The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [138]
More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This is what I have wanted all my life, from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands.
Jesus believed in his course and trusted in his Father, but how could he not be sad? Perhaps in his dark moments—or so I imagined in prayer—he may have wondered if it was all worth it. So Jesus wept.
For Christians, these are points of entry into the life of Jesus: in times of sadness and loneliness and dejection in your own life, you can connect with the human experience of Jesus and, perhaps more important, Jesus can connect with you.
Now let me share with you something quite personal, and quite explicit, as a way of illustrating what can sometimes happen in these Third Week meditations, while contemplating suffering.
Curiously, all the meditations I just mentioned came and went with little feeling. “Very unemotional,” I wrote in my journal. When I recounted this to my retreat director, an elderly Jesuit named Paul, it was also with scant feeling. Paul, an experienced spiritual director, listened intently. Then he said, “I think you’re blocking something.”
“I’m not blocking anything,” I told Paul. “I’ve told you everything I’ve experienced.”
Paul was surprised that so little feeling surrounded these meditations, and he encouraged me to return to Jesus’ Passion. This time, he said, sit in the tomb where Jesus has been laid. Ask for the grace to be free of anything that keeps you from being closer to God. Is there anything of you that needs to “die” in that tomb?
When I grudgingly returned to prayer the next day, something surprising happened. Imagining myself sitting in the tomb, I saw Mary, dressed from head to toe in black, sitting silently beside me. And I asked God to free me of whatever was burdening me.
All at once I was aware of the burdens in life that I wanted to set down in that tomb. All the things I had unconsciously kept bottled inside during the previous few weeks—things I didn’t want to examine since they might disturb the equanimity of the retreat, things I didn’t want to take out of the “box,” as David Donovan would say— poured out. Loneliness for one. Not the loneliness of being friendless, but the existential loneliness of religious life: the loneliness of chastity. (Single, divorced, and widowed men and women know this loneliness.) Tiredness for another. Not the tiredness of everyday life, but what seemed like the continuous stress of two, three, or even four jobs at a time. (Parents know this tiredness, too.)
So I told Jesus: “I am lonely and tired.” Expressing this brought forth what Ignatius called the “gift of tears.”
Immediately I saw myself at the foot of the cross in as vivid a prayer experience as I’ve ever had. Just that day I had finished a book called The Day Christ Died, by Jim Bishop. In it, Bishop notes that Roman crucifixes were probably elevated not far off the ground, and here in my mind’s eye was the base of the cross—squarish, boxy, rough. At eye level were Jesus’ feet nailed to the cross.
I imagined looking up at Jesus’ face. And he said deliberately, “This is your cross. Can you accept it?”
I knew what I was being asked to accept. Loneliness and tiredness are the lot of most people, not just Jesuits. But both are still “crosses.” Could I accept the “reality of the situation”? Could I surrender to the future that God had in store for me?
“Can you accept it?” I imagined Jesus saying.
I knew what the answer should be, but I wanted to be honest.
“I don’t know,” I said with many tears.
“Do you want to follow me?” he said.
“Yes, but show me the rest,” I said.
After the meditation ended, I was wrung out. Now, these kinds of intense prayer experiences are not so common to me. (Mostly, my prayer is calm and not quite so vivid. Like most everyone else’s, it is rich at times,