The Healthy Spiritual Journey • November 2025: Truly Free? Then, Truly Love!

“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become [servants] to one another.” – Galatians 5:13

Father Don Saunders was one of the finest retreat leaders we have experienced during the ten years that my brothers, Wayne, Denis, many of our friends from Fancy Farm, Kentucky, and I have attended the Jesuits’ White House Retreat on the Mississippi River in South St. Louis. This year, there were many memorable moments, both funny and profound, but one of Father Saunders’ messages became an ‘aha moment’ for me: “If we are not truly free, we cannot truly love”. That message took me on a daydreaming adventure. It reframed how I understand both freedom and love in the context of the spiritual growth journey that brought me to the retreat in the first place. 

We often think of freedom as the absence of constraint, personal liberty, a license to do whatever we lawfully want to do in this country. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, found in the Christian Bible, he challenges those notions. Paul reminds us that freedom is not about self-indulgence, but is about the capacity to love others deeply and sacrificially. True freedom allows us to choose love of others over ego, service to others over selfishness, and grace for others over judgment. 

This kind of freedom is not passive. It is active and intentional. It allows us to live out the Prayer of St. Francis: “O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, and to be loved as to love.” These words signify letting go of the need to be right, the desire to be praised, and the fear of being vulnerable. They mean embracing humility and trusting that love, even at great cost, is worth it. 

As we grow in spiritual freedom, we become more capable of loving others authentically. When we practice the kind of love that serves and sacrifices, we actually deepen our freedom. This is the kind of love that Jesus taught, the kind of love that leads us closer to the heart of God. In everyday life, it might mean forgiving someone who has hurt us. It might mean listening intently without interrupting, giving without expecting anything in return, or showing kindness when it’s inconvenient. These acts of love, rooted in freedom, become sacred expressions in a world where so many feel forgotten and lonely. 

God created human beings with free will, the ability to make choices. Since God is love, maybe God was hoping that we would choose to reflect God’s image by loving our neighbors – using our free will. That would make each and every one of us instruments of God’s peace - since God lives in every human, without exception. Where there is hatred, let us sow love, and where there is injury pardon. This good earth needs peacemakers – like you and me. So, in the short time we have on planet earth, let us do as much as we can to help our neighbors be truly free and truly loved – for God’s sake. 

In God’s love,

Lanny F. Wilson, MD

“Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope…”  – Prayer of St. Francis