Read The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything Online
Authors: James Martin
One can imagine the journalist anticipating a boilerplate answer like “Jesus Christ is my Savior” or “Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
Instead, Arrupe said, “For me Jesus Christ is everything!” That is a good shorthand for how Ignatius looked at God.
But not everyone reading this book has that kind of relationship with God. Maybe few people do. For people on the path of independence, the path of disbelief, the path of exploration, or the path of confusion, the question is less about devoting oneself to God entirely and more about something else, the question that began our discussion: how do I find God?
Here is where we can turn to an important insight of Ignatius: God can speak directly with people in astonishingly personal ways. This can lead even the doubtful and confused and lost to God. The key, the leap of faith required, is believing that these intimate experiences are ways God
communicates
with you.
In his
Spiritual Exercises,
Ignatius wrote that the Creator deals “immediately with the creature and the creature with its Creator.” God communicates with us. Seekers, then, need to be aware of the variety of ways that God has of communicating with us, of making God’s presence known.
In other words, the beginning of the path to finding God is awareness. Not simply awareness of the ways that you can find God, but an awareness that God desires to find you.
That brings us to the first important moment in the life of Ignatius: his initial conversion. By focusing more carefully on this one particular incident, you can see how God can use everything to find you. So let’s return to that event and look at it in greater detail.
L
ITTLE BY
L
ITTLE
Iñigo of Loyola, as I mentioned earlier, was thirty years old when his leg was shattered by a cannonball during the siege of a castle by the French military in Pamplona in 1521. This pivotal incident, which might have been merely a tragic setback to another person, marked the beginning of Ignatius’s new life.
After Ignatius stayed in Pamplona for several days, his French captors, who treated him “with courtesy and kindness,” brought him back to his family’s castle, where the doctors reset the bone. To do so, they had to break the leg. “This butchery was done again,” he writes in his
Autobiography
. His condition worsened, and those around him, worried that he was about to die, arranged for him to have the last rites.
Finally he recovered. Yet Ignatius noticed something troubling: the bone below one knee had been poorly set, shortening his leg. “The bone protruded so much that it was an ugly business.” Now his vanity took over. “He was unable to abide it,” he wrote, “because he was determined to follow the world.” He couldn’t abide the idea of being thought unattractive.
Despite the pain involved, he asked the surgeons to cut away the bone. Looking back, the older Ignatius recognized his foolishness. “He was determined to make himself a martyr to his own pleasure,” he wrote.
During his subsequent convalescence, Ignatius was unable to find books on what he most enjoyed reading: adventure stories and tales of chivalry. The only things available were a life of Jesus and the lives of the saints. To his surprise, he found that he enjoyed the tales of the saints. Thinking about what the saints had done filled him with a sense that they would be “easy to accomplish.”
Still, he was attracted to the ideals of knightly service, and when he wasn’t reading about the life of Christ or the lives of the saints, he mused about doing great deeds for “a certain lady.” Even though her station was higher than a countess or a duchess, Ignatius was obsessed on winning her over with daring exploits. In this way he wasn’t very different from some men in our time, or any time for that matter.
So he went back and forth, thinking about doing heroic things for the noble lady and doing heroic things for God.
Then a strange thing happened, something that would influence not only Ignatius but the life of every Jesuit and anyone who has followed the way of Ignatius.
Ignatius slowly realized that the
aftereffects
of these thoughts were different. After he thought about impressing his “certain lady” with exploits on the battlefield, he felt one way. After thinking about doing great things and undergoing hardships for God, he felt another.
I’ll let him describe it in one of the most famous passages in his autobiography:
Yet there was a difference. When he was thinking about the things of the world, he took much delight in them, and afterwards, when he was tired and put them aside, he found that he was dry and discontented. But when he thought of going to Jerusalem, barefoot and eating nothing but herbs and undergoing all the things that the saints endured, not only was he consoled when he had these thoughts, but even after putting them aside, he remained content and happy.
He did not notice this, however; nor did he stop to ponder the difference until one day his eyes were opened a little, and he began to marvel at the difference, realizing from experience that some thoughts left him sad and others happy. Little by little he came to recognize the difference between the spirits that agitated him, one from the enemy and one from God.
Ignatius began to understand that these feelings and desires might be ways that God was communicating with him. This is not to say that Ignatius found God and women in opposition. Rather, he began to see that his desires of winning fame by impressing others drew him away from God. His desires to surrender to a more generous and selfless way of life drew him toward God. What religious writers call a “grace” was not simply that he
had
these insights, but that he
understood them as comingfrom God
.
As a result of his experience, Ignatius began to understand that God wants to communicate with us. Directly.
This idea would get Ignatius in trouble with the Inquisition and land him in jail. (Ignatius had his own problems with “religion” at times.) Some critics suspected that Ignatius was trying to bypass the institutional church. If God could deal with humanity directly, they wondered, what need was there for the church?
As I’ve mentioned, religion enables people to encounter God in profound ways in their lives. But Ignatius recognized that God could not be confined within the walls of the church. God was larger than the church.
Today the Ignatian notion of the Creator’s dealing directly with human beings is less controversial. It’s assumed by those on the “spiritual but not religious” journey. The far more controversial idea these days is that God would speak to us through religion.
But Ignatius’s insight is as liberating today as it was in his time. And it is here that Ignatian spirituality can help even the doubtful find God.
Some agnostics or atheists await a rational argument or a philosophical proof to demonstrate the existence of God. Some will not believe until someone can show them how suffering can coexist with the belief in God. A few may even hope for an incontrovertible physical “sign” to convince them of God’s presence.
But God often speaks in ways that are beyond our intellect or reason, beyond philosophical proofs. While many are brought to God through the mind, just as many are brought to God through the heart. Here God often speaks more gently, more quietly, as he did during Ignatius’s convalescence. In these quiet moments God often speaks the loudest.
Let’s look at some examples of these quiet, heartfelt moments in our own lives.
You are holding an infant, maybe your own, who looks at you with wide-open eyes, and you are filled with a surprising sense of gratitude or awe. You wonder:
Where do these powerful feelings come from? I’ve never felt like this before
.
You are walking along the beach, and as you cast your eyes to the horizon, you are filled with a sense of peace that is all out of proportion to what you expect. You wonder:
Why am I getting so emotional about the beach?
You are in the midst of a sexual encounter with your husband or wife, or an intimate moment with your girlfriend or boyfriend, and you marvel at your capacity for joy. You wonder:
How can I be so happy?
You are out to dinner or with a friend and feel a sudden sense of contentment, and you recognize how lucky you are to be blessed with her friendship. You wonder:
This is an ordinary night. Where did this deep feeling come from?
You have finally been able to come to terms with a tragedy in your life, a sickness or death, or you find yourself consoled by a friend, and you are overcome with calm. You wonder:
How is it that I am finally at peace in the midst of such sadness?
Gratitude, peace, and joy are ways that God communicates with us. During these times, we are feeling a real connection with God, though we might not initially identify it as such. The key insight is accepting that these are ways that God is communicating with us. That is, the first step involves a bit of trust.
Conversely, during times of stress and doubt and sorrow and anger, we can also experience God’s communication.
You accompany a good friend or relative struggling with a horrible illness, or maybe you are ill. You think:
How could this happen?
And you feel a desperate need, an urgent longing, for some comfort or connection.
You are in the midst of a stressful time and wonder how you can ever get through the day. Then someone says something that goes straight to your heart, consoling you out of all proportion to the words, and you feel supported and loved. You think:
How could just those few words help me?
You are at a funeral and wonder over the meaning of human life. Or you are tired and stressed from your life and wonder how much more you can take. You think:
Is there anyone out there aware of me, who is looking out for me?
In each of these times—happy and sad, consoling and confusing, intimate and overwhelming—something special is happening, something more than just emotional “projection.” The excess of feeling seems disproportionate to the cause, or perhaps it’s hard to see
any
obvious cause. As well, there is a certain expansion of the soul, a loss of inhibition, and perhaps even an increase in one’s feelings of love and generosity. (Abraham Maslow, the social psychologist, spoke of these as “peak experiences.”) There may even be a change in one’s outlook on life, and a great sense of peace or joy.
During these times, I believe, you are feeling a manifestation of your innate attraction to God. You are feeling what St. Augustine described in the fourth century. “Lord, our hearts are restless,” he wrote, “until they rest in you.” The pull that draws you to God comes from God.
Now we need to talk about that attraction from a different angle, and using another word. We’re going to talk about something that Ignatius considered to be at the heart of the spiritual life. And it might surprise you.
We’re going to talk about desire.
T
WO OF THE
G
OSPELS
include the deceptively simple story of Jesus of Nazareth meeting a blind beggar along the road. In the Gospel of Mark, he is given a name: Bartimaeus, which in Hebrew means “son of Timaeus” (see Mark 10:46–52).
Bartimaeus is seated by the side of the road, begging for alms, when Jesus and his disciples pass by. The Gospels say that a “large crowd” was following Jesus, so there must have been a great commotion. You can easily picture the blind man wondering what is going on.
When Bartimaeus hears who is passing by, he shouts, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Here is some irony: as Mark tells it, most in the crowd have no idea who Jesus is. Jesus’ true identity as the Messiah is kept hidden from most people. (Theologians call this the “Messianic secret.”) The blind man, however, sees.
The crowd shushes Bartimaeus. But he is insistent and shouts out again. The blind man, who has probably been ignored for most of his life, wants Jesus to notice him. The unseen man wants to be seen.
Finally, Jesus hears him and invites him over. In a bit of storytelling that has the ring of truth, the man’s friends, who had previously been shushing him, now say, “Get up, he is calling you.” With a gesture of freedom, he throws off his cloak and approaches Jesus.
Jesus says to Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?”
“My teacher,” he says, “let me see again.”
“Receive your sight,” says Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. “Your faith has saved you.” Bartimaeus is healed and follows Jesus along the way.
When I first heard this story as a Jesuit novice, it baffled me. Why would Jesus ask Bartimaeus what he wanted? Jesus could see that the guy was blind. And Jesus already had several healings to his credit, so he knew not only that the sick wanted to be healed but that he
could
heal them.
So why does he ask that question? Gradually, an answer dawned on me: Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he wants, not so much for himself as for the blind man. Jesus was helping the man identify his
desire,
and to be clear about it.
Desire has a disreputable reputation in religious circles. When most people hear the term, they think of two things: sexual desire or material wants, both of which are often condemned by some religious leaders. The first is one of the greatest gifts from God to humanity; without it the human race would cease to exist. The second is part of our natural desire for a healthy life—for food, shelter, and clothing.
Desire may be difficult for some people to accept in their spiritual lives. One of the best books on the way of Ignatius is
The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed,
written by Katherine Dyckman, Mary Garvin and Elizabeth Liebert, three Catholic sisters. In their book, they suggest that some dynamics of Ignatian spirituality may present obstacles for women and may need to be reimagined. Desire is one of them. “Women may often feel that paying attention to their desires is somehow selfish and that they should not honor their desires if they are being truly generous with God.” The authors encourage women to “notice” and “name” their desires.
Why this emphasis on desire? Because desire is a key way that God speaks to us.
Holy desires are different from surface wants, like “I want a new car” or “I want a new computer.” Instead, I’m talking about our deepest desires, the ones that shape our lives: desires that help us know who we are to become and what we are to do. Our deep desires help us know God’s desires for us and how much God desires to be with us. And God, I believe, encourages us to notice and name these desires, in the same way that Jesus encouraged Bartimaeus to articulate his desire. Recognizing our desires means recognizing God’s desires for us.
Here’s a dramatic story to illustrate this. At least it was dramatic for me.
F
ATHER
? F
ATHER
? F
ATHER
?
A few months before I was to be ordained a deacon (the final step before the priesthood), I started to get migraine headaches—almost every week. At the time I was in the middle of theology studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Life was only moderately stressful, and I had suffered from migraines before, but never with such intensity. I decided to see a doctor.
After some tests, the doctor informed me that he had seen a “spot” on my test results. He suspected that it was a small tumor under my jaw that would have to be removed.
At the time, I was something of a hypochondriac, so even though my father had had the same operation thirty years before and had recovered, I was terrified. What if it were cancer? What if I were disfigured? What if? What if?
Fortunately, my friend Myles is a Jesuit physician. (That doesn’t mean that he is a physician who takes care of Jesuits only; he’s a physician who’s also a Jesuit.) Myles offered to arrange the surgery at the Catholic hospital in Chicago where he worked, with a doctor he knew well. By way of convincing me, he invited me to stay in his Jesuit community during the subsequent recuperation. What a relief! I was grateful for his friendship, his professional help, and his compassion.
Until this time I had never had major surgery. Fear welled up within me, and with it self-pity. Yet when I saw all the others in the hospital waiting room a few weeks before the surgery, I realized the truth of what Myles had said: When you get your diagnosis you ask, “Why me?” When you meet others who suffer, you ask, “Why not me?”
On the morning of the surgery, lying on a cold hospital table, with tubes snaking out of my arms, I was consumed with fear. Myles entered the room in his surgeon’s gown and introduced me as a Jesuit to the physicians and nurses in the operation room. After saying a few words of encouragement and promising he would pray for me, he left.
A nurse stuck a needle in my arm, placed a mask over my face, and asked me to count backward from one hundred. I had seen this dozens of times in the movies and on television.
Suddenly an incredible desire surged up from deep within me. It was like a jet of water rushing up from the depths of the ocean to its surface. I thought,
I hope I don’t die, because I want to be a priest!
The Energy of Life Itself
We tend to think that if we desire something, it is probably something we ought not to want or to have. But think about it: without desire we would never get up in the morning. We would never have ventured beyond the front door. We would never have read a book or learned something new. No desire means no life, no growth, no change. Desire is what makes two people create a third person. Desire is what makes crocuses push up through the late-winter soil. Desire is energy, the energy of creativity, the energy of life itself. So let’s not be too hard on desire.
—Margaret Silf,
Wise Choices
I had never felt it so strongly before. Of course I had thought about the priesthood from the day I entered the novitiate and felt drawn to the life of a priest throughout my Jesuit training. But never was there a time when I felt that desire so ardently. Perhaps it was something of what Bartimaeus felt when Jesus was passing by.
When I awoke hours later, it was as if I had been asleep for only a few moments. In my foggy state I dimly heard someone calling my name. Since Myles had told the physicians and nurses that I was a Jesuit, they assumed I was already ordained (which I wasn’t). So the first thing I heard, seemingly immediately after having this intense desire to become a priest, was a nurse saying softly, “Father? Father? Father?”
For me it was a surprising confirmation of my desire from the God of Surprises. During my recuperation I realized another reason why Jesus may have asked Bartimaeus what he wanted. Naming our desires tells us something about who we are. In the hospital I learned something about myself, which helped free me of doubts about what I wanted to do. And who I wanted to be. It’s freeing to say, “
This
is what I desire in life.” Naming our desires may also make us more grateful when we finally receive the fulfillment of our hopes.
Expressing these desires brings us into a closer relationship with God. Otherwise, it would be like never telling a friend your innermost thoughts. Your friend would remain distant. When we tell God our desires, our relationship with God deepens.
Desire is a primary way that God leads people to discover who they are and what they are meant to do. On the most obvious level, a man and a woman feel physical, emotional, and spiritual desire for each other, and in this way they discover their vocations to be married. A person feels an attraction to being a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher, and so discovers his or her vocation. Desires help us find our way. But we first have to know them.
The deep longings of our hearts are our holy desires. Not only desires for physical healing, as Bartimaeus asked for (and as many ask for today), but also the desires for change, for growth, for a fuller life. And our deepest desires, which lead us to become who we are, are God’s desires for us. They are one manner in which God speaks to you directly, one way that, as Ignatius says, the Creator deals with the creature. They are also the way that God fulfills God’s own dreams for the world, by calling people to certain tasks.
A few weeks after the operation, I shared all this with Myles, who always combines prayerfulness with playfulness. He agreed that it was a grace to have this recognition, but then he laughed and said, “Wouldn’t it have been nice if you didn’t have to have major surgery to realize this?” (As it turned out, the tumor was benign and had nothing to do with the migraines.)
Laughing, I replied that if I hadn’t had the operation, I probably wouldn’t have realized any of this. Not that God wanted me to be sick, or caused me to be sick, so that I could recognize his presence in this way. No more than Jesus caused Bartimaeus to be blind. Rather, when my defenses were down, I was able to see things more clearly.
These are a few reasons why Ignatius asks us repeatedly in the Spiritual Exercises to pray for our desires. At the beginning of each prayer, Ignatius asks you to ask God “for what I want and desire.” For instance, if you are meditating on the life of Jesus, you ask for a deeper knowledge of Jesus. The practice reminds you of the importance of asking for things in the spiritual life and of realizing that whatever you receive is a gift from God.
Desire plays an enormous role in the life of a Jesuit. A young Jesuit who dreams of working overseas, or studying Scripture, or working as a retreat director, will be encouraged to pay attention to his desires. Likewise, Jesuit superiors reverence these desires when making decisions about where to assign a particular Jesuit. This is part of the decision-making process known as “discernment” in the Jesuits. (More about making decisions later.)
Sometimes a Jesuit might find himself lacking the desire for something that he
wants to desire
. Let’s say you are living in a comfortable Jesuit community and have scant contact with the poor. You may say, “I know I’m
supposed
to want to live simply and work with the poor, but I have no desire to do this.” Or perhaps you know that you
should
want to be more forgiving of someone in the community, but you don’t desire it. How can you pray for that with honesty?
In reply, Ignatius would ask, “Do you have the
desire for this desire?
” Even if you don’t want it, do you want to want it? Do you wish that you were the kind of person that wanted this? Even this can be seen as an invitation from God. It is a way of glimpsing God’s invitation even in the faintest traces of desire.
Some people find that their deep desires are difficult to identify. What then? Margaret Silf, an English spiritual writer, retreat director, and popular lecturer, provides one answer in her book
Inner Compass: An Invitation to Ignatian Spirituality
.
She suggests two ways that you may come to know your hidden desires. One is “Outside In”; the other “Inside Out.” The Outside-In approach considers those desires already present, which may point to deeper ones. Desires like “I want a new job” or “I want to move” may signify a longing for greater overall freedom.
The Inside-Out approach uses archetypal stories as signposts to your desires. What fairy tales, myths, stories, films, or novels appealed to you when you were young? The same could be asked about stories from your sacred Scriptures. Are you drawn toward the story of Moses’ freeing the Hebrew slaves? Or Jesus’ healing the blind man? Why? Might these real-life stories hold clues about your holy desires?
Desire is a key part of Ignatian spirituality because desire is a key way that God’s voice is heard in our lives. And ultimately our deepest desire, planted within us, is our desire for God.
E
XPERIENCES OF THE
D
ESIRE FOR
G
OD
Maybe you’re surprised by the notion that everyone has an innate desire for God. If you’re an agnostic, you might believe that intellectually but haven’t experienced it yourself. If you’re an atheist, you might flat-out disbelieve it.
So for the disbelieving, the doubtful, and the curious (and everyone else, for that matter), let’s turn to
how
these holy desires manifest themselves in everyday life. What do they look like? What do they feel like? How can you become aware of your desires for God?
Here are some of the most common ways that our holy desires reveal themselves. As you read, you might take a moment and consider which have been at work in your own life.
Incompletion
Many of us have had the feeling that, even though we have had some success and happiness, there is something missing in life. Way back in the 1960s Peggy Lee sang “Is That All There Is?” In the 1980s, U2 sang “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” We all feel that restlessness, the nagging feeling that there must be something more to life than our day-to-day existence.
Feelings of incompletion may reflect dissatisfaction with our daily lives and point us to something that needs to be rectified. If we are trapped in a miserable job, a dead-end relationship, or an unhealthy family situation, it might be time to think about serious change. Dissatisfaction doesn’t have to be stoically endured; it can lead to a decision, change, and a more fulfilled life.