Freedom and Giving

The subject of freedom and self-donation has been coming up in my life recently, so I want to link to this article at the First Things site that someone sent to the Unschooling Catholics list. The Freedom of Heaven and the Freedom of Hell. A quote:

the community of the blessed saints, for whom freedom means the grace-filled incapacity to will anything but the good for themselves and for one another. Thomas Aquinas steps forth from the constellation of the wise to express this freedom as the now utterly natural and supernatural virtue of love.

Aquinas says to Dante (in the Divine Comedy)

When the radiance
of the Lord’s grace, which lights the flames of true
love and by love still grows in eminence,
With such multiplication shines in you
it leads you up these stairs no man may take
descending, without climbing up anew,
He who’d deny his flask of wine to slake
your thirst would not be free, would have such power
as rivers not returning to the sea!