Mary’s School of Sanctity                   

Having covered the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, it is now time to examine and study the foundation which St. Ignatius gives as the preparation to do his actual Spiritual Exercises.

Before beginning to give the actual exercises, St. Ignatius gives an introductory meditation in which he expounds to the exercitant the true purpose of life.  Because St. Ignatius knew that in order for the purpose of life to be deeply rooted into the soul, a person must generously ponder the very reason why man was created.  This pondering naturally includes understanding more about the Creator.  Hence, St. Ignatius intends that this particular meditation has such an impact on the soul that it is never forgotten.  Consequently, this meditation on the purpose of man’s existence is meant to give the exercitant a firm foundation that he can use for the remainder of his life.  Indeed, this meditation sets the tone for all of his actions.

St. Ignatius calls this meditation the Principle and Foundation.  Every retreat or setting out to do all of the Spiritual Exercises begins with this meditation.  It is such a fundamental and rich meditation that this one lends itself to be done frequently even outside of a retreat per se.  It could be done as a meditation even as often as once per week as a means to keep one working out his salvation with the intense, necessary seriousness we need in this work.

In other words, this meditation on the Principle and Foundation is a powerful way to humble the soul and firmly cement the virtue of humility in the soul.  This is mainly true because this meditation helps a person grasp exactly where he fits in God’s plan of creation.  He sees how crucial it is to fulfill God’s plan for man’s existence and how our entire eternity is determined by how well we love and obey   God’s plan for us.

As the reader may recall, Lesson #2 in Mary’s School of Sanctity[1] explains how to do a meditation.  So here we give the “meat”, as it were, of the meditation which one can use for this introduction meditation of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

First, we give the text of St. Ignatius and then expound on the various points one can use for his considerations in his actual meditation.  St. Ignatius says:

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God Our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.  All other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him fulfill the end for which he is created.  From this it follows that man is to use these things to the extent that they will help him to attain his end.  Likewise, he must rid himself of them insofar as they prevent him from attaining it.

Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things, insofar as it is left to the choice of our free will and is not forbidden.  Acting accordingly, for our part, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short one, and so in all things we should desire and choose only those things which will best help us attain the end for which we are created.

There are actually two parts here which one must consider.  The first part regards man’s service to God, and the second part is man’s proper use of creatures when serving God.  Therefore, we will divide this beginning meditation into two parts, only considering the first part now.  In our next lesson, we will take the second part.

Man’s Service of God – the reason God created man

God made us to praise, revere, and to serve Him.  We often think of our catechism answer to the question of why God made us, “God made me to know, love, and serve Him in this life so I can be happy with Him in the next.”  Although this is true, it often, unfortunately, makes us focus too much on ourselves.  St. Ignatius would have us direct our main focus on the service of God.  Ad majorem Dei gloriam was St. Ignatius’s motto, which means “all for the greater glory of God.”

St. Ignatius tells us that it is God Who must come first in our lives.  We owe Him praise, homage, and our service.  We must give Him all our praise.  We owe and ought to give Him all of our homage.  We owe Him our complete service.

In this meditation St. Ignatius wants us to think deeply of all the aspects of what it means to say that “Man is created”.  There are many consequences of God creating man.   Let us try to penetrate the most obvious ones.

1) “Whence am I?  I am from God.”[2]

God made man out of nothing.  God made man in His Image and likeness.[3] This means that God made man rational. Man can think and reason things out.  Indeed, man has the obligation to use his reason.  This use of reason is what makes a man’s action moral.[4]

I owe to the Almighty all that I am and possess: my body and soul, my intellect and will, my five senses, my talents and my powers, my health and my life…What gratitude do I not owe to Him?  “What shall I return to the Lord for all the things that He hath rendered to me?” Ps. 115:12[5]

Indeed, we should ponder each and every benefit that God has given to us as creatures and be very grateful.  Hence, “I can attribute nothing to myself, to my own merits; not the least thing did I give to myself.  I must, therefore, be humble and not presumptuous.”[6]

Likewise, I must think about the fact that:

I am the property of God, [and] that I belong entirely to Him.  He that makes a thing has also a claim to it.  As I am the property of God, I must keep myself holy!  I must not desecrate the property of God.  I must keep myself holy, my will, my heart, my imagination, my eyes, my ears, my tongue.  Hence the warning of St. Paul: “Or know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, Who is in you, Whom you have from God, and you are not your own?   Glorify and bear God in your body.” [I Cor. 6:19-20][7]

Another point to ponder about being owned by God is the fact that God can do what He wills with His own property, namely, me.  He has given me everything to be used for His service and He can take everything away if He wishes.  “He can exalt me and lower me.  I must be entirely submissive to His holy will, and be disposed as Job was.”[8]

Knowing that we are the work of God’s Hands we must marvel at the honor that He bestows on us as being His highest material creatures. 

What an honor, what a joy to be able to glory in having such an originator, such a Creator!  With what confidence in God’s help and assistance ought I not to be filled!  The Almighty will not forsake the work of His Hands: “For thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things which thou hast made: for thou didst not appoint or make anything, hating it …  But thou sparest all, because they are all thine, O Lord, Who lovest souls.” [Wisdom 11:25, 27].[9]

2) “Why am I here? I am for God.”[10]

“For what end did God create me?”[11]  “We were not created for this world; He created everything else in this world for us, [12] but us He created for Himself, to praise Him, to honor Him, and to serve Him.”[13]  Then it is clear that God determined what we must do and what our role in His Creation exactly is, namely:

1.    “To honor God in His infinite majesty, in His house, in His Church, in the representatives whom He has placed over us.

 

2.    “To praise God, not only with our tongue, but with our heart also; that His sharp rebuke may not strike us: ‘This people honoreth Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.’ [Matt. 15:8]. We must praise God by our good works, by our good example; for the glory of parents are their virtuous children: ‘Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father Who is in heaven.’ [Matt. 5:16].

 

3.    “But our principal duty to God is to serve Him, for He is Our Lord and we are His servants.  Now what does it mean to serve?  It means to do the will of the superior, to submit oneself to him.  But how can we know the will of God in order to serve Him?

 

a.    “From His commandments.

 

b.    “From His holy Church.

 

c.     “From our conscience, through which He speaks to us, to warn us against evil and urge us on to do good.

 

d.    “From our parents and superiors, who take His place in our regard.

 

e.    “From the vocation which He has given us; for quite often very definite duties come along with it.

 

f.     “From evils permitted by God, that strike us even against our will.  In spite of all precautions, you get sick –– the permission of God.  It is His holy will that you accept this sickness patiently from His Hands.  You are unjustly slighted, accused and calumniated –– the providence of God.  It is His will that you do not complain and murmur, but humble yourself under the hand of God. ‘Be humbled therefore under the mighty hand of God.’ [I Peter, 5:6].  The time for you to die arrives: submit yourself; it is the will of God. ‘Whether we live we live to the Lord, or whether we die, we die to the Lord.  Therefore, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s’ [Romans, 14:8]”[14]

3) “Whither am I going?  We must go back to God.[15]

What will happen if we do what we were created to do?  We shall go back to God for He Himself is our reward.  Yet if we do not do what we were created to do, we shall receive the eternal perdition that we deserve. The following points are crucial to penetrate in this aspect of the meditation:

a.    “How important then our destiny is: this business of which we, here upon earth, have charge and care, –– the glorification, the praise, and the service of God.  On it depends our whole eternity of bliss or misery.

 

b.    “It is our only business, because for it alone we are here on earth.

 

c.     “Precisely because this business is so important and our only one, all other business to which we must attend must be made subordinate to this, so that it [the other business] does not interfere, but supports and promotes our destiny. [The purpose of our existence in the first place]. We must ask ourselves, with St. Stanislaus: ‘What has this to do with eternity?’  Is this or that business conducive to my salvation?

 

d.    “This is a personal business.  I can let friends and servants take care of all other business, but of this I must take care myself.

 

e.    “It is a constant and everyday business, because I am always the servant of God, and He is always my Lord.

 

f.     “Furthermore, I have this business on hand but once, as a concern of my present life.  Should I neglect it, I can never repair it, not even in eternity.”[16]

All of these points are extremely serious and help one to have a proper perspective of life and look on all of life decisions as important in direct reference to pleasing God and eternal salvation.  Each point should be considered and when the exercitant is struck by any of the points and finds himself saying something to God, he should feel free to express what is in his heart at that moment.  Whether these be words of awestruck wonder and amazement or words of contrition for past ingratitude, or words of overwhelming love and thanksgiving, the exercitant should not hold back his heart from speaking to His Creator.  This is the colloquy that St. Ignatius speaks of.  This colloquy is a heart-to-heart talk with God and the fruit of the careful considering of the points.  Namely, we want these acts of the will to arise in us so that we can express them to God.

Some further points in concerning our service of God should be taken.  These points foster a healthy self-examination of how one has viewed God and God’s intended purpose of one’s life.  These points are also very striking and tend to make the exercitant be shaken with the awesome responsibilities that we creatures have in owing God praise, honor, and service.

1.    “Which is the pivot of my life, upon which everything turns, I or God?

 

2.    “Which is my most important business here on earth:  my honor, my praise, my service, the gratification of my passions; or the honor, praise, and service of God?

 

3.    “Is my life a constant service of God, a continuous hymn of praise, a continuous ‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost’?

“In the light of this meditation we now understand our destiny [God’s plan for us].  Let us repent of our many deviations from our course, and give back to our life its right direction to God. ‘Come let us adore and fall down and weep before the Lord that made us.  For He is the Lord Our God and we are the people of this pasture, and the sheep of His hand.’ Ps. 94; 6-7.”[17]

This is certainly a very striking examination of one’s priorities in life.  How full of shame we find ourselves because God is not high enough in our estimation!  The distractions of life are continually tugging us away from this crucial center of our existence.  Even if we think we are trying very hard to have a God-centered life, when doing this meditation, we always find ourselves lacking.

One should ponder this topic as much as possible in the time period of the meditation, trying to draw fruits and humbling himself by seeing how little he is within the plan of God and what he owes to God.  Two strong conclusions that one should take away with from this meditation are that the purpose of life is our service to God and that our goal in life should be to serve God to our maximum capacity.  After the meditation, it is good to jot down some notes of the insights that especially struck one so he can keep these inspirations in mind and truly appreciate them.  Also, it is a good idea to say some prayers in thanksgiving after the meditation to thank the Holy Ghost for His assistance in the meditation.  And it is important to examine the meditation to see if one was generous in his efforts to cooperate with the Holy Ghost in giving glory to God and drawing fruits from the meditation.

In our next lesson we will consider the second half of St. Ignatius’s Principle and Foundation and how we can do a meditation on our proper use of creatures in our service of God.