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by
James Martin
Started reading
October 15, 2021
The way of Ignatius is about finding freedom: the freedom to become the person you’re meant to be, to love and to accept love, to make good decisions, and to experience the beauty of creation and the mystery of God’s love.
a spirituality is a way of living in relationship with God.
be careful not to let your career become a “disordered affection”
that prevents you from being free to meet new people, spending time with those you love, and viewing people as ends rather than means. It’s an “affection” since it’s something that appeals to you. It’s “disordered” because it’s not ordered toward something life-giving.
Ignatius would invite you to move toward “detachment.” Once you did so, you would become freer and happier.
The way of Ignatius means there is nothing in our lives that is not part of our spiritual lives.
This doesn’t mean that you need to believe in God in order to find Ignatius’s insights useful. But to do so, you have to understand where God fits into his worldview.
Ultimately, faith is a gift from God. But faith isn’t something that you just have. Perhaps a better metaphor is that faith is like a garden: while you may already have the basics— soil, seeds, water—you have to cultivate and nourish it. Like a garden, faith takes patience, persistence, and even work.
As the Catholic priest and sociologist Andrew Greeley once wrote, sometimes the question is not why so many Catholics leave the church—it’s why they stay.
This is not to excuse all the problems, imperfections, and even sinfulness of religious organizations. Rather, it is a realistic admission that as long as we’re human, we will be imperfect.
you can live with the question of suffering and still believe in God—much
The maxim of “illusory religion” is as follows: “Fear not; trust in God and He will see that none of the things you fear will happen to you.” “Real religion,” said Macmurray, has a different maxim: “Fear not; the things you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to be afraid of.”
Despite our best efforts to be spiritual, we make mistakes. And when we do, it’s helpful to have the wisdom of a religious tradition.
More problematic than Sheilaism are spiritualities entirely focused on the self, with no place for humility, self-critique, or a sense of responsibility for the community.
Unreflective religion can sometimes incite people to make even worse mistakes than they would on their own.
Thus, those prophetic voices calling their communities to continual self-critique are always difficult for the institution to hear, but nonetheless necessary.
It’s a healthy tension: the wisdom of our religious traditions provides us with a corrective for our propensity to think that we have all the answers; and prophetic individuals moderate the natural propensity of institutions to resist change and growth.
As with many aspects of the spiritual life, you need to find life in the tension.
God is always inviting us to encounter the transcendent in the everyday. The key is noticing.
THE EXAMEN
Life becomes an endless series of tasks, and our day becomes a compendium of to-do lists. We become “human doings” instead of “human beings.”
More often, Jesus condemns the “strong” who could help if they wanted, but don’t bother to do so. In
the famous parable of the Good Samaritan,
those who pass by the poor man along the road are fully able to help him, but simply don’t bother. Sin, in Father Keenan’s wo...
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“sins of omission.”
Here’s the examen in the words of St. Ignatius Loyola, straight from The Spiritual Exercises: The First Point is to give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits I have received. The Second is to ask grace to know my sins and rid myself of them. The Third is to ask an account of my soul from the hour of rising to the present examen, hour by hour or period by period; first as to thoughts, then words, then deeds, in the same order as was given for
the particular examination. The Fourth is to ask pardon of God our Lord for my faults. The Fifth is to resolve, with his grace, to amend them. Close with an Our Father. After the challenges
examen went like this: gratitude, awareness of sins, review, forgiveness, grace.
Thank God for favors. Beg for light [that is, the grace to see clearly] Survey Repent Resolve
“In this sense, it is less a matter of searching for God than of allowing oneself to be found by Him in all of life’s situations, where He does not cease to pass and where He allows Himself to be recognized
once He has really passed.”
“Excuse me,” said an ocean fish. “You are older than I, so can you tell me where to find this thing they call the ocean?” “The ocean,” said the older fish, “is the thing you are in now.” “Oh, this? But this is water. What I’m seeking is the ocean,” said the disappointed fish as he
swam away to search elsewhere. “Stop searching, little fish,” says de Mello. “There isn’t anything to look for. All you have to do is look.”
This type of prayer—asking for help—is called petitionary prayer and is probably the type of prayer with which
most of us are familiar. Asking God for something you want is both common and natural.
prayer is like a personal relationship with God, which can be fruitfully compared to a relationship with another person.
And prayer is not simply the relationship itself, but also the way that the relationship is expressed.
the way you think about friendships can help you think about, and deepen, your relationship with God.
What kind of relationship do you have if you never carve out time for the other person? One that is superficial and unsatisfying for both parties. That’s why prayer, or intentional time with God, is important if you want a relationship, a friendship, with God.
As the Book of Amos says, “Do two walk together unless they have made an appointment?”
Seeing friends on the fly or at work or in groups is fine, but from time to time you need to give a friend undivided attention. Prayer is like that: being attentive to God. How much time are you willing to spend, one on one, with God?
listen to other people talk about their own experiences of God.
In order to communicate an essential truth, God offered us a parable: Jesus.
Equanimity in the face of stress does not make you holy. Much less does it make you a saint. But it’s a start.
Detachment, freedom, and a sense of humor are signposts on the road to holiness.
Letting yourself be known by God means more or less the same thing it means in a friendship: speaking about your life, sharing your feelings, and revealing yourself openly.
Honesty is an important part of this process.
you might try something that I stumbled upon recently: imagine what you think God would say based on what you know about God.
Insights are another way that God speaks in prayer. Perhaps you’re praying for clarity, and you receive an insight that allows you to see things in a new light. You may see a novel way of approaching an old problem.
Memories also float to the surface in prayer. Here God may invite you to remember something that consoles or delights you. What is God saying to you through those consoling memories?
