The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [180]
That leads us to a second goal: finding God in all things. By now you’ve seen how everything can be a way to experience God. In the past chapters, we’ve talked about encountering God in prayer, worship, family, love, music, nature, decision making, working, living simply, friendship, even during times of suffering. In all things. And in all people. And we’ve talked about an easy way to jump-start that awareness, to help you find God in everything: the examen. The contemplative in action seeks God and seeks to find God in action.
That means that he or she sees the world in an incarnational way, a third definition. God dwells in real things, real places, and real people. Not just “up there” but “all around.” (Though I’m not denying that God is also “up there” in heaven, wherever or however that is.) For Christians, Jesus is the incarnation of God, but you don’t have to be Christian to have an incarnational worldview. The more you travel along the way of Ignatius, the more you see the incarnational God.
And the more you travel along the Ignatian way, the more you will want to go further. The more you experience God, the more you will want to experience God more. The more you know God, the more you will want to know God more.
To do this, you need to maintain a measure of detachment and freedom, a fourth goal. You desire freedom from anything that prevents you from following along the way. You want to free yourself from any excess baggage. You want, as Ignatius said, to be free of “disordered attachments.” And you have to be careful not to start down paths that will lead you away from God. As Ignatius would say, you have to “discern.”
So tying it all together, you could say this: Contemplatives in action seek to find God in all things by looking at the world in an incarnational way, and, in their quest, they realize their desire for freedom and detachment, which helps them move even closer to God. That’s probably a fair summary of Ignatian spirituality.
That’s been my experience, too.
In the past few chapters, I’ve offered some personal examples of God’s activity in my life, not because my life is more important than anyone else’s, or more spiritual, or even normative. Rather, it’s to show you that anyone can experience God if he or she moves along the path of Ignatius.
When I entered the Jesuit novitiate at twenty-seven, I had little experience of prayer. I couldn’t imagine that I would ever have a “personal relationship” with God. I couldn’t imagine that I would be free of some of the unhealthy patterns that had been with me since childhood. I couldn’t imagine walking along a new path. I couldn’t imagine a new path at all. I couldn’t imagine, in a word, change.
But God had already imagined it.
The path of Ignatius has invited me to continual growth, freedom, and movement toward becoming more aware, more loving, more authentic, and, “yes, alive,” to quote Carol. I’ve tried to show how this happened in ways that are personal, because that’s where God is usually most alive, in our most intimate selves, intimior intimo meo, nearer to me than I am to myself. If we allow it to happen, God can work that way in all of our lives, which is why I include some real-life stories from the Jesuit saints, Jesuits I’ve known (some of whom seemed like saints), and many other friends and companions, both men and women, whom I’ve met along the way of Ignatius.
But those qualities—growth, freedom, movement, love, authenticity, even feeling alive—are not the final goals. The goal of the Ignatian way is not a quality, but something else.
THE ROAD IS OUR HOME
The goal is God.
I’ve tried to write this book in a welcoming way so that as many readers as possible will be able to use it—from the doubtful