This Ignatian Life

I tried not to look because mass was in full course. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him only when people started to stare and shuffle: probably a foreigner, as they call them here in Italy, of unidentifyable southern European complexion. A beggar. A nuisance on a Sunday morning – we are here to pray after all! He started walking around. Wrinkled face but not a streak of gray in the brown hair under his hat. A heavy bag over his shoulder.

Two people blocked his entry (gently) to the altar room, so he walked around the back, holding out his little plastic cup, asking (gently) for some coins. People gently talked to him, smiled at him. He didn’t seem to understand Italian.

Still trying not to stare, I assumed he was gone when I didn’t see him at the sign of peace, but probably he was busy shaking hands somewhere. We are a welcoming community, after all. During communion, he walked aimlessly up and around the altar, then around the back of the pews. As far as I could see, a total of four people tried to talk him out of the church during the 20 minutes he was with us. One of them eventually convinced him, walked him to the door and off he went.

After mass, it turned out that a number of people I talked to were convinced that no action would have been necessary. I would guess there were probably about thirty people (we are a small congregation) who were too shy to ask him to take a seat, warm his hands, invite him to take part in the mass. The four sensible ones did what seemed best for the community, on our behalf.

Here is how I want to look at it: Jesus came to visit us in church yesterday to check in on us. Some of us mistook him for a beggar and he ended up being gently ushered out. I assume he got nailed to some cross around the corner from the church, or, given the raising xenophobia in Italy, in any case will be eventually. Some cross or other.

“All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men (and women) to do nothing.”

Will I stand up next time? Will I stand by the beggar and turn my back to my sensible friends? All I can do is hope that the Gospel message will eventually sink in, that I will eventually act on it. It’s a long process.

Photo: “Begger Outside a Church in Rome” by christopher.woo from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

For the last week (10-16 November), I have been with a group of almost 50 people from all over the world in El Escorial, outside Madrid, in Spain. What we attempted to do has never been done before: to define the nature of advocacy, specifically Ignatian advocacy, using a process that included elements of common apostolic discernment (i.e. discernment as a group) as well as a “normal” methodology for group decision processes. The group was composed of (a majority of) Jesuits, lay women and men working in Jesuit institutions and NGOs, and a representative from Christian Life Communities.

As I am not an expert in advocacy, I had asked to be in charge of the liturgies: morning prayers and evening eucharists. It was only the second time that I was preparing 15-minute prayer sessions for a group and the challenge to find meaningful material seemed a little overwhelming at first. In fact, it took me entire days but every minute of it was fun and worth it. I will never know if people actually noticed that I was leading them along the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises (the first four days) plus one day where we reflected on the Holy Spirit as ‘Advocate’. Neither did it matter that much – people will always find surprising insights where you don’t expect it at all.

The most surprising insight for me was what I got from it myself. I had prepared the prayers, I had read them before, watched all the videos, listened to the music, so there was nothing unexpected for me in there. However, every morning, the prayers touched me anew, gave me a new insight, moved me in some way.

One of the videos I showed had been produced for the General Congregation at the beginning of this year. Did you see the ultrasound picture of a fetus? Have you ever thought of the Incarnation in this way?

Or this text that took on a very concrete meaning when we read it on the morning of the fourth day, the “crunch” day where we had most difficulties in moving on as a group:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some 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 circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming in you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ)

I came away from this one-week Workshop physically exhausted but spiritually challenged and refreshed. How did that happen? I was on the organising team and we never planned for spirituality to take a big role in the workshop, apart from the morning and evening “input”. And yet, as people kept referring to the Kingdom of God as our vision in advocacy and eventually, on the last day, among all the other actions planned, the group decided to start a network on Ignatian Spirituality and Advocacy, I felt that we were being moved by something bigger than “group dynamics”. I pray that the movement of the Spirit will be as perceivable in implementing Ignatian advocacy on the ground and through our new networks as it has been during the week in Spain.

Click here to read the full blog of what happened during the Ignatian Advocacy Workshop.