The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything (14 page)

Happily, the crisis passed. But after he had opened up to me, I felt closer to him, and he told me that he felt closer to me. Both of us were grateful for our friendship. Though I knew he didn’t lead the perfect life, I liked him even more. His honesty changed the relationship.

How can you be honest with God in prayer? One easy way is to imagine God right in front of you. You might imagine God, or Jesus, sitting across from you in a chair, or sitting beside you on a couch— use whatever image feels most comfortable. Then speak in a familiar way, in silence or out loud, about your life.

Of course God already knows what’s going on in your life. Still, this kind of openness is an important part of the spiritual life. Once again, comparing it to a friendship is instructive. Let’s say a loved one has died. A good friend already knows how sad you are, and probably doesn’t need to be told. But you tell her anyway, right?

Not too long ago I had lunch with a friend who lost his brother at a young age to cancer. My friend is a warm and generous person, and I knew that he was devastated by his brother’s loss. But it was still a privilege for me to hear him talk about what had happened, to see his tears, and to listen to him recount funny stories about his brother.

Telling your friend
anyway
helps to make the loss more concrete for you, it gives you the opportunity to accept your friend’s consolation, and it reminds you that you are known by another in an intimate way.

Being honest with God means sharing everything with God, not just the things that you think are appropriate for prayer, and not simply your gratitude and praise. Honesty means sharing things you might consider inappropriate for conversation with God.

Anger is a perfect example. It’s natural to be angry with God over suffering in our lives. Disappointment springs from all of us. Anger is a sign that we’re alive.

God can handle your anger no matter how hot it burns. God has been handling anger as long as humans have been praying. Just read the Book of Job in the Old Testament, where Job rails against God for causing his seemingly endless pain. Usually Job is seen as a patient man, and in the beginning of that book he is. But eventually Job loses his patience and begins to curse the day he was born. “I loathe my life,” he says. “I will give free utterances to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul” (Job 10:1).

Anger, sadness, frustration, disappointment, and bitterness in prayer have a long history. Why shouldn’t you allow yourself to express those same honest feelings too?

A few years ago, I told my spiritual director I was so frustrated that God didn’t seem to be doing anything to help me and that I used an obscenity in my prayer. One night I was so angry that I clenched my fists and shouted aloud, “How about some @#$% help, God!”

Some readers might be shocked that a priest would use language like that, especially in prayer. And I thought my spiritual director, a wise and gentle Jesuit priest named Damian, would reproach me. Instead Damian said, “That’s a good prayer.”

I thought he was kidding.

“That’s a good prayer because it’s honest,” he said. “God wants your honesty, Jim.” Being honest also made me feel that God now knew exactly how I felt. Have you ever had the experience of confiding something to a friend and feeling relief? It felt like God could now better accompany me, as a good friend might. Or, more accurately, I would be able to allow God to accompany me.

Saying it aloud also brought me face-to-face with my lamentable lack of gratitude. Sure, there was a big problem in my life, but there were some wonderful things going on at the same time. It was like an adolescent saying to his parent, “I hate you!” because he was asked to go to bed early or turn off his video games or take out the trash. Hearing myself talk like that—out loud—revealed how part of my relationship with God was childish and how much I wanted to change my approach to prayer.

So Damian was right: it
was
a good prayer!

Sadness is something else that some people feel reluctant to share with God. Someone once told me of the experience of going to a movie with a close friend. Because the subject material intersected with his life, he began to sob at the end of the movie and was embarrassed. Later on, as the two sat together in a car in the parking lot, his friend sat silently and simply let him cry.

His friend wasn’t the only one showing love. The person weeping allowed another to enter into his life, giving the gift of intimacy. Can you share with God the intimate gift of your true self, your true emotions, even when you are grieving?

But when it comes to prayer, the most inappropriate emotion, at least in many minds, is sexual desire.

One of the best books on prayer is
God, I Have Issues,
by Mark Thibodeaux, one of the most lighthearted Jesuits I know. Each chapter addresses prayer during different moods. The moods are organized alphabetically so that you can thumb through the book when you are: Addicted, Afraid, Angry, Angry at You, and so on.

One chapter is titled “Sexually Aroused.” Mark begins his essay bluntly: “Good Christian people often worry about their sexual feelings. They are embarrassed and ashamed of them.”

Mark reminds us that sexuality and sexual activity are wondrous gifts from God to be celebrated. On a natural level they draw people together for the sake of companionship and creating new life. On a spiritual level those feelings remind us of the love that God has for us. Many spiritual writers use erotic love as a metaphor for God’s love for humanity. (Check out the Bible’s Song of Songs if you have any doubts.)

But like any gift, sexuality must be used wisely. If motivated by selfishness, it can turn into a desire for possessiveness. On a much more benign level, sexual thoughts during prayer can also be a distraction. So what do we do with those feelings in prayer?

Again, the solution is being honest. “Instead of hiding these experiences, we should share them with God,” says Mark, “and use them to remind us how great it is to be alive, how great it is to be a creature of God and how wondrously we are created.” If that doesn’t work, or if those feelings are troublesome because they are directed to a person with whom you cannot have a relationship, just be honest with God about your struggles.

Be honest with God about everything.

L
ISTENING

Friendship requires listening. You would scarcely consider yourself a good friend if all you did was talk and talk and talk. But that’s what happens in some relationships with God. People sometimes find their prayer is just a recitation of things they need (too much petitionary prayer) or an endless stream of letting God know how they are (too much talking). As in any friendship, we need to listen.

But what does it mean to “listen” to God? This baffled me in the novitiate. Does it mean hearing voices?

Few people say they have heard God’s voice in a physical way. (That is, few sane people.) But it does happen. Mysterious notations in Ignatius’s personal diaries, speaking about his prayer, refer to
loquela,
loosely translated as speech, discourse, or talking.

The most recent example may be Mother Teresa, who wrote that in 1946 she “heard” God ask her to work with the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Earlier, Mother Teresa had made a promise to God to never refuse anything that God asked of her. Then, years later, as she told her spiritual director, when she heard God’s voice asking her to leave behind her work in a girls’ school, she, not surprisingly, was reluctant to leave behind her work for something new and, it seemed, dangerous.

She reported that God, as if recalling her earlier promise, said to her, “Wilt thou refuse?” Mother Teresa accepted God’s invitation to work among the poor. (By the way, she could have said no. Our relationship with God does not obliterate free will.)

But the kinds of experiences reported by Mother Teresa are exceedingly, exceedingly rare. So it’s probably best for the rest of us to set aside our pious hopes—or unwarranted fears—that we’re going to hear voices in a literal way.

In twenty-one years as a Jesuit I’ve only met two people who have told me they have heard God speak to them. One is Maddy, a joyful and prayerful woman who is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Springfield, Massachusetts. Maddy and I first got to know each other when we were both working in East Africa in the 1990s. Today she works at the Jesuit retreat house in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where we have often directed retreats together.

Since we are longtime friends, I figured I knew her well. But this no-nonsense woman surprised me during one of these retreats when, during an afternoon talk to the retreatants, she said that when she was young and considering entering a religious order, she heard God’s voice saying, “I have chosen you to be with me. You will find your way.”

Before entering the Jesuits, I would have thought Maddy was insane. But now I believe that those moments—while very rare indeed—can be privileged experiences of God’s presence. Still, we have to weigh them carefully, ruling out any psychological illness, comparing them to what we know about God, and submitting them to experienced spiritual guides.

Most of us will never have that kind of experience. (I never have.) So if you’re worried about hearing voices, don’t be. Or if you’re frustrated that you’re
not
hearing God speak to you in that way, don’t be.

On the other hand, many people say that during prayer, even though they don’t audibly hear God’s voice, they feel
as if
God were speaking with them. This can happen in ways both subtle and not so subtle. It can even happen outside of formal prayer. For example, a friend may say something so insightful that it is almost as if a window into your soul had just been opened: you may feel as if your friend’s words are a way that God is communicating with you.

Another example: my mother once told me that she was looking out the window and said to God, “Do you love me?” And the words “More than you know!” instantly came to mind. “It wasn’t a voice; it just popped into my head.” My mother wasn’t seeking that answer; it came spontaneously. And of course God
does
love her more than she can know. But for many people these experiences are rare, too.

So, are there other ways to listen to God? Absolutely.

Sometimes, for example, when you try imagining yourself speaking with God, you might also try imagining what God would say in return. That’s a popular way of prayer for many Christians, and it is something that Ignatius suggests as one technique in the Spiritual Exercises.

Praying in that particular way is difficult for me. But for some people it’s not difficult at all. When they picture themselves speaking with God, they can easily imagine God speaking to them, naturally and easily. Sometimes it helps to imagine listening to Jesus in a familiar place from Scripture—like by the Sea of Galilee or even in his house at Nazareth. However, what you imagine him saying must always be tested against what you know about God, what you know about yourself, and what your faith community believes about God. Does it lead you to be more loving and compassionate? Does it sound authentic? “God’s words,” as Vinita Hampton Wright says in
Days of Deepening Friendship,
“have the ring of truth.”

If that kind of prayer is too difficult, you might try something that I stumbled upon recently: imagine what you think God
would
say based on what you know about God.

Here’s where the friendship analogy is again helpful. Let’s say you have an elderly friend who is known for giving excellent advice. She’s experienced, wise, and compassionate. Over the years, you have come to appreciate, and know, her outlook on life. When you tell her a problem, sometimes you don’t even have to wait for her to respond: you
know
what she’s going to say.

Since it’s hard for me to imagine God literally speaking to me, I sometimes ask myself, “Given what I know about God through Scripture, through experience, and through tradition, what would God
probably
say about this?” Usually it’s not hard to imagine at all. And, as the authors of
The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed
note, “Often communication is ‘felt’ or intuited, rather than heard as ordinary conversation.”

But for most people the idea of listening to God is even more subtle than the ways I’ve just been describing. So let’s look at how God
most often
communicates in prayer with people. The following are more common ways to listen to God’s voice in prayer.

L
ISTENING
C
AREFULLY

Emotions
are a key way that God speaks in prayer. You might be praying about a favorite Bible passage, and suddenly you feel happiness over being closer to God, or anger over how Jesus or the prophets were mistreated, or sorrow over the plight of the poor. God may be speaking to you through those emotions. Remember the story of Wanda, the unemployed woman in the community center? During my prayer, I felt sorrow for her, which seemed to have been one way that God was leading me to care for her.