Every good person is free of committing mortal sins and has no willing attachment to them. Such freedom is necessary for salvation, but that is not what I am talking about here. The freedom I’m referring to is the ‘freedom of the children of God’ who know they are loved. And what is that (freedom)? It’s the detachment of a Christian heart from all things so that it is free to follow the known will of God. You will readily understand what I’m trying to say if God gives me the grace to explain to you the characteristics and effects of this freedom, and the occasions when it is practiced.

…this freedom is not attached to consolations, but accepts affliction with as much docility as nature can manage. I’m not saying that the person doesn’t like or long for these considerations, but just that her heart isn’t bound to them….a person who has this spirit is not emotionally bound to her spiritual exercises…Again I’m not saying that she doesn’t like them, but that she is not attached to them. Third, she hardly ever loses her joy, for no deprivation can sadden a person whose heart is attached to nothing. –St Francis de Sales

Exploring the profound letters of St Francis de Sales and St Janes de Chantal I came across these words of guidance from the former. They expand upon the idea of spiritual maturity, and the idea of freedom and enslavement—broadening the idea of freedom beyond free will. Freedom eternally magnified to salvation. Freedom is not just doing what pleases. I am free to do whatever I want. Because I want to do certain things, things others are doing, even being glorified, does not mean I should do certain things. It is not the desire, yet the act which enslaves. Instant pleasure and redemption in the eyes of the word is enslavement, a duplicity created. Individuality becoming a habit, a struggle to be someone in the eyes of the world. Such an existence in all truth is impossible for one to smash, roots becoming so deep ruination seems inevitable. How can one fighting for survival and identity truly surrender? How can one pursuing faith for years remove one’s self from stagnation, an inability to mature? An individual of duplicity identifies, fights with everything, compares and contrasts, demands others to be stacked up against one another, forces others to fight with others, Everything based upon salvation sought exteriorly through the eyes of others, The interior life, barely breathing, reposes in critical condition, acting upon the world in a destructive broken manner, needing to define and inflict restrictions upon others. Everything, even within the greatest efforts of kindness and compassion, is a form of division through the attachment to identity and the need for consolations appeasing individual delusions and brokenness. Maturity goes beyond confrontation through the inducing of unification, a fullness breathing into being, an expansion through passive surrendering of individuality, nurturing the graced power to conquer the mighty strength of passions, concupiscence, and brokenness, released from self-identity, attaining a state of grace within imperfection. Thus a mature seeker learns to sit still before the Eucharist, heart open and aware, needing yet detached.

The Eucharist: Lost within unification