The grace we are asking of God: to discover Jesus in my own personal story so that my personal myth may be transformed in Jesus, as was that of Ignatius, that I will be disposed to hear God’s call and follow it wholeheartedly

Horizons of the Heart is inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius and my own notes from my thirty-day Ignatian retreat in 2022. See an index for the whole series.

Begin by relaxing your body, your mind, letting go of anxieties and ambitions and expectations and plans… Lay all that you notice and all that you are bare and exposed before the Father who welcomes you with a gaze that is gently loving. Settle into the silence that runs deeper than emotional turbulence… Move beyond imagination where you wait upon the stirring of the soul and the movement of the heart. Return to Jesus to find the Rest he offers…to welcome the gift…to become a child held in safe arms….

Making Space for the Word

Ask Jesus that every aspect of this prayer will please him and will give glory to God.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1).

Slowly read the passage for your meditation once. Leave some moments of silence and then read it again with the intention of entering into the story, of observing the details of what is happening. Take some time to set the stage and picture the environment in which the story takes place.…

The Judean desert was a rocky and barren place… In the Bible, the desert is an image of loss of control, of separation from the safety offered by villages and family, and of our utter dependence on God since without resources in these wastelands one would certainly die… Feel the heat on your face… Notice your thirst… Experience hunger… Bear the loneliness, no one as far as the eye can see… “It is through our senses that we feel the ‘touch’ within the heart (Exx 335), and then the heart expands in feelings of happiness, peace and serenity, and in a renewal of spiritual strength, along with desires to ‘move forward’ (Exx 315, 329) (Imitating Christ our Lord with the Senses: Sensing and Feeling in the Exercises: Antonio Guillen (The Way, 47/1-2 (Jan/April 2008), 225-241). 

Read the passage of Scripture again.

Let the story expand from the few verses that are recounted in Scripture to what these forty days in the desert would have been like for Jesus, what he would have experienced or needed or felt, how he lived these events interiorly, how he expressed himself….

With your senses of sight, of hearing, of touch immerse yourself in the event. Is there any way you can be of help to Jesus. If so, imagine yourself entering the story through these actions. Look around for a particular moment that seems to be of greater importance to you, to catch your attention.

The desert is for Jesus a place of love. Here he has eyes and heart only for the Father. As the days of his forty day retreat go on, Jesus becomes more and more ready to live and die on the terms of love…. He hands himself over to the Father, confident in his love, willing to live and die for love of me.

Psalm 63:1:

You, God, are my God,
    earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
    my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
    where there is no water.

Jesus asks: Who will join me? Who will love like me? Who will trust my Father this completely?

Adore Jesus in the desert… In your inspired imagination show him reverence… Speak to him about these questions he asks, have an honest conversation.

This deeper contemplation of Jesus in the Gospels is an apprenticeship of our feelings and senses in which we are formed in such a way that we feel with Jesus, that our feelings becomes those of Jesus, and our spontaneous reactions of personal promotion and self-protection are gradually curbed and re-invented so that we spontaneously react as Jesus does.

Ask for the grace “to know Jesus intimately, to love him more intensely, and so to follow him more closely.”

Colloquy

Allow an image or object that encapsulates all these experiences to form in your mind. Take some time to speak with God about the meaning or significance of this object.

Ask Jesus to show you one specific gift he wishes to give you. Receive it and remain in stillness and quietly relaxed presence under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Reviewing the Graces of Prayer

When you finish praying, write down the main gifts and discoveries from this time of intimate contemplation. What is one concrete thing you can do to solidify these gifts in your life.

Image: Briton Riviere: Temptation in the Wilderness, public domain, Wikimedia Commons