Ignatius Loyola the first Jesuit

JULY 31 is the feast of St Ignatius Loyola. One of the greatest bequests he has left us is the Spiritual Exercises. He begins by asking us to think about our existence. The human person is called to praise and, reverence the divine Creator. The purpose of human life is to attain the final goal of heaven.
St Ignatius stresses the importance of the particular examen of conscience. Here the penitent searches his soul for his particular fault or defect. He concentrates on ridding his life of this obstacle. He reflects each day on the progress he has made, and compares one day, one week, with the next. He looks at his thoughts, words,. and actions. Thoughts may come from one's own spirit, from the good spirit, or from the evil spirit. We should be especially careful about what we Say concerning other people.
Ignatius begins the meditation with preparatory prayer, asking for grace to pray sincerely. The three powers of the soul are involved, the memory, the intellect, and the will. An incident in the life of Christ is reflected upon, and a practical resolution is drawn from it. The meditation ends with a "colloquy" or conversation with God. We are to realise the love that Christ has for us. Sacred scripture is a love-letter of Christ to us. This love-letter requires two persons, my Lover and myself. It enables us to experience Christ in our lives, and to experience ourselves in His life. We see that Christ who is communicating to us through His love-letter is Christ in the Church today.
It is Christ now incorporated in his Mystical Body who is speaking to us. That is the Christ we must respond to, otherwise we are responding to a Christ created in our image and likeness, or in the image of our own ideals, or who we want Christ to be, instead of the real Christ.
In our prayer it is not the position that matters, it is the disposition We use whatever position helps us to pray. Mental and verbal prayer are important and even essential but there are other forms of prayer that can help us. Today we realise how important non-verbal communication is in any relationship. Very frequently we express much more with our body language than we do with words.
Sometimes we just can't find the words to express what is going on inside us, and a gesture Or a look helps us to get our point across. Sometimes it happens that our mind is not functioning at all well and we are not thinking clearly. Sometimes the words won't come when we are kneeling in the presence of Christ. For instance, perhaps we feel down and depressed and our whole bodies express this.
That depression can be our prayer. We can stand before our Father in silence and let him see how we are. Perhaps we become aware of some sinfulness of which we are guilty. We can hang our heads in shame before Christ or strike our breast in recognition of our guilt.
Perhaps • we want something very much. We can reach out our arms in yearning earnestness and plead like a child. Or perhaps we feel in great form and eager to carry out Christ's commands.
We can show that we are at His service and can stand at attention and ask for greater awareness of the apostolate that He calls us to do. Perhaps we are suffering, there is great sadness within us, and we can cry in His presence. We can offer our pains to Him in reparation of our sins. We may feel that nobody loves us then the sight of Christ reminds us that He came into the world precisely to tell us that we are very loveable indeed.
Maybe there is great loneliness within us and we feel abandoned. We can curl up in the fetal position and express to Him exactly how we feel and how alone and isolated we are. We could kneel there and extend Our arms in the form of a cross and try to get some sense of Christ's love for us.
There are so many ways that we can express ourselves -physically to our Father. All it needs is a little imagination a tittle willingless to overcome the initial embarrassment if we are with others. We should not, of course, annoy other people!
Most of us speak too much in prayer and don't do enough listening. The "body" prayer concentrates our attention on just being present to Him and allowing Him to touch us and to respond to us in His own way. This is a great grace. Why not try it for a while and see what happens.
St Ignatius had great devotion to the Mother of God. Mary is the model of our prayer. Luke sums up her prayer life when he tells us that she kept all these things in her heart and pondered over them. She came to understand through prayer what Christ meant.
When we are with Christ God will speak to us and communicate Himself to us in prayer. Prayer is a gift, but we can and should want to receive the gift. Each day we should make time for prayer, especially in the Morning Offering and in service to others. If we are too busy to pray then we are too busy.
John Gallagher SJ