This is an approach to imaginative prayer proposed by Joseph Tetlow, SJ,

I come into God’s presence and feel His loving gaze, and then I offer myself completely to God.

First, I recall for a moment some details of the particular part of sacred history that I am going to pray about.

Second, I compose myself in the scene I am going to contemplate, or in the place where it takes place.

Third, I ask for what I want: I want to know Jesus intimately, friend to friend. I want to share great love with Him. I want to go where He goes and do what He does.

Then, I enter into the event. I can do that in many different ways, and nothing constrains me to do it one way rather than another.

• One way that helps some people: I notice the people themselves, keenly, lovingly. Then I listen to what they say. Then I watch how they are acting.
• Another way that helps: I simply get involved in the event, at whatever point I feel drawn into it. I act in it, a part of the event—holding the light, fixing the hayrack, helping with the animals.
• And a final way: I go along with one of the persons in the event, letting the event be a dynamic background. We talk with and listen to one another.

Whichever of these ways I use, I try to keep myself involved. For intimate knowledge reaches both into the one known and into the one knowing and deep love of God comes only to the one who knows himself or herself loved even while loving.

After I have spoken with the Lady Mary or with Jesus and with the Father, as always, I end with the Our Father.

Hurricane Katrina occurred in hot, muggy August in the middle of Ordinary Time. Katrina, however, felt nothing like Ordinary Time; rather, it felt like the darkness of Good Friday as I had a first-hand look at the suffering of my loved ones who resided in New Orleans. Their suffering was situated in the overwhelming suffering by the many beloved Louisianans who resided in my home state.

To say that Katrina was a major turning event in my life and especially my faith life is an understatement. Katrina brought me to my knees, and with my total surrender to God, the Holy Spirit entered into my life in full force. Within the confusion and disbelief in the months following the storm, I began to understand the gift of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives in Ordinary Time. I began to understand Pentecost, not as a single feast day to celebrate, but as a way to live our lives, fully aware of God at work through the Spirit.

To name all the moments of suffering embraced in grace, full of the fruits of the Spirit, would be impossible. There is one, though, that stays with me and I draw from on a daily basis. Our parish in Baton Rouge adopted an African-American parish in New Orleans which had literally lost everything. Many of the members sought refuge in Baton Rouge because their homes and everything they owned were washed away in Katrina’s flooding. Within weeks of being within our parish, St. Gabriel’s parishioners taught us a new prayer. Right after the Gospel and before the homily, we would all pause for a moment of silence and then sing this prayer:

Holy Spirit, come and fill this place.
Bring us healing and your warm embrace.
Show your power; make your presence known.
Holy Spirit, come fill this place.
Breath of God, we need a touch from you.
Shine down on us with the light of truth.
Stir our hearts and set our spirits free.
Holy Spirit, come fill this place.

There was power in this prayer. Joined in fervent prayer we were a community of wounded, confused disciples from different cities, from different backgrounds, from different cultures, carrying with us the hurt in our hearts, yet hoping for the joy of the Resurrection and begging for the gift of the Spirit in our lives. Praying this Holy Spirit prayer helped me see that we were like the disciples at Pentecost who were both confused and able to proclaim the Spirit at the same time.

This prayer remains with me today. I rock my children to this prayer. I say this prayer when I experience or witness in others hurt, sadness, grief, confusion, or anger. I pray this prayer on days when I am full of joy and hope. This prayer has brought awareness in my life of God at work in all things, especially during the mundane, ordinary rhythm of the majority of our liturgical year. This prayer helped me understand that Easter does come, and the joy we find in the Resurrection does not have to end, because Pentecost reminds us that the Spirit remains with us, even in Ordinary Time.

Without the willingness to be spiritually challenged, we cannot and will not change. Without the will to give up whatever is asked of us in order to meet a bigger God, we find that our understanding and experience of the Divine cannot and will not grow.

God took Abraham through the desert, and if you have the will to follow, he’ll take you through the desert too. The desert represents a place of purification and pure encounter with God, with no obstacles or distractions. The desert is the place where you will experience the naked truth of who you are—the image and likeness of God, the divine breath. While you’re in the desert, God may come for your beloved Isaac and ask you to sacrifice him. Isaac was Abraham’s son and God’s own gift and promise to him.

Do you still want to know God? Do you still want to see the face of the Divine? Do you have the will to experience your own spiritual and divine identity and become a channel of divine blessing?

Paul Coutinho, SJ
How Big Is Your God?

A comment about the early Jesuits

There was, however, one “doctrine” that was fundamental for them, one that gave orientation to all their ministries and to the way they wanted to lead their own lives. It was the basic premise of the Exercises, even though it was buried unobtrusively in the fifteenth “Preliminary Observation”: the Creator deals directly with the creature, and the creature deals directly with the Creator—heart to heart, one might say. Upon this teaching Jesuits based their more characteristic themes—indifference, discernment, and inner devotion, or consolation.

John W. O’Malley, SJ
The First Jesuits

One day I was riding a subway in New York City engaging in my favorite New York pastime—people-watching. You can really study people in subways because they sit in the same place for a while and they almost always avoid eye contact. Across from me sat a Sikh man wearing an expensive suit and a turban. Near him was a Muslim woman also wearing a head covering. Down the car a bit were two Hasidic Jews wearing long black coats, flat-brimmed black hats, and sporting curls of hair on the sides of their heads. The religions of the world, all in one subway car—only in New York. Then I noticed that the man sitting next to the Sikh appeared to be reading a Bible. It was hard to tell for sure. The Bible looked like an ordinary book, but as I peered at it, it looked like the type was small and laid out in two columns on the page.  He looked like everyone else, an ordinary guy reading a book on a subway.

My friend Chris Lowney calls this “the Christian problem.” The problem is: how are Christians different? Our lives look pretty much the same as everyone’s. In everyday terms, what makes us different?

Other religions have answers to that question with visible differences, as my subway inspection showed.  Observant Jews follow the Law, which regulates food, dress, and other aspects of daily life. Faithful Muslims pray five times a day.  Hindus are differentiated into caste groups with distinct modes of dress and behavior. We Christians have few of these outer signs of religious identity because Jesus wasn’t much interested in external signs of piety.  He was much more interested in the condition of our hearts. We act as Christians when our hearts are set on loving God and other people.  We live as followers of Christ when we’re aligned with the work God is doing in the world. This is much more a matter of our inner orientation than outward characteristics.

The answer to the Christian problem is to find God in all things—to see God in what we think, do, and feel; in life with family, friends, colleagues, and casual acquaintances; in our busyness and our rest.  That’s what the Examen helps us do so well.

Adapted from A Simple, Life-Changing Prayer: Discovering the Power of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Examen

What if that shadowy mystery beyond the span of our years turns out to be the real country to which our earthly days are just the fragmented signposts? What if the unconscious realms in which our conscious minds are floating turn out to be the embryonic sac that is beckoning us toward a reality far beyond imagination? What if that of my life that seems so total, so final, and so absolute turns out to be the map into the hinterland of my eternal reality?

How reluctant we are to let go of the containing walls and risk a life beyond the circumscription. It seems easier to survive the slavery of Egypt than to venture into Sinai, and we convince ourselves that our slavery is freedom and our helplessness is a proud independence. The map changes radically when our walls come down and the real roads, that were always there, though impassable, are opened up. Then the hinterland becomes the heartland, where real life can really be lived.

Margaret Silf
Inner Compass

When one of his students said she was spiritual but not religious, Jason Brauninger, SJ, decided to explain why was both.  His essay was published on the lively JesuitPost.com site.  His main reason?

It’s this: without religion, without a living community of spiritual friends, I simply have no one to hold me up to any standards. There would be no one with a similar set of values or beliefs that could help me become a better person, challenge me to deepen my relationship with God, or even understand me when I have to beg for help from the depths like the psalmist.

Read the whole thing.

There’s an old saying that we should “pray as if everything depends on God, work as if everything depends on you.”  It’s been attributed to Ignatius (though there’s no evidence that he said it), and many think it captures the Ignatian spirit: turning it all over to God in prayer and then working tirelessly and urgently to do God’s work.  I prefer to reverse it: “pray as if everything depends on you, work as if everything depends on God.”  This means that prayer has to be urgent: God has to do something dramatic if everything depends on me.  It also puts our work in the right perspective: if it depends on God, we can let it go.  We can work hard but leave the outcome up to him.  If God is in charge we can tolerate mixed results and endure failure.

Ignatius writes about work and human effort in a letter to an aristocrat named Jerome Vines, whom I imagine was a busy, hard-charging, Type A character who was getting upset about the fate of his many projects.  A busy man, Ignatius writes, “must make up his mind to do what he can, without afflicting himself if he cannot do all that he wishes. You must have patience and not think that God our Lord requires what man cannot accomplish.”  He concludes with this: “There is no need to wear yourself out, but make a competent and sufficient effort, and leave the rest to him who can do all he pleases.”

Something to think about ¦ How do you “know” if you have “found God” in something, in a moment of your day? For me it is like hitting a hard reset on my computer; It is reconnecting to my mission, to that which makes me tick and makes me seek goodness. It is the self-awareness of seeing what is truly important and needed in a situation rather than just what I “want.” It is the moment of gratitude for what is, and the release of the angst for what isn’t. And in those moments, there is a sense of wholeness, of Oneness with Something greater than myself, with another person, or with the world around me. When I step outside of myself enough, at the end of my day or throughout the day, to momentarily name and celebrate that experience of Oneness, that is when I can say I find God in all things.

Lisa Kelly
IgnatianLife.org

I have a dear friend who has been a Servite sister for many decades.  Last week she mentioned in passing that in her community they have a tradition that she called “Go gracefully.”  It means that before someone goes on a trip she gets everything done ahead of time.  Laundry is done, suitcase packed, driving directions printed off or boarding pass ready.   “Go Gracefully” means that the night before the trip or the morning of the excursion, there is a peaceful readiness about everything and no last-minute panic.

I have thought of that a number of times in the days since I have seen her and pondered what a gentle and sensible tradition that is.  When we are running around excitedly trying to get our last-minute things done, our urgency is imposed on everyone around us.  My panic becomes the prominent emotion in the house.  My problem becomes everyone else’s problem.

It’s bad enough in a family, but if I project that kind of alarming behavior on a whole community of people, I can create quite a disturbance simply because I did not plan ahead.  What a sensible tradition for people who live in community – and for the rest of us!

I even think about workplace panic.  If I have a big meeting that I am procrastinating preparing for, my last minute fear and anxiety will fill the office and disturb my colleagues.  My disquiet will seep into those around me at work or at home.

This is a good time of year for all of us to remember to go gracefully.  It is a special way we can love those around us by remaining at peace and turning our fretting over to our loving God.

“The LORD will guard your coming and going both now and forever.”
Psalm 121