The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [181]
But to understand fully the end of the journey, you have to understand the destination. For Ignatian spirituality is meaningless without God. The end is not a place. It’s God.
Remember the analogy I used about the Spiritual Exercises at the beginning of the book? The Exercises are not meant to be read, they’re meant to be experienced. It is similar to an instruction book about dancing. It wouldn’t do you much good if you just read the book; you have to dance before you can understand it.
Well, there’s a partner in that dance: God. It’s a cheesy image, I know. (At this point you might be imagining yourself dancing with an old man with a long white beard—or if you weren’t, maybe you are now!) But it’s a reminder that the goal of the path is a relationship with God, who wants to be in relationship with you. Who wants to dance with you.
For me, Ignatian spirituality has been the primary way through which I’ve met God in my life. It’s been my path to God. And to Jesus Christ. Ignatius’s practices and insights have enriched my appreciation for my religious tradition, for Scripture, for community, for prayer, for . . . almost everything. The way of Ignatius has helped to lead me into relationship with God, something I would have thought impossible at age twenty-seven.
But no one, in this lifetime, reaches the end of the journey. After our deaths, I believe, we shall meet God “face to face,” as St. Paul says. But on this earth we will always be pilgrims along the way.
That’s why the image of the path has been the dominant image that I’ve used for Ignatian spirituality. That’s also why I like what Jerónimo Nadal, one of Ignatius’s early companions, said: “The road is our home.” He meant that Jesuits were always traveling, always en route to some new mission, always open to move.
But Nadal’s comment carries another meaning, too. It means that we are always on the road to God, and the more we come to understand the destination, the more we feel at home on that road.
God is the goal. So is our offering of ourselves to God. That’s part of the friendship. In any real friendship, there is, as Ignatius says, an exchange of gifts. “Each shares with the other.” God offers himself (or herself) to us, and we offer ourselves to God. So that’s why I would like to end this book with a challenging prayer, taken from—what else?—the Spiritual Exercises. It’s about giving something to God.
Yourself.
TAKE, LORD, RECEIVE
Throughout these past chapters, we’ve mentioned the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises. As we moved along, I introduced you to selected aspects about each week as they related to the topics we were discussing. The First Week invites you to look at gratitude for God’s gifts in your life, and then your own sinfulness. You’re led to a grateful awareness of yourself as a loved sinner. In the Second Week, you imagine yourself accompanying Jesus of Nazareth in his earthly ministry of preaching and healing. The Third Week takes you, imaginatively, into the story of Jesus’ passion and death, which gives you new perspectives on suffering.
But there’s one more week we haven’t yet talked about: the Fourth Week, which focuses on the Resurrection.
By the end of the Spiritual Exercises, most retreatants are delighted to be able to meditate on the joyful stories of the Resurrection: Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene and the disciples, Jesus forgiving Peter for his betrayal, and Jesus feeding his disciples by the Sea of Galilee. And in a burst of pious enthusiasm Ignatius even added something to the New Testament: a scene of Jesus meeting his mother after the Resurrection. “Although this is not stated