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.

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. (Luke 4: 28-30) NIV).

We reach more perfect understanding when we take quality time to feel with Jesus, as he reveals himself, looking and hearing, touching and tasting, in the Gospel Word. Contemplation of Jesus becomes the path to imitate Jesus.

Imagine yourself in the crowd of curious men, pushing, pulling, yelling, gathering momentum as they moved Jesus out of the town and to the edge of the cliff.

Now enter into Jesus, into his heart, into his experience of all this…his experience of being the object of anger, resistance, rejection…his experience of being pushed around, ganged up on….

What is Jesus seeing? How does he gaze on each of these men? What does he see deep within them? What does he feel as he sees in them his Father’s creative beauty and goodness?

Ask Jesus to show you his desires for each of them….

In Jesus, has love cast out all fear?

This prayer changes the way we perceive and experience reality. We learn how to be in Jesus and to imitate him in the way he experienced every aspect of human need and desire…

Rest in that awareness as Jesus helps you to resonate with what he resonates with. As you enter into his feelings and the way he uses his senses, you will gradually lose interest in your own spontaneous reactions, defenses, and self-promotions. Jesus will bring you to his way by attraction, sweetness, and beauty. He will make you feel safety, belonging, and hope.

As Joseph Ratzinger wrote:

From the point of view of the Christian faith, man comes in the most profound sense to himself, not through what he does, but through what he accepts. He must wait for the gift of love, and love can only be received as a gift. It cannot be “made” on one’s own, without anyone else; one must wait for it, let it be given to one. And one cannot become wholly man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved.

That love represents simultaneously both man’s highest possibility and his deepest need and that this most necessary thing is at the same time the freest and the most unenforceable means precisely that for his “salvation” man is meant to rely on receiving.

If he declines to let himself be presented with the gift, then he destroys himself.

Activity that makes itself into an absolute, that aims at achieving human by its own efforts alone, is in contradiction with man’s being.

Joseph Ratzinger once quoted Louis Evely:  

The whole history of mankind was led astray, suffered a break, because of Adam’s false idea of God. He wanted to be like God. I hope that you never thought that Adam’s sin lay in this … Had God not invited him to nourish this desire? Adam only deluded himself about the model. He thought God was an independent autonomous being sufficient to himself; and in order to become like him he rebelled and showed disobedience.

But when God revealed himself, when God wished to show who he was, he appeared as love, tenderness, as outpouring of himself, infinite pleasure in another. Inclination, dependence. God showed himself obedient, obedient unto death. In the belief that he was becoming like God, Adam turned right away from him. He withdrew into loneliness, and God was fellowship. (Introduction to Christianity, trans J.R. Foster, 267-268.

“To educate our senses and feelings, to become imbued with his way of being and feeling, of resonating with everything that made him resonate, of abhorring everything that he abhorred, of reacting to things and to people as he sed to react, to spontaneously (the goal) feel with Jesus—to be more like him [than ourselves]…” (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).

A gift to take with you

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 Mary, Joseph and Jesus to show you one specific gift they wish 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 Credit: ChrisG via Pixabay