This Ignatian Life

When I’m faced with making significant decisions, I often just go with my “gut” feeling.  This may or may not be the most Ignatian strategy.  Certainly, Ignatius advises the retreatant in the Spiritual Exercises to be attentive to the movements of the spirits in her life, but I don’t know that my “gut” is always the same as the good spirit.  In fact, I’m almost sure that my (often disordered) attachments influence my intuitive reactions.

Now that I’m faced with making a significant decision about my time commitments in the upcoming year, my gut seems to be failing me.  Stuck in this place of indecision and confusion, I went back to the second week of the Spiritual Exercises to recall how Ignatius explains his ways for making a “sound and good” election.  Ignatius’ suggestions initially seem a bit banal; for example, the retreatant should create a pro/con list, he urges, and make her decision based on the relative reasonableness of each choice.  Simple, right?  Alone, this seems unrelated to faith in God, but when I re-looked at the whole of Ignatius’ system, I found myself amazed at his simple profundity.

First and foremost, Ignatius reminds the retreatant that she was created to praise and serve God and to save her soul.  In other words, whenever she makes a decision, she must ask how the outcome will affect her capacity for and ability to love and serve God and others.  At that point, placing herself in a place of balance, she invites God to move her will.  If a decision is not made immediately obvious, she may go to the pro/con list, imagine the advice she would give to a stranger in the same scenario, ask herself what choice she would prefer if she were facing death, and/or ask herself how she would answer to Christ, her “judge,” if he were evaluating her decision.  These concrete steps all must be tied back to that prelude: how will any decision she makes affect her praise and love for God and others?

The beauty of Ignatian spirituality is that it neither floats into esoteric reflection nor deteriorates into mechanistic rubrics.  Ignatius offers meditative insight coupled with practical techniques – the perfect combination when making a tough decision.  I haven’t made my choice yet, but going back to the Second Week has equipped me as I continue to discern.

I’ve been quite impatient lately. Well, let me restate that: I’m a perpetually impatient person who has been feeling a particularly severe pull towards impatience lately.  These last few weeks I’ve been impatient for spring break to arrive, and then Easter, and then the summer, and then another year.  Another year when I will be stronger, more disciplined, more diligent, more prepared, more focused.  Impatient for settledness. Impatient for meaning. Impatient for healing. I’m always waiting for that time to arrive…But someone in my life recently reminded me that we can only live in the moment.  Trite and cliche, I know.  Something I’ve heard countless times.  But the way she said it to me struck me profoundly, because she reminded me that each moment I spend “living” in the future is a moment I’ve failed to experience the now.  I cannot live in some imagined time when things will be better. I think in the fatigue and anxiety that seems to be plaguing me lately, I particularly need to be reminded to be in the present.  In that spirit, I will share a prayer that I recently rediscovered that I think is apt as I commit myself to living in the present, particularly during this Lenten season, when it is so very easy to grow tired of the waiting.Above all, trust in the slow work of GodWe are quite naturally impatient in everythingto reach the end without delay.We should like to skip the intermediate stages.We are impatient of being on the way to somethingunknown, something new.And yet it is the law of all progressthat it is made by passing throughsome stages of instability –and that it may take a very long time.And so I think it is with you.your ideas mature gradually – let them grow,let them shape themselves, without undue haste.Don’t try to force them on,as though you could be today what time(that is to say, grace and circumstancesacting on your own good will)will make of you tomorrow.Only God could say what this new spiritgradually forming you will be.Give Our Lord the benefit of believingthat his hand is leading you,and accept the anxiety of feeling yourselfin suspense and incomplete.Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ(printed in Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits, Ed. Michael Harter, SJ, The Institute of Jesuit Sources, St. Louis, 1993)
Photo: “Impatience“by mdezemery from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

When Lent approaches, the question always begins: “What are you giving up this year?”  Not having grown up Catholic, I always vaguely envied my friends who got to whine and sulk for forty days while they went without their vice of choice.  Of course, the vices of fifth graders are quite tame; my friends always seemed to be giving up relatively mundane things like eating Skittles, watching television, or being mean to a little brother.  When I became Catholic, I have to admit I was secretly excited to be a part of this Lenten club – what would I give up?  I thought about it for weeks.  Giving up foods held a strange conflict for me – I didn’t want Lent to be a diet plan (and God knows I’m always trying to lose weight).  I figured I could give up television, or wine, or lattes… but none of those things seem to regularly get in the way of my relationship with God.  What might I give up that would truly draw me into a deeper and more life giving relationship with God?  As I was praying about this last year, the Holy Spirit gave me a remarkable revelation.  Why not give up fear?Now, I’m not a timid or frightful person, but last year I began to realize how many of my actions came out of places of deep fear – fear of being hurt, fear of being rejected, fear of looking stupid, fear of being judged, fear of being alone, fear of failing.  I have to admit, my steps towards giving up fear last year weren’t horribly profound.  I went to a concert alone – something I never wanted to do in the past because I felt like people would think of me as a loser.  I tried a new weight machine at the gym, one I had always avoided thinking the meatheads would laugh at my ineptitude.  I initiated a conversation with someone I admired and had been afraid to talk to, thinking he would find me uninteresting.  These tiny steps revealed to me that much of my fear is irrational and the bits that are not irrational are not healthy.  So what if someone laughs at me?  So what if someone doesn’t like me?  So what if someone judges me?  A failure to act beyond those fears was preventing me (and still prevents me, I know) from living the abundant, loving life God is calling me to experience.So, where does Ignatian spirituality fit into all of this?  Inspired by Ignatius, this year for Lent, I’m going a step further.  For the next forty days, I’m going to attempt to fast not only from fear, but from insecurity, anxiety, and self-doubt.  Ignatius reminds us that these feelings are very rarely from God.  As Ignatius points out in the Spiritual Exercises, the enemy “uses discouragement and deception… dissatisfaction… [and] doubts and anxieties” to detract us from our attempts to “pursue the lead of God in our life.” (Paragraph 315, David Fleming translation). Giving up chocolate or beer will not likely help me follow Christ more dearly, but starving my fears will undoubtedly enable me to be cognizant of the areas of unfreedom in my life.  This Lent, I pray for the grace to experience the satiated feeling that comes from feeding my soul with the truth of God rather than the temporary fix that comes when I binge on the lies of the enemy.
Photo: “The Self Doubting Second Guessing Demon“by trixi from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

I teach sophomore high school Church History. Not an easy task, I suppose. The text we use begins with an introduction to the word church and the various models of church that one can think about when trying to understand what we mean when we use that oft-loaded word. In an attempt to discover a unique way to approach this somewhat complex topic, I created a quiz for my students to take: “What is your model of church?” It’s admittedly unscientific and intentionally absolutist, but I still think it is an interesting excercise to introduce the notion of models of church.

This got me thinking: what is the Ignatian model of church? If Ignatius were to take my silly little quiz, what would he score? While I’ve not read much of Ignatius’ correspondance and can certainly not claim to be an expert in his thought, I reflected on what I do know about the first Jesuit. Clearly Ignatius had no strong aversions to the institutional church; he willingly entered formation for the priesthood when it became clear that would be the conducive route for his ministry and his Society pledged absolute loyalty to the Pope. He was undoubtedly a disciple of Christ willing to live counterculturally – how else can you explain his time at Manresa or his extensive work among the sick in Paris? His emphasis on the church as Body of Christ is evident in his depth of insight into the ways his directees and companions had so many different gifts and talents to contribute. Sacramentality was a core component of Ignatius’ vision also – in the Exercises he stresses the importance of the Eucharist and Reconciliation explicitly. A more implicit sacramentality is found in his recognition of the movements of the Spirit in the world. The Society of Jesus was (and remains today) a missionary organization, so Ignatius’ desire to perpetuate the “Herald” aspect of the church can not be disputed. There is no clear “model of church” that Ignatius seemed to favor.

This left me thinking Ignatius would probably come to the same conclusion that I have: any models of church we attempt to create are ultimately deficient. At the end of the day, the church is both all and absolutely none of these models. These frameworks help us understand various aspects of the church, but also tend to trivialize the interdependency of these assorted functions of the Church. The Church ultimately is a complete mystery. A beautiful, glorious mystery I am thrilled to be a part of…

Photo: “The Mystery Light“by att21 from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)