IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK FOUR – SESSION 31
GIVING THE CONTEMPLATION ON THE LOVE OF GOD
Russell: [00:00:00] Welcome, everybody. It’s good to be with you all again, wherever you are this morning, this afternoon, this evening. Here in Johannesburg, we were in beautiful summer weather where it was almost, I guess for you to have been around 100 degrees, and [00:01:00] suddenly, in the last 36 hours, it feels like we’re back in mid-winter, because the temperature was almost at zero this morning. It’s just unbelievable. Seems this whole ecological thing is a real issue with this unpredictability.
It’s good to be with you and to see all your smiling faces ready to go. I’m going to hand over to Anne, who’s going to lead us in prayer today. Thank you, Anne. If I could just ask everyone to make sure you’re on mute.
Anne: Lovely to be with you all. And for those of you who know that I love snow, we’re actually having snow in South Africa at the moment.
Speaker: Russell?
Russell: Yes?
Speaker: It’s just started to pour here so I don’t know if that’s affected Anne’s connectivity.
Russell: It may have because I see she’s frozen. No problem. So maybe we can just prepare ourselves if you want, just closing your eyes,[00:02:00] just checking in with how it is that you come into the space, maybe what your predominant feeling is at this time, being present to yourself,
If [00:03:00] you’d like to just take a deep breath in and to hold it, and then to breathe out; perhaps to repeat that just a few times, just for yourself in your own rhythm, to breathe in slowly, to hold it, and to breathe out. [00:04:00]
As you slowly begin to settle into this time and this space, become aware perhaps of the expectation that you have. We always come feeling in a certain way and then we come with an expectation. What is the expectation that you have as you enter into [00:05:00] this space today,[00:06:00]
We have last week, and this week been pondering the contemplation to attain love—this love of God.
Anne: And so, if I can continue, just sorry for the interruption. But love consists in mutual sharing. God creates me out of love which desires nothing more [00:07:00] than a return of love on my part.
Think about these as I read them out. God’s gifts to me. God creates me out of love, which desires nothing more than a return of love on my part. Think about your natural abilities and gifts, which are only some of the many gifts and Your graces lavished upon you.
Who am I by the grace of God?[00:08:00]
If I were to respond, what could I give to return such a lover?
God not only gives gifts to me, but He literally gives Himself to me. God loves me so much that I literally become a dwelling place or a temple of God, growing in an ever-deepening realization [00:09:00] of the image and likeness of God. It remains the glory of the creation of man and woman.
Who am I by the grace of God?
And once again I ask myself, how can I respond to that? What can I do?[00:10:00]
God labors for me. God loves me so much that He enters into the very struggle of life. God even came to death on a cross in order to bring forth the life of resurrection. How do I respond to that?[00:11:00]
God’s love shines down on me like the light rays from the sun. His love is poured forth lavishly, like a mountain, filling forth its waters into an unending stream. Just as I see the sun in its rays and the fountain its waters, so God pours forth Himself in all the gifts He showers upon me. His delight and His [00:12:00] joy is to be with the sons and daughters of man, to be with you. He cannot do enough to speak out his love for me, ever calling me to the foot of the mountain and better life.
What can I do to respond to such a generous giver?[00:13:00]
Maybe we can offer up this prayer—
Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will. All that I have and call my own, you have given it all to me. To you, Lord, I return it.
Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will. All that I have and call my own, you have given it all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. [00:14:00]
We bring you this day. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Russell: Great. Thank you, Anne. Sorry about the glitch there—technology. I’m going to hand over now to Brenda, who will be leading us with an input today. Brenda, over to you.
Brenda: Thanks, [00:15:00] Russell, and I’m hoping I’m not going to have technology glitches everyone. Just give me a sign if my voice gets distorted, then I’ll switch off video.
I’m speaking to you tonight from a retreat center up the north coast of Cospatel (sp?) and the connectivity is not brilliant. I’ve done my best, so hopefully we’re okay. So just give me a sign if I don’t make sense.
We’re talking tonight about giving the completion on God’s love. Last week, Trevor, as always gave us this beautiful big picture and one of the comments that in our reflection as team afterwards came through was, it’s like a love letter. It’s this beautiful exchange of love between God and us. We’re asking this week—how do I help my retreatant pray [00:16:00] this beautiful prayer? And this is just a condensed version of it again as long as you can hear me, I’m glad; keep me up to date.
Let’s just remember what the contemplation has at its heart. The grace we’re asking for in the contemplation is intimate knowledge of the many blessings that I have received that will lead to gratitude, and then to love and service because of that gratitude. Serving God’s divine majesty is Ignatius’ language.
So, remembering that it’s the bookend. We’ve got the PNF at the beginning and the contemplation coming towards the end of the journey of the exercises. Remembering we’ve got four points that Ignatius gives us. First [00:17:00] is to think about the gifts that he has given us—that God is present in all these things, that God is laboring on our behalf, and then this image of grace and love and beauty streaming; God coming to us in this generous act.
The title of this prayer can be a little bit tricky—just a reminder of that. The traditional translation is the contemplation to attain God’s love. So, when we’re giving the prayer or offering it to our retreatants, we’re here to just remind them that this is not how we earn God’s love. I’d much prefer the title or to use the more contemporary version of the contemplation on God’s love.
In one of the books that I was looking at in terms of how to offer it, Habach—I [00:18:00] think that’s how you say it. It says, if you want to put it into contemporary slang, the title of the contemplation is how to get God love. You know, like “I get it;” not like I achieve it, but I understand it and that it’s integrated into me. I really get it. This contemplation is an integrate of our acceptance of God’s love that’s deep into ourselves.
Remember that we’re invited to remember those two principles or two statements of Ignatius at the beginning; that love is expressed more in deeds than in words, and also that there’s a mutual sharing. The contemplation invites us into a mutuality with God, and a giving and receiving from both.
So, the first question when we’re taught the contemplation [00:19:00] is really when are we going to get it and that should feel like, why on earth are you putting that in your presentation? Because it’s coming at the end, and it’s the last thing we do. Most people or many writers now, would agree, it comes at the end, but that’s not always been the case. Through centuries, the contemplation has been used whenever someone finishes the exercises. So, if someone does a shortened version of the exercises at one stage, and there are some who would argue now the contemplation was given as they ended, say one and ended the exercise.
At times, the contemplation on God’s love was given before the election, the second week or at a later point in the second week. Whilst we are assuming and thinking this comes at the end of the exercises, that’s not always [00:20:00] been the case. Keep that in mind.
Trevor alluded to this last week. He said, there is some debate, but he thinks he likes the contemplation at the end, and he would be in good company. Many of those who give us the frameworks that we use, or the resources that we’re using to help us guide our retreatants, put the contemplation on God’s love, after the resurrection appearances in the fourth week.
So Veltri does that. Bergen and Schwann do that. O’Brian has the end, so does Warner. However, Tetlow has a different approach. What Tetlow does is he takes one point of the contemplation and spreads it through different days or different weeks in the 19th annotation. So, he spreads it out in amongst the texts on the resurrection. So, you have a different approach, [00:21:00] with Tetlow, and the concept is that Ignatius, either to spread it out through the fourth week or to use it as the last prayer at the end.
I found another approach—Olga Wonker; I think I’m saying her name right. She says she typically gives the contemplation before giving the resurrection appearances. That’s unusual. I suppose what I’m saying as I speak about the different places that you could put The contemplation is that we recognize that there’s not just one understanding; this is the way it is.
In fact, in the exercises, there is less instruction from Ignatius around how to present this prayer. It’s there, we attach it to the fourth week. [00:22:00] In the past, it has been seen as a separate prayer, more attached to the three types of prayer that we’ll talk about later in another session. And so, it really is a transition in a sense. It’s a transition from the way we’ve become used to all the contemplations through the second, third, fourth weeks into every day.
Bergen and Schwan have a lovely take on this, and I’ve not read it elsewhere, but I think it’s beautiful, so I want to share it with you. They write that in recent years there’s been a growing awareness that this exercise was initially given by Ignatius to the novices who were returning home after having come to Rome as pilgrims to make the month-long spiritual exercises.
At the end of this incredible spiritual experience, they were eager to return to their various [00:23:00] homelands to begin to co labor with Jesus. Ignatius knew that by the end of their long retreat, they were men in love with Jesus Christ and His mission. He gave them this, as their prayer for the journey home, what has come to be known as the contemplatio.
Ignatius told them to keep their eyes and their hearts open, for as men in love, they would see what they had never really seen before—the majesty of the mountains, the strength of the winds, the beauty of the flowers, and so on. These, he told them, they would now be God’s gift to them. What would be their response?
Ian Tomlinson writes as well, in the sense that he speaks about the contemplation being the transition from the exercises into [00:24:00] everyday life. This is the movement from the structured praying, living with God in everyday life. In fact, the writers suggest that this prayer is not one that’s been limited to time of making the exercises. This prayer is going to go into the rest of our lives.
Practically, the prayers differ for how we present them to different people. Remembering it’s a contemplation, so it’s not a meditation—a thinking about—we want to feel with Jesus. We’re wanting to [00:25:00] be there experiencing God’s love. It’s an experiential “being with,” so whatever we offer needs to help our folk experience that.
Switching off my video just to check that you can still hear me and it’s still showing silence.
Contemplation is to gaze lovingly at the one we are beholding. Tomlinson makes the point, that by this point in the exercises, you’ll probably notice that your retreatant has started to pray differently. They may well have slowed down. They may have settled into a more contemplative, less active way of [00:26:00] praying. And so, we want to support that. We want to find ways that will support what has happened in their own praying.
We want to also recognize that it’s about everything covered in love, so we will take it slow. We want to give them space. We want to help them find ways to respond generously to God. It might be helpful just to name that sometimes retreatants are quite anxious about the take and receive prayer because it feels very scary to offer up your memory, your understanding, your entire will.[00:27:00]
If we’re finding people who are afraid or anxious about praying the prayer, then we need to help them reconnect back to the fact that they are making the prayer out of the experience of being loved by God. So, we’ve got to go right back to the Principle and Foundation and that foundational experience of being loved by God to the first week where they’re a sinner, loved by God and to the second week how they have responded to Christ and offer themselves in love, to the joy of the fourth week, and to recognize that we are offering ourselves in love to the one who has loved us first.
Sometimes there’s an anxiety, especially if people have dealt with dementia or someone, they love has had dementia, speaking about memory and understanding and giving them away. [00:28:00] And if the case, then again, we’re coming back. What is this living that we’re doing? It’s a sharing in love. It’s an offering and receiving because of love.
You want to nurture less active, less content-based prayer and more just sitting or being in the presence of the enormous gifts of God—to soak in, to see, to taste, to be with. I hope not at the end of the fourth week, but sometimes people are asking for more content. By the time we get contemplation wanting, we’re wanting to hold that space and slowing down.[00:29:00]
Let me say it again—how we offer this contemplation will be different for different people. Some people have really used their imaginations, and their imaginations have really been part of how prayed through the exercises. And so, they may use their imaginations in a continuing way. Others may have got to that stiller space. It’s okay. Help the people that you’re accompanying to pray in their own particular way. Hold things gently and quietly and prayerfully; they transition.
Just to notice something about dealing with the ending. I spoke about this [00:30:00] last week and they kept saying, Brenda’s going to talk about it next week, and I was looking for words of wisdom in this regard dealing with the endings. There are some realities. By the time we get to this place in the exercises, if it’s in a 30-day. enclosed retreat, people are tired. They’ve been there a long time. They’ve prayed hard; they are getting ready to go home. They are thinking about what waits beyond. For those who are making the 19th annotation, they’ve been praying 9, 10, even 12 months, and they are weary.
The other part of the ending, and it was brought home to me this week when I was speaking with someone that I had guided through the exercises and have continued to accompany. Because I’d been thinking about the contemplation, I brought it up in conversation and she said, “To be honest, I can’t even remember the contemplation [00:31:00] because I was so wrapped up in the fact that the ending was near and such a sense of loss that I don’t know that I really gave it full attention.
So, it’s very possible that by the time you come to this contemplation, people may not be as excited as we would love them to be for the future. And that’s why the emphasis on the fact that this prayer continues, this particular contemplation goes with us from the exercises into daily life. And if we can help folk understand that, then there is a sense that there’s not that much pressure on getting it right. I, in my own making of the exercises, I don’t remember the contemplation at all. By the time I’d got to the end, it was a [00:32:00] rush to finish because I’m moving, and it needed to be done and there’s a bit of sadness.
But if we can help people understand that the contemplation is probably the overflow of the exercises into daily life, that is a really helpful place to be. So, it’s not that this one is a full stop. It’s much more the dot, dot, dot of the exercises, and so, we want to give it in that way. We want to encourage people to realize this way of praying or this particular way can accompany them from the exercises into the rest of their lives.
There’s no evidence, say the writers, that Ignatius offered people the exercises twice. It’s the once and then we are told to go and co labor with Christ, and the contemplation on God’s love is how you live the rest of your life. So, [00:33:00] there’s a sense of continuity that we want to offer folk in the way that we present this program.
What are we going to give people? How are we going to do this? Most of the folk just in a day or a week or two where you take one of the points at a time. Ponder that, pray with that, contemplate—allow the gifts to soak in and then move to the next point. So, spreading out possibly over two weeks in the 19th Annotation—the first point and the second point in the week, and then the third and the fourth with the pray and receive prayer or the Lord, and receive those two weeks. That has kind of been my own practice.
You could give all four points at the beginning as a single prayer at prayer time and then spread it out over the next little while. As [00:34:00] I said, Tetlow takes one point and puts it per week amongst resurrection appearances of both weeks. So, if you are going to use Tetlow’s material, you are going to find that’s how he spreads it out Use one point at a time.
We can put the contemplation, though, with other material. And so, I’m going to invite you as you ponder to think about what kind of scriptures could I be using to support the contemplation? Warner has a lot of various scriptures that you can use from some that you used right in the beginning with the Principle and Foundation, and then you can use them again as you come back for things like, “In Him we live and move and have our [00:35:00] being” from Acts 17, Isaiah 64—Since ancient times, no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any god beside you.” You can use things like James 1—a good thing, a perfect gift is from love.”
You, you could use any of the texts that have been part of their journey, their sense of savoring and soaking in enormous love for them. Whichever system or support resources you’re using, you’re going to find a variety of texts that will help your retreatant stay with and soak in the contemplation. So perhaps offer one of the points, and then maybe a scripture text, and then a [00:36:00] repetition, giving them time to really sink in what they’re receiving.
I particularly do enjoy using poetry and other people’s writings, and there’s some lovely, well-known prayers that you could use to help you along the way. I thought I would read a couple of them this evening, just to give you an idea of other resources you could use. How about this one?
Let thy love play upon my voice and rest on my silence.
Let it pass through my heart into all my movements.
Let thy love like stars shine in the darkness of my sleep and dawn in my awakening.
Let it burn in the flame of my desires
And flow in all currents of my own love.
Let me carry thy love in my life as a harp does its music, and give it back to thee at last with my life.
[00:37:00] You’ll find that it’s by Rabindranath Tagore. You’ll find it in O’Brian’s Resources for those using O’Brian or Tersea of Avila’s well-known prayer.
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
[00:38:00] or one by Pedro Arrupe,
More than ever, I find myself in the hands of God.
This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth.
But now there is a difference;
the initiative is entirely with God.
It is indeed a profound spiritual experience
to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands.
And I wonder what others you have in your resources that help someone settle into that deep being loved and loving Him.
There’s a Methodist prayer for those who are of Methodist heritage. I share that with Trevor and every year Methodists [00:39:00]have a covenant service and I’m convinced that Wesley; he wrote the covenant prayer had had access to the Sistepe prayer or to the “take, Lord and receive. So, you may want to offer the covenant prayer as another alternative or another way of expressing the take and receive.
John Wesley’s prayer goes—
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. [00:40:00] [And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen]
As directors, go looking for quotes, poems, prayers that express the theme of the contemplation. Then as you structure a week or as you take someone through the reflection and the praying, you’ve got other materials to support.
But the thing with this prayer is you don’t just want it to all be words, so find images. I’m not particularly someone who’s really good at the art side of things, and so my collection is not really good. But there are folk who have beautiful images that you could use as an offering to your retreatant, inviting them to pray with an image [00:41:00] that shows or deepens the experiences, the experience, the contemplation, a picture of a cloud of the rays of the sun breaking through a cloud could really reinforce the fourth point. It could be a visual way of experiencing it.
You may also want to invite them simply to walk, to go out into nature like where I am now, not much internet, but enormous beauty, and to have that particular perspective that this is all God’s gift, that God is present, Christ is present in all that I see, that God is working, to really just live it in the moment.
Ian Tomlinson’s article on the contemplation asks a question. Is the contemplation a prayer or a way [00:42:00] of life? I suppose what we’re wanting in those last periods of the exercises, what we’re inviting folk into is to experience the way of life that comes out of the exercises.
You will remember that we’ve referred to the Principle and Foundation and the contemplation on God by the book [garbled words]. When our retreatants or our exercitants began the exercises and we offered to them the Principle and Foundation as they entered into that first week, do you remember they were asking, What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I to do for Christ? That sense of [00:43:00] what is it that I will be asked or invited to offer. By the time we come to the contemplation now at the end of the day, there is a very different feel. There’s not the ought and the should and the must. Really, what am I giving with great affection in response to God’s loving? What is it that I’m offering just because I cannot “not”? What am I giving over? What is the overflow of all that I have received?
So, Ignatius does not give us clear guidelines on how to offer this prayer, and it would seem that [00:44:00] Directors will find their own way to offer this contemplation to their exercitant. I suppose that means listening very deeply, as we’ve been doing all the way through to how you’re exercitant prays, recognizing the shifts that have happened in them and helping to tap into those.
The contemplation has a feel of it, of gathering the graces of the retreat. It’s that sense of how have I shifted? How has my relationship with God deepened and expanded? Am I praying differently now? By naming the journey made and helping them set that, they can enter into this gentle space of savoring the gifts that they have received. Partly, [00:45:00] you can yourself use the contemplation as a way of praying in your own being. And as you do that, you can then find ways to help express it.
You may need to talk about gift giving. So, you may find yourself explaining how sometimes someone gives you a gift and they just order it online. It gets wrapped by the shop and delivered. They’ve still given the gift, and the gift is still useful, but there is not the same self-giving as if someone puts the time in and the energy in, either to go and look for the particular gift or makes you something that they know you will love, and you may find yourselves pondering gifts. You may find yourselves pondering absolute extravagance love of God. [00:46:00] You may find yourself helping your retreatant to stop looking for what should I do and simply savor their belovedness and how that spills over into love and service—so less of what exactly, and much more of the attitude of mutuality and self-giving.
What I give, how I offer myself, this is all me that I’m giving to you, beloved, is the heart of the contemplation. You may find that you are being more creative in this, perhaps than I have been at the time, because it really does invite personal response.[00:47:00]
Let me read for you again that beautiful prayer that is in our Bible(?)—a prayer of self-giving and let’s use it for ourselves. I invite you to use this as a lectio yourself as we consider giving the contemplation to other folk. Listen again. This is how we want to be when we offer the contemplation on God’s love.
Let thy love play upon my voice and rest on my silence.
Let it pass through my heart into all my movements.
Let thy love like stars shine in the darkness of my sleep and dawn in my awakening. [00:48:00] Let it burn in the flame of my desires
And flow in all currents of my own love.
Let me carry thy love in my life as a harp does its music and give it back to thee at last with my life.
All in the words. After contemplation of the Suscipe Prayer—
Take Lord and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and all my will, all that I have and possess. You, Lord, have given all that to me. I now give it back to you, O Lord. All of it is yours. Dispose of it according to your will. Give me love of [00:49:00] yourself along with your grace for that is enough for me.
I think that is enough from me. There are some questions for discussion in the box or reflection and discussion. I am really wanting you to think practically, to be conscious of how this contemplation carries through into our living. And so, I invite you to be quite practical in your reflection and your discussion in your groups. Share what has been meaningful to you.
And yes, Kathi, I will [00:50:00] say thanks Kathi for reminding me. I will send those particular quotes to you all after the session this evening. So, I’m not sure of timings. Russell, perhaps you can guide us.
Russell: Thank you, Brenda. Yeah. The questions Brenda is asking you to reflect on are as well, Pam has put them in the chat there for you so you can take a look at them. We’ve got about seven minutes to go just before the hour. So, what I suggest is you take a bit of a break and let’s come back at 6 15 for us. So that would be quarter past the hour, wherever you are, and we will go into our mentor groups at quarter past the hour.
So just take time now, if you want to get coffee and just to sit with those questions around the contemplation on the love of God. And we’ll see you back here just now.[00:51:00] [00:52:00]
Russell: Great. Welcome back, everybody. It’s good to have you all back. I hope that you had a good time of questions and reflections. And so once again, we open the screen for your insights. Maybe something that struck you, something new that you learned that you want to share or a question or a wondering that you have.
[00:53:00] The floor is yours. Brenda may turn off her camera. We noticed that the sound is better when there’s no camera. So, if the little Springbok appears on your screen, she hasn’t left us. She’s just turned off her camera.
Brenda: I am still here. It’s just better sound quality. So, wondering what you’re wondering about.[00:54:00] Probably not able to see hands. So, if Russell and Pam can help me with hands, that’d be good.
Russell: Great. Melanie. Melanie’s hand is up.
Melanie: Yes, I just want to thank you for naming the anxiety that folks might experience when they are invited to respond with the Take and Receive Prayer. It made my anxiety when I was first introduced to that in the contemplation—especially that take my memory like, oh, my goodness, and it was just very real, and it normalized it for me. Maybe my director said something like that too. I just don’t recall. [00:55:00]
What I was sharing in my small group was that for me, what was really giving me some freedom around that is to think about the relationship between beloved and lover and thinking about my own experience in the natural with my husband, my lover and how happy I am to share whatever I have with Kevin whether it’s my dessert, my resources, my energy; however I can come alongside and help—and he for me as well. That really reframed it for me in a way that probably has to do with image of God too when we get to that prayer—to think about what is my image of God that I can see this prayer. And so anyway, all that just to say, it’s always helpful for me to know that I’m normal, and then also for me to be able to offer that to others. Thank you.
Brenda: Thanks, Melanie. I [00:56:00] think you’re highlighting. Very important, even when people have journeyed through the exercises, suddenly you come to those words and it can evoke a fearful reaction, possibly triggering old images of God taking us back to before. So, it’s really useful just to normalize, name, reframe.
I have a retreatant, and I share this with permission who when she prayed, my memory, my understanding, my entire will, it spoke for her of her past, her memories, her present, her understanding, her future, her will. So, there was something about all the faculties—everything that makes me, “me,” I’m sharing with you, is so much more helpful language, isn’t it, than take it.
It feels like a much more generous kind of giving and receiving. So, thank you for [00:57:00] that. It’s often real for people. Thanks, Melanie. Not sure if Russell, if you want to say something on that one.
Russell: Just another way of rephrasing it, which I found quite helpful as well is this idea that the contemplation of the love of God is an exchange.
It’s an exchange of love—that in the third week I’ve seen this wonderful love for me, this love that gives, and I’m now invited into this exchange of love to give just as the lover gives to the beloved. We talk about, understanding grace, so I want to give back to the beloved as much as I can. This idea of an exchange of love, I think is another way, which I find quite helpful. Yeah.
Brenda: Thanks, Russell.[00:58:00] I’m wondering if in your conversations, any practical resources were shared and if there was anything that was helpful in your discussion that might speak into the rest of us.[00:59:00]
Brenda: We see you, John.
John: Thank you. It seems like a lot of people have forgotten, me included the impact of the contemplation after the fact, after the exercises, and wondered if there’s any ideas on how to mitigate that, whether it’s to reconnect with the retreatant? Any ideas on how to mitigate that same thing continuing to happen?
Brenda: It’s an interesting question because in preparing for tonight as I was doing the reading, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be good to talk with directees about the contemplation again? And so just thinking [01:00:00] about it, perhaps at a practical level, if you’re continuing with people you’ve accompanied through the exercises, which we sometimes do, or if you’re guiding people who’ve made the exercises, that kind of pointing out the contemplation and inviting them to reconnect is something that can be done after they’ve journeyed into the fifth week. I suppose for us, just keeping it in our consciousness. Maybe pointing it out when people share prayer. This is all after the fact, or after the exiles. But that sense of us being aware that this is an ongoing process helps us connect with other people’s journey.
For us as the directors, being conscious that the prayer doesn’t end. It’s not a full stop. It’s dot, dot. I think that that weariness at the end of the exercises is and [01:01:00] so inviting people to pray their way out might be helpful, saying to them, this is the way that’s going to continue and inviting them to return to it.
Some of the writers actually suggest that maybe the contemplation fits better with the three types of prayer that we’ll be talking about in the next couple of weeks. It’s a way of praying that you can use like the examen. And maybe we can also remind people of that as they pray it even in the exercises.
Yeah, I’m not sure if anyone, any of the mentors, Russell, if you’ve got any thoughts on carrying the contemplation through into the period after the exercises. I think awareness is part of it.
Russell: Yeah. So, I think, if somebody does the exercise with you and they move on and they [01:02:00] go to another director or accompanier, maybe you were just leading them through the exercises. First of all, there’s this encouragement to take that to where they are at the end of the exercises; take it into the ongoing spiritual accompaniment relationship.
But I also think that there’s something about—the contemplation in a way is a case of the Lord is given, and I want to return to the Lord.
And the more I become aware of the grace of the Lord in my life and what the Lord has done for me, and the more I want to make a response in a way that give, return, give, return, give, return is almost in a deeper relationship with God is almost the dynamic of that relationship the whole time—the more I become aware, the more I want to respond. And almost in a way as well, I think if someone comes out of the exercise, the dynamic of God giving, God the giver of all good gifts, and me seeking ways to respond to return them, it [01:03:00] naturally also happens.
So, I wouldn’t get too worried about the contemplation itself and how we pull that through, but to see the dynamic of that happening in the ongoing spiritual accompaniment, the ongoing relationship with the Lord that the person has. Yeah, I think that is also part of it and we will, or we will just as a little throw forward as well. We will also be doing something about what some people are now calling the fifth week anyway, how this continues to happen. That is coming up as well. I don’t know if that’s helpful, John.
Brenda: I think you’re highlighting what Tomlinson says that the contemplation is a way of life. So, in a sense, you don’t have to actually just do the four points; it becomes your way of living and that’s the response coming out of it. That’s quite helpful. John, did we give you help?
John: Yes, very helpful. Thank you. [01:04:00]
Russell: And right from the beginning of the exercises, we talk about the gift that the Lord has given, everything God has created, redemption, the spirit that gifts. The more we live into that sense of God, the giver of all gifts, I think it does make this a way of life as well. It naturally flows from that when we are intentionally living those gifts. Shelley?
Brenda: Oh, Shelley?
Shelley: Yeah, we just had a rich conversation in our group about our own personal experiences that sort of expand how different people experience contemplating the love of God. And then resources. as well as how we’ve lived into it as a way of life. And so, I think we had a good conversation about [01:05:00] senses; the sense of the importance of perhaps inviting retreatants to use spoken word, maybe even speaking scriptures with their own name in it in terms of the love of God.
We also talked about possibly using Trevor’s Beloved Charter exercise that is a powerful tool for living into the identity of your own love of God and the notion of prayer walking and engaging your senses in terms of the gifts of the love of God. So, we just had a good conversation about expanding how you think about that.
Brenda: Thank you, Shelley. It sounds like in your discussion, what you’re naming is the reality that the contemplation is not a set format so much as a lived experience and a soaking in. It’s almost an application of the senses at the [01:06:00] end of the exercises as a whole. That just savoring. Thank you for that.
Russell: And Shelley, the many ways as well that you just spoke about; of living into that contemplation, whether that’s walking, nature. Brenda mentioned a few things as well—poems, and some creative ways just to help people to live into that I think can be very helpful.
I wish I remembered the name of the film, but somebody who was just finishing the exercises, went to go and see a film, and for a long time, they were so impacted by this film because they felt the film just drew them exactly into this whole idea of the love of God and the wanting to respond and make it a way of life. I should actually see if I could get hold of that person and ask what the film was, but I just remember how the film became a catalyst for them to do that as well. Yeah. Yeah, [01:07:00]
Brenda: We would love that, Russell if you could give us the name. Doreen
Doreen: Several things. One is we were talking about how as directors, what we always do is help people live into the contemplatio, to receive the love of God, to see God always active. So, we shared some of our resources. I know I give regularly David Benner’s Surrender to Love book, which to me is a wonderful book to remind people or Henry Nowen’s Life of the Beloved is another one.
Another thing I remembered is that when I was done the exercises, I kept drawing the experience for me of being loved by God. And so, wondering just in the same way we invite people sometimes to write their own Principle and Foundation, if we could write people to draw or to write a poem or to write out their own contemplatio, something that’s theirs to carry with [01:08:00] them.
The other thing from last year that I remember writing down in this talk that was helpful—two things. One is using Margaret Silf’s take on the Suscipe’s Take and Receive Prayer was helpful, and then I think Timothy Gallagher also has a podcast that walks you through the contemplatio.
So those were just two resources that were new to me that I think might be helpful.
Brenda: Thanks, Doreen. My sense always in this kind of work is that the more we share our resources, the better our practice is for sure. Thank you for those.
Russell: Doreen, I just want to pick up on something else that you said there, which just struck me now as well. I wrote the word down. You said the word surrender when you were talking there, and one of the things about the contemplatio is like this—take Lord and receive [01:09:00] take, take—and I think in English, the word take can sound quite possessive. I think going back to the first question that we spoke about tonight, it’s not really a taking, but it’s more surrendering, and the word take can also kind of mislead us. I just thought I wanted to say that it’s not in a possessive way, but in a surrendering way, because I want to surrender to be totally God’s, that God has in a sense, in the third week, God has given all for me and He’s totally willing to give all for me, and therefore my response is also this wanting to surrender, this desire to surrender to God. So maybe for people who think the word take—it can be a little thing like actually, I don’t want you to take anything; just leave it. The invitation is more of a surrender, I think, and when you said that I just thought that’s maybe also important to say.
Brenda: I do think that word take feels like for people when [01:10:00] they say take, it feels like they will then not have, and that surrender or even sharing, there’s a mutuality in where the contemplatio is leading us—that sharing between the lover and the beloved.
The take is really hard and may for people feel quite abrasive. As you say, Russell and Doreen, surrender or sharing or and words like mutuality really help people have a different feel to what they might otherwise hear. I see Shirley’s hand.
Shirley: Thank you, Brenda, for that. That was really good. I was struck when you said that Ignatius often gave these exercises to people as they walked home and my thought was him putting these exercises together, and maybe I’m wrong, but I [01:11:00] think he would have followed up with them at a later date and how did your walk home go or whatever, but it would have probably been done by letter or something.
I’m wondering if there’s a place for six months afterwards, a contact if the person is not continuing with them in spiritual direction, if there’s a place for contact later about the exercises. Does anybody ever do that?
Brenda: Good question. First of all, let me just say that I can’t vouch for the authenticity of that story, but I did like it in Bergen and Schwan’s book that the sense of carrying the contemplation home with you on the journey. In terms of your question about follow up, I’m wondering because of our different contexts. I see Russell was going to say, our different texts may have different impacts. if you give exercises in a 30 day, you [01:12:00] may well not have contact with someone after. Whereas if you’re giving them daily life, you may well continue.
I’m wondering about my own experience is really much more ongoing because I’ve tended to give the 19th annotation. Russell, I’m wondering what you’re thinking is about ongoing or following up six months down the line.
Russell: Yeah. So, I know Some people who do that, and I know that lots of people don’t do that. I guess it’s the nature of the relationship with the person afterwards, where they are, if they’re in another spiritual direction relationship, and all those things need to be considered.
In my experience as a Jesuit, there definitely is follow up. Two or three months after it, there is a follow up with whoever gave the exercises to us six months later. There is a kind of sense of an ongoing [01:13:00] thing. There’s a sense that that accompanying doesn’t stop if the person wants to have that.
My take on it is, if you’re the person giving the exercises and there’s not going to be an ongoing accompaniment relationship afterwards like a 30 day, and they’re going back to the other side of the country or whatever, I think at the end, even one could say or make a suggestion to the person, would you like in six months that we just touch base on this again, or something like that and see what they say. They may say, yes, I’d love to. Do we have to wait six months? Maybe could we do it in three months.
I think it depends on the nature of the relationship. I don’t think there’s a good way or a bad way. My one caution would be that if the person is coming just for the exercises and then afterwards is in an accompaniment relationship with someone else, you don’t want to see to be stepping into that space—I don’t know if you have this expression in the States—muddying the [01:14:00] waters in that relationship. I don’t know if that’s helpful.
Brenda: Thank you, Russell. I suppose it’s got something as well to do with what the original contract or agreement was, and where are you going from there? So again, maybe it’s each one on its own merits on following through.
Russell: And some people will have the experience as well that, you’ll give someone the exercises and then at the end of the exercise, they’ll say, okay, I was going to someone else, but would it be okay if we continued journeying together as well? That sometimes also has happened that people say I feel like we’ve entered into a relationship here and I want to continue journeying with you. That could be possible too.
We do something about this towards the end as well. We’ll talk a [01:15:00] little bit about ending the relationship, et cetera, et cetera if it is in a fixed period of time, just for the exercises.
Brenda: You are sparking another thought for me, though, as well that as we give people the exercises, we may well find ourselves accompanying people in different spaces who’ve made the exercises. So, for us, keeping the journey and the dynamic and the fruit of the exercises in our minds as we accompany people in other spaces is also helpful.
To be able to refer back to what they will have might have experienced and to touch into that. So, we can also take the contemplatio into daily living as well as we accompany other folk even if we didn’t give them the exercises, we can help them stay connected with the graces of the exercises.[01:16:00]
Russell: Yeah, so I have someone who comes to me that did the exercises with somebody else, and then, for one reason or another, the person decided to come to me, and it’s very interesting because from time to time, we do use the language of the exercises. Sometimes even when they come and they see me once a month he’ll say something and then he’ll say “like, you know, in the exercises.”
So, in a way, also just knowing that the person did them and using the language of the exercises with someone, even if you didn’t do it with them, I think that also keeps it alive for people, and sometimes when they’re in desolation, so I remember what you learned there in the exercises or whatever the case is. So, it keeps the dynamic going as well. Yeah.
Brenda: Absolutely. Thanks, Russell. We’ve probably got time for one [01:17:00] or two more comments or questions or thoughts.
Russell: If nobody’s got anything, there was something else which struck me the other day when I was looking at this and that is the relationship between the third degree of humility, if you’d like to call it—number 167, and the contemplatio. It always strikes me how there’s a relationship between those two— this in the third degree of humility in order to imitate and be more actually like Christ our Lord, and then I want to choose poverty with Christ, poor, blah, blah, blah, blah, with Christ. And in a way in the contemplatio, that’s what we are praying as well, and I just think sometimes seeing how these things in the exercises are related to each other are also quite nice.
A day or two ago, I was looking at this and I just thought, wow, 167 and the contemplatio. there’s a nice—what we are asking for there in 167 in [01:18:00] the third degree of humility is almost what we are giving, what we are surrendering in the contemplatio.
Brenda: It’s that shift, isn’t it? We are seeing the fruit of all the praying—the grace is given. and our generous response. I suppose in the end, that’s the thing about the contemplation, is that it is an overflow; it is a reality; it’s an outpouring of ourselves in affectionate response to God. It’s a loving response. This is what it is—I’m yours, you are mine, that’s enough. It is our giving—an expression of what is.
Speaker 2: I think theologically for Ignatius, for those who would be interested, that idea of kenosis that he emptied himself. In a way, I think Ignatius, in his mind, almost sees the contemplatio as well as this [01:19:00] generous emptying of oneself and not emptying for the sake of emptying but emptying to be filled by. That the idea that somehow the contemplatio encapsulates our own self emptying, our own kenosis, I think is quite powerful as well to see it into the background of the kenosis that we see in the scriptures—the emptying of Himself.
Brenda: Generous outpouring.
Russell: So, I don’t know if there’s anything else. We’ll keep the space here just a couple of more seconds and then we’ll move to wrap up.
Russell: Sorry, I don’t see Reggie. [01:20:00] Go ahead.
Reggie: Thank you. I just thought it’s rather important to make two remarks. One is that by this stage of the exercises, you have probably gotten to know your exercitant very well, and how are you going to actually present this prayer will depend on who they are and how God has created them, and you should be led by that in how you actually present it and how you encourage them to express their response to God’s love.
I love all the ideas of, poetry and writing and sculpturing and painting something because that leaves a person with a reminder of the exercises, if they keep it in their study or something like that.
The second thing I wanted to say is that maybe we as directors on these [01:21:00] exercises also need to get a feeling in our own hearts and minds that just like the resurrection of Jesus wasn’t the end of the story, it was actually the beginning of the story.
So too, we talk about coming to the end of the exercises, but it’s actually the beginning of the rest of that person’s wonderful life with their beloved who they have grown closer to and perhaps rediscovered or whatever. There is a sense of it is the beginning, it’s not the end.
Brenda: Dot…Dot…Dot.
Russell: Thanks, Reggie. I think that’s a very nice way of putting it that it is the beginning of the person’s ongoing journey with the Lord. Yeah.
Good. Thank you, everybody for your [01:22:00] participation, your insights, your questions. Just a little administrative note. Pam was reminding me. We don’t think like this here in this part of the world because we never have to do this, but apparently your clocks change sometime between now and next week and so just to be aware that the time of the class will change wherever you are. I won’t even pretend to begin to tell you because I know people are spread out over a few places. So just make sure. For us here in this part of the world, the time remains the same. So, just be aware that next week, you will be meeting earlier than what we are meeting at the moment. Take note of that. Okay. Let’s just bring our time to an end. [01:23:00]
This great invitation that we receive from the Beloved to surrender whatever we feel we need to surrender or want to surrender or can surrender to the Beloved with the awareness that with our God it’s never just one opportunity, but the Lord is always willing to receive what it is we would like to offer.[01:24:00]
Maybe tonight, or today, there is something you feel you want to exchange; you want to offer, you want to surrender to the Lord.
Or simply even remembering back, praying the contemplatio yourself, reminding yourself what it is that you offered, that you exchanged for the many gifts God has given to you. Call that to mind.[01:25:00]
And let’s just end with a paraphrasing of this wonderful Prayer, this offering.
Lord, I offer you my liberty, my memory, my understanding, [01:26:00] my will.
You have given me so many gifts. I want to give you the gift of myself.
Everything is yours. Me and all around me is yours. I simply offer to you.
Lord, I rely only on your love and your grace.
Everything else I offer to you. Most of all, I ask that you do with me, whatever it is [01:27:00] that you desire, because I trust that you know what is best.
And we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank you, everybody. Have a good week, wherever you are, and we will be back on the same screen. I won’t say at the same time, on the same screen next week and look forward to being with you. So, God bless you all. Bye bye.