiternam, in Love

Is freedom getting what you want (desire) or letting go of desire?  It would seem the former since to do what one wants appears to define freedom.  But not wanting also seems to be freeing.  Can we make sense of the paradox?

Love underlies all desire.  But it's easy to appreciate that not all desire (love) frees.  Passions often enslave while seeming at first to be freeing, so much what we want.  All addictions turn out this way:  Not getting enough of what you really don't want. 

What I truly want is what I truly need, and that is found in a direction different from what most passions promise.  Faith and reason teach that true happiness is found in falling in love with Divine Love.  But to do that I have to break my attachments to lesser goods that are forbidden or do not satisfy.

And so I have to give up my desire for what I think I want to get what I truly want.  Sublimation of desire isn't easy.  What motivates it?  Reason's knowledge of the true good (Jesus Christ, God), and the will to turn (in repentance) to it.  The experience of conversion is one of grief and suffering, but in the grief of losing what I thought I couldn't do without I find flecks, then rays, of God's true Love and the joy and peace that Love brings.  In the experience of turning, grief is transformed to joy and peace.  Loss to gain!  And our lesser loves are raised up, purified, given a new identity, in the Divine Love that makes all love as it can and should be! Loving others in God's Love is what I truly want, and so is true freedom.

To work this out in words is one thing.  To live this paradox . . . that's the suffering, the joy, the peace, and the everlasting freedom of life!