Category: Horizons of the Heart

The grace we are asking of God: a growing ability to recognize the weeds and the wheat in my own life, that is, the ways in which I am drawn through grace toward living in the Kingdom of Christ and the ways in which I am deceived by the Enemy in the decisions I make. I also ask for the grace to know Jesus deeply, so that I may immerse myself wholly in his standard: his values, his preferences, his loves, his desires, his self-offering, his compassion and mercy.

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.

I started praying with the Two Standards Meditation and realized I would be here quite a while. In a sense, this lens on the way Christ is at work in us is life-changing, and I have recently discovered anew how much change needed to be brought about within me so that my hidden disordered tendencies might be brought into alignment with the values of the Kingdom of Christ.

The traditional image of the Two Standards exercise arose out of the medieval experience of war and it certainly didn’t resonate with me. In fact, it left me striving to “prove” I was good enough for the Kingdom of the good leader: Christ. The meditation is rooted in the method of war during the time of Ignatius: the image of two warring factions of knights in full arms being led onto the battlefield, each clearly serving a different leader and fighting under a large flag or standard. Once the hand-to-hand combat began, however, the two armies would become indistinguishable as the knights were mixed together in mass confusion. It became impossible to tell who was fighting for who as the battle progressed.

The two leaders are Christ and Lucifer. Each of them called to themselves people who were willing to serve in their respective armies under the values of their very different Kingdoms, fighting under their opposing standards: hence the name, Two Standards Meditation.

As I prayed with this, Jesus drew me to the parable of the weeds and the wheat. As I’m entering into this second week of the Exercises, “unfinished business” and inner wounds are surfacing and hitting the fan once again. Jesus reminded me while I was praying that the weeds and the wheat (like the armies of the two kings) will be there until my last breath, and the two sometimes are hard to distinguish. What may be convinced is a virtue might actually be something I’m doing for less than noble reasons. What appears to be a vice might be the best I can do at the moment, even a virtuous struggle as I’m calling out to Jesus to help me be as faithful as I can at this moment to his “standard” or Kingdom.

Jesus brought to my mind the apostles crying out in terror as they bailed water out of their boat capsizing in the winds and rains of an unexpected storm on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus, a number of feet away from them, stood on the water, also wet from the rain with his clothes whipped by the winds, calm and reassuring with his presence.

“It’s okay to cry out,” Jesus helped me see. “That’s all you can do sometimes. These burly fishermen, professionals at what they did, were as terrified as toddlers that day as the storm unexpectedly whipped up the Sea of Galilee. And I loved them in all their vulnerability that lay exposed to me at that moment. They were my Father’s children, my brothers, the ones for whom I would give my life…. As their wounds became evident I showed them immediately that I still delighted in them. Even in the continuous need you have for healing and freedom I want you to look at my face now. I am calling you into my Kingdom: so that the way you are and the way you live and what you choose to do will become part of the Kingdom.”

Jesus wants us to know that every time we expose to him our wounds and believe, nevertheless, that God has made something special when he made us and that Jesus delights in us right then, we also join him as those who are willing to live and serve under his standard, as ambassadors of his Kingdom of Love. He calls those willing to be humble, poor, vulnerable, those willing to surrender in obedience and love while serving beside him as he brings to fulfillment the reign of the Kingdom of heaven in the world today.

Here you are entering into the Mystery

In a moment of quiet and prayer, can you believe these words as you say them to yourself: “God made something wonderful when God made me!”

Notice any confusion or resistance or fear or shame. These feelings indicate the presence of wounds, unfinished business waiting for the healing touch of Jesus as he calls us to enter and to serve the Kingdom of Love. Up to now in the Spiritual Exercises, we have been praying through the lens of personal healing, repentance and conversion, and spiritual transformation. In this short meditation we are taking a step back to consolidate our trust in the love of Jesus for us, even in our wounds, as he invites us to become a part of his saving mission in the world.

Pray again: “You, Lord, made something wonderful when you made me! I believe this. My feelings may not resonate with my faith. I may have old tapes of what others have told me about myself that say differently. The voices of shame may try to smother this trust. The Enemy may be sowing weeds of self-hate, but no matter. Regardless of what I feel, you have made something wonderful when you made me, Lord, because you can only make perfectly wonderful things.”

Ask the Holy Spirit to give you a memory or a symbol of a wound that he is ready to heal.

Pray quietly: “Lord, when I expose to you my most vulnerable places, you will still delight in what you have made. Your kindness is bottomless. Your love is endless. Your delight in me reminds me that I am your child.”

Abide in the silence. Feel the attraction of the Kingdom. Offer gratitude.

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.

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

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.

“He has sent me … to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

The last part of Jesus’ proclamation stated that he was sent to proclaim a year of the Lord’s favor or grace that had been announced by Isaiah. Luke uses this same phrase in the Acts of the Apostles as a reference to the gospel proclamation.

The Greek verb μαρτυρέω (martureo) translated often as “speak well of” means simply to “testify” or to “bear witness.”  Daniel Hoffman explains that translated literally, the statement reads like this: “And all were bearing witness about him and were marveling at the words of grace coming from his mouth; and they were saying, “Is this not the son of Joseph?”

“They were not impressed with his words, they were amazed (in the skeptical sense) that he was telling them that the time of the Lord’s favor was now. They doubted it, and their question confirms this—Asking ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ is not a compliment, but a scoff. “

They only became angrier as Jesus continued:

Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” (Luke 4:20-27)

Pause and enter into the drama of these words of Jesus and the consternation with which they must have been received…. Noticing the way in which the sunny skies of excitement and pride over Jesus were quickly turning to bafflement, confusion, and aggression.

Be present to the way Jesus “senses” the situation. As Gemma Simmonds reminds us, in Ignatian prayer, to “sense” includes mental thoughts, intuition, emotions, as well as bodily processes (our emotions often generate strong bodily reactions as when our cheeks become flushed when we are embarrassed or our fists clench when we are angry).

Be present to all the intensity in Jesus who has come as the ambassador of the Lord’s love and compassion and faithful loyalty to his people. And instead of welcoming and receiving that love, they respond by scoffing at him.

Entering still deeper into the mystery of Christ, allow your heart to taste, to smell, to touch the infinite gentleness and sweetness of Jesus. Allow your spirit to soak up what has been felt and known in this contemplative prayer.

As you do this your mind’s activity will fade into the background, and the mystery you are intuitively contemplating will begin to take over and engulf you, planting within your spirit an inner knowledge of the Lord.

You will at some point begin to intuitively sense the difference between the way Jesus spontaneously feels, speaks, and acts in a situation and the way you yourself feel, speak, and act in similar situations in your own life.

As you stay within Jesus, he will reveal to you how he is experiencing the rejection of his offer of love, freedom, good news, grace and salvation.

What is it that you notice?

What in Jesus is drawing you?

What in Jesus is speaking to your life’s story right now?

Let the mystery of Christ’s life become present to you. Take much time with this. Let your senses and his be tuned together by the action of the Holy Spirit. Let them play in harmony. Let Jesus’ interior life absorb your inner life so that you become “connatural” with him and your inner world is “taken over” at an intuitive level, being established firmly in the “inner knowledge of the Lord.”

This experience of feeling with Jesus, or enjoying this inner knowledge of the Lord, is a window into what Ignatius called “spiritual consolation.” Ignatius said consolation is when, “Some interior movement in the souls causes the soul to become inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord.” 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.

We reach greater 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.

Rest in that awareness as Jesus helps you to resonate with what he resonates with.

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.

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 he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked. (Luke 4)

Here you are entering into the Mystery

Notice the sounds of everyone sitting that day in the Synagogue. Everyone turning toward Jesus, the village boy of Nazareth that had grown up among them.

His words crack like thunder on a serene day: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

The statement is met by silence then an uncomfortable clearing of throats and shifting of position. Some exchanged glances, alarmed and uncertain….

“Today this scripture is fulfill in your hearing.” As if Jesus were saying: You are used to listening to the reading of the prophets Sabbath after Sabbath, as a recounting of thoughts and events and ideas and prayers of people who populated history but who are now longer here. Now I am here. I am the fulfillment of the prophecies.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.”

It was as if Jesus is trying to tell them: I want you to know that the heart of the Father who has described himself again and again as being full of hesed has now been broken open and is now at this very moment pouring out love upon you. Not loving words, or ideas, or promises, but the deed that is the sending of his Son because he has so loved the world.

Hesed is a Hebrew word that appears some 250 times in the Old Testament and is variously translated in the Scriptures as mercy, compassion, unfailing love, faithful love, grace, and faithfulness. Hesed at its very core communicated faithfulness within God’s covenant with his people. It expresses God’s faithfulness to his people.

Jesus stated that day that God was giving them the gift of his love in faithfulness to the covenant he had made with them. Jesus, God’s gift, would free, give sight, forgive, offer salvation, heal, proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor in the gift of forgiveness and salvation in Christ.

“He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

What was in Jesus’ heart as he looked into each face, saying “I am here. God is here. I am God-with-you. I am love. God is love. I am going to free you so that you may be lifted up into the love that is God.”

We know the end of the story, you know the part about the villagers trying to toss Jesus off the cliff. And that kind of spoils the rest of the story. We might think that Jesus showed up at the synagogue that day in a feisty mood, arrogant, resistant…. But just forget the ending of the story of the minute and listen to Jesus’ heart….

Listen! I hear my lover’s voice.
I know it’s him coming to me—
leaping with joy over mountains,
skipping in love over the hills that separate us,
to come to me (Song of Songs 2:8).

Jesus’ heart is filled with amazing grace for the people he loves. Those people in Nazareth that day…. Enter deeply into the mystery of that moment. See the love reflected in Jesus’ gaze. Re-read his words and let them be filled with a loving offer he is making to them.

Is there hope in his heart? Excitement? Joy at being able to bring his friends and fellow Nazareans along with him?

And how does he look at you? Let there be that same excitement, joy, faithful love. That loves doesn’t come from the behavior of the one loved. Hesed, steadfast love and compassion comes from the one who is offering the love to the other.

“Will you receive my love?” Can you hear Jesus ask you this?

This deeper contemplation of Jesus is an apprenticeship of your feelings and senses in which you are formed in such a way that you feel with Jesus, that your feelings becomes those of Jesus.

Entering into the mystery you humbly allow Jesus to be your Master, to educate your senses and feelings according to the pattern of his own life and teachings. It is a matter of becoming saturated with Jesus’ own way of being and feeling.

Allow your spirit to soak up what has been felt and known in this contemplative prayer.

Allow the offer of freedom, mercy, healing, joy to wash over you….

Where is there resistance to the gift of God’s love in Christ….

To this love story into which you and I are being drawn….

This place that may feel shadowy and messy God has always known, because it is a part of your life and your struggle. But at the core of who you are, what is most deeply human within you, responds with delight and pleasure to this being drawn into the proximity of loving relationship through which our humanity will be made whole again.

“He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

This God who approaches us first, who shows us our beauty and our goodness when we are bathed in the light of his loving gaze…

It is from God’s love for us that we learn what love is… How beautiful the experience of God-like love is….

Entering still deeper into the mystery of Christ, allow your heart to taste, to smell, to touch the infinite gentleness and sweetness of Jesus. Allow your spirit to soak up what has been felt and known in this contemplative prayer.

As you do this your mind’s activity will fade into the background, and the mystery you are intuitively contemplating will begin to take over and engulf you, planting within your spirit an inner knowledge of the Lord.

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: Berthold Werner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:14-21 NIV)

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.… Use one of your five senses that is most helpful in entering into an experience. For some it is sight—visualizing what is happening, for others it is hearing—noticing sounds like the swoosh of a robe, a voice, the people sitting down, the sounds of nature or feet as they walk…

I invite you to zoom out and see this event within the larger arc of Jesus’ life and mission. This passage, which we’ve heard so many times, is really the beginning of a love story. It is the entrance of the lover who has come to woo his bride Israel and all humanity. You may wish to read through the passage a third time looking for hints of this story of love.

The way this passage is set up is similar to another biblical account of the entrance of a Lover. This one is found in the Old Testament book Song of Songs:

Listen! I hear my lover’s voice.
I know it’s him coming to me—
leaping with joy over mountains,
skipping in love over the hills that separate us,
to come to me (Song of Songs 2:8).

Notice your response to this passage. What occurs to you? What surprises you? What moves within you? What is your emotional response: hope? Excitement? Relief? Uncertainty? Fear? Joy?

Entering more deeply into the Love-Story of the Word Made Flesh

The Lover comes. He chooses his bride.

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up…

Listen! I hear my lover’s voice.
I know it’s him coming to me— (Sg 2:8)

The Lover enters…

…and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.

leaping with joy over mountains,
skipping in love over the hills that separate us… (v. 8)

The Lover stands…

He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.

Now he comes closer,
even to the places where I hide.
He gazes into my soul,
peering through the portal
as he blossoms within my heart. (v. 9)

The Lover speaks…

Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:14-21 NIV)

The one I love calls to me:
Arise, my dearest. Hurry, my darling.
Come away with me!
I have come as you have asked
to draw you to my heart and lead you out.
For now is the time, my beautiful one.
The season has changed,
the bondage of your barren winter has ended,
and the season of hiding is over and gone.
The rains have soaked the earth
and left it bright with blossoming flowers.
The season for singing and pruning the vines has arrived.
I hear the cooing of doves in our land,
filling the air with songs to awaken you
and guide you forth.
Can you not discern this new day of destiny
breaking forth around you? (v. 10-13)

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

Here you are entering into the Mystery

This deeper contemplation of Jesus is an apprenticeship of your feelings and senses in which you are formed in such a way that you feel with Jesus, that your feelings become those of Jesus.

Entering into the mystery you humbly allow Jesus to be your Master, to educate your senses and feelings according to the pattern of his own life and teachings. It is a matter of becoming saturated with Jesus’ own way of being and feeling.

As you re-read the passage from Luke one more time, allow yourself to enter into the feelings of Jesus. In the thought of Ignatius, to sense what Jesus is experiencing includes mental, intuitive, emotional feelings, and bodily responses. Enter into the sense of a Lover who experienced such love for the people in Nazareth, seeing them with the eyes of God their Creator, with the heart of a Father who had been following his people for thousands of years, preparing them for the arrival of his Son who would convey to them in word and deed the treasures of his heart.

Jesus hadn’t arrived at the village of Nazareth just before the synagogue service (since walking for any great distance was forbidden on the Sabbath), so he would have walked through the city, greeted neighbors and friends, picked up the children who came to see him as he approached Mary’s house, listened to stories and sorrows, and spent at least a couple nights with Mary in the home in which he had grown up in. With your inspired imagination enter into Jesus’ arrival in Nazareth and the morning of the Sabbath where he joined the men in the synagogue. Allow these sense images to surface in your consciousness without trying to control or interpret them. Experience in Jesus and yourself any sense responses on the level of thoughts, affectivity, physical sensations, intuition and emotions. Allow yourself to gradually be overtaken by the was Jesus experienced loving, being a Lover—both for the people of Nazareth… and for you… Gently soak in these meaningful impressions.

What is the grace or spiritual gift you desire….

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: Mouse23 via Pixabay.

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….

Resonating with Jesus

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 entering into how Jesus is experiencing this event, how he is using his senses, what he is thinking, feeling, desiring….

Jesus could have prayed with Psalm 91 while he communed with his Father in the desert.

You who live in the shelter of the Most High,
    who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress;
    my God, in whom I trust.”
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
    and from the deadly pestilence.

…The fowler is set on destruction. He sets traps in favorable spots, attracting doves and other small birds by scattering grain inside the trap. The birds would walk into the snare, not suspecting danger until the trap had been sprung. Jesus would have reflected in this psalm how God delivers the one who trusts in him.. “Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: The snare is broken, and we are escaped” (Psalm 14:7). In this Psalm God is proclaimed as trustworthy to rescue us by either helping us avoid the trap altogether or freeing us from the trap if caught… This is a very masculine image, particularly for Ancient Israel… The forces of evil are stalking us to destroy us, but our Rescuer ultimately calls the shots. There is only one outcome: freedom from the snare of the fowler. After the fall of Adam and Eve, through the thousands of years before the birth of Jesus, we were trapped in our infidelity and disloyalty and in the destructive power of death which seemed to have the last word…. Jesus in the desert proclaimed to Satan: “Your power is broken.”

He will cover you with his pinions,
    and under his wings you will find refuge.

…A pinion is the outer part of a bird’s wing and represents the protection a mother bird gives her chicks. She spread her wings over them. This is a call to confidence in God. If you make the Lord your resting place, he will never leave you…. Here the psalmist offers a feminine image for the protecting and caring power of God.

Attend to Jesus as he prays the rest of this psalm in the rocky landscape and oppressive heat of the desert loneliness:

[The Lord’s] faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
You will not fear the terror of the night,
    or the arrow that flies by day,
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
    or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side,
    ten thousand at your right hand,
    but it will not come near you.
You will only look with your eyes
    and see the punishment of the wicked.

Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
    the Most High your dwelling place,
no evil shall befall you,
    no scourge come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
    so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder,
    the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

Those who love me, I will deliver;
    I will protect those who know my name.
When they call to me, I will answer them;
    I will be with them in trouble,
    I will rescue them and honor them.
With long life I will satisfy them,
    and show them my salvation.

Rest in the awareness of what resonates in Jesus heart as he prays these words from the prayerbook of Ancient Israel. As you enter into his feelings, you will gradually lose interest in your own spontaneous reactions, defenses, and fears. Jesus will bring you to his way by attraction, sweetness, and beauty. He will make you feel his own heart’s safety, belonging, and hope.

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: Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness (Jésus tenté dans le désert). Brooklyn Museum, New York, public domain, Wikimedia Commons