Daily reflection _ out thoughts and feelings

OUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS
Let us each be mindful each day of the presence of God in our lives!
Deacon John Ruscheinsky
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!