Newsletter 

No.13                                                                                                       July/August 2004

Holiday Time

Summer is a time when many people, including the Holy Father, take a holiday.  In this intention, the Holy Father prays that our holidays may help us to meet God and to find in Him our “inner harmony”.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, states: Just as God rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done (Gen 2:2), human life has a rhythm of work and rest,  This time of rest is given to people so that they might cultivate their familial, cultural, social, and religious lives (#2184).

In his apostolic letter Dies Domini, Pope John Paul II wrote that God’s rest was a lingering before the ‘very good’ work (Gen 1:31) which His hand has wrought, in order to cast upon it a gaze of joyous delight.  This is ‘contemplative’ gaze which does not look to new accomplishments but enjoys the beauty of what has already been achieved.  It is a gaze which God casts upon all things, but in a special way upon mean, the crown of creation (DD 11).

In out rest, both on Sunday and during holidays, we need to imitate God and cast a contemplative gaze upon creation which reveals something of God’s beauty.  When we stop to smell the flowers (or when we admire the blue skies and sea), we pause to become more aware of God’s gift of creation.  This helps us reflect on our own blessed identity; we are God’s beloved creatures for whom He has created everything else.  This awareness should revitalize us and five us the peace that Jesus came to give us, the peace which the world cannot give (Jn 14:27).

But our holiday time is not just for ourselves.  Our holidays should open us to God’s love for all people.  In his message for the World Day of Tourism 2002, Pope John Paul II wrote: I therefore particularly address Christians, that they may make tourism also an occasion for contemplation and for meeting with God, the Creator and Father of all people, thus being strengthened in their service to justice and peace….

For Reflection:  

How do I use my free time? Does my recreation help me to find inner harmony and peace?

What changes do I need to make to find the rest that my body and spirit need?

(1Kings 8:54-61, The Lord has granted his people rest)

(Psalm 12, 7It is vain for you to put off your rest, for He gives to His beloved in sleep.)

Ignatian Maxims

57. To take pride in the acuteness of our own mind, in our own wisdom, in our prudent conduct, would be a mark of folly. (Bartoli I, III, n.1, p.201)

58. When charity and courtesy are not sincere, they are nothing but vanity and deception. We must, therefore, beware of ever promising so much to others, that our actions cannot come up to the level of our words. (Bartoli I, IV, n.36, p.398)

59. Superiors should not intermeddle too much in the affairs which are entrusted to the charge of those who occupy important offices under them, thus using them merely as instruments for executing their orders. (Bartoli I, IV, n.36, p.405)

60. It frequently happens that the most holy persons, who according to worldly ideas are totally devoid of prudence, succeed in the most important affairs better than others apparently wiser, but less holy; because holy persons take counsel from God, rest all their hopes upon Him, and God in return inspires them with wholesome thoughts and blesses all their undertakings. However, holiness alone is generally insufficient for one who has to govern others, since much prudence and judgment are also required.
(Bartoli I, IV, n.36, p.405)

61. I'm ready to suffer and even die a thousand times daily - no matter what death ! - for the salvation of just one person.
(Rosephius, Promptuarium, M.I., Font Narr., III, Mon, 29, {265, 182}, p.539.)

Fr Arthur Vella SJ

Letting God Come Close
William A. Barry, SJ
(Loyola Press, Chicago, 2001)


William Barry is one of the most knowledgeable scholars of Ignatian Spirituality. The book Letting God Come Close is practically an expansion of Annotation 15 of the Manual of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius (SE): 

The one giving the Exercises ought not to lean or incline in either direction but rather, while standing by like the pointer of a scale in equilibrium, to allow the Creator to deal immediately with the creature and the creature with its Creator and Lord.

In Chapter 1 Barry explains the dynamics of the four Weeks of the SE. How would one know when to move to the next Week? Only when I feel that God has revealed to me, in an existential way, the grace of that particular Week - which is not as obvious as it may appear. For instance, the director is not to start the first Week before the exercitant has experienced what Barry calls the affective Principle and Foundation, (SE #23). It is experiencing God as loving and accepting me the way I am.

Chapter 2 is perhaps the most interesting in the whole book. It is about the role of desires in prayer, what Ignatius has in mind when he makes the exercitant pray, for what I want. Ignatius himself suggests what the content of each prayer ought to be, but the problem is that the exercitant's desire may not coincide with it. Barry insists that without the real desire we never get very intimate with Jesus. He even goes further and says that 'what we really desire' is diagnostic of the stage of the exercises we are actually in" (p. 28). 

The author goes on to discuss how real, albeit unconsciously, desires may be frustrated because of ambivalence or other incompatible desires. Sometimes the spiritual director himself may 'derail' a person's deepest desires. "To a mother who has lost her only child, we might say, 'God knows best,' and thus make it difficult for her to voice her outrage at God and her need for God's own answer to this awful loss. Sometimes we feel that we have to defend God against the anger directed at God by suffering people. Yet the anger may be the most authentic way for a person to relate to God and to express a desire to know God's response" (pp32-33). A similar story is that of Hannah, the mother of Samuel and the attitudes of her husband Elkanah and the priest Eli (1 Sam. 1) 

Fr Harry Formosa SJ

God the end of all our desires

What are we seeking? In most everyday actions, we have definite objectives, often resulting in immediate satisfaction. We wake up in the morning to go to work. We go to work to earn money. We earn money to live well.... The chain of reasons goes on and on. Where does it end? Prayer is the privileged moment when we can stop and think about this fundamental issue. It is fundamental not only because it involves our entire life, but also because it has been the object of innumerable studies in the course of history, since the very dawn of civilisation.

The pagan philosopher Aristotle wrote the first major study about 350 years before Christ. He reflected on his own life, and concluded that we often seek things not for their own sake but for the sake of something else. This does not satisfy us completely. So he realised that there must be a supreme good that we seek for its own sake alone. For him, it is very important that we know what this supreme good is. Otherwise, we would lose our way in life. We would just seek one thing after another in life without a clear purpose. We would live our lives like sailors without a compass, or like archers who want to shoot their arrow in the dark, without seeing their target. In his own words: 'If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake [...] clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.'

These thoughts became eventually very significant for our Christian faith. Many saints and scholars saw in Aristotle's reflections a clear reference to our desire for God as the supreme good in all that we do. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, writes: 'Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence.' By this, he means that we are not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for us to desire and seek. Meeting God in total confidence, as sometimes happens in our moments of consolation in prayer, is already a foretaste of ultimate happiness. St. Ignatius of Loyola built upon this insight. He is sometimes called a practical mystic. This refers to his style of combining in perfect harmony both the contemplative aspect and the practical aspect of his life as a committed follower of Jesus. He kept his eyes fixed on the ultimate end of our life. Moreover, this allowed him to engage in innumerable projects that kept him very busy but never disoriented. He insisted that his followers do the same. In the famous passage of his book the Spiritual Exercises, he explains our ultimate aim in practical terms: 'Human beings are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by means of doing this to save their souls. The other things on the face of the earth are created for human beings to help them in the pursuit of the end for which they are created.'

People have different attitudes in their prayer life. Some may even consider living a good life a kind of contract between them and God. They say, 'I will praise and reverence and serve God. This is my part of the contract. In this way, I will acquire my ticket to heaven.' St. Ignatius was not encouraging this attitude. Our ultimate end is a matter of loving God, not of making a contract. St. Francis Xavier, one of the greatest friends of St. Ignatius, became famous for his desire to seek God and to love Him for His own sake alone. For him, to love God to avoid going to hell was an imperfect attitude. Likewise, to love God to gain heaven was an imperfect attitude. His prayer was a deep desire to love God simply, fully, unconditionally. This aspect of his saintly life left a deep impression on his companions. There is, in fact, a prayer attributed to him called 'O Deus ego amo Te'. It describes beautifully the purity of his desire to love God above all else, just as Jesus did when he lived among us. The Jesuit poet Gerald Manley Hopkins made the following translation of this prayer:

O God, I love Thee, I love Thee - 
Not out of hope of heaven for me 
Nor fearing not to love and be 
In the everlasting burning. 
Thou, Thou, my Jesus, after me 
Didst reach Thine arms out dying,
For my sake sufferedst nails and lance,
Mocked and marred countenance,
Sorrows passing number,
Sweat and care and cumber,
Yea and death, and this for me,
And Thou couldst see me sinning;
Then I, why should not I love Thee,
Jesus, so much in love with me?
Not for heaven's sake; not to be 
Out of hell by loving Thee;
Not for any gains I see;
But just the way that Thou didst me
I do love and I will love Thee:
What must I love Thee, Lord, for then?
For being my king and God. Amen.

Fr Louis Caruana S.J.

We would like to remind you that the Centre for Ignatian Spirituality offers personal spiritual direction to all those who would like to have any kind of spiritual experience like Ignatian retreats in every day life. Retreats can be tailored according to the needs and circumstances of the retreatant. CIS can call on experienced Jesuits, other religious and trained lay people to accompany retreatants through these experiences. 

Anyone interested can contact the Director on 21827323 or 99864561 or email vince@maltajesuitretreats.com.