God's Voice Within: The Ignatian Way to Discover God's Will

by Mark E. Thibodeaux

Ignatian discernment, then, isn’t so much about what to do but about who to be. It’s about becoming a person in tune with the movements that lead toward God. The doing will flow from the being.

has its roots in the Middle English de sole,

The first [cause for desolation] is because we have been tepid and slothful or negligent in our exercises of piety, and so through our own fault spiritual consolation has been taken away from us. —SE, Rules for Discernment of Spirits, First Week, #9 Of the three causes, only this first one implies culpability on my part. It’s important to note that if I am in desolation I should not presume that it is my fault. On the contrary, for a devout Christian, desolation does not usually come because of sin. Furthermore, even within this first cause, I would like to propose a qualifier to Ignatius’s rule. I believe that in addition to moral problems that lead to desolation, there could be logistical problems or psychological problems as well. Ignatius did not include these possibilities because the sixteenth-century mind-set tended to blame “the sinner” for even logistical problems and because the entire field of psychology had not yet come about. With this in mind, I propose that the first reason desolation has come is because of moral, logistical, or psychological problems. When a person finds himself in desolation, then, it would be good to do a sort of inventory of these three factors to see if, by making some changes here or there, he might begin to ease out of desolation.

Why is consolation, as opposed to desolation, the right time to work on the problem? Ignatius puts it this way: “For just as in consolation the good spirit guides and counsels us, so in desolation the evil spirit guides and counsels. Following his counsels we can never find the way to a right decision” (SE, Rules, First Week, #5) When a person is in desolation, all objectivity is gone. The false spirit is her counselor—presenting foolish proposals, drawing incorrect conclusions, and making poor judgments. We get a medical checkup when we’re in good health, not when experiencing acute illness or injury. Once, in order to do hospital ministry, one of our novices had to have a routine tuberculosis test. But he came down with a virus on the day he was to take the test. He was not able to take the test because the virus, which had no relation to tuberculosis, might have made the results look as if he did have the disease.

“When one enjoys consolation, let him consider how he will conduct himself during the time of ensuing desolation, and store up a supply of strength as defense against that day” (SE, Rules, First Week, #10).