by James Martin
Experiencing God also comes through personal interactions within the community. Sure, God communicates through private, intimate moments—as in prayer or reading of sacred texts— but God also enters into relationships with us through others in a faith community. Finding God often happens in the midst of a community—with a “we” as often as an “I.” For many people this community is a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. Or more broadly, religion.
Finally, religion means that your understanding of God and the spiritual life can more easily transcend your individual understanding and imagination. Do you imagine God as a judge? That’s fine—if it helps you become a more moral and loving person. But a religious tradition can enrich your spiritual imagination in ways that you might not be able to discover by yourself.
Here’s an example: one of my favorite images of God is the God of Surprises, which I first encountered in the novitiate. My own idea of God at the time was limited to God the Far-Away One, so it was liberating to hear about a God who surprises, who waits for us with wonderful things. It’s a playful, even fun, image of God. But I would have never come up with it on my own. It came to me from David Donovan, my spiritual director, who had read it in a book of that same title, by an English Jesuit named Gerard W. Hughes, who borrowed it from an essay by the German Jesuit Karl Rahner.
That image was amplified when I read the conclusion of one of the great modern spiritual novels, Mariette in Ecstasy. Ron Hansen, an award-winning writer who is also an ordained Catholic deacon, penned the story of the religious experiences of a young nun in the early 1900s, loosely based on the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the French Carmelite. At the end of the story, Mariette, who had left the monastery many years before, writes to her former novice director and assures her that God still communicates with her.
We try to be formed and held and kept by him, but instead he offers us freedom. And now when I try to know his will, his kindness floods me, his great love overwhelms me, and I hear him whisper, Surprise me.
The image of the God who surprises and the God who waits for surprises came to me from three Jesuit priests and the religious imagination of a Catholic writer.
In other words, that idea was given to me by religion.
Overall, being spiritual and being religious are both part of being in relationship with God. Neither can be fully realized without the other. Religion without spirituality can become a dry list of dogmatic statements divorced from the life of the spirit. This is what Jesus warned against. Spirituality without religion can become a self-centered complacency divorced from the wisdom of a community. That’s what I’m warning against.
For St. Ignatius Loyola the two went hand in hand. (If anything, Ignatius was criticized for being too spiritual, as his way struck some people as not centered enough on the church.) His way understands the importance of being both spiritual and religious.
FINDING GOD IN ALL THINGS
After Ignatius’s conversion, his life was focused on God. The introduction to the Spiritual Exercises reads, “Human beings are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by means of doing this to save their souls.” God, says Ignatius, is at the center of everything and provides meaning for our lives.
Another way of understanding that worldview is with a quotation from Pedro Arrupe, S.J. Father Arrupe was the head of the Jesuit Order from 1965 to 1981, a period of volcanic change in the Catholic Church. He is perhaps best known for reminding the Jesuits that part of their original work was with the poor and marginalized. In the 1970s a journalist asked Father Arrupe this question: who is Jesus Christ for you?
One can imagine the journalist anticipating a boilerplate answer like “Jesus Christ is my Savior” or “Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
Instead, Arrupe said, “For me Jesus Christ is everything!” That is a good shorthand for how Ignatius looked at God.
But not everyone reading this book has that kind of relationship with God. Maybe few people do. For people on the path of independence, the path of disbelief, the path of exploration, or the path of confusion, the question is less about devoting oneself to God entirely and more about something else, the question that began our discussion: how do I find God?
Here is where we can turn to an important insight of Ignatius: God can speak directly with people in astonishingly personal ways. This can lead even the doubtful and confused and lost to God. The key, the leap of faith required, is believing that these intimate experiences are ways God communicates with you.
In his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius wrote that the Creator deals “immediately with the creature and the creature with its Creator.” God communicates with us. Seekers, then, need to be aware of the variety of ways that God has of communicating with us, of making God’s presence known.
In other words, the beginning of the path to finding God is awareness. Not simply awareness of the ways that you can find God, but an awareness that God desires to find you.
That brings us to the first important moment in the life of Ignatius: his initial conversion. By focusing more carefully on this one particular incident, you can see how God can use everything to find you. So let’s return to that event and look at it in greater detail.
LITTLE BY LITTLE
Iñigo of Loyola, as I mentioned earlier, was thirty years old when his leg was shattered by a cannonball during the siege of a castle by the French military in Pamplona in 1521. This pivotal incident, which might have been merely a tragic setback to another person, marked the beginning of Ignatius’s new life.
After Ignatius stayed in Pamplona for several days, his French captors, who treated him “with courtesy and kindness,” brought him back to his family’s castle, where the doctors reset the bone. To do so, they had to break the leg. “This butchery was done again,” he writes in his Autobiography. His condition worsened, and those around him, worried that he was about to die, arranged for him to have the last rites.
Finally he recovered. Yet Ignatius noticed something troubling: the bone below one knee had been poorly set, shortening his leg. “The bone protruded so much that it was an ugly business.” Now his vanity took over. “He was unable to abide it,” he wrote, “because he was determined to follow the world.” He couldn’t abide the idea of being thought unattractive.
Despite the pain involved, he asked the surgeons to cut away the bone. Looking back, the older Ignatius recognized his foolishness. “He was determined to make himself a martyr to his own pleasure,” he wrote.
During his subsequent convalescence, Ignatius was unable to find books on what he most enjoyed reading: adventure stories and tales of chivalry. The only things available were a life of Jesus and the lives of the saints. To his surprise, he found that he enjoyed the tales of the saints. Thinking about what the saints had done filled him with a sense that they would be “easy to accomplish.”
Still, he was attracted to the ideals of knightly service, and when he wasn’t reading about the life of Christ or the lives of the saints, he mused about doing great deeds for “a certain lady.” Even though her station was higher than a countess or a duchess, Ignatius was obsessed on winning her over with daring exploits. In this way he wasn’t very different from some men in our time, or any time for that matter.
So he went back and forth, thinking about doing heroic things for the noble lady and doing heroic things for God.
Then a strange thing happened, something that would influence not only Ignatius but the life of every Jesuit and anyone who has followed the way of Ignatius.
Ignatius slowly realized that the aftereffects of these thoughts were different. After he thought about impressing his “certain lady” with exploits on the battlefield, he felt one way. After thinking about doing great things and undergoing hardships for God, he felt another.
I’ll let him describe it in one of the most famous passages in his autobiography:
Yet there was a difference. When he was thinking about the things of the world, he took much delight in th
em, and afterwards, when he was tired and put them aside, he found that he was dry and discontented. But when he thought of going to Jerusalem, barefoot and eating nothing but herbs and undergoing all the things that the saints endured, not only was he consoled when he had these thoughts, but even after putting them aside, he remained content and happy.
He did not notice this, however; nor did he stop to ponder the difference until one day his eyes were opened a little, and he began to marvel at the difference, realizing from experience that some thoughts left him sad and others happy. Little by little he came to recognize the difference between the spirits that agitated him, one from the enemy and one from God.
Ignatius began to understand that these feelings and desires might be ways that God was communicating with him. This is not to say that Ignatius found God and women in opposition. Rather, he began to see that his desires of winning fame by impressing others drew him away from God. His desires to surrender to a more generous and selfless way of life drew him toward God. What religious writers call a “grace” was not simply that he had these insights, but that he understood them as comingfrom God.
As a result of his experience, Ignatius began to understand that God wants to communicate with us. Directly.
This idea would get Ignatius in trouble with the Inquisition and land him in jail. (Ignatius had his own problems with “religion” at times.) Some critics suspected that Ignatius was trying to bypass the institutional church. If God could deal with humanity directly, they wondered, what need was there for the church?
As I’ve mentioned, religion enables people to encounter God in profound ways in their lives. But Ignatius recognized that God could not be confined within the walls of the church. God was larger than the church.
Today the Ignatian notion of the Creator’s dealing directly with human beings is less controversial. It’s assumed by those on the “spiritual but not religious” journey. The far more controversial idea these days is that God would speak to us through religion.
But Ignatius’s insight is as liberating today as it was in his time. And it is here that Ignatian spirituality can help even the doubtful find God.
Some agnostics or atheists await a rational argument or a philosophical proof to demonstrate the existence of God. Some will not believe until someone can show them how suffering can coexist with the belief in God. A few may even hope for an incontrovertible physical “sign” to convince them of God’s presence.
But God often speaks in ways that are beyond our intellect or reason, beyond philosophical proofs. While many are brought to God through the mind, just as many are brought to God through the heart. Here God often speaks more gently, more quietly, as he did during Ignatius’s convalescence. In these quiet moments God often speaks the loudest.
Let’s look at some examples of these quiet, heartfelt moments in our own lives.
You are holding an infant, maybe your own, who looks at you with wide-open eyes, and you are filled with a surprising sense of gratitude or awe. You wonder: Where do these powerful feelings come from? I’ve never felt like this before.
You are walking along the beach, and as you cast your eyes to the horizon, you are filled with a sense of peace that is all out of proportion to what you expect. You wonder: Why am I getting so emotional about the beach?
You are in the midst of a sexual encounter with your husband or wife, or an intimate moment with your girlfriend or boyfriend, and you marvel at your capacity for joy. You wonder: How can I be so happy?
You are out to dinner or with a friend and feel a sudden sense of contentment, and you recognize how lucky you are to be blessed with her friendship. You wonder: This is an ordinary night. Where did this deep feeling come from?
You have finally been able to come to terms with a tragedy in your life, a sickness or death, or you find yourself consoled by a friend, and you are overcome with calm. You wonder: How is it that I am finally at peace in the midst of such sadness?
Gratitude, peace, and joy are ways that God communicates with us. During these times, we are feeling a real connection with God, though we might not initially identify it as such. The key insight is accepting that these are ways that God is communicating with us. That is, the first step involves a bit of trust.
Conversely, during times of stress and doubt and sorrow and anger, we can also experience God’s communication.
You accompany a good friend or relative struggling with a horrible illness, or maybe you are ill. You think: How could this happen? And you feel a desperate need, an urgent longing, for some comfort or connection.
You are in the midst of a stressful time and wonder how you can ever get through the day. Then someone says something that goes straight to your heart, consoling you out of all proportion to the words, and you feel supported and loved. You think: How could just those few words help me?
You are at a funeral and wonder over the meaning of human life. Or you are tired and stressed from your life and wonder how much more you can take. You think: Is there anyone out there aware of me, who is looking out for me?
In each of these times—happy and sad, consoling and confusing, intimate and overwhelming—something special is happening, something more than just emotional “projection.” The excess of feeling seems disproportionate to the cause, or perhaps it’s hard to see any obvious cause. As well, there is a certain expansion of the soul, a loss of inhibition, and perhaps even an increase in one’s feelings of love and generosity. (Abraham Maslow, the social psychologist, spoke of these as “peak experiences.”) There may even be a change in one’s outlook on life, and a great sense of peace or joy.
During these times, I believe, you are feeling a manifestation of your innate attraction to God. You are feeling what St. Augustine described in the fourth century. “Lord, our hearts are restless,” he wrote, “until they rest in you.” The pull that draws you to God comes from God.
Now we need to talk about that attraction from a different angle, and using another word. We’re going to talk about something that Ignatius considered to be at the heart of the spiritual life. And it might surprise you.
We’re going to talk about desire.
Chapter Three
What Do You Want?
Desire and the Spiritual Life
TWO OF THE GOSPELS include the deceptively simple story of Jesus of Nazareth meeting a blind beggar along the road. In the Gospel of Mark, he is given a name: Bartimaeus, which in Hebrew means “son of Timaeus” (see Mark 10:46–52).
Bartimaeus is seated by the side of the road, begging for alms, when Jesus and his disciples pass by. The Gospels say that a “large crowd” was following Jesus, so there must have been a great commotion. You can easily picture the blind man wondering what is going on.
When Bartimaeus hears who is passing by, he shouts, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Here is some irony: as Mark tells it, most in the crowd have no idea who Jesus is. Jesus’ true identity as the Messiah is kept hidden from most people. (Theologians call this the “Messianic secret.”) The blind man, however, sees.
The crowd shushes Bartimaeus. But he is insistent and shouts out again. The blind man, who has probably been ignored for most of his life, wants Jesus to notice him. The unseen man wants to be seen.
Finally, Jesus hears him and invites him over. In a bit of storytelling that has the ring of truth, the man’s friends, who had previously been shushing him, now say, “Get up, he is calling you.” With a gesture of freedom, he throws off his cloak and approaches Jesus.
Jesus says to Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?”
“My teacher,” he says, “let me see again.”
“Receive your sight,” says Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. “Your faith has saved you.” Bartimaeus is healed and follows Jesus along the way.
When I first heard this story as a Jesuit novice, it baffled me. Why would Jesus ask Bartimaeus what he wanted? Jesus could see that the guy was blind. And Jesus already had several healings to his credit,
so he knew not only that the sick wanted to be healed but that he could heal them.
So why does he ask that question? Gradually, an answer dawned on me: Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he wants, not so much for himself as for the blind man. Jesus was helping the man identify his desire, and to be clear about it.
Desire has a disreputable reputation in religious circles. When most people hear the term, they think of two things: sexual desire or material wants, both of which are often condemned by some religious leaders. The first is one of the greatest gifts from God to humanity; without it the human race would cease to exist. The second is part of our natural desire for a healthy life—for food, shelter, and clothing.
Desire may be difficult for some people to accept in their spiritual lives. One of the best books on the way of Ignatius is The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed, written by Katherine Dyckman, Mary Garvin and Elizabeth Liebert, three Catholic sisters. In their book, they suggest that some dynamics of Ignatian spirituality may present obstacles for women and may need to be reimagined. Desire is one of them. “Women may often feel that paying attention to their desires is somehow selfish and that they should not honor their desires if they are being truly generous with God.” The authors encourage women to “notice” and “name” their desires.
Why this emphasis on desire? Because desire is a key way that God speaks to us.
Holy desires are different from surface wants, like “I want a new car” or “I want a new computer.” Instead, I’m talking about our deepest desires, the ones that shape our lives: desires that help us know who we are to become and what we are to do. Our deep desires help us know God’s desires for us and how much God desires to be with us. And God, I believe, encourages us to notice and name these desires, in the same way that Jesus encouraged Bartimaeus to articulate his desire. Recognizing our desires means recognizing God’s desires for us.
