OUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS
Let us each be mindful each day of the presence of God in our lives!
Today in the Gospel
of Matthew we read: "Where did this
man get such wisdom and mighty deeds?" The church honors Saint
Ignatius of Loyola who shared great spiritual insight. Saint Ignatius was a
Spaniard who lived in the mid-16th-century and who founded the Society of Jesus
(Jesuits.) Ignatius exercised a most fruitful apostolate both by his book,The
Spiritual Exercisesand in the training of his disciples who thereafter played
such a central role in renewal of the Church at the time of the Counter-Reformation.
Ignatius was
greatly strengthened by God in doing His work but he also was challenged with
temptations of images of worldly pleasures in which he felt intense pleasure. When
he gave himself up to them out of weariness, he felt dry and depressed. Then
when he thought of living the rigorous sort of life he knew the saints had
lived, he not only experienced pleasure when he actually thought about it, but
after he pondered these thoughts, he experienced a great joy.
Ignatius reflected
on both of these thoughts and feelings going through him. And he came to
understand through this experience that thoughts of one kind left him sad, and
the others full of joy. And this was the first time he applied a process of
reasoning to his religious experience. That is when he started to formulate his
spiritual exercises, in which he drew on his experiences as illustrations to
explain the doctrine he taught his disciples on the discernment of the spirit.
We read in the
Scriptures how Jesus and the Apostles knew difficulties in the mission to God's
people. In a similar way, I am sure Ignatius also had his moments of difficulty
and frustration. But he received strength from God and through his apostolate
many came to recognize the presence of God in their lives.
It all comes to
this one point that Ignatius learned to pay attention to the presence of God in
his life-each day-and seek God's will in all things. Now the church has a
Jesuit pope, Francis, who encourages the faithful to recognize the presence of
God in our world and who speaks of finding Him everywhere, especially in the
poor and vulnerable.
Let us each be
mindful each day of the presence of God in our lives!