15. The Death of Self-Will: Holy Indifference and the Freedom of the Converted Soul

"Not my will, but thine, be done." - Luke 22:42

If obedience returns the will to God, self-will must actually die. This is one of the hardest truths in spiritual life because many souls imagine they can belong to God while still reserving their preferences as sacred territory.

St. Bernard and St. Ignatius both teach, in different accents, that self-will is one of the deepest roots of disorder. So long as the soul insists on having things on its own terms, even its devotions remain unstable.

Ignatian indifference is often misunderstood. It does not mean coldness or the refusal to care. It means the soul becomes ready to receive from God whatever best serves His glory and its salvation: honor or obscurity, health or sickness, consolation or dryness, provided God be obeyed and loved.

This is real freedom. The soul ruled by self-will is never free, because it is always hostage to conditions. The converted soul becomes freer as it becomes less demanding.

Self-will does not always appear in dramatic rebellion. It often hides in respectable forms:

• insistence on one's own pace,
• refusal to forgive unless one feels ready,
• demand for consolations before perseverance,
• attachment to being consulted, noticed, or obeyed,
• resentment when God permits humiliation.

The old man can survive in all of these.

The death of self-will is painful because it strikes at the false center of the soul. Yet the more it dies, the more room there is for peace. The converted soul becomes light when it stops insisting on being its own law.