Interior Openness: “Indifference” as the Simple Trust of a Child

A statement is frequently made that bears a lot of truth, but also, understood a certain way, is a little inaccurate. It is often said that “once you discover your deepest desires, you will know God’s will for you.” It is implied that God’s will is identical with our deepest desires, and if only we can “tap into” them, we will know precisely what God wants for us. The fundamental truth here is that God has given us our authentic desires—our longing for love, for intimacy, for happiness, for well-being, for the gift of ourselves and the reception of the gift of others—and that he yearns to fulfill these desires in his paternal care for us.

However, I have encounters again and again in which, as people get in touch with the inner longing of their hearts, they say something like: “my desires are universal, and they don’t seem to point to any particular vocation or decision.” This reveals that our desires inherently transcend any particular choice or limited path in this world, that they are, as it were, boundless, and cannot rest in anything finite or particular (even in the concrete expressions of God’s will for us in this life).

Therefore, this “transcendence” of my desires over any single vocation or state of life, over any concrete decision, action, or experience, is but a sign that I have been created by God to be more than a mere vocation, more than a mere “mission.” I am deeper, deeper than all the external circumstances of my life, deeper even than my human relationships…rooted in the very eternity of God, who cradles my inmost being in his embrace. His deepest desire for me, the very reason he made me, is simply love and intimacy: profound interpersonal communion sought and experienced for its own sake…which goes deeper than all external expressions while also enfolding them and being manifest within them.

Indeed, it is precisely this realization of the transcendent call to intimacy, the all-enveloping reality of Love-for-its-own-sake, which opens the way to truly receiving the call to my particular vocation or to a particular decision in my life. This is because it allows my heart to relax into what St. Ignatius of Loyola calls “indifference,” but which is perhaps better called “interior openness” or “freedom of heart.” How does it do this? Because once I realize that no created thing—and not even a particular ministry or vocation received in obedience to God—can fulfill my desires, I am able to cease grasping and clinging for such things. I am able to let go and open myself, in simple trust, to whatever God may wish to give to me. All of this is secondary to his simply loving presence, which will never leave me, and to his Love which unceasingly cradles me within itself. My identity does not lie in any of these things, but only in the innermost truth of my being, bathed in the Father’s gaze and in intimate relationship with him.

Truly, only when I know myself to be intimately and enduringly loved by God can I recognize that every moment of my life is but an expression of his fatherly care for me. I come to trust, even in times of darkness and suffering, that “all things work together for good” (Rom 8:24) for me and for all of my brothers and sisters, through the immensity of God’s ever-present Love. Then I can open my heart—without fear of being disappointed, without fear of receiving from him something that hurts me—and welcome anything and everything as an expression of his Love. Indeed, in all, through all, and beyond all, I simply seek to welcome his Love itself, ever communicating itself to me. And, through the power of this Love, I can abandon myself lovingly into God’s hands in return.

This is indeed the interior movement revealed in the prayer of St. Ignatius, the Suscipe:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.
You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.1

My whole life, in its every concrete expression, is cradled within the primary, all-enveloping relationship of intimate love that God has established with me. Because of this, my heart can remain united to him in the simplicity and trust of a little child, receiving from him all that he gives, all that he asks, and giving myself lovingly and generously in return. This is the childlike simplicity that awakens when—and only when—I know myself to be infinitely and unceasingly loved by the Father and cradled at every moment within the arms of his Love. Trust awakens in my heart through his touch, a trust in which I become confident that his intentions for me are only love, and nothing but love—that everything he does and wills is simply the expression of his one desire: to unite me intimately to himself, and in himself, to my brothers and sisters, now and forever.

This allows the desire to grow within me, not for a particular path, but above all simply to receive ever more deeply the pure love that the Father gives beyond all things and in all things, and to allow it to transform my life. Only within this all-enfolding truth of childlike openness—this deep spiritual nakedness before God which is born of the joyful confidence that his Love is enough—only within this can the reality of vocation freely unfold. When I desire him, then I am free also to welcome all that comes from him, as an expression of his awesome love and of his tender, constant, and intimate providence. Then, indeed, I can hear his call, not as arising from within my own personal desires, which are often muddled and confused—but as a gift coming from the outside which directs and harmonizes my desires into a unity.

This harmony is first of all simply the unity created by receiving God’s Love and responding to his invitation to surrender myself into his welcoming embrace—the unity of childlike and spousal intimacy with him. It is also a unity that harmonizes all of my desires and hopes along the path of love toward the Beloved who invites me, and who I know can alone satisfy the thirst of my heart, and to whom I want to give myself entirely in return. Third, it is a unity of living, no longer according to the fragmenting desires, wishes, and fears of my superficial “self,” but according to the inner truth of my being before God and before others. This is a unity which flowers in the capacity to live at every moment in love: in an ardent love for God and for my brothers and sisters, whom I yearn to serve and to help draw closer to the bosom of the Trinity.

Finally—and flowing from and returning these deeper, more encompassing movements—this is a unity of living according to the particular contours of the unique path that God lays before me in this world. It is not in this that I find my identity or my security; rather, this springs unceasingly from that inmost place of God’s Love, for me and for each one of his children, in which he gently cradles the world. Springing from this place as from a never-ending wellspring, the unity and harmony of love are expressed in the concrete unfolding of my life—in which I receive God’s gift, live in communion with him and with others, and offer my life as a gift back to God and to my brothers and sisters.

In a word, the harmony of my life—flowing unceasingly from the Love of God, cradled always in this Love, and surging back into this Love once again—unfolds entirely within the all-enfolding harmony and peace of knowing myself to be his precious and beloved child, held always in his loving arms which cradle the entire world.

  1. There is another prayer, perhaps even more beautiful, which expresses the same spiritual attitude, written by Charles de Foucauld, that ardent hermit of the Sahara. Notice the word with which the prayer begins and ends. That is the key to understanding it:
    Father,
    I abandon myself into your hands;
    do with me what you will.
    Whatever you may do, I thank you:
    I am ready for all, I accept all.
    Let only your will be done in me,
    and in all your creatures –
    I wish no more than this, O Lord.
    Into your hands I commend my soul:
    I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
    for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
    to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
    and with boundless confidence,
    for you are my Father.