Occasionally, I have periods of great clarity regarding my spiritual life. This often happens when I am talking with friends who, like me, spend time cultivating their spiritual lives. I imagine that Ignatius may have had similar moments of clarity when he was talking with his roommates, Francis Xavier and Peter Faber, in their room at the University of Paris. Together, they would go on to found the Society of Jesus, so there must have been some illuminating conversations among those three! Like the process of clarifying butter, speaking aloud to a spiritual friend that which is often kept in the silence of the heart can help us come to a clearer perspective.
As I was chatting with my friend the other day, I was telling her that when I was praying, I was asking for something big for this family member or that friend, but for myself, I didn’t want to ask too much, because I had already asked for that other “big thing.” For example, I might pray, “Please watch over my family, help Sally during her cancer treatments, and, oh, by the way, if you have time, I have this little thing I could use help with…”
When I heard what I had said aloud, I was incredulous! I realized that I was bargaining with God as if God had a limited bag of gifts for the whole world and would dole out only one to me.
I was incredulous, because I preach God’s unlimited generosity. And I believe this deep in my bones because, as Mary prays in the Magnificat, “the Lord has done great things for me.” I have had no shortage of hardship in life, but I have even more abundant stories of God doing great things for me in my life.
So why am I still bargaining with God to bless others and skimping on my requests for God’s blessings on me?
I’m sure it’s a complicated answer rooted in the fact that I am human. Even though I know that God’s ways are not our ways and that God cannot be outdone in generosity, I still sometimes project human limitations onto God.
In fact, according to Ignatius, given my deep awareness of God’s generosity, it might even be a temptation of the enemy not to recognize God’s desire to bless me in abundance and beyond what I might imagine could be possible.
What should I do?
- Be gentle with myself, and bring the situation to Jesus. When I do this, I imagine Jesus smiling and gently and affirmingly saying, “It’s OK; you’re still learning!”
- Listen to St. Ignatius, and pray for the grace! In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius tells us to ask for the grace we wish to receive before we settle into prayer. In my situation, I would ask for the grace for my mind to be illuminated by the Holy Spirit so that I might remember God’s abundant generosity to me. I would pray for the grace to recall that God cannot be outdone in generosity. Always, Ignatius urges, pray for the grace, because we cannot do anything but through the grace of God, because God gifts us everything!
What would you like to pray for the grace for today?
Photo by Evi Odioko on Unsplash.