Indifference – the risk of ever greater love
Dear companions in the Lord,
In the fundamental texts of Ignatian spirituality, we are repeatedly confronted with the call to indifference when it comes to recognising and carrying out God’s will for our personal lives or the life and mission of the community in a path of discernment.
In many conversations and encounters in the provinces and communities, and not least in my own inner life, I hear and feel again and again how complex and often difficult this demand for indifference can become in our lives, especially when it comes to situations that are characterised by a high level of personal commitment, deep convictions and being anchored in valid values.
From a purely human point of view, the demand for indifference is a total overload. Probably hardly any of us would spontaneously count ourselves among the ‘third kind’ of people mentioned in the Spiritual Exercises who, in view of an obvious advantage for the organisation and security of their own lives, ‘have no attachment to having or not having the acquired thing’ (GÜ 149-157). What is shown here using the example of a material advantage can be applied to all other areas of our lives – the idea of indifference often stands in the way of our striving for security as human beings, and not only in a material context. There are so many things that we are attached to, that are dear to us, that seem indispensable for our lives, that give us security – and they can be objectively good and very good things and circumstances, the necessity and meaningfulness of which nobody would doubt so quickly. Our desires, insights, abilities, opinions, our vision, our commitment, our need for freedom and self-determination, our striving for personal fulfilment … everything that makes up the innermost part of our person and that we cannot – and initially do not have to – be ‘indifferent’ to so easily.
And yet indifference, properly understood, plays a central, indispensable role in our spirituality. Not an empty, passive indifference in the sense of ‘I don’t care’, not a spiritual superstructure that tries to ignore essential areas of our humanity,
but a highly committed indifference that arises from a complete openness towards God and sets us free for Him and His will. It is becoming free out of love, for the greater love and the greater service.
Indifference understood in this way is a response of surrender, it requires deep faith and trust in God’s love, and it requires the humility to offer God the setting aside of my own demands and ideas, or at least the longing, the desire for it. Perhaps it is also often associated with a painful letting go. And yet it is the only way to become an ‘instrument’ in the hands of God. Surrendering everything to God ‘all my things and myself with them’ (GÜ 234). Then we no longer need to secure ourselves in ourselves, but only in God and can immerse ourselves in the Magis, which no longer looks at things from our own point of view, but from God’s perspective.
At the end of the retreat, the person offers himself to God – may He dispose of him. In this ‘offering oneself to God’, indifference is understood from its goal, in its facilitation of greater freedom and sensitivity to God’s will, in a resulting availability for service that is not primarily anchored in reflection on oneself, but in listening to God.
Just as Ignatian indifference is indispensable for sensing God’s will for our personal lives and our mission, it should also – in the right sense – characterise the way we work together. If our conversations and our common endeavours are permeated by this ‘venture of love’, we will be able to be truly open to one another, we will experience the presence of God in one another and no longer revolve around ourselves, but live for one another and reach out to God together. Then we will be free to open ourselves to something new, something new that may not initially appear in our thoughts and feelings, but can be a call from God.
It is God who wants to bring about the will and the fulfilment in us (cf. Phil 2:13) – let us open ourselves to His work and ask to become truly indifferent people, people who live the risk of ever greater love!
In heartfelt solidarity
