Since I’ll be attending my friend Fr. Jim Martin’s book event tonight, celebrating the release of “A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas, and Life’s Big Questions,” I thought I’d share an excerpt from it that I liked, because it pertains to how, in moving toward our truest selves, or towards our vocation, that we find liberation, fulfillment, and happiness. I touched on this theme back in my post “If You Can Dream.”

Contemporary spiritual writers suggest that the seeds of one’s vocation are found most easily in one’s desires. Understanding our desires and hopes, in this construct, is a way to discover what we are meant to do and who we are meant to be. In his book, “Letting God Come Close,” Jesuit priest William A. Barry, a popular writer on spirituality, spends an entire chapter on the role of desire in the spiritual life. He advises spiritual directors, pastoral counselors, and retreat directors to pay attention to this key aspect of the heart. Retreat directors, Barry says, “do their most important work when they help [others] to discover what they really want.”

At first blush, this may appear to be an encouragement of selfishness or greed—as in, “I want a new car!” or “I want to be famous!” But it is not about mere surface wants or transient wishes; it is about one’s deepest desires. The idea has a distinguished pedigree: in the Gospel accounts, Jesus of Nazareth frequently asks those he encounters to express their desire. This is particularly true in the famous healing narratives. In the Gospel of Mark, for example, when Jesus meets the blind beggar Bartimaeus, Jesus’ first question is simple: “What do you want me to do for you?” He is asking the man to name his desire.
So it is not the case that one needs to “get” a vocation as much as one needs to discover it within oneself. Understanding one’s desires and hopes is a touchstone of spiritual growth. In this light, our deepest desires manifest God’s desire for us and for the world. This is true for both the saints and the rest of humanity. Certainly the saints—and I use the term broadly—embraced a particular way of life because they felt it was the best way to follow God.