Some readers entering our book contest wrote about how St. Ignatius has inspired them. Here are some excerpts from these comments. (Go here to enter the contest if you haven’t already.)
As a woman and a Presbyterian, I think of him as an affectionate and helpful older brother.
I think his story is a fascinating one, with many ups and downs, twists and turns. It gives me hope that God can make anything out of anyone if they only let God work, as Ignatius did.
My favorite story about St. Ignatius Loyola is that he kept a picture of the Holy Family in the room he used for prayer. It is said that he used this simple picture for his daily meditation and imagined himself sitting down to dinner with the Holy Family. This story along with St. Ignatius’ suggestion that we try to imagine ourselves in a scene as we read the gospel, has helped me in trying to meditate on the readings.
I like the fact that Ignatius started on his journey by feeling he could beat other saints at the sainthood game.
Ignatius as a 30 (or 40?) year old struggling to learning Latin, tells me to write “AMDG” at the bottom of my to-do list, log off Facebook, and crack the books.
Ignatius, after all that, ended up doing office duty, just like me.
St. Ignatius is the only saint with a notarized police record! If a jailbird can be converted into one of the greatest saints, then I have a chance to be converted too.
It took Ignatius years and many wrong turns before he found his way of finding God in all things. This gives me hope!
Ignatius has been a great influence on me, especially after having 4 kids (and expecting a 5th!). Finding God in all things has been such an eye-opener for me.
I love his intensity in the beginning when he grew his nails and hair and did everything with such fervor and passion. He eventually scaled things back and adjusted to where he felt God was calling him.
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July 29, 2010
Matthew Spotts, SJ, didn’t particularly “like” his four-month stint working on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, yet he thought it was what God wanted him to do. He writes, “discernment, is far, far more complicated than figuring out what makes us happy on a superficial level, figuring what we ‘like.’”
Liking or not liking something isn’t a primary way of discerning what God’s will is. It’s not even a primary way of figuring out whether we’re experiencing consolation–remember, the primary definition of consolation is a movement that brings us closer to God, a movement that tends to increase faith, hope and love. A movement of repentance for something we’ve done wrong betters our relationship with God and increases our faith, hope and love, even though it’s not particularly pleasant. Most of us can think of difficult experiences in our lives that may not have been at all pleasant but still made us deeper, wiser, stronger and more loving people. That too can be a consolation.
Read the whole thing.
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July 28, 2010
Saturday is a big day in the Ignatian calendar–it’s the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola. To mark the day, we’re giving away five copies of the book Compass Points by Margaret Silf. To have a chance to win, just leave a comment here on this post before midnight on Saturday, July 31. We’ll pick five winners with a random drawing.
You can say anything you want in your comment. But, if you would care to, you might say something about St. Ignatius. How has he inspired you? What is your favorite story about him?
You might know Margaret Silf as the author of Inner Compass, a fine introduction to Ignatian spirituality. She is a columnist for America magazine and a well-known spiritual director. Compass Points is her latest book.
You can increase your chances of winning a book by entering an identical contest at People for Others, our sister blog, maintained by Paul Campbell SJ.
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July 27, 2010
Just when I’m almost certain that church-the-building is one of the last places I’ll encounter God’s grace, I receive evidence to the contrary.
Being a mystic* type, I’m okay with having my assumptions about church and faith challenged empirically. This is what happened when I got into gear for the 5:30 PM liturgy on Friday.
I almost didn’t go because of the life-threatening heat. (I blame beehive hairdos of the 1960s and the massive amounts of hairspray they required for this climatological disaster.) Also, I’d taken a late afternoon nap and could not imagine getting dressed (appropriately), getting into the car and driving anywhere. I got dressed (semi-appropriately), got into the car and drove to the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.
Because punctuality has taken on new meaning in the years since I’ve become Roman Catholic, I was on time enough to trail in after the mini-procession. And as if I’d been doing so since the Cradle Catholic childhood I didn’t have, I slid into a back pew. Unobtrusively — or so I thought until an usher’s tap on my shoulder launched me into full-bodied Uh-oh Mode.
Go ahead and fill in what happened next . . .
[To be continued . . . ]
* Not from Missouri but “show me” is the prayer that got me into my current situation viz. Christianity.
photo credit: alancleaver_2000
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July 26, 2010
I do some of my best thinking and praying while running or biking. This morning I considered how biking hills is not a bad analogy to the discernment of consolation and desolation in the spiritual life. Here’s the idea.
Coming to the beginning of a long upward climb can be a daunting experience. You see it looming, and you see that it will be a hard and tiring. There is a temptation to quit or turn around. This is like desolation: it is a period in life when just moving through days can be difficult.
Conversely, the descent downhill can be exhilarating. The wind is rushing past you as you are moving fast without effort. That is like consolation.
Much of the ride is the ordinary work of pedaling, one crank after another. You settle into a rhythm. It can be more or less difficult based on how you’re feeling and the conditions outside and on the road.
I think the only way to think about life is as a long ride. There will be flats and hills. Ignatius’s counsel is very important: don’t just look for consolation, don’t despair in desolation–just keep pedaling (as it were). Prepare for uphill climbs by building momentum and speed before them, and they won’t crush you. Keep the focus on the destination, but enjoy the ride.
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July 24, 2010
Fat Man's Misery, Purgatory Chasm, Sutton MA
I took my girls to a place called Purgatory Chasm and had a metaphor experience. Metaphor experiences are of course those things you do which, once they are accomplished, emerge as perfect metaphors for life. And I tend to encounter them frequently because I look for them, and that, according to my wife, makes me unusual.
Entering the place I had visions of Dante running through my mind (purgatory and all that, though the place looks much more like the entrance to Dante’s inferno). But I’ll cut to the chase: a place called Fat Man’s Misery–a cleft in a massive wall of granite which some people can slide through sideways. So here’s the story: of course I wanted to do it, and so I lowered myself down into the cleft. A man high above the rock indicated that there was another way down and out of the cleft, a way which was not visible from where I was standing. I trusted him, and went further down and into the cleft, lowering myself again to another level before emerging out the distant side.
Now on one level this is not a bad metaphor for the spiritual life: we trust those that have gone before, those who tell us that the path may be difficult but that it gets us where we’re going. Trusting people is part of the spiritual life, and a certain amount of courage is necessary. So far, so good.
But here’s where it gets interesting: my two girls wanted to go through the cleft as well, and so now the trusting of the other had an altogether different import. I was responsible not only for myself, but also for my girls. I could not make a reckless decision which I as a younger man might have made just for fun. When I emerged out the other side, I had to proceed up and out of the chasm in order to judge whether the way was safe for them; otherwise we would have had to retrace our steps through Fat Man’s Misery.
Here’s my point: faith takes on new dimensions of meaning when one acts upon it mindful of how it will affect those he loves. (I think of someone like Thomas More, whose martyrdom left five children without a father.) As I left the chasm, I considered how fatherhood has affected my own faith, and what is most clear is that it gives shape to the kind of decisions I make about how to be a disciple of Christ. Whatever I do, I do as a husband and as a father, not as an individual. And in my experience, those relationships add depth and meaning to faith. At the end of the day, I can return to a basic question: how have I loved my wife and daughters? (A good question to include in an examen.) As I look back over seventeen years of marriage and ten years of parenting, I think that above all else, the vocation to family life is about beginning a pilgrimage of learning to love, and that pilgrimage constitutes the life of faith. It is not always easy or fun; sometimes the way is difficult and unclear. Sometimes I need people like the guy up above the rock to tell me what the path is like. But always I am traveling with my family, and when I finally meet Jesus face to face he will ask me how we managed to stick together through it all.
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July 22, 2010
God doesn’t move, we do. I’ve heard this aphorism for years and am currently experiencing this bit of wisdom big time. God doesn’t move, but I did — and I mean this quite literally.
Was it just last week or the previous one that movers arrived to load and transport all my stuff? I can’t remember and looking at a calendar hardly helps create clarity, I am that confuzzled these days. For a slew of superb reasons, I recently decided to make a bold move — maybe not so bold because I’ve been carping forever about being stuck in Suburban Captivity.
I haven’t lived in a city for 30 years; now I do. The city of my personal pre-Christian Era was Manhattan.* Where am I now? Baltimore, Maryland. No shortage of churches and evidence of church history here in Charm City or within walking distance of my apartment, for that matter.
In one direction, Loyola University Maryland and the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. In another, the Cathedral of the Incarnation and diocesan center for the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. One hot humid evening, I sat on the steps of the Scottish Rite Masonic Center (next building over) to gaze at the illuminated stained glass windows of the First English Evangelical Lutheran Church (across the street).
If you think being surrounded by Gothic, Romanesque, baroque and contemporary versions of these church architectural styles would help me feel anchored during my move, you’d be right but not entirely so. Yes, attending Mass a few times has helped me feel more connected to church but feeling God’s presence? That didn’t happen until yesterday morning when I finally heeded God’s call to walk across grass still moist with morning dew, listen to birdsong and notice life lived along the pavement.
* East side, below 14th Street!
photo credit: rumpleteaser
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July 21, 2010
The other day I came across a passage in a novel that brought me up short. The book is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. The writer describes the thoughts of a nine-year-old boy: “His father always talked to him—so he felt—as if he were addressing some imaginary boy, one of those that exist in books, but quite unlike him. And he always tried, when he was with his father, to pretend he was that book boy.”
These sentences struck me like a thunderclap, and I wondered why. It’s hardly a novel insight that we often pretend to be someone other than when we really are, or that people often treat us as someone we’re not. I think the passage struck me because it captures in a few sentences the utter futility of an all-too-common human situation. Everybody’s playing make believe. The father has a fantasy of the son he has. The boy pretends he is that son, knowing he’s not.
Walter Burghardt, SJ, calls prayer “a long, loving look at the real.” He writes, “What is real? Reality, is not reducible to some far-off, abstract, intangible God-in-the-sky. Reality is living, pulsing people; reality is fire and ice.” Reality is the real boy and the real father. Prayer is an end to the game of let’s pretend.
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July 21, 2010
I ran across this poem by Denise Levertov recently while I was doing some writing about Ignatius Loyola’s view of gratitude. It may be July, but it’s pleasant to think about snow.
Praise Wet Snow
Praise wet snow
falling early.
Praise the shadow
my neighbor’s chimney casts on the tile roof
even this gray October day that should, they say,
have been golden.
Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney’s shadow.
Praise
god or the gods, the unknown,
that which imagined us, which stays
our hand,
our murderous hand,
and gives us
still,
in the shadow of death,
our daily life,
and the dream still
of goodwill, of peace on earth.
Praise
flow and change, night and
the pulse of day.
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July 20, 2010
Over the past two weeks I’ve had the remarkable experience of being a nearly full-time Dad. My wife has started a new job and has undergone an orientation process that’s taken her away from home for some time, so we’ve found ourselves switching roles.
It’s been a profound process of discovery for me. This is by no means my first time as primary caregiver–we’ve shared that role over the years as time and demands permit. Early after our first adoption, for example, I took two days home every work week to be with an infant who needed constant physical contact. Parenting has stretched me unlike any other life experience.
But these past two weeks have still been a period of growth. Primarily, this has been an experience of slowing down and really paying attention to my girls as I have not done often enough. I am certainly guilty of a tendency toward workaholism, even though I have in theory been trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance. The truth is that I often leave the emotional work of parenting to Sue, in large part because she is just plain better at it.
But with Sue away so much, I’ve stepped more deeply into the world my girls inhabit. And what I am realizing is that our worlds move at different speeds, with different imaginative objects that help structure our respective worlds. I live in an academic world and move freely between millenia; what captures my imagination are eternal truths I seek to understand and live by. It sounds grand, but in extremes it’s an unreal world. My girls live much more in the here and now; they live in imaginative worlds populated by figures from stories and TV and music. What’s important, though, is that I have set aside my imaginative world for a while in order to move more freely about in theirs. And I have discovered dimensions of who they are in the process, and I fall in love.
I am convinced that we become who we imagine ourselves to be. Too often I imagine myself in ways related to my work. The experience of the past two weeks has reminded me of my fundamental vocation in the world. It’s not about my work, though that does express an important dimension of how God has gifted me. It’s about my marriage and my fathering, that sacramental context which, by definition, is oriented toward eternity. I have been reminded to slow down, to be part of the world of my children, to walk with them and discover who they are and who they are becoming. It is a wonder.
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July 16, 2010
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