IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK THREE – SESSION 26
THE BIG PICTURE OF THE THIRD WEEK
Annemarie: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. Good to be with you all. Just a reminder to mute yourselves if you haven’t already. I’ll just give a few more seconds for the [00:01:00] last few that are coming on.
I’m going to hand over now to Cheri-Lynn to lead us in our time of prayer. Thanks Cherie-Lynn.
Cherie-Lynn: Hello to everybody. It is so wonderful to be with you again. I invite you to make yourself comfortable. If it is easier for you to switch off your screen for this time, please do so and we come gently into this space together.
I invite you to set your feet firmly on the ground so that you are indeed grounded. [00:02:00] That you make your body as comfortable as possible and that you connect with the natural rhythms of what gives you life—the beat of your heart, your breath moving through you. Don’t try and change anything. Just be aware of what is happening for you.
You may want to do a scan of your body and just become aware of the whole of yourself, what makes up the whole [00:03:00] of you so that you may bring the whole of you into the whole of God, and I particularly ask you to be aware of your hands and your feet as we meet together today. You may want to wiggle your toes and your fingers and just think for a moment around their movements, their action, their reactivity within your life.[00:04:00]
I’m going to share with you a prayer poem. I will read it through twice and then invite you to stay with what is grabbing hold of you at this time and have a conversation with God around it or listen to what God has to say to you.
Feet and hands. Work worn hands reach out in love. Indecisive hands respond, embracing [00:05:00] and repulsing.
Our hands held out to God. Come close. But not too close. Touch me, but don’t ask me to change.
Washing of feet. The work of a slave. Not too menial, too intimate a gesture. But the master, if you want to be my companion, let me touch you. Prepare to be changed. Have the courage. To be like me, bread broken, [00:06:00] a body broken, a cup poured out for us, an example of humblest service.
Do you see what I have done? Do this in my memory.
I shall read it another time.
Feet and hands. Work worn hands reach out in love. Indecisive hands respond, embracing and repulsing.
Our hands [00:07:00] held out to God, Come close. But not too close. Touch me, but don’t ask me to change.
Washing of feet. The work of a slave. Not too menial, too intimate a gesture. But the master, if you want to be my companion, let me touch you. Prepare to be changed. Have the courage. To be like me, [00:08:00] bread broken, a body broken, a cup poured out for us, an example of humblest service.
Do you see what I have done? Do this in my memory. Amen.
Annemarie: Thanks so much, Cherie-Lynn and this evening, it’s over to Trevor. Thanks, Trevor.
Trevor: It’s good to be with each of you. I find myself in San Francisco at the moment, so [00:11:00] if the internet is a little bit wobbly, please don’t blame South Africa. It says that my internet is a little bit unstable and I’m hoping that it won’t interrupt us too much. Also, just
To say, it’s been a real joy to be with some of you on retreat and to meet you as it were in person.
I’m going to offer to you a big picture of the third week. You may remember that last time when I offered you a big picture of the second week, I focused on the theme of discipleship.
As Aschenbrenner points out, the second week could be seen and framed [00:12:00] as a school of discipleship and so, in the second week, we spent time praying that grace that we would come to know Christ more intimately, that we would love him more deeply and follow him more closely.
It’s against this backdrop of the second week that we move into the third week, and I want to suggest that in the third week, I want to suggest we move into the very heart of discipleship,[00:13:00] the invitation to die and to rise with Christ.
I often like to say that my own life has been shaped by sentences that have been spoken to me or sentences that I’ve read, sentences from scripture. I remember reading when I was 21 years of age, for the first time, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, The Cost of Discipleship. In that book, there is a very powerful sentence, and when I read it for the first time, it kind of scorched its way into my own heart. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes these [00:14:00] words, he says, “When Christ calls a man or when Christ calls a woman, he bids them come and die.”
Now when I first read those words, I had some understanding of what they meant for Dietrich Bonhoeffer in terms of his resistance to the Nazis, his imprisonment, and his eventual execution. I had very little sense of what those words may mean for me within the context of my everyday life, my everyday relationships, my everyday vocation. [00:15:00] And I want to suggest that the third week helps us to explore what it may mean; that in essence—in essence—if we want to enter into the life that God gives us, we need to learn to die daily.
So, with that as an introduction, I would like to share with you the grace of the third week. As we enter the third week, we kind of assumed to [00:16:00] some degree, and we’ve hopefully discerned that the person has received in some measure, the grace of the second week in a significant measure. They have come to know, to love, to follow Christ more deeply. They have also put some words, discerned their election, and now, hopefully in that process, God has whetted in them a deeper desire—a deeper desire to be with Jesus, to be with Christ as He goes to the cross—to share, as it were, in the passion of Christ.
I’ve got Fleming in front of [00:17:00] me, and this is the way that Fleming words the grace—
The grace that I seek is that God would gift me with a way of entering into sorrow and shame as I stay with Jesus in his sufferings on my behalf and because of my sins.
So let me read that again. This is the contemporary translation from Fleming of the grace—
The grace I seek is that God would gift me with the way of entering into sorrow and shame as I stay with Jesus in his sufferings, born on my behalf and [00:18:00] because of my sins.
Now, I’m going to kind of paraphrase that in my own language, and I hope this will be helpful. In effect, I’m asking Lord Jesus, I want to be close to you on the cross. Reveal to me what it’s like—your rejection, your betrayal, the loneliness. Reveal to me your compassionate heart that was willing to lay [00:19:00] down its life for me and for all the world. Help me to stay close to you on the cross. Help me to be attentive to you .n the cross.
So that is the desire that we are trusting has welled up within the retreatant. Remember when Ignatius gives us a desire, he is not expecting us to crank it up. He’s not expecting us to manufacture it, to force it, but in his own deep reflection upon his own experience, he knows that if we have really experienced the grace of the second week, this [00:20:00] particular grace will be almost like a natural upwelling within our own lives.
Notice secondly, that this grace is both very similar and radically different to the first week. The similarity is predominantly in the language. You will have noticed the words—let me go back to Fleming again—the words of sorrow and shame. Now that again reminds you of the language of the grace for which we prayed in the first week.
However, while the language is similar, there is. [00:21:00] a radical difference. We are not returning to the beginning again. You may remember that in the first week there was the deep request that we would come to know that we were deeply beloved sinners. The focus was on God, God’s deep love and mercy and our own sinful tendencies and attachments. That was the focus. of the grace of the first week.
The grace now, though, is to be with Christ [00:22:00] in His passion. And again, I’m going to quote Fleming, “that God would gift me with a way of entering into sorrow and shame as I stay with Jesus, in his sufferings born on my behalf and because of my sin.”
Michael Ivens—and I find this very helpful—is this grace is far more contemplative. It is far more participatory. I’m not wanting to know more about Christ’s suffering. I’m wanting to enter into it with Him, to be with Him, within it.[00:23:00] and as we do this, we are asking Christ to reveal to us his own experience of the cross. I think of Paul’s language, “we want to share in the fellowship of Christ’s suffering.” That’s a very deep request. We want to share with Christ in His own passion, in His own suffering. So, this is not a kind of intellectual reasoning. It is a much more contemplative participatory grace that we are asking for. Lord Jesus Christ, I want to be with you in your experience of the cross. [00:24:00] In your experience of the passion, and I’m hoping that that is making some sense.
I want us to notice a natural continuity with the second week. There’s a natural continuity of the third week with the second week and that continuity is the continuity of Jesus’s life. Let me just kind of expand this continuity thread.
The second week, do you remember it? When we enter into a [00:25:00] contemplation of the incarnation, do you remember its Trinitarian focus? It had a very, very strong Trinitarian focus. As we move now into the Passion and the Cross of Jesus, we retain that Trinitarian focus. It’s very important for us to do. We retain the Trinitarian focus.
I have a friend who says we suffer from TDD, Trinitarian Deficit Disorder, and I like that. We suffer from a Trinitarian Deficit Disorder and that disorder often makes its appearance [00:26:00] when we enter into the Passion and the Cross of Jesus. The Incarnation is all about the Trinity. The Crucifixion is all about the Trinity. That on the cross we enter, as it were, deeply into the Trinitarian heart of God. God was in Christ on the cross, hidden but present. And so, the cross draws us into the self-emptying love that lies at the heart, the pouring out love, the self-giving love that lies at the heart of the Trinity.
Jesus [00:27:00] does not change God’s character towards us on the cross. Jesus does not change God’s character on the cross. The cross, in one sense, has always been in the heart of God eternally. The cross has always been in the heart of God eternally. That self-emptying, that self-giving, sacrificial love that we witness on the cross has been in the heart of God forever. What lies at the heart of the universe is a great love, a Trinitarian love, a self [00:28:00]-emptying love, a sacrificial love, a canotic love, a love that is constantly pouring itself out.
And then fourthly, there is a very, a very important question as we enter the third week that we need to engage. I want to introduce this question by just quoting/ paraphrasing David Fleming. David Fleming, in his own reflections on the third week, makes a point that Jesus has died—past tense—Jesus has died. That is history.
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ [00:29:00] is rooted in history. Nothing can change that. Nothing can change that fact.
However, and this is subtle but so important, and I think our retreatants need to be helped with this. However, we can now be with the risen Christ as He reveals His passion to us and allows us to participate in it. Does that make sense? I need a bit of a nod to feel that I can go on, that I’m with Christ now and He is revealing His own memory to us of the passion. He’s revealing His [00:30:00] passion to us.
He’s allowing us to enter into it contemplatively and to participate within it. It’s almost like analogous; it’s almost like you are sitting with someone who shares a very painful experience with you from their past in their life, but they are sitting with you now and they are sharing with it, you know, and you enter into that memory of that painful moment of their own history. I think it’s something analogous to that as we enter into the third week. That is the grace where we’re asking Christ to reveal to [00:31:00] us the depths of his own passion so that we can enter into it and participate with him within it.
I hope that is clear. I want to devote a particular significant section of what I’m going to say to you to this; that when we receive the grace of the third week, there is a particular fruit of that grace in our own life. So let me just name the fruit immediately and then and then explore it with you. The fruit of receiving the grace of the third week is the fruit of compassion. It is the fruit of compassion.[00:32:00] Just some background, because that’s quite a big, big statement.
The God of the Bible is the compassionate one. The Hebrew word for compassion and for womb, I believe from Hebrew scholars is the same word. God’s compassion is a similar kind; it’s analogous to an-other centered, self-giving, sacrificial love that we often witness in a mother for a child. It is a womb like love. It is a womb like compassion. We see this compassion embodied in Jesus’s words and actions. [00:33:00]
So, for example, do you remember when Jesus is speaking about the prodigal father in Luke chapter 15? There is a very powerful sentence, chapter 15 verse 20, and I’m quoting this from memory. I haven’t got it in front of me that when the father sees the son—he sees the son, That’s a very powerful scene. Compassion is never blind. He sees the son and then we read his heart is full of compassion, full of compassion and when your heart is full of compassion, there is no room for anything else. You can’t put anything else in there. It’s already full. It’s full of compassion. And then that sentence unfolds; the father [00:34:00] then runs down the road. That’s a very moving picture of compassion—this father running down the road; his feet are feet of compassion, and then he embraces the son. So, you have all the dimensions of being the father sees, the father’s heart is filled, the father’s feet compassionately run. We spoke about hands today. His hands embrace and then his lips kiss. Every dimension of the prodigal father’s being is permeated by compassion. Like [00:35:00] the sun that cannot keep shining, God’s compassion radiates streams towards us continually.
Let me be provocative. There is one thing that God cannot do. God cannot stop being compassionate towards us. Like the sun that keeps shining, so God’s compassion streams towards us continually. And so, the fruit of being with Christ in his passion will be the gradual fruit, the gradual growth of this fruit of compassion. [00:36:00]
The seed that dies. Do you remember that word picture that Jesus gives in John chapter 12 of the seed that falls into the ground and dies? Well, the fruit of that seed, the chief fruit is compassion.
That is how we reflect the family likeness. That is how we reflect the family likeness of belonging to God’s family. This is always the acid test. This is why this is the heart of discipleship. This is the acid test of our faith. It’s not how much we pray, how much we know of the Bible, etc. The acid test is the quality of our compassionate response to those around about us. [00:37:00] The depth of our compassionate response, learning to die with Christ to ourselves, our selfishness, our egocentricity, our own self-absorption, so that God’s compassion can grow within us, blow through us towards others.
And so, in the third week, as we seek to be with Christ and as we ask for the grace to participate with Him in His passion, God, as we seek to be with Christ, so God gradually grows within us the fruit of compassion in our own life.
And I want to suggest that this compassion [00:38:00] flows and comes in a three-fold way. At one level and this was in my own experience, the exercise, this was strikingly new. It is our compassion towards Christ Himself. We are being compassionate towards Christ. We are showing compassion for Christ ourselves, that as He shares with us, reveals to us His own experience of the cross, the rejection, the betrayal, the loneliness, that as we seek to be [00:39:00] with Him in that way, we are in fact showing compassion to Him. I’d never ever thought of myself being able to show compassion to God, to Christ.
It is also, secondly, it’s a compassionate response to others, especially to suffer in those who suffer. Matthew chapter 25—we live in a crucifying world. Christ continues to suffer in [00:40:00] those who suffer in as much as you have done it unto the very least of these,
you have done it for me. And there’s a part of me that always kind of, I feel here, you know, I’m not ready to speak about this. I feel there’s still so much more conversion of my own heart that needs to happen before I even dare speak about this. I remember the poverty of my own compassion being revealed in one of the most startling ways.
One of my colleagues—I won’t name him—some years ago suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease. You know, when your body stops functioning [00:41:00] and it’s that terrible disease where your whole body just, you know, stops working while your own awareness remains acute as ever and I remember making a promise to him that I would come and be with him every Wednesday morning for an hour, and I would sit at the side of his bed and eventually he couldn’t speak and all he could do was move his eyes. I found it harder and harder and harder to go and spend one hour with him and Christ in him. And I’ll never forget. It’ll always be in my memory. I was at the gate, and I couldn’t go in. I just couldn’t go in. There was like a resistance. and [00:42:00] I remember texting Debbie. Debbie’s the woman I’m married to, and I was just saying to Debbie, “Debbie, I’m at the gate. I can’t go in.” And I’ll never forget her own text. She said, Trevor, this is the most important thing that you are doing right now and there was a deep encouragement to kind of try and get over my resistance. But again, it was a kind of glimpse of maybe the hardness of my own heart, the journey for it to become flesh has a long way to go.
And then also compassion towards ourselves to begin to have a compassionate self-regard towards our own life. Compassion is a stream that just flows; it flows towards Christ’ it flows [00:43:00] towards others, and it flows towards ourselves towards those parts of our life that we ignore, towards those parts of our lives that we are ashamed of, towards those parts of our lives that we marginalize, towards those broken bits and pieces of our own life. That compassion flows as well, seeking to put its arms around the poor and the crippled and the beggars within our own life as it were. And so, this fruit of entering into the Passion of Christ is this fruit of a deep, deep compassion, the [00:44:00] compassion of God, God’s self, towards Christ, towards others, towards even ourselves, and the crucifixion of Christ, even within our own life. There’s a name of a book; The Crucified Jesus is No Stranger. The Crucified Jesus is No Stranger.
Then a last word just about Jesus’s cross and our cross. Language about the cross. The cross of Jesus is unique. He is the seed that dies, the true seed that dies. John chapter 12. On the cross, he pours out his life, absorbs— this is the only way I can put it—[00:45:00] absorbs all the powers of evil and death—dies at the hands of good people, not bad people—dies at the hands of good people like you and me who reflect our attitudes. They reflect our attitudes. And so, there is a deep sense in which we participate in the crucifixion of Jesus. That death cannot be repeated. I really hope that in this third week, we come to know this cross, just in its rawness.
I think sometimes we [00:46:00] become abstract about the cross, particularly with all our atonement theories. And just for a moment, I’m not knocking them, and we all need to study them, but just for a moment in the third week, we put our atonement theories to one side. We can pick them up afterwards again. It’s a time of entering with our heart into the death of Christ, the rawness of that death.
So, we need to be careful that we don’t slip into theorizing in the third week. That would be a movement g contemplative sharing of the death of Christ, the fellowship of Jesus’ sufferings. And then there is our [00:47:00] cross and we need to be, I think, always careful in talking about our cross.
I find Dallas Willard really helpful here. We’re talking about the death to self. We’re talking about death to our own selfishness, to our own self-centeredness, our own self-absorption, our own egocentricity where we put ourselves at the center of everything. That is what we are dying to, and that dying goes on forever. It is not the death of self. It’s not the death of self. [00:48:00] God doesn’t want us to kill ourselves.
We know that God is calling us to become everything God wants us to be. We know that God is calling us to come alive, to come alive to ourselves, to come alive to others, to come alive to creation, to come alive to the glory of God, and to come alive to our own distinctive election in life. God is calling us to come alive; however, for us to come alive, there is the mystery of our own dying to that which stands in the way [00:49:00] of us coming alive. And so it is that we die with Christ, and we rise with Christ into that new life, that deep life, that rich life, that flourishing life that God wants to share with us. And I think that is what is meant by taking up our cross, denying ourselves, losing our lives in order to find them. It’s that deep dream.[00:50:00] [00:51:00]
So, I can just end off with that taking up our own cross. Denying ourselves is deeply rooted in that mystery in which and through which we are also becoming fully alive; [00:52:00] that Christ calls us to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, to lose ourselves. That does not mean killing ourselves or the death of ourselves. It is the way in which and through which we come alive to ourselves, to others, to creation, to God and to our own unique calling and election in life. So, I hope that is helpful.
Annemarie: Thank you so much for that Trevor. That’s hugely helpful. Let’s take some time to just sit with what Trevor has shared and allow it to settle within us. We’ve got two extra minutes, and I think we should take those because there’s a lot to be with and if we come back at quarter past the hour, then we’ll go into our small groups. So, have a little break and allow that to settle. The [00:53:00] questions I will put up.
Trevor: Welcome back friends. I’m going to have to navigate this one quite carefully with my internet becoming increasingly unstable. Annemarie will give me a heads up if I need to switch off my video, which may help. But this is an opportunity for us to be together in the bigger group and you know what we do, it could be a time for questions, but [00:54:00] it could also be a time just for sharing what is becoming clearer to you or is really helpful, what is really resonating with your own experience of the exercises or perhaps highlighting what maybe you missed in your own journey. So, the screen is open, and it’ll be great to be in conversation with you, and I know the team are ready all to step in as well. So, I’ll keep my eyes open, but I may need a bit of help in noticing hands that go up. Anyone have an observation, comment, testimony, [00:55:00] question?
Annemarie: MaddyChristine.
Trevor: Hi, MaddyChristine.
MaddyChristine: Not a question—just something that came up in our group that was very new to me is that somebody described how week three he did in a solitude environment. He just went on a retreat for three days, got five prompts, I think also for in the middle of the night to be in prayer and then met with the spiritual director and that was very new.
So, I just thought, Hey, we do it in a 30-day or in daily life and then to have week three to do in solitude, I thought is just very intriguing. So, I wonder if there’s more to say about that. We did talk about it quite a bit, so [00:56:00] if there’s others that didn’t know about it, now you do that, that’s an option.
Trevor: Thanks, MaddyChristine. Again, I’ll depend on the team here. You did come and go a little bit in terms of my internet, so I may miss the heart of what you said, that it could really enhance our retreat in daily life if during this particular week perhaps, we create some space to be in solitude or silence for the third week? And that is something that I’ve done a few times, and I think the third week lends itself to, as it were, a retreat place where one can be kind of fully engaged with the material. [00:57:00]
I’m not too sure if the team would like to weigh in on that one, but just simply to say that I think it can really enhance the retreat in daily life, if at all possible, to signal right at the beginning of the journey, the possibility that during the third week, it’ll be good if you could carve out a few days to be on your own.
Anne: When I made my exercises, I was doing the passion of Christ at Christmas time, so it was really difficult for me, and I think it created an awareness in me of the suggestions that we act in a certain way [00:58:00] and the grace that we are praying for. So, it created that awareness in me that it can be a struggle if you’re not in that time of the calendar of the and so I have had people go through the Passion in a secluded place, and it’s been incredible how they’ve experienced Christ in the midst of that. So, I just thought I’d share that.
Trevor: Thanks, Anne. Anyone else from the team want to weigh in on this one?
Adri-Marie: Trevor, I might add that I am particularly fond of suggesting an enclosed retreat for Week Three and we might get to some of the practicalities [00:59:00] next week if some of you are wondering how it works?” And what do you mean about midnight prayer? So, when we’re going to look at the content, just to assure the group that we will get into some of the nitty gritties in terms of practicalities also next week. That’s a wonderful adaptation.
Trevor: Thanks, Adri-Marie. Any other wonderings, any other comments, perspectives, Gavin?
Gavin: I’m not really free to talk about my group, but if anyone wants to talk, it needs to be Vivianne, [01:00:00] because it was kind of sacred space with what you shared and then what the group shared. But I always remember Sister Margaret Magdalene saying something that has stuck with me over many years in terms of Third Week, and maybe you remember it—standing with God in his hour of suffering. I’m not too good at that, but I need constantly to be reminded about that, so I just offer that to the group.
Trevor: Thanks, Gavin. That’s such a powerful phrase and standing with God in God’s hour of grieving or God’s hour of suffering. I think also another kind of gift of that phrase is it keeps the Trinitarian focus as well, [01:01:00] which I find very, very important in this week. It really is a poignant phrase—standing with God in God’s hour of grieving. Thanks for that, Gav.
Elizabeth: I don’t quite know how to articulate this question, but I’ll give it my best try. I really appreciated what you said about your analogy sitting with a friend who gives you the privilege of [01:02:00] sharing in something that they’ve been through because the crucifixion is history. It’s fact that can’t be changed, all of which I obviously totally agree with. The question arises for me with the fact that God is outside of time, and that He, in that sense, the crucifixion is His current experience, and I’m aware of really a lack of words, but I don’t know if that gives you the gist of what I’m asking. For some reason, it’s a deep question for me.
Trevor: Thank you. Right. Thank you. So, Elizabeth wondering around, given the fact that God is outside of time and space, whether the [01:03:00] cross is part of God’s current experience, as it were, I think you used that word current in the here and now.
And if I can go back to the talk, you might remember that I said that—and again, it’s really my own understanding of things, so I’m really open to being corrected here— that the historical cross is a historical expression of what has always been in the heart of God. You know, God wasn’t changing character on the cross, that the cross is an expression of God’s canotic self-giving, outpouring love and that cross has been part of God’s heart eternally [01:04:00] and therefore part of God’s heart right now, that in the present moment as well; the cross is part is part of the eternal heart as it were of God. And that’s always been a very, very deep theme in my own theology.
It has been challenged sometimes by dear friends who feel that I’ve personally overemphasized that to the exclusion of the joy that is in God’s heart as well. My sense is that God’s heart holds together both joy and pain and encompasses both joy and pain [01:05:00] and I think we even see that in the life of Jesus. On the one hand, the man of sorrows; on the other hand, also a very joyful, joyful human being in his life as well. I really am with you on that, Elizabeth, that the cross is as it were, “in God’s heart right now.” Thank you.
Elizabeth: Thank you; that’s very helpful.
Trevor: Hi, Beth.
Beth: Hi, Trevor. I just wanted to share. I think that in the talk today, you really stretched my definition of discipleship. So, as an evangelical, a lot of times it’s what I know, what I do, my obedience to Christ, my love [01:06:00] for Christ. I remember this time of the exercises being incredible. The imaginative prayer of going through these particular meditations and suffering with Christ was very heartbreaking for me and being with Him in that was very wonderful. But the way that you called this the heart of discipleship, the way that you said that this growing in compassion, being just such a key point, I think was very important. It was just very good for my evangelical background to really see that being with Him is just as important as these other things. I just wanted to share that.
Trevor: Thank you. Thanks, Beth. If I may just go very slowly with you here, that word “with” is a very big word. [01:07:00] I’ve often felt that that word “with” has got different dimensions to it If that makes sense. You know, I can be with someone during the day and that word is fine to use. I can be with my neighbor. I can also be with someone very close to me. That “with-ness” is a word that gets deeper and deeper and deeper, and I think that’s what happens on the exercises that right from the Call of the King, where we are called to be with Christ in Christ’s ministry; you know, that word makes its first appearance in the Call of the King and as we journey through the second week and the third week and then finally into the fourth week and fifth week that that word with is becoming deeper and deeper and deeper all the time. I think you are helping us just [01:08:00] become aware of that. It’s a dynamic word. It’s a relational word that continues to get deeper and deeper and deeper. Thank you for just drawing our attention to that. Hi, Viv.
Vivianne: Hello. I couldn’t help but think when Elizabeth was sharing how it’s right now one o’clock for me, but it’s a different time for Russell and Annemarie, Adri- Marie and Annemarie, and it’s just so fun to think that God is outside of time. It’s midday and midnight for Him, because He’s not turning around the world with us, so He can keep company with midday and midnight, and like you said, the “with” is so wonderful, because being with the people at midday is so different than being with the people at midnight. [01:09:00] And we have to learn—and that was the thing that I think Gavin was also alluding to is—that we have to keep learning to be with ourselves in all those seasons so we can accompany people at the season they’re at; otherwise, we obscure the space by bringing our pain when they’re trying to be joyful or bringing joy, etc. Jesus obviously is the master of all things but especially holding that “for the joy set before Him endured the cross.” He didn’t pretend to make it happy but was still able to be fully present for the enduring.
In our group, we spoke about the ongoing need for us to be in the week that we’re in and how to continue to be available to other people if they’re in a different space by just being aware of the fullness of joy and suffering in our own lives too. Yeah. I just thought that picture of what time of day it is kind of a [01:10:00] simple image for a very deep paradox.
Trevor: Yeah. Well, thank you, Viv. Thanks. I got bumped off.
Vivianne: It’s all right. It’s just a mystery for the rest of us and not for you.
Annemarie: Thanks very much for that Vivianne. I think that’s an amazingly helpful image that we can relate to.
Vivianne: Especially in this class. It’s very relatable.
Annemarie: Especially in this class. Exactly. [01:11:00]
Russell: So Vivianne, you might be the first person who’s managed to like turn travel off like that so quickly.
Annemarie: I think you’re right that there is something quite complex about holding the fact that we accompany people who are in different places in the exercises to where we’re at and having to be quite conscious of the complexity of that and yet being able to do that because we have this fuller experience through our life and through our own journey in the exercises. Thank you for that.
Shirley, do you want to tell us where you’re at, and we’ll hope that Trevor bounces back or that we can all put our heads together. [01:12:00]
Shirley: I have two questions—a logistic one that maybe you will answer next week, but I’m just looking at my calendar and I’m thinking, okay, by the time I get to third week, I’m going to be at Christmas time with my retreatant and so that one. I don’t know if you were going to answer next week or not, but just a thought. How do you do Christmas and the Passion at the same time?
But probably the deeper question for me is, Trevor started the whole talk with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s quote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die,” and my experience of the exercises was the difficulty of sitting with Christ and not doing anything. Like Elizabeth, I’m not sure how to even word this question, but how do you put the dying to self, [01:13:00] and the compassion with Christ? It seems to me that even though the compassion of Christ was very difficult and sitting with Him in His passion was very difficult for me; the whole dying to self is another level of this that is ongoing.
I wonder in my evangelical circles if sitting with Christ in His passion is a whole pile easier and how does it lead to the dying of self if you could put the two of those things together for me. I would appreciate some help with that because one seems easy to talk about and the other one seems, I just want to avoid it, and I think my culture wants to avoid it. I like myself. You know, culture likes themselves. So how do the [01:14:00] two dovetail together? And Trevor’s not here to get the question, sorry.
Trevor: Shirley, I did get your question. I’m sure that the team will also respond, but I just want to respond at different levels, if I may. I think the first level is that experience can be at one level for us a very, very difficult experience, as it were, to be with Christ and not to be able to do anything about his suffering. And I think [01:15:00] there’s something in that movement that opens us up to a new compassionate response in terms of being with people, in terms of drawing us into a compassion that goes beyond helpfulness. I think we get addicted to helpfulness. I think there come moments when our greatest gift to others in their pain is not our helpfulness, but in fact, the gift of our presence.
I think the third week draws us very deeply into the gift of presence that being with Christ in His passion is something akin to being with like a [01:16:00] dying person in the here and now—that there is really nothing I can do except be here. So, that’s the one part of my response.
The other part of my response, and I’m not too sure if this is going to be addressing your concern. I heard you saying something around the relationship of death to self and that movement which is really a bit foreign in our culture today, and the birth of compassion within ourselves. I was hoping, and maybe I didn’t do this clearly enough, that there really for me is a very significant difference between death to self and death of self, that we’re not being invited here to depreciate ourselves, to put ourselves [01:17:00] down, or to make ourselves a doormat. That’s not the movement. The movement here is to die to that which gets in the way of a compassionate response to God, to others, and to myself, that it is the ongoing dying to those inordinate attachments that keep sabotaging my life and my relationships.
So, for me, I have found it helpful just to keep that distinction alive, that in fact, this dying is an entrance into a deeper life [01:18:00] with God and with others; it’s that ongoing entry point into a deeper life with God and others. I hope that’s helpful, but I’m going to let others also weigh in on this a bit.
Russell: You used the word kenosis Trevor, when you were talking, and it seems to me that it’s a word that we kind of use theologically, but when we sit with it, it’s exactly what you were talking about. It’s this ability to die almost to the false self so that the real me can come to the fore. [01:19:00] The kenosis, the self-dying is not for the sake of dying, but it is for—and I think for me, that’s quite important because that kind of language which you highlighted so well—the dying to self. It’s not an end, but it’s a beginning because we are dying to become; it’s dying for something more, something greater, something more authentic. This word kenosis—I’ve been sitting with it for a long time, like months now. And you know, it seems to me there’s just so much there, which we need to chew on and ponder what this kind of self-emptying is about.
[01:20:00] We hold onto certain things and yet if we can die to those things, it’s a point of growth really, rather than a dying, you know, but language—I think we lose something with language as well.
Trevor: Thank you.
Annemarie: Josie has put something into the chat there around this. She says, would it be right to say that we die to those things that are ‘already,’ killing us?
Trevor: Oh, thanks. Thank you for that. That’s very powerfully put—things that already are sabotaging our life and sabotaging our relationships with God, and with others. I think the only other thing, Shirley, that I may like to add is I think I personally find it quite helpful. I think this [01:21:00] language can sometimes take me into abstraction, and I think sometimes at a very practical level, maybe just learning to listen to another person deeply is an act of dying and rising. That just in the simple action of listening in that moment, as I seek to be present to another, I am dying to my own preoccupations, and my own self-interest.
So, for me, it’s not an abstract thing, but it kind of just weaves itself into our everyday relations in life. Shirley, I’m not sure how this is landing for you it would be great to get a sense of just your own response. [01:22:00]
Shirley: I’m grateful for what you all have said. Actually, it’s been helpful and I’m just wondering if the exercises themselves do it naturally. Maybe it’s the word dying that I’m struggling with; our culture just doesn’t want to do that. It’s just me first and self-centeredness is our culture. And so. And maybe I’ll learn as we take people through the exercises that they actually lend themselves to the process of doing that—to opening up, you know, and I know God and the Holy Spirit are the ones that do that ultimately, but I can see a big stumbling block for people here. [01:23:00] Am I reading more into this than than what is there?
Trevor: No, I don’t think so, Shirley. I think you are putting your finger on something; that we do live within a culture that is going in the opposite direction. I think an awareness of that could be very, very helpful for us as exercise givers, as well as for our exercitants, those who are doing it. Just that influence, as it were, of the world upon our own lives and upon the way we frame discipleship today I think is critical.
Annemarie: [01:24:00] I may be about to say the same thing Trevor was going to say, I’m not sure, but I think that people have now already been on a journey, that the exercises take people through the first week where there’s a lot of work being done around this already. And then when you get into those exercises of the second week, like the key meditations and the inordinate attachments, there’s a refinement of that.
So, my sense is that once people get to the point of the third week, a lot of work has already been done and there’s something about the relational dimension that especially in the third week. That love deepens when I watch the person that I’ve come to know so deeply in [01:25:00] the contemplations of the second week as I’ve entered into those imaginative contemplations and I’ve developed this relationship and I see the one that I love suffering, there’s a natural sense that we are drawn by that to want to be within a company, even at a cost, even at a price, that there is something about that love that happens in being present to the one that I care for, that I love when they are suffering. I think that that shifts something in a very profound way as well.
Russell: Shirley, I was also just thinking while you were talking there—you were talking about the word dying. I don’t want to shy away from it because I think we also need to face that word, but I think it’s the book called Reaching Out, and actually I think it’s [01:26:00]a life story of Henry Nouwen, but he talks about upward mobility and downward mobility and how this kind of kenosis is that the society culture is driving us always to this upward mobility, and yet the call of the gospel is a downward mobility. I just remember that being a very helpful way of exploring this as well in the sort of way that he did. He links it to his own life where, you know, he’s this professor and he’s climbing the ladder and he wants to give that all up and people say, well, you’re crazy.
I’m sure it was reaching out to this kind of movement—upward mobility / downward mobility, but that might just be a helpful thing to look at as well in terms of the language issue around this question of dying. He phrases it in a different way.
Trevor: Thanks, Russell. Thanks, Annemarie. Yeah. [01:27:00] Angela. Good to see you too.
Angela: Good to see you too. I was just curious about that language and one of the things that really resonated with me, and I just don’t know if it’s the same thing, so I’d like to hear what you guys say is in this dying. The language of the freedom to become indifferent all but Christ really resonated deeply with me in my time through. Is that also an embracing of this idea of dying to self? Is it the same? I’m just curious.
Trevor: Thank you, Angela. I think you’re making an important connection. I really do. I think there is a deep relationship between indifference slash freedom and the process of dying to that to which I’m attached. [01:28:00] and so I think there is a very deep dynamic connection between my ongoing growth into freedom; on the one hand, indifference, and my ongoing daily discipleship of losing my life to find it, of going down maybe as Russell was pointing out in order to be raised up into the life that God wants to give me. So, I think that for me, Angela, you’ve made a very critical connection. Thank you.
Annemarie: Trevor, I think Gavin may want to say something and then we are almost at time because we’re almost at 25 past the hour. So, Gavin. Did you want to say something? [01:29:00]
Gavin: I think I could just add to Russell’s ongoing reflection on kenosis. Yeah, let’s join the lifelong club here. I’m finding words that I can use a bit simpler for myself now—like “making space for,” and I like Trevor’s words about “sabotaging myself,” but I think it’s more than just sabotaging myself. It’s also what I do to Jesus Himself who’s on the cross. You know, I’m the cause of his suffering, but at the same time, He just wants to love me and give me mercy and help me get out the way. Yeah, I’m just kind of rambling on because you got me going there, Russell, with Trevor’s words of sabotage and all that.
Trevor: Thanks, Gav [01:30:00] and also I think you are drawing us into one level that “I” continue, that “we” continue to “crucify God’s love today, with my own actions and attitudes” that were also present so deeply in the historical moment of Jesus’s death, but are ongoing in my own life as well and what that does to God, to Christ. So, thank you. Yeah. Annemarie, I’m happy to hand over to you.
Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor. Can I just say hanks very much for that and thanks to all of you for this really rich conversation.
Just to remind you that we have one more session next week, and then we have a two-week break. So, just to keep that in mind coming up. [01:31:00] And this next assignment, can you believe it is almost upon us? So, that’s just kind of anchoring us with where we are. Russell, can you help us to end in prayer now? Thank you.
Russell: I invite you just to listen to the words of scripture, to that very powerful few lines in Philippians 2 and I’m going to just simply read twice through Eugene Peterson’s translation from The Message.
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of Himself. He had equal status with God, but didn’t think so much of Himself that He had to cling to the advantages of that status, no matter what, [01:32:00] not at all. When the time came, He set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human; and having become human, He stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process.
[Silence]
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of Himself. He had equal status with God, but didn’t think so much of Himself that He had to cling to the advantages of that status, no matter what, not at all. When the time came, He set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human; [01:33:00] and having become human, He stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process.
Lord, we give you thanks for sending us Your son who shows us how by emptying ourselves, we become more authentic, and He does that not in word, but shows us by His very life.
Give us the grace as we ponder [01:34:00] these exercises, this gift to us. And as we journey with others to always walk that path of kenosis, of self-emptying so that we can become who you want us to be, our authentic selves. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, thank you everybody and we will be back on the same screen next week. God bless you all. Have a good week.