IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK FOUR – SESSION 30
THE CONTEMPLATION ON THE LOVE OF GOD
Russell: [00:00:00] Greetings, everybody. Welcome. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. It’s good to be with you again this evening for yet another class together. We’re going to start and I’m going to hand over to Becky, who will lead us in a reflection in prayer today. Becky, thank you.
Becky: Hello friends. It’s wonderful to see each one of you. [00:01:00] As we enter into this time of prayer, make yourself comfortable, turn off your screens, ease on into yourself. Draw your awareness to your breath, the life force that moves in and out of you with each and every breath and use your breath to slow your thoughts[00:02:00] and your energy, breathing deeply in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Be silent.
Be still.
Alone.
Empty before your God.
Say nothing.[00:03:00]
Ask nothing.
Be still.
Let your God look upon you.
That is all God knows. God understands.
God loves you with an enormous love and only wants to look upon you with that love.
Quiet, [00:04:00] still, be, let your God love you.
Allow these words of God to flow over you and be whispered within you.
Attend me, dear child, as I attend you.
Behold me, as I behold you.
Oh, attend me, [00:05:00] attending you. Behold me, beholding you.
You are irreplaceably precious to me.
I am hopelessly in love with you.
Be silent.
Be still.
Alone.
Empty before your God.[00:06:00]
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be still.
Let your God look upon you.
That is all God knows.
God understands.
God loves you with an enormous love and only wants to look upon you with that love.
Quiet, still, [00:07:00] be, let your God love you.
Allow these words to wash over you and through you. Attend me as I attend to you. Oh, behold me as I behold you. Attend me, attending you.
Behold me, beholding you. You are irreplaceably precious to me.[00:08:00]
I am hopelessly, hopelessly in love with you.
Be silent. Be still. Alone. Empty. Before your God. Say nothing. Ask nothing. Be still. Be [00:09:00] silent. Let your God look upon you. That is all God knows.
God loves you with an enormous love [00:10:00] and only wants to look upon you with that love.
Quiet, still, be, let your God love you.[00:11:00] Amen.
Russell: Thank you, Becky. You’ll remember that last week we looked at the Fourth Week of the exercises and we continue with the Fourth Week, really focusing in, zooming in on the contemplatio. Trevor’s going to lead us through that. I’m going to hand over to Trevor. [00:12:00] Thank you, Trevor.
Trevor: Thanks, Russell. And good morning, afternoon, evening to each of you. Really good to be with you.
If I had to choose which one of my own lectures I enjoy doing the most, I think I would need to put this one at the top of the list—The contemplation on the love of God and the invitation to enter into that contemplation.
David Fleming makes the observation that as we journey through the spiritual exercises, we encounter, as it were, the different faces of God, that in the Principle and Foundation we encounter the creative lover, the one who’s always creating us, knitting us into being, never puts the knitting [00:13:00] needles down.
There in the first week we encounter the prodigal father, prodigal mother—the one who reassures us that we are beloved sinners. In the second week, as we get to know Christ, love him and follow him, we encounter the beckoning God, the calling God. In the third week, as we enter into the sorrows, the anguish of Christ, we encounter the crucified God.
The Fourth Week, the God who consoles us, the joyful God, and then he suggests that in the contemplation on the love of God, we encounter God as the loving giver.
I hope that [00:14:00] you’ll have the text with you. I have the text with me. It’s on page 175. You may like just to keep it before you as we journey through it together, and perhaps as we enter into this lecture together, I can offer to you three simple introductory comments that are relatively self-obvious, but I draw your attention to them.
The first is that this is a contemplation. By now, you know that as we go through the exercises, one of the great gifts of the exercises is that it’s a school of prayer. It inducts us into a whole lot of different ways of praying, considering material with God, reflecting on the day, [00:15:00] meditation with the three powers of the soul, of memory and understanding and will, and then contemplation. By now you will also know that Ignatius uses that word in a particular way that’s a little bit distinct when one looks at the broader tradition of prayer within the Christian church and how the word contemplation is used in other ways.
For Ignatius, it has a very particular meaning. It’s one in which we enter into a text as it were; not so much discursively, but certainly imaginatively. And so, he wants us to live in the contemplation on the love of God. He wants us to dwell in it, not just to think about it, and I think that’s really important to underline, particularly when we explore the giving of the contemplation on the love of God, which I think we explore that next week. That’s the first thing to notice. It’s a contemplation.
I think a second thing to notice is that the word attain can be relatively unhelpful. In the popular usage of the word attain—I attain to something, I reach out for something, I strive for something. It can have those connotations of making an effort to get God’s love or to earn God’s love, and that would certainly not be in Ignatius’s framework of thinking. By now he is assuming very much that we have personally experienced and received and [00:17:00] known God’s love in Christ very, very deeply from the first week onwards that the experience of the love of God is already part of our experience. Hence, sometimes many people within the Ignatian tradition, speaking about a contemplation on the love of God; so, sometimes tweaking that word attain because of some of the connotations that go alongside of it.
I want to also suggest that while there is discussion and debate around when this particular contemplation can be given in the exercises—and there’s a lot of conversation around that—I’m going to make an assumption; I guess it’s my own bias, that [00:18:00] it provides a wonderful bookend for the exercises.
The two bookends of the exercises, being on the one hand the Principle and Foundation and then on the other hand. the contemplation on the love of God. In serving as a bookend on the far side of the spiritual exercises, it also serves as a bridge into what some people call the Fifth Week. I’m suggesting that it’s a helpful bookend to the spiritual exercises and also a bridge for us as we enter into the Fifth Week. In a very real way, it’s an exercise now, and I’m going to speak carefully here. It’s an exercise that situates God’s ever present loving of us within the immediate realities [00:19:00] of our own context, and of our own lives. It situates our response to God within those immediate realities and context as well.
I know that’s a mouthful, so I’m going to say it again. This exercise has a wonderful way of situating the good news of God’s ever-present love. This exercise situates that good news within the contextual realities of our lives, and it also situates our response to that ever-present loving God. It situates that response also within the context, the immediate context and realities of our lives. So, we could [00:20:00] say, and to use Ignatian language here, this exercise really invites us to become contemplatives in action. It invites us to become. contemplatives in action.
You will know that one of the key phrases within the Ignatian tradition—finding God in all things—and here Ignatius is offering us the means now. Not only to find God in our prayer, but to find God quite literally in everything; to find God in our places of work, and in our moments of conflict. To find God in our relationships; to find God in our moments of health, and in our moments of sickness.[00:21:00] Indeed, to find God everywhere and at all times and sometimes that can be quite a challenge.
Now, underline that this good news is the conviction that God as creator and God as redeemer is constantly creating this universe all the time, constantly calling us into Trinitarian community as well as community with each other and constantly touching our lives all the times with personal revelations of divine love. Hence, at any moment of the day, we are in touch with God, and God is in touch with us [00:22:00] lovingly.
This contemplation on this love is offered to us by Ignatius, to those who really want to desire to become actively aware of this ever-present God loving us—in every moment and in everything of our lives. Here is the means by which we can enter into that desire and live into that desire very deeply.
So, let’s explore what the text as it were, says and hopefully as we explore what the text says, it may actually become the means right now for each one of us. Right now, in whatever we’re going through, it may become the means by which we [00:23:00] have a sense of God touching our lives with Divine love, so that we’re able to respond in the present moment.
There are wo observations the text opens with. The one love expresses itself in deeds. John, who writes the letter, one John, would be very pleased with that statement, that love expresses itself in deeds. Now, Ignatius is not underplaying the place of words. He’s not depreciating the place of words. He’s not saying that love cannot be expressed through words. What he’s doing is he’s placing the emphasis on action. The Ignatian charism is essentially practical.
[00:24:00] I’ll never forget when I was taken through an eight-day retreat by a Jesuit priest, who I think is fairly contemplative, and he took me through the eight days in retreat. I had to board the plane in Boston at six o’clock in the morning, and this 87-year-old Jesuit priest said, Okay, Trevor, I’ll meet you in the car park at half past three and I’ll take you. Don’t worry about calling an Uber. I’ll take you to the airport. He was living the Ignatian charism. He didn’t just say, I hope you had a good retreat, Trevor, and God bless you and may God’s love be with you as you go. No, he actually said, Trevor, I’ll meet you in the car park. It was snowing like anything, I’ll take you. He drove me one and a half hours to the airport and then dropped me off and went home. That was the last time we [00:25:00] saw each other in the flesh. I will never forget that moment. Love expresses itself in deeds.
Then the other kind of introductory comment which I find so moving is that love always involves mutuality, a mutual sharing of goods. I’ve always found this quite mind blowing when you think about it; that God who really doesn’t need anything, God who dwells eternally in the relational abundance of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit desires something from us. I find that quite moving. God who doesn’t need anything wants [00:26:00] something from us. desires something from us, and that when we don’t share ourselves with God, there is a sense in which God misses us. God misses us. My response affects God. That is a mind-boggling thought.
God desires our loving friendship, and when God does not have what God longs for, there is a sense in which God misses that, and that unless I freely offer to God my friendship and love, God cannot be fully what God wants to be for us. [00:27:00] There is a sense that by sovereign choice, God makes Himself self-dependent upon my response. I find that absolutely mind blowing. So, let me ask you, as I ask myself, are we willing to give God what God longs for—our love, our friendship, our response?
Now, He’s offering these just as two preliminary thoughts as we enter into the contemplation on the love of God.
I want you to notice the Preparatory Prayer and Prelude. The first Prelude is to behold myself, as it were standing in the presence [00:28:00] of my Lord and my God and all the saints who are praying for me, and we will all do this differently. How do we situate ourselves in the invisible world of the Trinity and of the angels and of the saints who are cheering us on?
So, it is situating ourselves intuitively or imaginatively in the loving presence of God, and this is so important for Ignatius that we live always within a context of love, of deep love. We are immersed. We are surrounded. We are penetrated by a context of Divine Love.
[00:29:00] Then that second prelude—the asking for the grace; again, language now that is really familiar with us. We are asking for an intimate knowing of everything that God has given to us. I don’t want to just know about God. I don’t want to know that this as a theory. I want to intimately know all that God has given to me, and you will notice the word me. It’s not theoretical, it’s not generic.
It is intimately personal so that—and I want you to notice carefully the order in which the grace is constructed—so that filled with gratitude, [00:30:00] I want to be empowered to respond just as totally in my love and service. Notice the order, gratitude flowing into love, flowing into service.
There are four points to the contemplation and as you know, with each point there is the take and receive prayer. I’m going to just park the take and receive prayer for the moment as we as we slowly move through these four points.
The first point and I’m assuming the text is open before you. It relates to all the blessings that we have received [00:31:00] from our Creator and from our Redeemer. Now, Michael Ivens, and I always go to him whenever I look at the text. He suggests, in order to really update this, this could be a wonderful moment for us to make a specific note of all the graces we’ve received from our Creator and from our Redeemer, as we’ve traveled through the exercises themselves.
It’s not just the gift of my creation and redemption past tense. There is a sense in which I want to update all the blessings I’ve received from my Creator, from my Savior and [00:32:00] from my Redeemer. Obviously, all these blessings, and this is made clear, they involve my own giftedness, my own abilities, and my own strengths.
William Barry, in his comment on this part, he draws our attention—and I’ve never seen this before—if you look in the literal translation. Just look at the first point, first paragraph, last sentence, that the same Lord desires to give me Himself. as much as He can, as much as He can, that God is wanting to give as much as God can to us.[00:33:00] It’s quite a mind-blowing phrase.
Right at the beginning of this contemplation, we notice how for Ignatius, love and gift are inseparable. Love and gift are inseparable. This whole contemplation is saturated with the language of gift. I just want to give a shout out here. You may like to look at the article by Rob Marsh where he really explores this whole theme of gift and returning our gift of our response to God.
And then, after each point [00:34:00] Ignatius would say, if I were to respond as a reasonable person, what would I gift God in response? The gift of our response is going to be captured in the words of that prayer, which we will come to a little bit later. So, can you just park that for the moment?
Then moving on to the second point and I’m going to lean towards the literal translation. I find it really helpful, and you will see why as I meditate upon it. The second point is God dwelling in all creatures, [00:35:00] giving life to me, and also God dwelling in me and in you, giving life to us—that God is literally dwelling in everything around me.
I remember I did this contemplation on a farm, and I went around and I looked at the sheep, and I looked at the cows, and I looked at the hens, and God literally indwelling all these creatures. I looked at all the plants and the flower—God dwelling in me, giving all of us life, sustaining all of us in being, making a temple, as it were, of all of us.[00:36:00] There’s a sense here in which the sacredness of the universe—the sacramentality of the universe—that the universe is the sacrament of God’s love for me and for all of us.
And now you can see how that phrase, finding God in all things, comes alive; that if we really experienced God’s loving presence in all things, we would indeed naturally become contemplatives in action. There would be a sacredness to every action in human life.
I get drawn when going back to the second exercise in the first week when [00:37:00] Ignatius says—
I look at the world, everything cooperates to continue to give me life and strength. I look at the whole support system of air and water, warmth and coolness, light and darkness, all the produce of the earth, all the work of human hands, everything contributes to my well-being.
There’s an echo of that second exercise In this particular moment of the second point of the contemplation on the love of God.
The third point Ignatius invites us now, and David Fleming says this, Ignatius’s image of God as lover is not static; it’s dynamic. God is [00:38:00] actively laboring, as it were, on our behalf. One can fall into it a fairly static image of, me beholding God, beholding me, as it were, but here, Ignatius is at pains to consider. Look at the literal translation, how God works and labors for me in all things created on the face of the earth.
So, there’s a sense, and I think I get this from Fleming, that God is a busy God. God is not lazy. God is a busy God. God is laboring on our behalf. Barry can become a bit philosophical here, but I think in a very helpful way, that God’s busyness is directed towards an end. [00:39:00] It’s not just action for the sake of action, labor for the sake of labor that all of God’s action has a built in intention; God’s wonderful intention and can use different language here. I’m going to use my favorite language. God is laboring to bring everything into friendship with God and with one another—the whole universe. God is seeking to reconcile all things. I like the word friendship, and so, the action of God in our life has got this intention within it.
That is the way God is working in our life. God is actively seeking through everything to deepen the divine friendship between [00:40:00] myself, between ourselves with each other and with the Trinitarian God. So, God is laboring in a particular direction of life. It’s labor with intention. Its intention expressed in labor.
This is quite intimate language now, that fourth point, that God’s self is actually present in the gift and He uses two images here. The image of water and a fountain, and the image of sun rays and sun. The fountain is present in the water that [00:41:00] is bubbling up. The sun is present in the rays of the sun. When I feel the ray of the sun upon me, I’m feeling the sun. When I drink water from the fountain, I’m drinking from the fountain. So, God is actually present in the gifts I receive every day. When I breathe in air, I’m breathing in God. When I drink water, I’m drinking God’s love. This is very down to earth. It’s accessing the love of God in a very intimate, practical way. [00:42:00] God is actively present in every gift that comes my way every day of my life.
It’s quite something, quite king of mind blowing, overwhelming. It’s just overwhelmingly true and so the only reasonable response, Ignatius says, is the take and receive prayer, and it’s a radical prayer of self-surrender. It really is, and sometimes we’re not able to pray it fully. So, it’s a prayer that [00:43:00] stretches our self-giving. It stretches us into new levels of self-surrender and self-yielding.
It’s a lover’s prayer of abandonment. I think of Charles de Foucauld’s prayer, “I abandon myself into your hands.” It’s that prayer of self-abandonment, but it’s not through gritted teeth. I’m not trying to surrender. I’s a response to a great love. It’s a surrender that’s been evoked in myself.
So, it’s a prayer of great generosity. It’s a prayer of great generosity and of great freedom. It’s almost as if the [00:44:00] purpose of the exercises is that I will move beyond my attachments and become freely and fully available to God. Somehow this prayer is expressing that. It’s happening for me now—that as I live into this prayer, I’m becoming a giver as God is a giver. I’m becoming a lover as God is a lover. I am now beginning to reflect the family likeness of this loving, giving God. This prayer, as I live into it, expresses my desire to express the family likeness.
You may like to look very [00:45:00] carefully at the order, the construction of the prayer. It’s the offering of that gift of freedom back to God, which God has given to me. I’m giving back to God my freedom. It’s the offering of those three powers of the soul—of memory, and understanding, and will.
I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole here, but there is a sense in this that there are folk in the Ignatian living tradition that suggest here that there’s that movement beyond mental faculty, that now we are [00:46:00] entering into the deep contemplative dimension of our life with God.
I know that we will look at this when we come to the third method of prayer. We’ll look at that a little bit later, but I’m giving a bit of a shout out here. This is a prayer of someone who has been overwhelmed by God’s self-giving love and who’s now returning that love in a way that goes far beyond words. It’s a prayer of self-offering, of adoration, [00:47:00] of wordlessness.
Ignatius’ own experience of this exercise—we often say Ignatius has not put this together in a kind of university study. This all has come out of his own life and deep reflection upon his own life. Particularly, I think of his time in Manresa and particularly of his Cardona experience and the illuminations that came his way.
I find it so important and so down to earth that as Ignatius prays the take and receive prayer, it doesn’t take him into a monastery. It takes [00:48:00] him into an administrative office in Rome writing the Constitutions. That’s where “take and receive” works its way out—in the kitchen, in the practicalities of everyday life; we live the “take and receive.” We live the self-offering in very practical ways, and I find that hugely instructive. When I just consider Ignatius’s life–him becoming this contemplative in action; there’s nothing romantic about the action at all—nothing romantic about it.
It’s interesting—there’s no scripture given in this contemplation on the love of God and so, the Protestant in me goes looking; now where’s all this in the Bible? [00:49:00] It’s all over the Bible. It’s really all over the scriptures. The deep relationship of heaven and earth—that heaven and earth are not separate—it’s
not God out there as it were looking at us—the big cosmic stare “from a distance, God is watching.” I don’t want to claim the biblical witness for this, but it’s just saturated in scripture—“Heaven and earth are full of your glory,”—Isaiah chapter six. “Heaven and earth are full of your glory.” That’s the contemplation on the love of God. Where can I go from your presence? if I go up, you are there; if I go down, you’re there. That’s the contemplation on the inescapable loving presence of [00:50:00] God—that there is one God and Father. Ephesians chapter four, verse six, “there is one God and father who is in all and through all and over all,” and those prepositions really count. They really count—in all, through all, over all—and that word all really counts. All means all. All that is physical and non-physical. All that is visible and invisible. All that is conscious and unconscious. All.
Then four verses later, the ascended Christ whose presence fills the universe—fills [00:51:00] the universe. It leaves nothing out. What I’m simply doing here is I’m just giving, I’m hoping, confidence that this text on the contemplation on the love of God, even though it doesn’t mention a biblical text. it’s profoundly, profoundly biblical and rooted in the biblical witness.
I hope I’ve whetted your appetite to live in the contemplation on the love of God for the rest of your life. It’s something to live in. No matter where we are, what we are going through, what we are doing, this is what we live in. This is what we live. This is the Fifth Week, so God bless you [00:52:00] dear friends.
Russell: Thank you, Trevor, very much for that. Let’s do as you normally do; let’s take a break and also a time of reflection. You’ll have the questions on the bottom of your sheet there that Trevor is posing to you, and then we will come back at quarter past the hour and go into our groups. Thank you.
[00:53:00] So, the questions are:
What stirred in you as you listen to the talk today? How was your experience of the contemplation of the love of God?
I will put them up for everybody so that you have them— simple questions, but important ones, I think,[00:54:00]
MaddyChristine: Russell, they are already in the box.
Russell: Welcome back, everybody. Good to be with you, and as usual, we open up to our normal time of reflection insights or questions to Trevor, who’s eagerly waiting for the your insights and questions.
Trevor: And as someone said to me the other day, this is not a Q and A—it’s a Q and R—question and response. There won’t be too many [00:55:00] answers. But yeah, it’d be good to engage with you and whatever may be happening for you and in you, and if anyone spots a hand and I don’t.
Russell: Vivianne.
Vivianne: Hello, something we touched on last week, I believe, was this idea of there’s a little bit of weariness at the end of the exercises or a bit of exhaustion and thinking about how to gently revive or accompany people that are at a space where they perhaps want to run away from resting in God’s love and they want to get back to either busy life or vocational work and how to be gentle with people in encouraging them to stay if there is a theme of exhaustion perhaps. [00:56:00].
Trevor: Yeah. Thanks, Viv. I’m wondering to what degree we’ll really explore this next week, and I’m not too sure whether we do. I think we do, but I don’t want to duck your wondering now. I hope friends will weigh in on this.
I find it quite helpful just to be honest, in terms of, where are we at the moment in terms of energy level? I think for me the noticing of the energy level and the level of exhaustion and tiredness and wanting to end perhaps and get on with life, maybe as you were saying. I think if that’s a real theme of the conversation—I’m wondering to myself here—whether there is space for discernment of spirits.
In a time like this, I also want to be respectful simply of a physical weariness and tiredness, and I think that would [00:57:00] most probably shape quite a lot how I would give the contemplation on the love of God. I think it can be given in a very enjoyable way. So, if I really sensed weariness, joy is always a lovely antidote. I think I would begin to go in the direction of finding God in things that you are really enjoying at the moment. I think building in the dimension of enjoyment for me in the contemplation on the love of God, I think would be on my radar screen. So, let me summarize my own thinking.
I think 1) I would apply the discernment of spirits. What’s going on here? 2) I would want to be responsive if it’s genuinely a physical [00:58:00] tiredness. I would want to honor that and respect that. And I think thirdly (3), that would point me in the direction of how do I frame this exercise primarily in terms of enjoying God in all things that I enjoy, and how can I open myself up to that.
I realize that could set up a little bit of a tension with the depth of self-surrender, but again, I would not want to the retreatant to manufacture anything here or to force anything here. I would do my best to meet them where they are at the moment.
I would honor where they were; I would respect it. I would steer away from knuckling down and let’s battle our way through this. I wouldn’t go that [00:59:00] direction. “Come on, we’ve just got one more thing to do.” I wouldn’t go down that direction, but I would go down any other direction that may be responsive to their physical weariness and tiredness, but I really think you put your finger on something absolutely critical. I’m sure that Brenda, Russell, Adri-Marie, others may have something to weigh in on this.
Russell: I think in the Fourth Week; we do change modes as well. I think the mode of praying kind of changes. As I suggested last week, it becomes much more contemplative. Ignatius gives very few instructions, if you’d like to call them that. It does slow down into that more contemplative space.
So, I think as well, if we manage it into that space that if there is maybe someone who’s feeling a bit [01:00:00] antsy or a bit tired, the kind of mode as well, I think helps the way that we are praying. Also there is the suggestion to take those few days before you start the Fourth Week—whatever you want to call it—we called it in the other week the tomb day and that also just gives someone a bit of space to breathe, to maybe rest before they enter into this new mode of praying, this new way of praying. That for me would be the two things.
I find often that even though people may be tired after the Third Week, very often when they begin to enter into the Fourth Week, that tiredness doesn’t seem to drag with them because the emphasis now moves towards the contemplatio and also the mission—where am I being sent? Very often with people, there’s a sense of, “I want to go out and live this as well,” and that gives them a new sort of [01:01:00] energy. So naturally that can also happen and just to be aware of that. I think Adri wanted to say something.
Adri-Marie: I think I’ll just add and maybe confess this idea of facing my own tiredness by the time the person is there. So, as much as we take our lead from our persons, they are so taking their lead sometimes from us also.
I actually remember the way my giver when I did it introduced it, and I got the sense that this is important. It was important to Ignatius. Brenda will speak about that so much more next week. But, just a reminder to giggle at ourselves; also, our own tiredness being presented perhaps, but also to know if we are not excited or perhaps just the knowing of the significance of the exercise, this particular [01:02:00] contemplation, our people do pick up on us also, and then echo to the rest.
Trevor: Thanks, Audri. Thanks, Russell. I see Beth.
Beth: Hi, Trevor. Thank you for today’s session. It was wonderful. I would love if you could talk a little bit more about the grace. You talked about the particular order and the significance of gratitude to love. to service. It reminded me in Week One, I think where someone taught us that Ignatius said the root of all sin is un-gratitude, and I wondered how gratitude—the movements that happen toward love and service.
Trevor: Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Beth, and thanks for your spotting that as well in terms of the first week. Ignatius really does have a very real [01:03:00] place for ingratitude as being basic to our own sinful tendencies.
Personally, I’m not surprised by the order because of the place gratitude has in Ignatius’s life. His constant insistence that we live in a context of gifts. So, I find I’m not surprised by gratitude coming first and that being the wellspring. Then I’m also not surprised, even when I think of the grace of the second week, just a little bit of the order to know, to love, to follow Christ. There’s also an interesting flow or structure there.
I think there’s a sense in which our service springs [01:04:00] out of our love. So, I don’t think he’s playing down the place of service, but I think he’s really underlining in the structure that our self-giving in servanthood is really an expression of our gratitude and our love, rather than something that has been manufactured or worked at or through gritted teeth. I think he’s giving us an atmosphere of grace as opposed to an atmosphere of law—I need to do this in order to be obedient—if that makes sense. That’s what the structure does for me.
I do find the structure very important—that there is a very real sense in which love does come before service. That’s a very personal conviction, but [01:05:00] I really do believe that quite deeply.
Beth: It reminds me a little of your cycles of grace that you’ve taught about before—the response.
Trevor: Ah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks, Beth.
Russell: I don’t think Trevor that it’s only your conviction. I would really agree with that. It’s the conviction of Ignatius that the wellspring of all is this sense of gratitude—standing before all in gratitude. if one starts to put the bits and pieces of the exercises together, I think you will notice that how often, explicitly and implicitly, Ignatius is returning to this idea of gratitude, this deep sense of gratitude.
You know, there’s a real connection there between the Principle and Foundation and this contemplation to attain love as well. It’s in a [01:06:00] way that the destination of the Principle and Foundation is this contemplation to attain love and how strong it hinges on gratitude, but both of them,
Trevor: For what it’s worth, Beth, it may be also interesting. I did this for the first time ever. That’s my confession for tonight. I compared very closely the prayer in the exercise of the Call of the King, I compared that prayer to the prayer at the end of the exercises, and it would seem—and this is a bit homebrewed—it would seem that the tone of the Call of the King exercise is on action and doing, and the tone of the contemplation to attain love, without losing [01:07:00] the element of service, the emphasis seems to be more on the being part, out of which the service comes. I don’t know whether Ignatius just has a sense that this is what the dynamic has done for the person who’s doing the exercises.
I don’t know, but you may like to compare those two prayers and just the different tone of each of them and their comparison. Hi, Heather.
Heather: Trevor, I feel very nervous to even mention this, but it’s just like burning within me and we spoke about it in our little group. I wondered if that last week if you could give your retreatant, like we used to do when we played that game, Pass the Parcel, as kids, and then at each layer, there would be a gift. That would lighten the tiredness, and it would bring joy in.
I was thinking of the lady that I’m taking through at the moment. [01:08:00] She’s discovered such a love for jacaranda trees and such a love for soil, and I’m thinking, if during the week she opened a parcel and it had some soil in it, it would take her back to that moment where she really felt that she loved soil, you know? I know it’s a crazy thought. So, I thought, now do I say it or don’t I, and I’ve had my button on and off, but then I’ve got brave now. They could do that every day, another layer and, so anyway, it was just a thought of mine. I wondered if that is possible. Could you do something like that?
Trevor: I need to pray for a little bit of Heather’s creativity in my own life. I just find that so thoughtful, because you’re honoring the journey of the person. You’re honoring what is becoming [01:09:00] more and more important. You’re putting them in touch with that; you are deepening gratitude. You are, in a very beautifully adapted way, you are situating the contemplation within a context of gifts.
So, I think I’m glad you overcame your nervousness and shared that with us. I really do, Heather. I don’t think it’s trite or superficial at all, particularly as you link it with what is being profoundly significant for that person, and what a bunch of jacarandas could mean.
Heather: Thank you, Trevor.
Adri-Marie: Heather, you are giving me now an idea too. That is so fun. I’m such a fan of sparking ideas. As you were talking, I’m almost seeing these Russian dolls, [01:10:00] layer after layer and with the four points. I think what Trevor mentioned about it’s becoming that the words can sometimes just become less and less there towards the end.
So, to give a form of a creative expression for those to sit with could be something special. Thank you for that idea. I might make a note for it for one day for somebody. But yeah, for them to put also there. reflections into something creative. I’m sure Brenda is going to bring some adaptations next week just because the words are less and less. You know how it is if we are a bit fatigued to actually create something and while we’re creating, we’re not really talking, but something’s happening.
Heather: Yes. Thank you.
Russell: Heather, there’s [01:11:00] something sort of profoundly theological that you’re also, I think, linking into. If you look at number 235 in the exercises, Ignatius is talking about considering how God dwells in creatures, in elements, giving them existence, plants, giving them life, and that sense of that gift and unwrapping that gift. We’re being invited as well to see all these dimensions of where God is—or under all these wrappings, if you’d like to put it like that—where God is living, where God is present. In that second point he is inviting us to go a little bit further to the next level, to the next rapport, to the next—it’s all things eventually; it’s all things.
When you started to say that, I went to go and look at that 235 and just see how it is creative. I’m like Trevor; I don’t always think creatively, but how that picture of unwrapping also seems to take us deeper into that second point. [01:12:00]
Heather: Thank you, Russell.
Trevor: Any more wonderings, friends? Any lights that went on? Anything that really stirred for you? Anything around this? Angela?
Angela: Yeah, It really stirred for me when you said that we were offering the gift of freedom back to God that He has given us, and I’m just still sitting with that this whole morning. That was just beautiful. I think looking back, I can see the experience of that but having those [01:13:00] words, knowing that we’re taking this journey for freedom and then this place of offering it back and how I can see that cyclically in my life since the exercises receiving and giving freedom. So, thank you for saying that. I’m still sitting with that. I’m still chewing on that one. That one’s going to take a bit.
Trevor: Thanks, Angela. I think what you’re also helping us to see is just that process that is ongoing throughout the fifth week—the daily life for the rest of life. It’s that reciprocal, mutual sharing of our lives with each other. And at the deepest level, God sharing God’s freedom with me, and me sharing the freedom I’ve been given with God. There is something I think very deeply intimate in [01:14:00] that moment of me really letting God be fully God in my experience and God being able to be who God wants to be in my life. So, there’s that mutual joy as well. Thank you for that. Hi Shirley.
Shirley: Hi Trevor, thank you for your talk this morning. Awesome. I have a question about the PNF—the bookends—Is there a benefit to taking the retreatant to the PNF to review their own PNF before you go to the content or is that just exhausting for them?
Trevor: Well, I think—and I’m sure my colleagues will have much more to say than me here—but I think there’s a sense in which the contemplation on the love of God is almost like a contemplative Principle and Foundation.[01:15:00] So, when you think of the Principle and Foundation it’s a bit abstract, a bit dense, a bit theoretical, but all the themes really in many ways of the PNF are caught up in a much more contemplative space within the contemplation on the love of God.
I think I’ve sometimes, with the retreatant suggested to them that there’s a link between the PNF and the contemplation on the love of God, and this is almost much more a prayerful contemplative expression of the PNF. I think that’s as far as I’ve gone, but I think it could be a very, very significant experience for the person, particularly maybe even to bring their own PNF if they wrote their own [01:16:00] or created their own.
If they sat with that within the context of the take and receive prayer as well, I think there could be a very deep—a sense of not wrapping it all up neatly, but a sense of the bookends of the exercises—the sense of wholeness about the exercises. So, I think you could be on to something, and I’ll certainly keep that in mind next time I reach that point and say, “you may like to look at your PNF again and maybe just see how it resonates with the contemplation on the love of God.” So, thank you.
Adri-Marie: This reminded me now again of all the imagery that came when we were speaking about the PNF. I don’t know if you remember, Trevor, like everybody offered some imagery. I remember mentioning also that as [01:17:00] if the PNF is almost like the center of the wheel, I think the contemplation of divine love sits right in there. So, everything kind of weaves in and out keeping that wheel centered and I love that suggestion also. Thanks, Shirley.
I’m fond of often giving the PNF almost as the first part as the person is kind of reviewing. I also don’t want to say too much because we are going to talk about landing, etc. but everything informs everything. I love that that practical connection was made, especially if a person in the end also connected with a bit of that contemporary version of the PNF—from love for love—whatever is helpful for the person.
Shirley: Adri-Marie, just as you were talking, I have this picture of the PNF in the middle, and then the spokes being the exercises and the complacio being the [01:18:00] rubber of the tire that takes you. So just picture.
Adri-Marie: Oh, that’s lovely—that gratitude, love, and service.
Russell: I wonder sometimes as well about—and words are limited—but the words offering and becoming, and I think one can see part of both of those in the Principle and Foundation, but also in the contemplatio where we’re offering ourselves, but we’re not simply just offering because we are also becoming. We’re asked to become Christ in the world. You know, that image of the tire is a really good one, because we don’t do the exercises for the sake of doing them. We are doing them, so that the rubber can hit the road and sometimes the rubber is going to hit the road in very bumpy sections as well.
But also, this idea of offering and becoming that we’re not just [01:19:00] simply asked to offer, but we’re also being invited to become Christ. Ignatius talks about the hidden humanity and then the visible humanity. It’s almost like as well for me—often I’ve wondered about how this hidden humanity, it says Christ indwelling in us—that Christ is hidden in us. And therefore, our becoming is making Christ present in the world. I’m just throwing in those two words as well—offering and becoming.
Trevor: Thanks, Russell. Thanks, Shirley. You got us going there.
Adri-Marie: Yeah, I love what you’re saying there also, Russell, because there’s just something shaping about that take and receive prayer that I tell you immediately shows something about what’s happening with my own life. It’s an ever more becoming. Yeah, it’s just an encouragement for [01:20:00] us to keep praying that prayer, even for ourselves, yeah.
Trevor: It’s interesting if I may just respond to you, Shirley, with one more sentence, but there’s a writer and I’m sure his name will pop up when we come to the three methods of prayer—Francalex, he’s a Jesuit. This is from memory but I think he says that the contemplation on the love of God IS the principle and foundation of the unitive way, and he’s using the word there, unitive, in the classical sense—purgation,[01:21:00] illuminative, unitive. But he calls the contemplation on the love of God. He calls it the Principle and Foundation of the unitive way.
I think we might have room and space for one more observation, wondering, contribution, stirring. MaddyChristine.
MaddyChristine: No question. In our group, we really talked, Trevor about how you spoke, and it just felt like a love [01:22:00] letter. Much of what you mentioned, it sounds so simple and yet, like we hear how difficult that it is to connect in that simple way with God.
One thing that really stood out for me is where you said, God who doesn’t need anything from us. He desires something from us and my response affects God. I just want to highlight that because I’m not sure that I have thought about my response affecting God because God is God. God is big. What does God need me for? And He’s affected by my response.
Trevor: Oh, deeply so and one just looks at Jesus as, Jesus is constant. Let me just get, yeah the great joy in heaven when someone comes home. You want to say then, how can there be an increase? But there is, [01:23:00] there is an effect.
I think staying with the mind boggling thought that my life affects God takes us into a new world of relationship and friendship and union and how we affect each other in friendship and relationship and in intimacy. We deeply affect each other, and that God is not beyond being affected, and to the same degree that I can affect God with deeper joy, the sense I can also bring heartbreak to God. I can affect God. God’s heart can break. I just think if you’re staying close to that, MaddyChristine, it just opens up new dimensions of [01:24:00] relationship.
MaddyChristine: It’s easy for me to think that I affect other people, and for me to help my retreatants to think about that we don’t just affect one another, that we affect God. Thank you for that.
Trevor: Thank you.
Russell: You know, MaddyChristine, what you’ve just said. I suppose this is a Jesuit confession. We’ve had a Methodist one already tonight.
So, the times I’ve done the exercises, the times I’ve done retreats and I’ve used this prayer, I find this prayer always shakes me in a way in the sense that the kind of responsibility that I’m being invited to by God.
I did a retreat using this prayer earlier on this year in Spain and I was a [01:25:00] little bit less keen to pray this prayer. Why is it always that when it gets to this prayer, I wonder I second guess, and it just came to me this idea of what it really means to be a partner with God to build the kingdom.
There’s a great responsibility that the Lord is inviting me to, and therefore there’s a real seriousness about this prayer. Exactly pointing to what you’ve said that what I do can affect God’s heart and can affect the reign of God’s kingdom.
So yeah, hence, I always approach this prayer with great—what would the word be? I can’t even think of the word, but yeah—great appreciation, but also great awareness of what these words are committing me to in a way.
Trevor: Thanks, Russell. I’m not too sure who’s doing the prayer tonight. [01:26:00]
Russell: It’s me, so thank you, everybody. I’m going to invite you just to be still for a moment. I’m going to invite you just to listen to these words that we have been focused on and talking about this evening in two different versions.
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 [01:27:00] me. I now give it back to you, O Lord. All of it is yours. Dispose of it according to your will. Give me your love and your grace, for that is enough for me.
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. Everything is yours. Do with it what you will. Give me only your love [01:28:00] and your grace. That is enough for me.
Lord, that these words which we pray would help us recognize the love that you have, the gift that you give to each of us. This life, as we seek to return it all to you, we ask that you open our eyes to the gift that returning is[01:29:00] that we become as you are, that others may see through us, the Christ, the Son of God at work in our world. Amen.
Thank you, everybody. Same screen, same time next week. Some people asked about the article that Trevor mentioned. We will dig that out and it will be sent to you. And also someone was asking about the articles for last week, which Pam did send. So maybe if you didn’t receive them, Pam said she will resend them.
Those three articles that I spoke about that we would send from last week. Okay, so go well. Have a good week. God bless you all.