What Do You Really Want?
This brings discernment into clearer focus. Discernment is about loving and following God, not struggling to make the “right” decision. Our end is union with this God who loves us and who desires the best for us. Our decisions are the means to this end. As Ignatius put it, “I ought to do whatever I do, that it may help me for the end for which I am created.” The Gospel story of Martha and Mary is about this very thing. When Jesus came to visit, Martha busied herself with the chores of hospitality while Mary sat with Jesus and listened to him. Jesus chided the busy Martha: “You are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part” (Lk 10:41-42). The main thing in discernment—the one necessary thing—is to love God first.
If we love God first, it doesn’t matter if the path we follow in life is circuitous, with frequent loops, retreats, and cul-de-sacs. It matters little if the decisions we make turn out very differently than expected. No one knew this better than St. Ignatius. He called himself “the pilgrim.” In the tradition of pilgrimage, the journey itself is at least as important as the goal. His path in life was a meandering one, but Ignatius deeply believed that we can confidently walk along that path, finding the course that pleases God and brings us the deepest joy.
Notice the positive view of human nature that underlies this attitude. Ignatius was no Freudian. He knew nothing of libidos and ids and Oedipus complexes, and would have rejected the claim that they drive our behavior. He was no Calvinist; he didn’t think that the human soul was so irreparably damaged by sin that it is incapable of knowing the good. He didn’t view desires with suspicion as many religious people do. Ignatius loved desires. In the Spiritual Exercises, he continually says, “Pray for what I want.” He believed that our deepest desires—what he called the “great desires”—are for loving union with God and others.
Thus we arrive at perhaps Ignatius’s greatest insight in the matter of discernment. God placed these great desires in our hearts. Finding God’s “will” means discovering what they are. This is what we really want. Ignatius believed that when we find what we really want, we find what God wants too.
Ignatius came upon this insight through his own experience of conversion. Through a process of reflection and discernment he came to understand that his deepest desire was to surrender himself completely to Christ and to go wherever Christ sent him. This desire had always been there. He had been restless and unhappy in his life as a military man and court official. When he recognized his deepest desires—when he discovered what he really wanted—he found peace and joy.
You might say that of course God wanted Ignatius to walk the difficult and demanding path of celibacy and poverty. That God wants everyone to do the hardest thing. But God doesn’t work that way. Ignatius found the way of life best suited for him. If he had been a different person, it’s entirely possible that a career of service to the king would have given him more happiness than a life as a priest. In fact, that must have been God’s desire for any number of young men in sixteenth-century Spain. But it wasn’t his desire for Ignatius, and it wasn’t Ignatius’s deepest desire for himself.
Finding what you really want doesn’t mean “follow your bliss” or “do the work that makes you happy.” The problem is that we don’t know what will make us happy. Following our bliss frequently makes us miserable. We want many things, contradictory things—money and a balanced life; relationships and excitement; the esteem of others and the satisfactions of humble service. The hard work of discernment involves sorting through these desires and wants and passions and needs and discovering the kernel of authentic desire that God placed within us.
“Love God and Do What You Will”
“God’s will” isn’t something external. It’s internal. It’s implanted in our hearts. Doing God’s will isn’t a matter of finding out some undiscovered item of “God’s plan” and putting it into effect; it’s more a matter of growing into the kind of person we’re meant to be. It’s the expression of the deepest truths of ourselves within the setting of a day-to-day relationship with God. The question to ask is, Is this action consistent with who I am and want to become?
We can answer this question with confidence if we sincerely love God and seek to follow in the footsteps of Christ. Here’s the solution to the paradox of discernment. On the one hand, God cares about us and knows us intimately. We’re supposed to follow him in everything, large and small. On the other hand, God has given us free will and reason. We’re free to do what we want. These two principles seem to pull in opposite directions—but they are really two sides of one thing. If we love God, then what we most deeply want and what God wants are the same thing. Augustine made this point in his famous saying, “Love God and do what you will.” If you truly love God, doing what you want will be doing what God wants.
It’s simple—but not easy. The question “What do you really want?” is difficult to answer. We want many things. Many of them aren’t worth having. Many will make us miserable instead of happy. Ignatius knew this very well. He developed an approach to discernment that helps us sift through our competing desires. It’s an approach based on learning to listen to what our heart is saying.
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The Language of the Heart
Discernment is about learning a new language. It’s actually a language that we’ve heard all our lives—the feelings, moods, emotions, leadings, intuitions, and senses that constitute the affective part of our minds. Psychologists talk about the three parts of the mind: the cognitive (reason and other mental processes), the conative (the will), and the affective (feelings and emotions). All of these are involved in the choices we make, but the engine that drives the train is the affective power. The traditional word for it is “heart.”
Ignatius’s great discovery was that we can discern the right path by listening to the language of our hearts. Discernment is about noticing and interpreting those deep currents of feeling that shape what we want, which in turn influence what we do. By no means did Ignatius neglect reasoning and the other powers of the intellect. But he thought that the rivers of feeling and emotion are where God’s leadings can most readily be found.
Ignatius didn’t think this up. It was a discovery he made at a particular time in a particular place. Psychologists speak about “aha! moments,” those occasions when a sudden flash of insight reveals the solution to a difficult problem. Francis of Assisi’s aha! moment came when God told him to rebuild his church. Ignatius’s moment came when he was lying in bed in recovering from grievous wounds suffered in battle.
The Daydreaming Soldier
Ignatius Loyola’s path to sainthood was unconventional to say the least. As a young man he was a proud, headstrong courtier and knight at the royal court of Navarre. The ladies liked him; his rivals feared him. Once he was arrested for brawling in the street (probably in a dispute over a woman), making him one of the few saints with a police record. His macho world came tumbling down in 1521 when he was seriously wounded in a battle. He was carried back to his family’s castle in northern Spain where he endured two excruciating operations to repair his shattered legs. It took him many months to recover, long months of idleness, plenty of time to reflect on his life. He harbored dreams of returning to his previous life of knightly valor, but he probably knew that those days were over. He was a thirty-year-old washed up knight with two bad legs, living at home, being nursed back to health by his sister-in-law. He was ready for something new.
When he asked for something to read he was given the only two books in the house—a life of Christ and a life of the saints. Ignatius was a Catholic like everyone else in his society, but he was not