The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [68]
From the Spiritual Exercises
Here is St. Ignatius using “composition of place,” by imagining the Nativity scene. Notice the questions that he asks, and notice that he doesn’t tell you exactly what to imagine but leaves it up to your imagination, where Ignatius trusted that God would be at work on a very personal level.
The composition, by imagining the place. Here it will be to see in imagination the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Consider its length and breadth, whether it is level or winds through valleys and hills. Similarly, look at the place or cave of the Nativity: How big is it, or small? How low or high? And how is it furnished?
With your imaginative sight and hearing, you have now begun to enter more fully into this scene. But you’re not finished yet: you have a few more senses at your disposal.
What do you smell? Along with seawater washing into the fishing boat, you would smell . . . fish! (Or at least the residual smell from the day’s catch.) Finally, in such close quarters with the disciples you would smell rancid body odor and perhaps even some bad breath.
None of these imaginative exercises asks you to picture anything weird or bizarre. All Ignatius suggests is trying to imagine—as best you can—what things might have been like. You also trust that, since you’re trying to enter into this scene to meet God, God will help you with this prayer.
You still have two more senses left. Touch is one. What do you feel? Are you wearing homespun clothes? Maybe the material feels scratchy against your skin. If you’re sitting in a boat during a storm, you’re probably soaked, feeling cold, wet, and miserable, on top of being tired from traipsing around Galilee with Jesus all day.
Finally, what do you taste? For this particular meditation, this sense is slightly less important. But for others, like stories where Jesus and his disciples are eating and drinking—as during the wedding feast at Cana and the Last Supper—this is a key sense. But even here in the boat, you might imagine tasting the saltwater spray.
Now that you have used your senses and “composed the place,” you have the scene set. At this point you can just let the scene play out in your mind, with you in the picture.
But it’s not just something to “watch.” “You do not merely imagine the event as though you were watching it on film,” Joseph A. Tetlow, S.J., writes in Making Choices in Christ. “You enter into the scene, letting it unfold as though you were part of it, standing warm in the temple or ankle-deep in the water of the Jordan.”
Let the story play out in your imagination with as little judging on your part as possible. Let yourself be drawn to whatever seems most attractive or interesting. For example, if you notice the disciples more than Jesus, try not to judge that as inappropriate or wrong. While you’re in the meditation, allow God to lead you through your imagination.
Pay Attention!
Afterward take note of what happened within yourself while you were involved in the story. As with any kind of prayer, there are many things that could be revealed: insights, emotions, desires, memories, feelings, as we discussed in the last chapter.
God desires to communicate with you all the time, but when you intentionally open yourself up to God’s voice, you can often hear it more clearly. To use the metaphor of friendship, it is similar to saying to a friend, “You have my undivided attention.” Ignatian contemplation enables us to hear more easily, or differently, and to recognize something that might otherwise be overlooked.
Opening Ourselves
Though intended by Ignatius to help one enter into events from the life of Christ, Ignatian contemplation can be used by all religious traditions