The Spiritual Exercises 7

Ignatius asks us to concentrate on our thoughts, words and deeds. This is obviously a first step but he also wants us to keep a little notebook to remind us day by day when we have fallen short. He marks each line with a G, perhaps this stands for Giorno, the Italian for day. Frankly this is too much for me, but when I was thinking of his advice, lying half-awake in the night, I felt a great feeling of goodwill towards everyone and everything, so I'm sure his method works. Of course immediately next morning I felt angry about something and I had to start again, but this Is the point of these exercises!

There are five steps in making a general examen and they can be a constant of prayer; “to give thanks to God for the benefits I have received”; secondly, to “ask for the grace to know my sins and reject them”; thirdly “to ask for an account of my soul with regard to thoughts words and deeds”; fourthly “to ask pardon for my sins” and finally, the fifth “to resolve to amend with his grace”.

We should pause particularly on the first of these because as we do so we are with Ignatius in seeing God at the heart of all things. As I write this I am staring out on the magnificent cliffs and a bright blue sea on a sunny day in North Cornwall where, with my wife, we have come to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. It is easy to see God in all things when looking at Pentire Point in Cornwall, more difficult in the three mile traffic jam on the M5 getting here, and there’s the rub!

The Spiritual Exercises 6

Ignatius envisages making a “general”, or in other words, whole life, confession. People find going to confession one of the most difficult things to do and I'm no exception, so I would never lecture anyone on it. Too often it can be just a dreary repetition of the same innocuous “sins” for fear of letting on about the more embarrassing ones.

This is probably an heretical view, but as a lay-man I don’t have to answer to anybody. I think its better to go to confession and mention the easy ones and skirt around those of a more difficult nature than to not go to confession at all. For there is something wonderfully soothing about the priest’s absolution, however mumbling and pathetic the confession. In any event the best confessions are always made on retreat, for on retreat one’s inhibitions about confronting the truth break down.

The Spiritual Exercises 5: The Foundation

The Foundation is an exercise on its own and we could spend several days meditating on it. It may have been published as long ago as 1548 but it is profound and surprisingly modern.

Looking at it more closely it is written on two levels, the general and the personal. It should also be read in the context of the fifth annotation which we have already looked at, in other words, in a spirit of open mindedness. This does not mean that we have to be “indifferent” now “to all created things”. It would be good to want this or strive for it or even, and this is only my personal lay-persons reaction, to realise that this indifference may only come at the end of life, a kind of “make me holy but not yet” syndrome, but it should be there in some form.

But indifference can also suddenly hit us with regard to religion. I was in Walsingham of all places this Sunday and at the start of Mass everything seemed wrong, even ridiculous and rather Mumbo Jumbery. It was only after a passage from St Therese of Lisieux was read out that I warmed to the whole thing. She wrote “I had discovered where it is that I belong in the Church, the niche God has appointed for me. To be nothing else than love, deep down in the heart of Mother Church”.

After mass I sat alone in the tiny slipper chapel and felt profoundly moved as I looked at the green folds of the Altar covering moving in the reflected light. Indifference had given way to acceptance in a little over an hour. But I was in Walsingham.

The more you read the Foundation the more you can get out of it. For instance, in talking of all things that are created, Ignatius could be expressing the idea of the unity of all things and that all things are part of a beautiful temple of God.

The Spiritual Exercises 4: “Principle and Foundation”

We now come to the core of the Exercises, St Ignatius’ “Principle and Foundation”. “The human person is created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord and by so doing save his or her soul, and it is for the human person that the other things on the face of the earth are created, as helps to the pursuit of this end.”
It follows that the person has to use these things in so far as they help towards this end, and to be free of them in so far as they stand in the way.
“To attain this, we need to make ourselves indifferent towards all created things, provided the matter is subject to our free choice and there is no prohibition. Thus for our part we should not want health more than sickness, wealth more than poverty, fame more than disgrace, a long life more than a short one- and so with everything else; desiring and choosing only what conduces more to the end for which we are created”

What we are being asked to do here is not to leave what we have to do in our jobs or our homes I think, but to have a life that circulates around God rather than our self. Easily said, very difficult to achieve. Even more difficult is his injunction not to worry about a successful life or even a long life, but again to put our relationship with God first. Even more difficult. The length of our life is one of the principle components of our own sense of worth. How could it be otherwise?

Yesterday I went to sit beside an old friend and his family as he lay dying of a relentless disease. At the end he slipped away so gently that it was barely noticeable. A beautiful and peaceful death a gentle slowing down and quietening of the breathing, a slight flutter of breath as gentle of the flight of a butterfly and he was gone. Where to, none of us can ever know.

My friend was not religious but one of the last things he said to me was that all this cannot be for nothing, that there must be some survival somewhere of the consciousness.

I believe that Ignatius’ difficult Principle and Foundation becomes easier to achieve if we accept that we are not alone. That although we are absolutely unique, we also share a part with every other person who has been and will be. That we have two natures. Just as we want to believe that Christ had two natures, human and divine, so we are all temporary and human as well as permanent and divine in a way we cannot fathom.

The Spiritual Exercises 3: Annotations 4 - 20

With regards to the first four annotations we don’t need to go into these in any great detail as they are written for retreat directors. The fourth annotation tells us that the exercises are designed to last four weeks. The first is for the “consideration. And contemplation of sins”. The second for looking at the “life of Christ our Lord, up to and including Palm Sunday”. The third looks at the Passion of Christ and the fourth considers the Resurrection and Ascension, together with three ways of praying.

All these we can look at later, but it’s good to think about what we are letting ourselves in for. Of course all timings and progress will be up to us! As Ignatius himself tells us “it may be necessary sometimes to shorten the week and at other times to extend it”.

In the fifth annotation we are asked to begin the exercises “In a magnanimous spirit and with great liberality to our Creator and Lord”, and to offer him all our powers of desire and all our liberty. I believe this is the essential point of the exercises. Later on we will think upon Ignatius’ “Principle and Foundation”, his great statement about the need to put God at the centre of all things. But at this stage we are only asked to approach the exercises with an open heart.

From the sixth to the eleventh annotations the retreat director is given practical advice as to what to do when we the retreatant moves between too much enthusiasm to too much apathy! The advice is obvious; take it slowly and be understanding.

The twelfth and thirteenth annotations deal with the amount of time we are to spend on the exercises. I don't want to put you off, but the specified time is an hour each day on each of the five daily exercises. Let's leave this to the very few people who will have the time or inclination to take themselves off to a retreat house for thirty days. Ours is a more modest endeavour.

The fourteenth and fifteenth annotations were written for people who were so overcome that they decide to follow a religious calling or embrace poverty. That is unlikely to happen to us so we can move on.

The sixteenth annotation can apply to all of us; “If the soul in question happens to be attached or inclined to something in an ill ordered way, it is very useful for him to do all in his power to bring himself round to the contrary of that wrong attachment”. What I think we are being called to do is to move away from putting ourselves, our comfort and ambitions and our fears at the centre of every thing. Ultimately this does not mean endless, tedious self-denial, but a route to true freedom from the chains that bind us to the world. Happiness is what we hope for.

When Ignatius talks of “Wrong attachments” what he means is “For example, if a person were bent on seeking an appointment not for the honour and glory of God, nor the spiritual good of others. But for ones own advancement and temporal interests.” Of course he is thinking primarily of clergymen here but this can apply equally to us. We can never get away entirely from these personal attachments, what Ignatius calls the “first attachment”, unless we are saints, which we decidedly are not, but we can start making progress along the road, one step at a time.
In the seventeenth annotation Ignatius talks about the value of openness with the retreat giver. Whilst it may be difficult in a busy life to have a regular spiritual Director and often more so to find one at who is a genuine friend and soul-mate, it is enormously valuable and worth searching for.

In the eighteenth annotation Ignatius makes the obvious point that “The exercises are to be adapted to the capabilities of those who wish to engage in them; that is to say age, education or intelligence are to be taken into consideration”. In other words we can do everything at our own pace! Thank God.

We now come to the famous nineteenth annotation, which is about us. “A person taken up with public affairs or necessary business, and who is educated or intelligent, can set aside for the exercises an hour and a half a day”. This seems a hell of a lot in our age of short attention spans and let’s not get too hung up on it, but don’t give up on it either. The important thing is that we can attempt this in the midst of our ordinary life.

The twentieth and last annotation is for those who want to attend the whole course in seclusion.

We are now ready to begin!

The Spiritual Exercises: 2

In his second annotation St Ignatius writes, “for it is not so much knowledge but the inner freeing and relish of things that fills and satisfies the soul.” This is the key point. In order to do something effectively we often have to let go of the conscious rational process. This does not mean that knowledge is necessarily a bad thing, indeed a foundation is essential, but it will only get us so far.

All the commentaries that I have ever read on the exercises are written by Jesuit priests. They have obviously come to the conscious decision to believe that the Gospels are the work of an existing God. This is fine, but I am more interested in writing for those who struggle with belief. There is a good book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Its author, Betty Edwards, argues that at around about the age of eleven, children lose their self confidence to draw and adults rarely regain this confidence because the rational side of the brain intervenes and destroys their self confidence. I believe that the religious non-experience of most adults in the West is like this. We need to suspend knowledge for a time and release one’s inner feeling.

I think this is what Ignatius is getting at in his third annotation. “Throughout the following spiritual exercises we make use of the understanding in order to think things over, and of the will in order to rouse the affections. We should therefore note that in the activity of the will when we speak vocally or mentally with God or the saints, greater reverence is required on our part than when we use the intellect to understand.”

So knowledge is the building block, but in releasing the will or the heart we can slowly free ourselves of those worldly affections and allow us to approach a god that is necessarily not of this world but transcendent.

It is clear that here Ignatius is saying that when we start to pray, greater reverence is needed. When we start something like the exercises the novelty of the thing and of the topics to be discussed may be more interesting than prayer.

Andre Ravier SJ in his book A Do It At Home Retreat says that we should use the opportunity at the start of the exercises to put all our effort “into finding what he[we] are looking for at the particular stage of the retreat where he[we] is[are].” This must be good advice as he goes on to say that “If by chance we have an inordinate attachment or inclination toward something or someone, it is very good to go against and exercise all our force in opposition to what we find is improperly so attractive.”

Thus as I was writing this I got ridiculously angry about a chore I had to do. In realising the stupidity of my thoughts I think the exercises were telling me to fight against my propensity to put my own comfort first.

The Spiritual Exercises: 1

Over the next few weeks I will be having a look at St Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. These were written by him after his conversion experience from the 1520s. They are not meant to be read as a book. Indeed the language is somewhat archaic and difficult to read but they a wonderful treasure house of a spiritual guide. The idea is that you do the exercises with a spiritual director over a four week period at a retreat house in an atmosphere of complete calm and silence. This of course is impossible for most of us, but Ignatius himself envisaged busy people attempting them in the midst of a busy life. There are people better qualified than myself who can give good advice on the Exercises notably, extremely well trained Jesuit priests. I myself am indebted to the late Michael Ivens SJ and many others, including the staff at St Beuno’s Retreat House. But it may be that an untutored layman like me may have a few useful insights, precisely because I’ve got a questioning nature. Anyway here goes!

The Exercises start with the “Annotations”. These are just notes to give guidance to the retreat provider and the retreatant or exercitant. Shall we look at the first annotation?

“The term spiritual exercises denotes every way of examining ones conscience, of meditating, contemplating, of praying vocally and mentally and other spiritual activities as will be explained later. For just as strolling, walking and running are exercises for the body, so “spiritual exercises” is the name given to every way of preparing and making ourselves ready to get rid of all disordered affections so that, once rid of them, one might seek and find the divine will in regard to the disposition of ones life for the salvation of the soul.”

I can see you already telling yourself that all this sounds rather old fashioned, even pompous. For instance what is a disordered affection? Let’s try and explain it this way.

My youngest son loves swimming. He came back after a training session absolutely exhausted. Probably in the hour he was plying up and down the pool he had actually, despite all this effort, made an imperceptible improvement to his technique. Trying to get more into understanding religion is like that. True, some people are lucky. For them religion is always there, or it comes to them in a flash of inspiration. Personally I’m much more of a plodding long distance swimmer, as, I think, are most of us. I believe that you just have to persevere with daily reading, prayer and church attendance without making too much demand on belief. And very slowly religious exercise becomes so much a part of ones life, a pleasurable part, that like the regular jogger you don’t want to give it up. This doesn’t mean it is necessarily all true even more than jogging is true or false, it just is.

My other son comes home with his GCSE textbook on Theology. It is full of the most complicated arguments about proofs and dis-proofs of God, such as St Thomas Aquinas’ argument that everything needs a first mover. But to me the most interesting “proof” of the existence of God lies in the “numinous” experience that people have, a feeling that they can’t account for but that something else is out there.
This is where St Ignatius’ disordered affections come in.

In the sixth century BC the Buddha realised our life was blighted by the affections or feelings: our fear of death, disease or poverty. Now the purpose of these spiritual exercises is gradually over many weeks to reorder our priorities so that step by step the sprit enters into our thoughts.

One way of understanding this at a deeper inspirational level might be to reflect on today’s readings. As I write this, it is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. There is the wonderful passage from John where he talks about Niccodemus. God so loved the world that he gave his only son to save it. As I lay awake in the night I just concentrated on an image of a relic of the true cross that had been shown to us in Westminster Cathedral. Obviously a fake the septic will scorn. But it is like when we admire the rebuilt Cutty Sark. Maybe not much of its original wood survives, but its essence or spirit carries on as does that of the relic. The image of the relic became suffused in light, this was not a dream or a vision, something much more prosaic. Just an image implanted on the retina, but a good thing to fall asleep with!