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 expands. The flow of the Spiritual Exercises has much in common with the flow of how significant human friendships grow.
On the other hand, our engagement with the Spiritual Exercises themselves draws 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 through the Spiritual Exercise, I have repeatedly witnessed how this occurs.
So far in this this series, I have suggested that the analogy of Transforming Friendship underlines the critical importance of exploring both attraction and disturbance in our relationship of friendship with God.See the second and third reflection in this series available on the Conversatio web site. In this article, I introduce the theme of mutuality as a critical ingredient of any maturing friendship. Let us reflect on how this ingredient occurs both within our human friendships and our Divine Friendship before we explore what it means as we journey through the Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises.It was through the writings of William Barry SJ that I came to see the importance of mutuality in our friendship with God.
02. Mutuality in Transforming Friendship
Think of a good friendship that you presently enjoy. One friendship that I value greatly is with Johann who presently resides in the UK. We have known each other for over forty years. Even though we live far from each other, we still connect weekly. He knows me well, and I know him well. This has happened because we have shared with each other experiences that are important to us. We have allowed each other into our inner worlds. Our friendship is not one-sided; it is deeply mutual. Can you identify this experience of mutuality in the friendship you thought about a few moments ago?
However, Johann and I have not only shared our inner worlds with each other. We have also done things together. For several years, we were colleagues in pastoral ministry before he decided to work within a corporate setting. Even then we engaged together in shared projects both fun and serious. We explored Spain together with our partners in marriage, and for several years he and I partnered in a retreat ministry with people who were living in transitions called Crossroads. Our friendship consists in a mutuality of sharing with each other and collaborating in shared ventures.
This same two-fold mutuality is critical for our transforming friendship with Christ. On the one hand, God reveals Godself to us in Jesus Christ, and in response we learn to share ourselves with him. This ever-deepening mutual self-revelation and mutual transparency provides the environment in which our Divine Friendship both deepens over the years and gradually transforms us into the persons we are created to be. Certainly, this developing friendship Christ is not all plain sailing! Our Divine Friend can sometimes be a difficult friend whose values we may also sometimes resist!
On the other hand, our Divine Friendship also draws us into a shared collaboration and partnership with Christ in the world. We do not just look into each other’s eyes. We also look outward together at the world that God loves and wants to heal. We discover that friendship with Christ involves becoming God ‘s partner in “the family business” of making God’s dream for our universe a greater reality right where we live and work. William Barry SJ has helpfully described God’s dream as God’s desire for a world “in which human beings work together in harmony and friendship with God, with one another, and with all of creation.”William Barry S J Changed Heart, Changed World: The Transforming Freedom of Friendship with God(Loyola Press 2011) page 3.
03. The Second Week
The Second Week invites us to deepen this two-fold mutuality in our maturing friendship with Christ. We see this in the grace that we are invited to pray throughout this week. Before we enter the gospel stories that Ignatius suggests we contemplate in the Second Week, we ask for an “interior knowledge of the Lord, who for me has become man, that I may more love and follow him.”David Fleming SJ Draw Me into Your Friendship: The Spiritual Exercises: a Literal Translation and A Contemporary Translation (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2016) p92. Asking for this grace expresses our desire for Jesus to reveal himself personally through the gospel story we enter so that we can come to know him more fully and companion him in God’s family business in the world more faithfully.
However, this self-revelation is mutual. We are also invited to verbally share our response to how Jesus reveals himself. After we have imaginatively entered the relevant gospel story, Ignatius encourages us to speak out our joy, our thanks, our wonder, our praise, to the three Divine Persons.David Fleming SJ Draw Me into Your Friendship: The Spiritual Exercises: a Literal Translation and A Contemporary Translation (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2016) p95. This heart-to-heart conversation, which can also happen at any time during the exercise, facilitates the mutual self-revelation and transparency that lies at the heart of both the Second Week and our transforming friendship with Christ.
At a practical level, what does his journey into this deeper mutuality look like? The wisdom that Ignatius shares in the Second Week remains a grace-gift for the rest of our lives as we grow in friendship with Christ. Here are three possible ways in which Ignatius guides us in coming to know Christ more intimately in mutual friendship and partnership. They help us grow in friendship with Christ even if we are not engaged with the Spiritual Exercises right now.
First, we ask Christ to reveal himself that we may come to know him more intimately in his humanity. As we imaginatively immerse ourselves in the gospel stories of the Second Week -stories of Jesus’ birth, his growing up years, his baptism, his temptations, his public ministry, and his journey into Jerusalem-we open our heart and mind to the human Jesus. As we witness his emotional depths in these different gospel scenarios– his enjoyment, his affections, his loneliness, his likes, his dislikes, his weariness, his longings, his heartbreak, his insults – we ask continually that he reveal himself personally to us.
This is not an exercise in getting to know more about the historical details of Jesus’ life, important as these facts are. We do not want to know about Jesus, rather we want to know him. Along the way we discover how he meets us in our humanity, knows himself what it is like to be human, and shares with us our varied human experiences. As he discloses himself to us, we share with him our responses and reactions. The intimate way in which this two-way conversation happens will always be different for each person. As we come to know the humanity of Christ in this mutual way, we experience an ever-deepening intimacy in our friendship.
Ponder the moving witness of a Jesuit scientist, Rob Marsh SJ, in this regard. Reflecting on his experience of being with Jesus through the Second Week, he writes, “At the start he was all abstraction and hope and activity; but by the end he is this man, a man I have to come intimately. I’ve watched his birth and held his warm weight; I’ve been there as he has grown up and been made man before me; I’ve seen his struggle and heard his laughter. I’ve gazed at him and found him gazing back; I’ve heard my name on his lips. I’ve been drawn into his friendship; I’ve watched him work, suffered his hardships, wrestled with his self-discovery. I’ve discovered I need him and been sweetly shocked that he needs me too…Something has happened. I have fallen in love.”Robert R. Marsh SJ: ID QUOD VLO: The Erotic Grace of the Second Week: (The Way, 45/4 October 2006) p8.
Second, we ask Christ to help us discern how we can companion him in his Father’s business. There is a powerful exercise in the Second Week called The Call of the King where Christ calls us to be with him in mission. In this structured meditation we are invited to discern the unfolding calling of Christ in our lives. This invitation continues throughout the Exercises and beyond. It is an essential ingredient of our mutual friendship with Christ. As we discern our personal vocation with Christ, our mutual companionship transforms the world where we are.
Let me earth this last sentence in the particulars of your life and mine. We can begin where we live at the moment- our life-space with our families, with our colleagues at work, with the people who live next door, with the people who serve us in the bank and the supermarket, and even with those who are radically different to us. How is Christ calling us in these relationships to be less self-centred and more other-centred? No one else in the world occupies this unique relational space. If the light of Christ does not shine through us here, this space remains in the dark
We can also widen our life-space in this world to include our daily work and our broken community. What would it mean to see our place of employment as a chance to partner with Christ in God’s family business? We each are uniquely called to extend God’s kingdom in our workplace, and God depends on our cooperation in this adventure. Think too of the brokenness of our surrounding community. While we cannot respond to all the human cries in our midst, we can ask our Divine Friend, “What is my little piece of God’s dream? Where can I serve with you?
Third, we can ask Christ to reveal to us his intimate friendship with his Father. As we keep company with him through the gospel passages of the Second Week, we see clearly that this relationship is central to who he is and what he does. He believed that he was completely one with the Boundless Mystery whom he addressed in Aramaic as Abba, “my own dear Father.” Through his words and deeds, he reveals a mutual oneness with his Abba Father that we see in no other human being. When Jesus speaks, God speaks. When Jesus acts, God acts.
Astonishingly, as we come to know, love and follow Christ, he draws us into this mutuality with his Abba father. We begin to share in his own confident knowing of the Father’s love. This is how Jesus describes it: “No one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son- and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Matt 11:27) As we live in transforming friendship with Christ, we share in his own knowing, loving and trusting the Father within the context of our daily praying and living.
04. Conclusion
Reimagining the Spiritual Exercises as Transforming Friendship underlines the theme of mutuality in our Christ-following. The material of the Second Week with its emphases on asking Jesus to reveal himself to us in his humanity, entering heart-to- heart conversation with him, companioning him in his Father’s business, and sharing in his intimate friendship with his Abba father, draws us deeply into a more mutual relationship with the Trinity. While God always remains Creator and we creatures, this mutuality means that each of us is called to live in a real, dynamic two-way friendship with the living God.
05. Praxis
Set aside about 20 minutes if you are able. 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.
Ask in prayer: ‘Lord reveal yourself to me that I may come to know you better, love you more intensely, and follow you more closely.’
Take your favourite Gospel story, read it slowly a few times, and allow the story to awaken your imagination. (Some people have a vivid way of imagining; they “see’ the details of the gospel story clearly. Others, like me, “sense” the details in a more intuitive way. We can imagine with all our senses, not just our sight.)
Know that as you engage the story imaginatively, interact with Jesus within it, Christ’s risen presence accompanies you. You can trust that that he will encourage you in your friendship with him by showing himself to you in some way.
Whatever he reveals of himself to you, you can bet that it will stir up reactions in you. Share these reactions with him in conversation.
Close your time by praying the Our Father.
As you faithfully keep company with Jesus in this way, you slowly get to know him personally, and your friendship matures and deepens.