Taking care of our interiority

ONE of the essential characteristics of a person is his life of interiority. That is where the world of a person is hidden from the gaze of ‘strangers.’ It’s his world of intimacy, his sanctuary, which he only knows and dwells. It is where he can know himself and enter the depths of his own soul.

We just have to realize that that life of interiority has to be properly rooted and directed. It should not just be left on its own, relying only on one’s feelings at the moment. Neither should it just depend on our natural and sensible world. It has to be rooted and anchored on God and directed toward him, able to enter into the spiritual and supernatural world of God to which we are destined.

We are reminded of this truth about ourselves in that gospel episode where some people told Christ, “Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you.” To which he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers? And looking around, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mk 3,32-35)

We have to understand then that if we truly want to take good care of our life of interiority, we have to see to it that it is focused on God. It should always be with God. We have to be wary of our strong tendency to simply be on our own, pursuing our own likes and unavoidably falling into self-indulgence, the very antithesis of love, which involves self-giving.

That is why Christ asked us to deny ourselves and carry the cross to counter this strong tendency of ours toward self-indulgence. We should not take this duty for granted. We have to understand that this duty is necessary, and not just optional. It has to be carried out all the time.

Our will and our thoughts should not just be floating around on their own, thinking that it is how they enjoy their freedom. We need to acknowledge that our will is a creation of God and is meant to be united to God’s will since we have been created in his image and likeness. We need to acknowledge the truth that our real freedom is when our will is united to the will of God.

This, definitely, is not an easy task to do, given the fact that it is precisely in our will where we choose whether we would like to be with God, to be part of his family, or to be simply on our own. And given how we handle this issue, starting with our first parents all the way to the present, we always have the strong tendency to think that our will is simply our own.

We have to learn to live always by God’s will. This is a basic truth that we need to spread around more widely and abidingly, since it is steadily and even systematically forgotten and, nowadays, even contradicted in many instances. We need to inculcate this truth to children as early as when they can understand and appreciate it. Then let’s give them the example of how it is lived.

We have to realize that God’s will is the source of everything in the universe. The whole of creation in all its existence, unity, truth, goodness and beauty starts from God’s will and is maintained by it. The entire range and scope of reality—be it material or spiritual, natural or supernatural, temporal or eternal—is “contained” there, not only theoretically but also ‘in vivo.’