Saint Ignatius of Loyola is the founder of the Jesuits. Up to a couple weeks ago this was unknown to me. I knew that Jesuits were some version of Catholic and that was all. But a JRS staff retreat led by a Jesuit priest changed all that. The priest, who has spent decades of his life in Kenya (so many of them seem to do this, see previous post) led us through a form of prayer developed by Saint Ignatius. I found myself diving deeper into how one has joy in the darkest of circumstances.
Here is a brief synopsis of Ignatius provided by my memory of the retreat and newadvent.org. A Spaniard who spent a good deal of his life in the military, Ignatius was wounded in a battle and while recovering read the lives of Christ and the saints. I guess this is a book. Anyway, he converts to Christianity realizing that what was giving him joy during his recuperation was the idea of moving in step with the saints and not the idea of military glory. He converts to Christianity and eventually spends months in a cave, praying multiple hours each day. Out of this experience comes his work The Spiritual Exercises, and out of this work came a new form of prayer, the one the Jesuit priest led us through.
Essentially, rather than simply talking to God (which is a completely valid way to pray), you pick a verse, read it, and then imagine and picture yourself in that very scene. For example, if the passage is of Jesus declaring at the time of his death that he is going to make all things new, then you imagine that you are in the crowd, you imagine the yelling, the smells, the surroundings, the buildings, the weather. It does not matter if you are accurate or if you even put yourself into a Middle Eastern setting. Put yourself in Jamaica, what matters is that you feel that you are there.
This takes awhile. First, the priest invited us to be calm. Pay attention to your breathing he said. Notice how many breaths you are taking each minute. As you do this be cognizant of the things that are stressing you out and making you uncomfortable or worried. Put them down. Let yourself rest. As I said this takes awhile, but after what might have literally been ten minutes of silence, where I was thinking through my anxiety, I found that I was calm. And I found it was not hard to have my eyes closed anymore. The priest goes on and begins to set the scene. Now imagine that you are walking along a road. Picture the road. Is it paved? Full of potholes? Or maybe it is smooth, or a dirt path or a rocky one. Walk along it and notice what is around you. Is there a forest, an ocean, a city? Notice it. Smell it, sense it, see it. Then more silence.
The priest went on like this for some time, it could have been thirty minutes or more. He spent time leading us through the scene, bringing us into the story. We knew that the story we were entering was Luke 4:14-21, where Jesus announces why he came. We knew this because the priest had read the passage to us before the prayer even began. Eventually, during the prayer we arrived at that point where we were going to imagine that we were in the crowd when Jesus spoke these words. Imagine that you see a man get up and open a scroll in the presence of the crowd. It's Jesus. He opens the scroll to Isaiah and reads these words:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
The priest continued. You see Jesus slowly roll up the scroll, saying nothing. He looks around, saying nothing. Everything is silence. He sits down and adds these words:
"Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
The priest takes us deeper into the story and invites us to imagine the crowds reaction, our own reaction. What are people saying? What are they doing? Are they upset? Are they leaving? Are they stunned? Are they weeping? What am I doing? How do I feel about Jesus' words? More silence. Again, perhaps even ten minutes of silence which is a very long time to be silent in our current world. But it provides time to reflect on what my feelings would be. Eventually, the priest concludes:
Now imagine that everyone has left and you are still there. You notice that Jesus is watching you, he is looking right at you. Sense the place where you are. Wherever you have imagined yourself at this event, ocean, city, subway, castle, cathedral, stadium, wherever, it's just you and Jesus. He slowly walks up to you. You have just heard him proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. What would you say to him?
And this is why it is prayer. What I said to him is not long, but it's complicated, which I am more than happy to share upon our return. (Preferably over a quiet evening with chapati, chai, and beef stew, so perhaps in the winter). It has to do with my fear in the presence of Christ's anointing to bring good news to the poor, recovery of sight, liberty, and the year of the Lord's favor. It has to do with my desire to respond with joy in the presence of darkness and the presence of evil.
I'm going to leave a lot out now, but I was deeply moved, had tears, and realized that I had not had that intense of a time of prayer for years. We were then sent out on a time of 45 minutes of meditation, to reflect on what we had prayed and said to Christ. We were also given a reading with words that flowed well with the verse from Luke and Isaiah, and which fit wonderfully with what I had said to Jesus in my prayer. This is a loose take-away with one of my favorite quotes from the reading:
Jesus' declaration of the year of the Lord's favor has not ended. He calls us to receive his freedom to fully love this fundamentally broken world in a way that does not tie us to it, making us need it when we really don't. His announcement that he is here to give sight, good news, and liberty to those that need it most invites us into his plan to bring all creation to completion. But to become free to fully love the world in a way that shows people a way out from sin, selfishness, evil, corruptness, etc, we must realize that serving God is what makes us happy. Serving God and not ourselves, putting God first rather than our ambitions, our desires, and our wants. Thus, we should live in such a way that we not seek health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, a long life rather than a short one, and so on in all other matters, wanting and choosing only that which leads more to the end for which we are created.
That end being serving God, which is what makes us truly happy. The reading noted that we should be indifferent to our desires, but pointed out that it is not in the way some Eastern religions advocate. Rather, indifference here means undetermined to one thing or option rather than another; impartial; unbiased; with decision suspended until the reason for a wise choice are learned; still undecided. In no way does it mean unconcerned or unimportant...It is not so much detachment from things as "detachability." It means being like a good dancer, ready to move in any direction as the dance demands.
I have not achieved this ability to seek neither a long life or a short one, neither safety nor danger, neither health nor sickness. But I have felt recently that during the prayer, in what I said to Christ and contemplated afterward, that within was the answer to how to be in the valley of the shadow of death (no matter what form it takes over the course of a life) and yet still know that "I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff they comfort me, you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life."
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Here is a brief synopsis of Ignatius provided by my memory of the retreat and newadvent.org. A Spaniard who spent a good deal of his life in the military, Ignatius was wounded in a battle and while recovering read the lives of Christ and the saints. I guess this is a book. Anyway, he converts to Christianity realizing that what was giving him joy during his recuperation was the idea of moving in step with the saints and not the idea of military glory. He converts to Christianity and eventually spends months in a cave, praying multiple hours each day. Out of this experience comes his work The Spiritual Exercises, and out of this work came a new form of prayer, the one the Jesuit priest led us through.
Essentially, rather than simply talking to God (which is a completely valid way to pray), you pick a verse, read it, and then imagine and picture yourself in that very scene. For example, if the passage is of Jesus declaring at the time of his death that he is going to make all things new, then you imagine that you are in the crowd, you imagine the yelling, the smells, the surroundings, the buildings, the weather. It does not matter if you are accurate or if you even put yourself into a Middle Eastern setting. Put yourself in Jamaica, what matters is that you feel that you are there.
This takes awhile. First, the priest invited us to be calm. Pay attention to your breathing he said. Notice how many breaths you are taking each minute. As you do this be cognizant of the things that are stressing you out and making you uncomfortable or worried. Put them down. Let yourself rest. As I said this takes awhile, but after what might have literally been ten minutes of silence, where I was thinking through my anxiety, I found that I was calm. And I found it was not hard to have my eyes closed anymore. The priest goes on and begins to set the scene. Now imagine that you are walking along a road. Picture the road. Is it paved? Full of potholes? Or maybe it is smooth, or a dirt path or a rocky one. Walk along it and notice what is around you. Is there a forest, an ocean, a city? Notice it. Smell it, sense it, see it. Then more silence.
The priest went on like this for some time, it could have been thirty minutes or more. He spent time leading us through the scene, bringing us into the story. We knew that the story we were entering was Luke 4:14-21, where Jesus announces why he came. We knew this because the priest had read the passage to us before the prayer even began. Eventually, during the prayer we arrived at that point where we were going to imagine that we were in the crowd when Jesus spoke these words. Imagine that you see a man get up and open a scroll in the presence of the crowd. It's Jesus. He opens the scroll to Isaiah and reads these words:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
The priest continued. You see Jesus slowly roll up the scroll, saying nothing. He looks around, saying nothing. Everything is silence. He sits down and adds these words:
"Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
The priest takes us deeper into the story and invites us to imagine the crowds reaction, our own reaction. What are people saying? What are they doing? Are they upset? Are they leaving? Are they stunned? Are they weeping? What am I doing? How do I feel about Jesus' words? More silence. Again, perhaps even ten minutes of silence which is a very long time to be silent in our current world. But it provides time to reflect on what my feelings would be. Eventually, the priest concludes:
Now imagine that everyone has left and you are still there. You notice that Jesus is watching you, he is looking right at you. Sense the place where you are. Wherever you have imagined yourself at this event, ocean, city, subway, castle, cathedral, stadium, wherever, it's just you and Jesus. He slowly walks up to you. You have just heard him proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. What would you say to him?
And this is why it is prayer. What I said to him is not long, but it's complicated, which I am more than happy to share upon our return. (Preferably over a quiet evening with chapati, chai, and beef stew, so perhaps in the winter). It has to do with my fear in the presence of Christ's anointing to bring good news to the poor, recovery of sight, liberty, and the year of the Lord's favor. It has to do with my desire to respond with joy in the presence of darkness and the presence of evil.
I'm going to leave a lot out now, but I was deeply moved, had tears, and realized that I had not had that intense of a time of prayer for years. We were then sent out on a time of 45 minutes of meditation, to reflect on what we had prayed and said to Christ. We were also given a reading with words that flowed well with the verse from Luke and Isaiah, and which fit wonderfully with what I had said to Jesus in my prayer. This is a loose take-away with one of my favorite quotes from the reading:
Jesus' declaration of the year of the Lord's favor has not ended. He calls us to receive his freedom to fully love this fundamentally broken world in a way that does not tie us to it, making us need it when we really don't. His announcement that he is here to give sight, good news, and liberty to those that need it most invites us into his plan to bring all creation to completion. But to become free to fully love the world in a way that shows people a way out from sin, selfishness, evil, corruptness, etc, we must realize that serving God is what makes us happy. Serving God and not ourselves, putting God first rather than our ambitions, our desires, and our wants. Thus, we should live in such a way that we not seek health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, a long life rather than a short one, and so on in all other matters, wanting and choosing only that which leads more to the end for which we are created.
That end being serving God, which is what makes us truly happy. The reading noted that we should be indifferent to our desires, but pointed out that it is not in the way some Eastern religions advocate. Rather, indifference here means undetermined to one thing or option rather than another; impartial; unbiased; with decision suspended until the reason for a wise choice are learned; still undecided. In no way does it mean unconcerned or unimportant...It is not so much detachment from things as "detachability." It means being like a good dancer, ready to move in any direction as the dance demands.
I have not achieved this ability to seek neither a long life or a short one, neither safety nor danger, neither health nor sickness. But I have felt recently that during the prayer, in what I said to Christ and contemplated afterward, that within was the answer to how to be in the valley of the shadow of death (no matter what form it takes over the course of a life) and yet still know that "I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff they comfort me, you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life."
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
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