The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [153]
Over the past twenty years as a Jesuit, this has been the part of Ignatian spirituality that has been easiest for me to see in action. And once you’re familiar with it, you’ll begin to see it in yourself.
These are the three primary ways that the evil spirit works, slightly adapted from Ignatius’s Rules for Discernment.
First, the enemy conducts himself like a spoiled child. In this case the child is “weak when faced by firmness but strong in the face of acquiescence.” Frequently we find ourselves beset by what feels like a child within us. You think, “I want this! And I want it now!” Like a child screaming for another candy bar. If this overwhelming want is for something unhealthy, selfish, or even immoral, then it is important to recognize this for what it is. If part of you wants to jump into bed with another office worker, even though you’re both married, and you hear that babyish, demanding, petulant voice over and over in your head, you’re hearing this voice of the spoiled child. “I have to have sex with her, and I have to have it now!”
What’s the antidote? Do what you would do with a spoiled child: put your foot down on those temptations. You’ll find it effective. “The enemy characteristically weakens, loses courage, and flees with his temptations when the person engaged in spiritual endeavors stands bold and unyielding.”
Pity the parent who gives in to the spoiled child who keeps demanding more and more. And pity the person who doesn’t put his foot down with these kinds of selfish wants. The married man (or woman) who continually listens to that childish voice that says, “I have to have sex with that person!” risks falling into a devastating choice. If you begin to “fear and lose courage,” as Ignatius says, the temptations will only intensify. So put your foot down!
Second, the enemy acts like a false lover. Essentially, the enemy would prefer that temptations, doubts, and despairs be kept secret, which only makes things worse for the person.
Ignatius compares the enemy to a “scoundrel” who tries to “remain secret and undetected.” In a colorful passage he compares the enemy to a man intent on seducing a good wife away from her husband. (Let’s hope Ignatius was not speaking from an earlier experience!) The scoundrel wants his “words and solicitations” to remain secret, lest the husband finds out and puts things right.
In the same way, he writes, “When the enemy of human nature turns his wiles and persuasions upon an upright person, he intends and desires them to be received and kept in secrecy. But when the person reveals them to his or her good confessor or some other spiritual person . . . he is grievously disappointed. For he quickly sees that he cannot succeed.”
What’s the antidote here? Bring everything out in the open—all those negative feelings and temptations and urges to do wrong or to despair or to move away from God. Bring them out of that “box,” as David would say. Talk about them with a friend you trust, a counselor, or a spiritual director. You’ll see how those temptations, which seem so powerful when hidden within, quickly lose much of their power when they’re brought into the light of day.
How often this happens in spiritual direction! Someone seems to be dancing around some uncomfortable topic, something he is afraid of revealing, precisely because he knows that once it’s out in the open he will be challenged to recognize how unhealthy it is.
Once it’s revealed, the unhealthy urge, decision, or tendency can be examined, healed, or rejected. When a young Jesuit is tempted to break his vows in any way, for example, he often suppresses the desire to talk about his struggles with his superior or spiritual director, and the frustrations and fears and secrecy and problems only deepen.
“The devil never has greater success with us than when he works secretly and in the dark,” said Ignatius. Or, as members of Alcoholics Anonymous say,