The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything (15 page)

These invitations to listen can be easily overlooked because they are often fleeting. If we’re not careful, we’ll miss them.

Insights
are another way that God speaks in prayer. Perhaps you’re praying for clarity, and you receive an insight that allows you to see things in a new light. You may see a novel way of approaching an old problem.

Or you may, in a flash, perceive something surprising about God. Let’s say you’re reading a Gospel story that speaks of Jesus going off to pray by himself. You might have heard this story many times, but this time an insight arrives:
If even
Jesus
could take time off from his busy schedule to pray, perhaps I could do the same
. Here the experience is not so much emotional as intellectual.

While a few spiritual directors may privilege emotional moments in prayer, it’s important not to neglect the way that an intellectual insight can be as meaningful.

Memories
also float to the surface in prayer. Here God may invite you to remember something that consoles or delights you. What is God saying to you through those consoling memories?

A few years ago, for example, during a retreat in Gloucester, Massachusetts, I became consumed with doubts about chastity and concerned about loneliness as a celibate man. Not that I was thinking of breaking my vow. It was more of an abstract worrying. And I asked God to take away the loneliness.

Suddenly, as if a valve had been opened, warm memories flooded into my mind. Memories of the friends I had made since entering the Jesuits—this Jesuit from my novitiate; this sister in East Africa; this young woman I knew during my theology studies; even someone who worked at the retreat house where I was staying—arose into my consciousness. These memories reminded me of the love that I’ve been given in my Jesuit life.

Many might dismiss that as a coincidence: happening to remember these people just when I was praying about loneliness. But God often gives us such consoling memories as a way of saying,
Remember what I have done
.

In the Gospel of Luke (1:26–38), the angel Gabriel visits Mary to foretell the birth of Jesus. She questions Gabriel, saying, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Gabriel tells her that the Holy Spirit will “overshadow” her. He also reminds her that her elderly cousin, Elizabeth, is pregnant. “This is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.” In other words, see, and remember what God has already done.

Memories may reveal bitter things, too. One of the best examples comes from William Maxwell’s novel
So Long, See You Tomorrow,
the tale of a friendship between two young boys. Written in retrospect, the narrator tells the story of how his friend Cletus was ostracized by his schoolmates after his father murdered another man. One day in school, the narrator willfully ignores his former friend. Years later the narrator writes, in sorrow, Memories can both console us and move us to sorrow for our sins.

Feelings
are also important. Besides recognizable emotions— like joy and sorrow—more indistinct feelings, like a sense of peace or communion with God, can be signs of God’s voice. You may feel strongly connected with God in a way that may be incommunicable to others but deeply meaningful to you. You experience a strange desire for, coupled with a strange fear of, “I know not what.” Trust those moments, even though they are difficult to explain or, sometimes, understand.

Ignatius himself sometimes found what happened in prayer difficult to communicate. The fragments of his diary for 1544 include phrases like “with flashes of understanding too great to be written down,” “an experiencing . . . that cannot be explained,” and “a wonderful depth of reverence that I find impossible to explain.” Just because you can’t explain it or put it into words, doesn’t mean it’s not real.

Pay attention to
physical feelings
as well. Recently, I chatted with Matt, a young Jesuit in training, who had just directed a retreat for a group of young adults and spoke with them about how to listen to God. In addition to feelings of peace and comfort, and even inexplicable and incommunicable feelings, Matt added bodily feelings, another indication of God’s presence.

Let’s say you’re reading Psalm 23, which talks about God’s leading you through “green pastures” and “still waters,” and you feel your body relaxing physically. Pay attention. Or you come upon a passage in Scripture that you feel is inviting you to do something that you would rather avoid (like forgive someone) and you start feeling fidgety. What’s going on? Is God speaking to you through your physical reaction? Listen to your body, where God dwells.

Finally—as if we have to mention them again!—come
desires
. They arise in prayer frequently. There is the desire for God, which makes itself known in the ways we’ve discussed: the desire for holiness, the desire for change and growth in life, and all the desires we described in the past few chapters. Prayer is a key time for holy desires to arise.

In each of these cases it’s helpful to remember the story of Elijah, in the First Book of Kings, who patiently waits in a cave for the manifestation of God. First he hears a great wind, but God is not there. Then an earthquake, but God is not there. Then he sees a fire. But God is not there. Finally there is, as one translator has it, a “still small voice,” and Elijah covers his face, because he understands this as one way God communicates (1 Kings 19:12).

In such “still small” ways as emotions, insights, memories, feelings, and desires, God speaks to us in prayer.

But don’t forget to pay attention to what is going on in your
daily life
. That’s why the examen is so critical: it helps you listen to your day. Everyday events are perhaps the easiest part of your life to overlook; especially if you’ve been praying for some time you may inadvertently start privileging the contemplative over the active.

Reflecting on our daily lives is also an important way to discover how prayers are answered. Frequently we pray for something that we need and don’t receive what we had asked for. (That should be clear from anyone’s life.) But often we have to listen carefully for God’s response, to that “still small” voice.

We may also ask for something and fail to recognize that God is answering our prayer in a hidden or unexpected way. On that retreat, for example, I asked for an end to loneliness. In God’s response, I received the gift of memories, which helped me see that while there will always be some loneliness in my life, there is also an abundance of love.

It was a different answer to my prayers, but an answer nonetheless. Had I not been listening, I would not have heard the answer.

As in any good friendship, you not only have to listen, you have to listen carefully.

C
HANGING

Another aspect of healthy relationships is
change
. Friendships that began in childhood and adolescence can be among the richest of all. Yet if we don’t allow the other person to change, the friendship will not deepen and mature. Still, as with a friendship, change can be threatening in a person’s relationship with God.

Many believers assume that their relationship to God will remain the same—or should remain the same—as it was when they were children. Some adults feel, for instance, that they cannot be angry or disappointed with God, since they did not harbor those sentiments when they were young. Or, more likely, they were told that those feelings were wrong.

Recently an elderly Catholic woman sent me a copy of some questions from the
Baltimore Catechism,
the religious-instruction book used by many Catholic children from the end of the nineteenth century to the late 1960s. At the end of the chapter on sin, there were questions to help children better understand their faith. But some of them sound more like questions from a law-school exam. She marked the following with the ironic notation “a personal favorite.”

Pity poor Giles! And pity the poor third grader who had to puzzle out the answers. Of course religious rules and regulations have been around since (at least) the Ten Commandments. Jesus of Nazareth, during his short ministry, offered his own set of rules to his disciples. And nearly every organized religion has its own share of rules. (Check out the Catholic Church’s
Code of Canon Law
if you want a good example.) So do religious orders: my version of the Jesuit
Constitutions
runs to 502 pages.

Rules are an essential part of any community, since they enable us to live healthy lives in relationship with others. Rules bring order to the group. They also help order our personal lives. Ironically, some critics of religious rules designed to lead to spiritual health follow an even stricter set of rules designed to lead to physical health. Diet plans and exercise programs are often as draconian as any canon law.

But an overreliance on a rules-based religion can lead to an image of God as a stern traffic cop concerned only with enforcing the law or, as one friend said, a parole officer. How many children who memorized the
Baltimore Catechism
concluded that spiritual life was not an invitation to a relationship from a loving God but a series of complicated rules from a tyrant God?

This style of instruction may be necessary to educate young children, but if that teaching is never deepened it can hinder their ability to relate, as adults, to God. It would be as if in your twenties you related to your parents the same way you did in elementary school. The most obvious example of being stuck in a childhood idea of God, which I’ve heard from almost every person I’ve directed, is the tendency to see God not only as a judge but, worse—to use the image of the French philosopher René Descartes—as an “evil genius.”

When a person starts to be intentional about the spiritual life, prayer is usually delightful. Like any relationship, the initial period is one of infatuation. Reading Scripture and spiritual books is fun, talking with fellow believers about your spirituality is enjoyable, church services are rich. Everything is natural, easy, and joyful, just as in the start of a love affair.
Hooray,
you think,
I love being spiritual!

But soon you are invited—through prayer, conversation, or the voice of conscience—to amend your ways, to turn away from sinful behaviors, to surrender to a new way of life. In a word, to change. You may see that selfishness is inconsistent with your newfound beliefs. You may feel called to forgive someone against whom you’ve held a bitter grudge. You might feel drawn to living a simple life based on the Scriptures.

That’s when the fear comes.

It’s natural. Change is frightening. But this fear is different: it’s a fear of where God is leading you. It’s the fear that God is inviting you to something bad or dangerous. You think,
Even though I feel called to forgive this person, I’m sure it will be a disaster for me. God is going to trick me!
One young man, thinking about joining the Jesuits, feared that by following God’s invitation, he would end up miserable.

That’s when people may need to revisit their image of God. In these situations it’s helpful to dig deeper and ask,
Who is God for me?
Often one’s image is stuck in the third grade. Or the image is not life-giving: the stern judge, the distant father, or the unforgiving parent. “The particular image we have of God will depend very much on the nature of our upbringing and how we have reacted to it,” writes Gerard W. Hughes, S.J., in
God of Surprises,
“because our ideas and our felt knowledge derive from our experience.”

Religion itself may be a hindrance to developing a healthy image of God. In his book
God’s Mechanics,
the Jesuit scientist Guy Consolmagno, who works at the Vatican Observatory and has an advanced degree from MIT, speaks of a scientist’s faith in God. He notes, “One obvious way we can let a religion limit our view of the universe is by insisting that its doctrines are a complete and final description of nature and God.” God is bigger than religion.

Your childhood image of God may need to grow. When you’re a child, you may see God as I did: the Great Problem Solver. Later on, you might relate to God as parent. As you mature, you might relate to God in still different ways: Creator, Spirit, Love. Christians might find themselves looking at Jesus in a different way, too: not only as Savior and Messiah, but perhaps as brother and friend.

The way you relate to God often mirrors relationships in other parts of your life, particularly with parents or authority figures. But remember that while the image of parent is helpful (for some people), God is not your mother or father. This is especially important for anyone who has suffered physical, emotional, or mental abuse from a parent. Richard Leonard, a Jesuit priest, once said we’re relating to the best possible father or mother when we relate to God as parent.

Even if you feel drawn to the image of God as parent, remember that adult children relate to their parents in ways that differ from those of a child. In
A Friendship Like No Other,
Father Barry points out that when preachers speak of God as parent, they often use the image of the parent with a child. Barry believes that the “relationship between an
adult child
and his or her parent is a better image of the relationship God wants with us as adults.”