This paradigm of “becoming aware, understanding and taking action” is the foundation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Over the years, I have often read through the Ignatian Rules for Discernment, to brush up on the wisdom they contain. There are 14 “rules” in the first set that St. Ignatius presents. So for the past two weeks, I re-read one rule each day, finishing the first set of rules last weekend. The key to understanding our spiritual life is in NOTICING interior spiritual thoughts, feelings and desires. The weather pattern we all experienced last week with the cold front and cooler weather demonstrates what “noticing” looks like on a physical level.
In the spiritual life, the good spirit and the “enemy of human nature,” as St. Ignatius calls whatever is opposed to God, are always at work in our lives. The good spirit works by encouraging us to know, love and serve our Lord while the enemy of human nature is discouraging, confusing, tempting and distracting us to abandon a life of faith, hope and love for our Lord. By means of the rules of discernment, St. Ignatius teaches us how to notice, understand and take action in our experiences of the movements of spiritual consolation and spiritual desolation.
First, we BECOME AWARE of some thought, feeling or desire that seems to be prominent in our day. Simply put, we notice something. Secondly, we reflect upon the experience and come to UNDERSTAND it better, we realize something. Thirdly, we TAKE ACTION by accepting it or rejecting it, we DO something. While this is more obvious in the physical realm, it is very important in the spiritual life. So, for example, in the 5th rule, St. Ignatius cautions persons who, when striving to please the Lord, experience some desolation, discouragement or become disheartened to make no changes in the course of their spiritual lives until the desolation and heaviness is lifted or subsides.
As an example, two young people of different faiths, while being aware of serious differences in religion, decide to get married. They put aside the further discernment of this aspect of marriage because they love each other and want to live “happily ever after,” even though they frequently argue over matters of religion. By the time they reach their first anniversary, they have come to an impasse over religion, over having children, and in which church they raise their children. The Catholic spouse, experiencing intense discouragement, asks the priest, though still married, to help him get an annulment. The priest, aware of St. Ignatius’s rules for discernment, remembers rule #5, which says, “In desolation, never make a change.” He then counsels the Catholic person in deep desolation to wait until the desolation subsides and then return to discern this further.
In our busy, fast-paced lives, we scarcely pay attention to the interior movements of our thoughts, feelings and desires. We spend more time trying to ignore them, escape them, medicate them, or manage them in some way. Yet, when we pay attention to these movements, they provide profound cues about the ways of the good spirit and the machinations of the enemy of human nature. How many times have we felt the sting of our conscience telling us on a weekend – it’s time to go home, it’s already late, but we push that aside and stay out way too late. How often in the midst of a gossip session do we sense the Lord asking us to keep quiet about the person being slandered, or to change the subject, or to leave the room, and yet we stay the nasty course we’re on. Remember the steps: notice, understand and take action!
In this age of communication – emails, cell phones, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube Videos and more – it has become all the more difficult to slow down, be still and pay attention to the thoughts, feelings and desires that present themselves to us throughout the day. Yet, if we begin to find quiet time and work on the art of listening to the movements of the spirit in our lives, we begin to notice patterns there. Noticing these patterns enables us to understand ourselves more fully and act more intentionally on these interior movements.
A simple example might be helpful from our teenage years. Picture a co-ed classroom of High School Juniors. As a new school year gets underway, a young man looks across the room at a young lady only to notice her already looking at him. Surprised by this, he quickly looks away. A few moments later, he looks across the room at her and again she is looking at him. As before, he quickly looks away. Yet a third time in that class period he glances at her to discover her again looking at him, and their eyes meet. This time he not only notices her noticing him, but he notices what it feels like when he notices her noticing him. It is the first stirrings of attraction. After class he introduces himself, they set up a date, and about 5 years later at the end of college, they enter into the covenant of marriage. He became aware, he understood the mutual attraction and he acted upon it.
My point is that there is so much more to know and understand about ourselves if we but slow down, pay attention to what’s going on not only around us but within our thoughts, feelings and desires, and with greater understanding, act accordingly, accepting what is good and rejecting what is not. In Sunday’s Gospel, Martha was anxious and worried about many things, while her sister Mary sat beside Jesus and listened to him. Let us become aware and notice these interior movements, strive to understand them, and then either accept or reject them, so as to remain in ever greater union with the Lord.
