01. Introduction
In this six-part series we are looking at the Spiritual Exercises through the lens of Transforming Friendship. I believe two things happen when we do this. On the one hand, our understanding of their dynamics will be expanded. The flow of the Spiritual Exercises has much in common with the flow of how significant human friendships grow and deepen. On the other hand, our engagement with the Spiritual Exercises themselves will draw us into an ever-deepening transforming friendship with Jesus Christ, and the God whom he reveals. As I reflect on my experience of accompanying others on their Spiritual Exercise journey, I have repeatedly witnessed how this occurs.
In the second part of this series, I suggested that the analogy of Transforming Friendship underlines the critical importance of attraction in our relationship with God. We will only enter the Exercise journey with openness, generosity, and courage when we have an experience-based trust of how lovingly God is attracted to us and of our attraction to God. We emphasised that the purpose of the Disposition Days is to facilitate this foundational experience for the retreatant. Only then are we ready to take the next step into the rest of the Spiritual Exercise journey.
Disturbances in Transforming Friendship
However, friendship does not only consist of attraction. Disturbances also occur. There come moments when friends fail each other’s expectations, misunderstand each other, hurt each other. In these times friendships become strained and distant. Our friendship may lose its closeness, trust in one another gets undermined, communication becomes awkward. Friendships remain at a superficial level or even break down for good if we do not pay attention to these disturbances. You may know from your own struggles and challenges in friendship what I am describing.
Similarly, disturbances also occur in our friendship with God. (1) For some of us it happens when we feel let down by God. Our friendship with God gets challenged in moments of suffering, loss and grief. We wonder whether God really cares about what happens to us, or if God does care, why does our Divine Friend not intervene. This disturbance also can happen when we witness the unfair suffering that happens to others, especially our loved ones, and the apparent lack of God’s concern and care. In reaction, we may distance ourselves from God, resist going deeper in Divine Friendship, and harden our hearts to the whispers of the Spirit.
Our friendship with God also gets disturbed by our own attitudes and actions that break God’s heart. God calls us to live as God’s beloved; we choose to live as orphans. God calls us to listen; we choose to remain deaf. God calls us to do justice; we choose to act unfairly. God calls us into the light: we choose to walk in darkness. God calls us to respond compassionately; we choose to be self-centred. We ‘miss the mark’ God sets for human life, fail to become the people God wants us to be, and sabotage our Divine Friendship.
In the journey through the Spiritual Exercises, the First Week offers us an opportunity to become aware of these disturbances, to name them, and to bring them into conversation with God. As we do this, we ask God for the grace to see ourselves as deeply loved sinners, missing the mark of what God intends for our lives, yet loved beyond our wildest imaginings. We meet God as our faithful Friend who reaches out to us in our waywardness, offers us the cross-shaped gift of merciful forgiveness, and relentlessly desires to restore us into Divine Friendship.
02. The First Week
In this section I offer three simple suggestions for the First Week that enable us to experience the deepening of friendship with God amid these relational disturbances. (2)
In offering these ways of engaging the First Week, I assume that we have experienced for ourselves the depth of God’s loving attraction towards us and have been able to express our own attraction to God. As we have already noted, the purpose of the Disposition Days is for the retreatant to have this foundational experience of knowing that they are God’s dearly beloved. (3) Only then are we ready to engage the Spiritual Exercise journey.
Here are the three ways:
- First, we can ask God to reveal how we have broken God’s heart. Even if we know that that we are loved by God, this genuine request takes much courage and openness. Just think of approaching a dear friend, someone you know cares for you and wants the best for you and asking them to tell you honestly about how they experience your failings in their relationship with you. My hunch is that you would find this quite challenging. It is not easy facing our shortcomings, especially if someone else makes us aware of them, because we are often blind to them.
This is also true in our friendship with God. Because we deeply desire to grow in our friendship with God, we ask the Lord to reveal whatever attitudes and actions may have disturbed the relationship. This is the revelation that we need when we feel our friendship with God lacks immediacy and closeness. We must constantly remind ourselves that sin is a blindness. We need God to reveal our disorder and waywardness. We pray with the Psalmist, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139: 23-24)
Sometimes God may reveal past actions that have hurt others, or how we live in the darkness of deceit, or how we refuse to let God be God in our lives. It could also be that we have broken God’s heart by holding onto a poor self-image, or refusing to take proper care of ourselves, or taking on too much work. When God reveals these sinful tendencies, it will always be an experience of consolation. It is as if our Divine Friend says to us, “I want to show you how you break my heart so that we can grow deeper in friendship together.”
- Second, we can ask God to help us to receive the cross-shaped gift of God’s merciful forgiveness. Good friendships, as we know, require the giving and receiving of forgiveness. If we have hurt a dear friend or an intimate partner, and let them down badly, it doesn’t help us if they just brush off our actions and pretend it didn’t happen. Nor does it help us if they only don’t retaliate. Something in our heart needs more than this superficial way of dealing with our wrongdoing. We need to know that we are forgiven. We want to know that the friendship can be healed. So, we express our desire for the gift of forgiveness, make amends however we can, and give our friend the assurance that we will do whatever we can to restore their trust in us.
Step now into our friendship with our Divine Friend. When we break God’s heart, the astonishing good news is that God deeply desires to restore our friendship. God does not say to us, “It doesn’t matter what you did or said or thought.” Rather God, always rich in mercy, gifts us freely with forgiveness. God’s merciful forgiveness, demonstrated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, constantly streams towards us. Yet it is never forced upon us. We need to receive the gift. As we acknowledge what has been revealed to us, and ask for help to receive God’s merciful forgiveness, we experience the life-giving streams of healing and restoration in our friendship with God.
- Thirdly, we can express gratitude for the cross- shaped gift of God’s merciful forgiveness. Think of a close friendship in which you received forgiveness. It could have been in your marriage relationship, or in an enduring friendship that has lasted through thick and thin. As a result of this person’s willingness to forgive you, your relationship has survived misunderstandings and disappointments. I have little doubt that, if this has happened to you, you would want to express to this person a profound sense of gratitude.
The parallels with our friendship with God are obvious. When we experience the consolation of God’s merciful forgiveness, our hearts burst with gratitude. We need to express this gratitude. I have little doubt that God delights in our gratitude as any friend delights in the gratitude of their friend. Recall a time when someone expressed their gratitude to you for something that you did for them. How did you feel? Did their saying “thank you” not draw you even into deeper friendship? Did it not give you joy? Similarly, I sense that God is grateful to us when we express our gratitude for the divine gift of merciful forgiveness. Our gratitude brings joy to God!
03. Conclusion
Reimagining the Spiritual Exercises as Transforming Friendship underlines the critical importance of paying attention to whatever disturbs our relationship with God. We will only be able to engage the challenges of the Exercise journey when we know that our failures and sins do not undermine God’s desire for friendship with each one of us. The purpose of the First Week is to facilitate this assurance of God’s merciful forgiveness. Only when we know that we are deeply loved, accepted, and forgiven sinners are we ready to step into the Second Week.
- I first came across the phrase “disturbances in our friendship with God” from William Barry’s writings in A Friendship Like No Other (Loyola Press 2008)
- I explored the content of the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises in my talk in the video series filmed in Manresa. This video series is available for viewing on the Conversatio website and is titled Encountering the Christ who Forgives.
- See the second part of this series Exploring Attraction in our Divine Friendship available on the Conversatio website.
04. Praxis
Take a few moments to become quiet. Consider briefly that God looks at you with great love and mercy. Let this good news touch both your mind and your heart.
Now, ponder how the Psalmist expresses his desire to become aware of whatever may disturb his relationship with God, “Search me O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Ask yourself how you respond to this prayer. Does it come close at all to what you desire in your friendship with God? Spend some time talking with God about this.
How do you respond to the notion that sin is a blindness? This is what the Psalmist knew. He knew that without God’s revelation, we will not know what disturbs our friendship with God. Spend time talking with God about this reality.
You may like to end your time by praying this prayer:
“Lord, please show me what disturbs our friendship. Reveal to me how I fall short of your hopes for my life. At the same time, help me to know that you deeply desire friendship with me and give me an assurance of your never-ending forgiving mercy.”