Working to Get as Free as You Can

Editor's Note: In November 2024, a group of anxious seniors approached Fr. Maczkiewicz, associate vice president for mission and ministry, inviting him to offer some wisdom about how they could discern their future paths. He spoke to them at a campus Pub Night about the best of the Ignatian tradition, and HCM asked for his highlights. Here is the final reflection of a three-part series, Discernment 101. Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

They likely had no idea they were doing so, but the Snickers candy company offered a deep theological truth in a ubiquitous ad campaign that ran for several years. One commercial in particular was quite memorable: It featured Aretha Franklin riding in a car with friends, complaining about the lack of air conditioning. A friend offers her a Snickers bar saying, “Every time you get hungry, you turn into a diva.” She takes a bite and — presto — Aretha, sated, transforms into someone else entirely. The tagline then appears, splashed across the screen: “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”

What a fundamental truth that is, and found squarely in the Ignatian tradition of discernment: that when some force or inclination has an unreasonable hold upon you, you are not really you, and the choices you make fail to reveal your real character or what is most important to you. I call these forces “unfreedoms” and identifying them, well, that is the real work of the discernment process.

So, what obstacles could be limiting your freedom by blocking you or inclining you to one alternative over the other? What are your unfreedoms? For the college student, the fear of missing out, or FOMO, looms large. During my years in the Chaplains’ Office, I had the experience of sitting with students who were completely paralyzed as they agonized over the choice of whether to study abroad or not. The thought of missing out on a familiar, glorious Holy Cross spring weekend — even with the promise of carefree European travel and adventure — was too much. And so they sat frozen, unable to make a choice one way or the other.

FOMO is also the single biggest obstacle I encounter in the men with whom I interact in my part-time ministry as a member of the vocation team for the Jesuits on the East Coast: Saying “yes” to life as a celibate religious necessarily means saying no to, ahem, several other things, and when the thought of missing out on marriage and children climbs into the driver’s seat and grabs a hold of the wheel, a man can be totally debilitated in his ability to discern well.

Figuring out those things that have a hold on us turns out to be a major part of life’s work, at least for those who are inwardly aware. Because the truth about unfreedoms is that we all got ’em and they only change over time; indeed, we never totally outrun them. A workshop with faculty members several years ago revealed this to me in a powerful way: Though we had gathered to talk about mentoring students and helping them to understand the unfreedoms in the lives of the young people they encounter in advising, the professors gathered at the Joyce Contemplative Center that afternoon suddenly understood their own unfreedoms, which were different from their students’, but no less paralyzing. It wasn’t FOMO for this generation, but caring too much about what others thought of them and their place in the academy that seemed to be most present. There was a newfound realization that this could be a limiting factor, that it might affect their ability to choose wisely and well, and even affect their ability to mentor effectively.

What “drives the bus” in your life at any given moment? What disordered affections — St. Ignatius Loyola literally meant “out-of-order” desires — might you have, those things to which you are so attached that they keep you from being, well, you? If not FOMO or status, perhaps it is things like “shoulds” or “oughts” that tyrannize you, or a perfectionism that holds you back. Maybe it’s one of a myriad of other fears, or an inflated desire to keep up with the Joneses. Could it be that some past hurts or self-pity hold sway, or you have a consuming competitiveness that leads to envy? Or does impatience with yourself or others, lust, ingratitude, irreverence, desire for control, power, prestige, exclusiveness, unhealthy relationships — have a hold of you? The list goes on and on. 

Whatever you might discover, the goal is to get free enough to be influenced only by this one value: to choose the alternative that will give the most glory to God and be expressive of your own deepest self, your most authentic self. And, gosh, to get there requires serious work. But it’s work that is worthy of you.