The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [145]
At this point, says Ignatius, it’s good to meditate on which option gives you the greater consolation. Ignatius asks you to look at the “motions” within you as a sign of God’s helping you with your choice. For people trying to discern God’s hopes and dreams for their lives, the presence of God will be reflected primarily through consolation.
Consolation, again, is the sense of God’s presence and those interior feelings that lead to peace, tranquility, and joy. Here, in a time of decision, consolation is a sense of peace and of rightness of the choice. Consolation leads you to feel encouraged, confident, and calm in your decision.
For many years I wondered about the connection between making a good decision and feeling consolation. It seemed almost superstitious. Does God zap you with consolation, like a magic trick, to help you make the right choice?
No. As David Lonsdale writes, we feel peace about a particular decision when it is “coherent with” God’s desires for our happiness. Ignatius understood that God works through our deepest desires. When we are following that path to God, things seem right. Things feel in synch because they are in synch.
Lonsdale’s explanation of consolation is superb. The main feature of feelings of consolation is that “their direction is toward growth, creativity and a genuine fullness of life and love in that they draw us to a fuller, effective, generous love of God and other people, and to a right love of ourselves.”
The flip side of consolation is desolation. By this Ignatius means anything that moves you toward hopelessness. You are agitated or restless or, as Ignatius says, “listless, tepid, and unhappy.” These feelings mean you are moving away from a good decision.
Ignatian discernment means trusting that God will speak to you through these spiritual experiences about the choices you are considering. As Fleming writes, our hearts will gradually tell us which choices are moving us closer to God. All this is based on the belief that God does move our hearts and that we can grow in our sensitivity to God’s voice within us.
While recovering from his wounds at Pamplona, Ignatius felt consolation when he thought about following the saints. When he thought about impressing “a certain lady,” he felt desolation. Gradually he realized that these were ways that God was calling him to the best course of action. These are the kinds of feelings that you weigh in your prayer during the Second Time.
The Discerning Mother
Here’s a joke about discernment: A woman asks her local priest for advice. “Father,” she says, “I have a little boy who is six months old. And I’m curious to know what he will be when he grows up.”
The priest says, “Place before him three things: a bottle of whiskey, a dollar bill, and a Bible. If he picks the bottle of whiskey, he’ll be a bartender. If he picks the dollar bill, a business man. And if he picks the Bible, a priest.” So the mother thanks him and goes home.
The next week she returns. “Well,” said the priest, “which one did he pick: the whiskey, the dollar bill, or the Bible?”
She says, “He picked all three!”
“Ah,” says the priest, “a Jesuit!”
Besides praying about decisions and examining whether you feel a sense of consolation, there is another practice that can be used during the Second (and Third) Times. It is imagining living with each choice for a set period of time and seeing which choice gives you a greater sense of peace.
For a few days, act as if you were going to choose one alternative. Though you’ve not made the choice, imagine that you have, and move through your day as if you had made the decision already. Try the decision on, like a new sweater. How does it