Mary’s School of Sanctity

Lesson #15: The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius – The Second Exercise on Hell—On the Pain of Loss of God; the Worm of Conscience; and the Eternity of Hell

Meditation on the pain of the loss of God and the other moral punishments of hell is so efficacious that we wanted to add it to our series of the Spiritual Exercises.  Even though the following considerations are not given by St. Ignatius, the holy writers of the Church have focused so much on them because they aid souls in increasing the soul’s desire for God and in acquiring a filial love of God.  Since the highest perfection requires the filial love of God, we Catholics should aspire to obtain filial love.  In fact, the part of this meditation about the loss of God should intensely move us to desire to love God ever increasingly.  This meditation can and should be done often to strengthen our love of God and to help us remain faithful children to Our Heavenly Father.  One crucial additional advantage to this meditation is that it helps a person have perfect contrition.    

We will set this out as in the previous exercises.

The preparatory prayer is the same as usual: I ask God Our Lord the grace that all my intentions, actions, and works may be directed purely to the service and praise of the Divine Majesty.

The FIRST PRELUDE is the mental representation of the place.  Here it is to see hell as we saw it in Lesson #14.

The SECOND PRELUDE is to ask for the grace to acquire true filial love of God and a great horror of sin and its malice which so displeases God Whom we should love with all our hearts, minds, and souls. THUS, WE SHOULD BEG GOD THAT WE BURN WITH SUCH GREAT LOVE FOR HIM THAT WE HAVE A GREAT FEAR OF LOSING OUR WILLINGNESS TO LOVE HIM WHICH COMES AS A CONSEQUENCE OF US HAVING BLINDING PRIDE.  Hence, we beg Him to give us self-knowledge in order to foster our knowledge of Him, and the proper humility necessary in order to have a divine friendship with Him.  Furthermore, we will consider an additional way to conceive a true horror for sin by trying to understand the ugly malice which is found in the mind of the damned so as to conceive a true fear of imitating such a wretched soul.  Hence, we beg God to help us shun all sinful pride.    

The FIRST POINT is the pain of the loss of God.  Here it will be to ponder deeply about what it means to lose our most beloved Spouse of the soul, Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom Himself.  I will take the sobering words of Our Lord to allow myself to feel the intense anguish of losing Him Who I was created to love and be united with for all eternity in sublime bliss.  In His parable about the foolish virgins who did not care to keep the oil of sanctifying grace in the lamps of their immortal souls while they waited for the Divine Bridegroom, Our Divine Lord said, “Amen, I say I know you not.”  And again, Our Lord tells His Apostles what He will say to those who did not love Him or want to obey His Commandments, “Depart from Me, ye cursed into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels” [St. Matthew 25; 41].  I will make many more considerations to penetrate this GREAT LOSS.

The SECOND POINT is to consider the worm of conscience and its remorse.

The THIRD POINT is to consider ETERNITY.  The pain of loss and remorse of conscience will never end.

 The COLLOQUY: Enter into a colloquy with Our Lord speaking to Him about His mercy and thanking Him profoundly for His mercy.  Also the exercitant should humbly beg God for His continued mercy on his soul.  Included in this begging heart to heart talk with Our Lord is to beg for a humble and fervent love for Him in order to desire Him with all one’s heart and to want to be with Him for all eternity.

Considerations for the FIRST POINT – the Pain of the Loss of God

One can begin this meditation on the pain of the loss of God, by taking some moments to consider what loss means in general.  When one loses something he owns and cares about, he grieves for its loss.  Logically, the more important the object lost, the greater is his grief for having lost it.  For example, if one loses his car keys, he is not pleased.  Go further and consider if he loses the car itself, he would be even more distressed.  Now take the example of him losing his house key and think about his reaction.  Then go further and consider his house burning down from top to bottom, we would say that he suffered an enormous loss. 

Still, we can go further and consider what it is like to lose a loved one, e.g., a loving spouse, or a child.  How horribly grieved one is for such a loss!   Now we must consider the ultimate and most crucial loss possible for man: THE LOSS OF THE ALL-GOOD GOD FOR ALL ETERNITY!!!

For this to have a profound impact upon us, we must ponder deeply Who God is.  In our Lessons #10 and #11 on the Principal and Foundation, we spoke of God and His magnificent attributes.  We meditated on the fact that we were created to praise, revere, and serve God, and this really means to love Him with our whole heart and mind.  “Our hearts were made for Thee, O Lord, and are restless until they rest in Thee,” is the famous quote from St. Augustine.   Oh, how St. Augustine captured this tremendous truth!

Think about it: to be cursed by God; to be separated from our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier!

If we were thus cursed, then this deserved curse means that we did not appreciate being created, redeemed at such an enormous price, and also that we shunned the Holy Ghost, the Divine Love, by our refusal to cooperate in His most loving assistance, to sanctify us and make us happy in this life and in eternity.

The pain of the loss of God really involves a soul realizing the lesson of what we meditated on in the Principle and Foundation.  The lesson, that is, that we are creatures of God, made in His Image and likeness in order to praise, revere, and serve Him during our lifetime, and thus save our souls and be happy with Him for all eternity.  The happiness that God planned for us to have is the only perfect happiness there is, seeing God in the Beatific Vision for all eternity.  This means seeing God in the state of glory, which St. Thomas Aquinas explains is the only way man can see God.[1]  The damned soul knows there is no possible happiness available for him.

Yet, the reprobate, whilst he was on earth did not concern himself enough or at all, with this moral obligation.  He tried to be happy in his own way and not in the way that God designed.  He was made for happiness and still wants the happiness that he was created to enjoy; yet because at his death his will was fixed against God, it remains fixed against God for all eternity.  Nevertheless, he still wants happiness in eternity in his own way, which doesn’t include God.  This constant contradiction of the truth about his happiness and his own proud designs for happiness on his own terms constitutes this horrific pain of loss.  In other words, he will never get his way.  In life this soul didn’t want to obey God’s way of things, namely, do God’s Will and therefore in hell, he does not want to do God’s will.

Let’s further penetrate the mindset of the damned.  Because the reprobate rejected God and served himself by giving into selfish sensuality, this base selfishness naturally brought forth an excessive opinion of himself, which we usually call self-conceit.  The natural result of his self-conceit is pride, which is none other than he wishing to appear above what he really is.  His reason tells him what manner of man he is and that he owes all praise to God.  However, because he is not consulting his reason when seeing himself, he becomes completely blind.   God, in His Infinite Wisdom, allows the reprobate to remain in his blinding-pride.  The reprobate lived his life on earth as the enemy of God, despising God’s precepts.

In addition to this wretched way that they lived, at their deaths these souls cared more about the punishments they deserved and their plight than they cared about the injustice their sins against God have caused.  They show further false judgment and injustice to God by not thinking about His mercy.  They falsely judge that their own wretchedness is greater than God’s Mercy, thus heaping a far greater insult on God.  This is a sin against the Holy Ghost and is known as dying unrepentant.  This sin can never be forgiven.  Because they refused to acknowledge what they owed to God, He allows them to die in their self-centered self-pity and despair.

Of course, we can also well imagine the case of a completely blinded soul caught up in the pride of presumption at his death.  This person shows his insulting and audacious pride by not recognizing the injustices that he committed against God, and presuming that God will take him to heaven.

Therefore, the souls in hell are punished not only for their malicious disregard for God’s commandments but also for their selfish disregard for His justice.

The unrepentant sinner sees at his particular Judgment that God is Just and He rightly condemns the sinner to eternal separation from the Infinite Good, namely, God.

So now in hell, being fixed in his blind pride, he knows that he deserves to be separated from God FOREVER!  We must remember that the lost soul’s heart is fixed in evil in hell as it was found at death, and indeed, as it was in his life on the earth.  As the saying goes, as we live, so we shall die.  If we try to make ourselves our own god and disregard God and His Commandments, we show that we hate God.  There are no repentant sinners in hell.  These souls think to themselves in hell, as they did in their lifetime, and at the crucial moment of their death, that, “since I cannot have happiness on my terms, I don’t want the Author of happiness at all.”  And yet they know they are miserable because they were made for God’s Way of happiness, and not their own.

They have lived according to Satan’s motto, “Non serviam,” and now they are not surprised to find that they are living that motto for all eternity.  They plainly hate God and blaspheme Him and His justice.  THEY HAVE BROUGHT UPON THEMSELVES THIS ETERNAL DENIAL OF TRUE HAPPINESS!!!

Our Lord calls their punishment eternal death.  St. Thomas Aquinas says that before the general resurrection, the damned with suffer as if they had their bodies.   And so before and after the general resurrection, their eternal death is always occurring.  They will feel the awful intense pain as if they were at the moment of their souls actually separating from their bodies, namely, death.  We must imagine in this meditation the concept of being forever on the point in which our souls are being separated from our bodies.  This is a fitting punishment for the damned because it shows all the better the absolute malice of one trying to make himself his own god and not wanting to be humble and comply with God’s Plan.

The soul that damns itself truly has rejected God.   Nevertheless, we must not think that the inability to have the happiness their human nature desires, does not give these souls the greatest pain—for truly it does!

Fr. Cochem, in his book, The Last Four Things, quotes St. Bonaventure as saying, “The most terrible penalty of the damned is being shut out forever from the blissful and joyous contemplation of the Blessed Trinity.”[2]

Likewise, Fr. Cochem follows this with the authority of St. John Chrysostom saying, “I know many persons fear hell because of its pains, but I assert that the loss of the celestial glory is a source of more bitter pain than all the torments of hell.”[3]

Fr. Cochem also informs us that:

For the vision of God is so beauteous, so blissful, so full of rapture and infinite delight, that all the joys and attractions of earth cannot compare with it in the remotest degree.  In fact, all celestial happiness, how great soever it might be, would be turned to bitterness if the vision of God was wanting; and the redeemed would choose rather to be in hell, if they could there enjoy that beatific vision, than be in heaven without it.  Just as the privilege of beholding the divine countenance constitutes the chief felicity of the blessed, the one without which all others would be no happiness at all, so it is the chief misery of hell, that the lost souls should forever be excluded from it.  On this subject St. John Chrysostom says: “The torments of a thousand hells are nothing in comparison to the anguish of being banished from everlasting bliss and the vision of God.”[4]

Let us think about what St. Paul writes, “That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him.”[1^st Corinth 2:9]

Also, St. Paul writes, “We see now through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face.” 1^st Corinth 13:12.

Here St. Paul is alluding to the wonderful Beatific Vision that awaits the Elect.  Certainly the mystical saints saw visions of God and were completely in love with Him.  They were so much in love that they longed extremely earnestly for heaven.  We were all made for this union with God, which is the Beatific Vision.[5]  

Since spiritual pains are much worse than physical ones, the damned suffer the most exquisite pain in always knowing they cannot have happiness in any way whatsoever.  Now let us pass on to our second point, which we must keep in mind is ongoing in conjunction with the pain of loss.

Considerations for the SECOND POINT – the worm of conscience – “this worm that dieth not”

Fr. Cochem, in The Last Four Things, says:

All the senses of the reprobate have each their peculiar punishment: their reason, or intellect, is punished by the pain of loss – a punishment surpassing all the senses.  The memory of the reprobate is tormented by “the worm that dieth not,” that is, by a most keen and constant remorse of conscience, which will give them no rest.

The lost sinner will remember how many graces and means of salvation he had during life to save his soul; how God sent him so many good instructions, how he had the grace of  prayer within his power to enable him to practice the virtues of his state, to overcome temptation, to keep the commandments of God and the Church; how his pious friends exhorted him to lead a good life by their exhortations, but especially by their good example; he had so many opportunities of instructing himself in his obligations by the hearing of the word of God and the reading of good books, and of  strengthening himself in the discharge of his duties by the reception of the sacraments and by the practice of devotion to the blessed Virgin![6]

The damned feel an overwhelming shame.  The reprobate will see how easy it was to have saved his soul.  He will see that he could have taken the means and lived completely for God.   He could have made the necessary efforts to amend his life.

Yet he was too lazy and/or slothful.  He was seeking comfort and ease instead.  He certainly did not think about what happens to souls immediately after death, the particular Judgment.  He did not meditate on the four last things.  He could have kept his mind focused on his duty and pleasing God.  He will see all the lost opportunities for virtue and his growth in virtue.   He will constantly reproach himself and hear the reproaches of Christ and all that Christ suffered in order to help him save his soul.  But now it is too late!!  He can never change what he did in his life.  He will feel intense despair and will wail, lamenting and gnashing his teeth.  His hatred of God will ever be manifest to him and his fellow-inmates in that abode of doom.[7]

Here again we quote Fr. Cochem in The Last Four Things:

St. Thomas [Aquinas] tells us that the sins of each one will be a fully known to the others as if they could behold them with their bodily eyes.  Every one can imagine what anguish this must be.   For what is so painful on earth as to be put to open shame? [8]

Jeremiah 23:40, “I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual shame which shall never be forgotten.” [9]

Thus, as St. Ephrem says, this shame and infamy will be more insupportable than hell-fire itself, because it will keep constantly before their remembrance the sins whereby they defiled themselves on earth.[10]

Their shame is most bitter and is intensified by the fact that every soul in hell knows all of the sins of his fellow inmates.  All reputations will be public.  The Catholics will especially be mocked in hell because they were given the supreme benefits of the Church and they still failed to save their souls.  This suffering of intense shame will be worse because of the fact that IT WILL NEVER END!!!

This brings us to the third point—the consideration of eternity.     

The THIRD POINT is to consider ETERNITY.

Not only is this suffering without end, without mitigation, without interruption, but it is also without consolation.

Fr. Cochem explains why hell must be eternal:

Rather than humble himself before God, and implore His pardon, he [the reprobate] would endure yet greater tortures in hell.  Therefore, because the sinner will not repent of his sins, nor ask pardon for his sins, he remains eternally in a state of sin, and because his sin is never expiated or repented of, the punishment is likewise eternal.[11]

The torments of the damned will never end, never pass away.  When a thousand years have gone by, another thousand will commence and so on for evermore.[12]

One can meditate on this concept of eternity and think of how if I damn by soul I will NEVER get out of this place, I will be here FOREVER!

The damned see clearly that they will never be released from the prison that they deserve and they shriek with despair and blasphemies against their Creator and Judge for punishing them so.  THEIR DESPAIR AND HATRED ARE AT THEIR HEIGHT AND WILL NEVER DIMINISH AS LONG AS GOD IS GOD – THUS, FOREVER!!!!

COLLOQUY: After considering these points, let us speak with heart-felt prayer to Our dear Lord about all He has done for us.  Let us beg Him to give us a genuine sorrow for sins and fear of displeasing Him ever again in our lives.  Let us desire with the mystics to be with Him in the highest contemplation.   Let us beg Him to enkindle our hearts with love and gratitude for sparing our souls up to the present time and not allowing us to fall into hell.  Let us tell Him of our desire to be so strongly attached to Him that we shudder at the mere thought that anyone could actually hate Him.  Let us end our colloquy with begging Him to never let us fall into carelessness in our service of Him, knowing that such carelessness is the road to ruin.

It is also a good idea to speak to Our Lady and St. Joseph, begging their intercession in order to increase our love for God and our hatred of sin. 

 In our next lesson, we will consider DEATH both in the state of grace and in the state of mortal sin.  This meditation is done with the same motivation of intensifying our love for God and our hatred for sin.

Mary’s School of Sanctity

In the second, third, and fourth exercises, we address sin in its other aspects and with a greater intensity of understanding of what exactly sin is.

The preparatory prayer is the same as the first exercise: I ask God Our Lord the grace that all my intentions, actions, and works may be directed purely to the service and praise of the Divine Majesty.

THE SECOND EXERCISE {personal sin}

For this exercise the usual preparatory prayer is used which is given above. 

The second exercise’s meditation is in some ways a repeat of the first exercise.  In this meditation the FIRST PRELUDE is the same mental image of seeing one’s own soul in his corruptible body as St. Ignatius says, “the mental image will consist in imagining, and considering my soul imprisoned in its corruptible body, and my entire being in this vale of tears as an exile among brute beasts.  By entire being, I mean both body and soul."       

The SECOND PRELUDE is to ask God Our Lord for what I desire.  I shall here beg for an ever increasing and intense sorrow and tears for my sins.

THE FIRST POINT is the review of my sins.  I shall recall to my mind all the sins of my life, looking at them year by year, and period by period.  Three things will help me to do this: first, I shall recall to my mind the place and house where I lived; secondly the associations I have had with others; thirdly, the positions which I have filled.

 The SECOND POINT is to weigh my sins, considering the loathsomeness and the malice that every mortal sin has in itself, even though it were not forbidden.

The THIRD POINT is to consider who I am and abase myself by these examples:

1. What am I in comparison to all men?

2. What are men in comparison with the angels and saints of heaven?

3. What is all creation in comparison with God? Then myself alone, what can I be?

4. Let me consider all my own corruption and foulness of body.

5. Let me see myself as a sore and an abscess from whence have come forth so many sins, so many evils, and the most vile poison.

The FOURTH POINT is now to consider who God is, against whom I have sinned, recalling His attributes and comparing them to their contraries in me: His wisdom to my ignorance; His omnipotence to my weakness; His justice with my iniquity; His goodness with my sinfulness.

The FIFTH POINT is to be struck with amazement and filled with a growing emotion as I consider how creatures have suffered me to live, and have sustained me in life.  How the angels, the swords of Divine Justice, tolerated me, guarded me, and prayed for me.  How the saints have interceded and prayed for me.  How the heaven, moon, and stars, and the elements; fruits, birds, fishes, and animals have all served my needs.  How the earth has not opened and swallowed me up, creating new hells that I might suffer eternal torment in them.

COLLOQUY. I will end this meditation with a colloquy directing my thoughts to God’s mercy.  I will give thanks to Him for having granted me life until now, and I will resolve with the help of His grace to amend my life for the future.  Close with an “Our Father.”

In this second exercise St. Ignatius has us take a hurried glance over our past life in order to convince ourselves of our sinfulness.  Without entering upon an exact examination of our conscience, he wants us to consider the ten, twenty, forty, or more years which we have lived thus far.  Perhaps we will not be able to find a year without some grievous sin in it.  Perhaps there are many grievous sins.

In our examination St. Ignatius would have us not forget to examine the five senses of our body and the powers of our soul which are all desecrated and withdrawn from the service of God.  For indeed, we have sinned with our eyes, our ears, our tongue, through stubbornness, self-love, self-will, willfulness, and selfishness; we have abused all our faculties.  We must bear in mind the commandments of God and His Church which we have broken.  Likewise, we must not forget our duties-of-state which we have neglected; the capital sins of which we are guilty; the graces and the sacraments which we have abused.  Let us recall the places, hidden and public, where we stayed and not forget to recall the persons against whom we have sinned, in thought, word, and deed; our parents, our superiors, our brethren, our inferiors.  We should not forget those whom we have induced to commit sin by our bad example and by the scandal we gave.

St. Ignatius knows that this short examination is very beneficial because it wakes us up from our sleep of sin because we have indeed become lethargic and are callous to sin.  This review of our lives also reminds us of our debt to God and urges us on to do penance and return like the Prodigal Son.

Because St. Ignatius wants us to be convinced of the grievousness of sin, he sets forth his points to help us see the enormity of sin.

In his Sketches for the Exercises of An Eight Days’ Retreat, Fr. Hurter, S. J. presents many good points to help us see this enormity.  He discusses the abyss of ingratitude, the abyss of misery; the abyss of malice; and the horror of sin, both mortal and venial!!!!

Let us consider his points one by one.

I) THE ABYSS OF INGRATITUDE

Sin encloses within itself an abyss of the most hateful ingratitude because of the nature of what man does when he sins.

a. He returns evil for good.  Instead of thanking God for His innumerable benefits, he offends Him and despises His holy Will.

b. But the ingratitude of the sinner is still more contemptible because he abuses the very benefits of God to offend his Benefactor.  With the eyes which God gave him; with the tongue which God loosened for him; with all the powers and abilities which God bestowed upon him.

c. This ingratitude becomes still greater because man offends God at the very moment in which God is conferring benefits upon him and is thinking of new benefits.    For the very moment in which God preserves us in being, gives us health and strength of body and soul, and protects us against the heavenly powers who are but too eager to avenge themselves on us wretched creatures for offending their Lord and God.  [Ponder also that He brings us to a better knowledge of ourselves, brings us to contrition, and to return to Him, and then, makes us partakers of eternal bliss].[1]

Fr. Hurter relates the example of St. Polycarp being asked to deny his faith saying, “It is eighty-six years since I began to serve the Lord, and never has He done anything against me:  How can I now have the heart to blaspheme my King Who has redeemed me?”  This tremendous and edifying example is something to keep in mind when we are sorely tempted.  We see that we must ever shun ingratitude to God and we must give Him what we owe Him with devotion and love.

II) THE ABYSS OF MISERY

Grievous sin contains unspeakable misery.  Here is how Fr. Hurter sets forth some of the sad consequences which grievous sin produces in the soul:

a. The soul loses its baptismal grace.  Baptismal grace is so beautiful because God’s light shines in the soul.  But through mortal sin, the soul becomes deformed and is not acceptable to God.  Therefore, the soul that departs this life in this state must hear the words, “Depart from Me, ye cursed.”[2]

b. The innocent soul in the state of grace is a child of God, a brother of Jesus Christ, a temple of the Holy Ghost; by sin he becomes a child of wrath, a slave of the evil spirit.  Can we think of a greater degradation?  The debasement of a lost son, a child well brought up, of good parents, is but a faint picture of the degradation of a human being fallen into mortal sin.[3]

c. Before the sin the innocent one was rich in graces and merits; for all the good done in this state has a golden value, meritorious for eternity, and in the days of innocence so much was done.  But all this is lost by mortal sin.  To the sinner these words may be applied: “Because thou sayest: I am rich and made wealthy, and have need of nothing; and knowest thou not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor and blind, and naked.” (Apoc. 3:17)[4]

In addition to these consequential points, Fr. Hurter explains further,

Before sinning, the innocent man led a supernatural life, a life of grace. Sin robs him of this life. He dies, and how gruesome is his death! Death is the more disastrous, the higher the scale of life in which the creature was.[5] 

Fr. Hurter goes on to compare the life of a flower with that of an irrational animal and says that of course the death of an animal is more unpleasant because the animal is a higher form of life.  The death of an irrational animal is not as unpleasant as the death of a man[6] because man is the highest material creature. Then he says:

The corpse of a man scares us, and it takes time and self-conquest to become accustomed to the sight.  Why?  Because human life is considered more perfect.  But how much higher and more perfect is the supernatural life of grace.  Therefore, in the light of faith and in the eyes of the angels and saints, the condition of the soul that has lost this life is much more gruesome.[7]

This simple comparison really tells us the serious reality of the disaster of mortal sin.  Fr. Hurter’s words are striking when he adds:

No earthquake, no conflagration, no flood in the richest field of the earth can bring about a devastation as great as mortal sin does in the paradise of an innocent soul.  What a folly the sinner commits who at such a loss flings away the grace of God.[8]

III) THE ABYSS OF MALICE

Mortal sin contains an abyss of malice because grievous sin is an offense against God. The gravity of an offense is based upon the difference between the person offended and the offender.   The higher the dignity of the person offended, the more grievous is the offense.

This is the reason why St. Ignatius has the exercitant make the comparisons of himself with all men; men to the angels and saints in heaven; and then all creation to God. 

Fr. Hurter draws these comparisons out, as follows:

a. What is one man compared to the entire human race?  A mere cipher, a speck of dust, a drop of water compared to the ocean.  What are all men in comparison with the heavenly court? Miserable beings.  And what are all the angels when weighed against God? ‘Behold the gentiles are as a drop in a bucket, and are counted as the smallest grain of a balance; behold the islands are as a little dust.’ (Isaias 40:15) hence what am I in comparison with God?[9]

To further illustrate the wretched malice connected with sin, Fr. Hurter addresses St. Ignatius’s FOURTH POINT here:

And to become still more penetrated with my nothingness when compared with God, let me review the perfections of God.  God is so infinitely wise, and I so ignorant; God all-powerful, who poises the universe in His fingers, I so impotent, scarcely able to move a rock from its place; God immense, and I bound to space and place; God from eternity, I but from yesterday; God infinite and perfect, and I so limited and imperfect.  And yet I, a mite, have dared to say to God: ‘I will not serve.  You have indeed forbidden, but for all that I’ll do it, I do not care for Your Will.’  What malice![10]

This description is so appalling and yet an absolutely true picture of what the mortal sinner does to God, his Creator.

Fr. Hurter adds still more sobriety in his last two sub-points:

b. To this malice is allied presumption.  Or is it not rashness to sin before His eyes, in His presence? If children wish to violate the precepts of their parents, they do so secretly, behind their backs; not so the sinner, who breaks the command of God openly, before His very eyes.[11]

c. The sinner’s demeanor is indeed very bold, because he dares to offend Him in Whose Hands he is.  On His Hands depends life and death, heaven and hell.[12]

These last two points certainly show how with unspeakable audacity we humans offend God and manifest an utter lack of the gift of the Holy Ghost, that is, fear of the Lord.  We should shudder at such boldness!

If all of the above material has not yet brought the fruit of this meditation, namely intense sorrow and tears, we should beg for spiritual help from our heavenly helpers as we dig deeper into the concept of the horror of sin.  So far, we have been focusing on mortal sins; however, we must not forget that venial sins are infinite offenses against God as well!!

Are we in earnest when we resolve to avoid mortal sin above all things?  Then we must extend our resolution also to venial sin.  Without this resolution we can hardly succeed in always avoiding mortal sin.[13]

The Church also wants us to avoid venial sin.  She shows this in the conditions She requires for obtaining a plenary indulgence.  Not only are Holy Confession and Holy Communion required, but also is the intention to not have any attachment to deliberate venial sin.

Likewise, we must remember Our Dear Lord’s words, “He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them; he it is that loveth Me.  And he that loveth Me, shall be loved of My Father: and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” (St, John 14:21).  We cannot fool Our Lord.  We cannot claim to care about Him if we have no regard for His commandments.

The following are some key points given by Fr. Hurter to help rouse in us a true horror of all sin.

I.  We can look at the great multitude of our venial sins.

We can take a look at our lives in a similar way in which St. Ignatius had us examine our possible mortal sins—looking at the places we have lived, the persons we have associated with, at the senses of our bodies, the powers of our soul (which we have desecrated), at the duties we have neglected, at the graces we have abused, and bad examples we have given, by word and deed.  Truly as it says in the Mass prayers, we have “innumerable sins, offences, and negligences.”

Even though our sinfulness should startle us, we should not give up in despair, but blush for shame, and learn humility.  We should strive to diminish our daily faults and weaknesses.[14]

II. We can consider the grievousness of venial sins.

These sins are offences against God Who is infinitely great.  Thus, even the least offence to infinite majesty is a very great evil.  If we are careful so as not to offend our loved ones or friends, how much more should we take the greatest care not to offend God Who is supreme goodness and Our heavenly Father?

Venial sin defiles the soul.  Because our souls have been given sanctifying grace and thus made stately in the image and likeness of God, it is a horrific thing to stain the soul with venial sin. We would be ashamed if we were to appear before the angels in a filthy condition, let alone appear before God in this soiled state.  Therefore, it is perfectly understandable that soiled souls prefer to plunge themselves into Purgatory because they know they are unworthy to appear before God.

Venial sin shows its malicious character in the fact that it paves the way to mortal sin.  Because venial sin weakens the will, it especially weakens the soul and makes the conscience callous to sin; the soul can fall when a storm of temptation to commit a mortal sin arises. “He that contemneth small things, shall fall little by little” (Eccl. 19:1).  Therefore, it is all the more crucial to make a firm resolution not to play with venial sin, so one will not fall into mortal sin.  The saints worked to keep their consciences delicate and were truly frightened away from mortal sins.[15]

The causes of venial sin and the means to become free from deliberate venial sin.  Another helpful aspect of Fr. Hurter’s treatment of sin is his accurate assessment of the causes of venial sins and the means to become entirely free from deliberate venial sins, and at least to diminish the number of our faults and failures.

He says, “The first cause is sloth.  When this vice rules us, venial sin and faults thrive luxuriantly.  The remedy for it is fervor, for experience tells us that venial sin will disappear as a fog before the sun when we are all aglow with fervor.” 

He tells us, “The second cause is a want of watchfulness and of mortification of the senses.  If we let our senses roam about freely, the spirit of the world will soon take hold of us.  All kinds of distraction will appear, and with them temptations. The spirit being already weak will be taken by surprise and yield, now to this, then to that fault.”

Then he tells us, “The third cause is conceit.  Whoever over-estimates his own powers, is overconfident in himself, takes too little heed of danger, and is less careful to avoid occasions, will soon learn from his own experience how weak he is.  And the Lord will the sooner permit him to take a false step, the more he trusts in himself and prefers himself to others.  Pride goes before a fall.”[16] 

The means to avoid deliberate venial sins are based upon St. Ignatius’s Rules for the Discernment of Spirits.  We can see by what he says below that certainly agere contra[17] is needed to combat sin.

Fr. Hurter says, “If we are in earnest when we make a resolution against grievous sin, we must take up the fight against venial sin with unshaken firmness, and consider it no small evil with which we can afford to play.  We must be zealous, watch the various occasions, not trust too much to ourselves, and be discreet and humble.  Then with the grace of God we shall avoid all deliberate venial sin and shall considerably diminish the cloud of human weakness and miseries.”[18] 

Along with the resolution to avoid deliberate venial sin, St. Ignatius’s main goal in this Exercise is for the exercitant to have true repentance.  We have asked for intense sorrow and tears.  With all of the above considerations about mortal sin and venial sin, we certainly have much to inspire compunction of heart.  Let us try to see the entire malice of sin, and by the awareness of our own sinfulness, we shall be filled with repentance.  “My eyes have sent forth springs of water: because they have not kept thy law” (Ps. 118:136).  We must tell ourselves that for no price will we commit another grievous sin (if we have had the misfortune to have committed them in the past). This is the greatest misfortune that can befall us.

Let us beg God’s Mercy and not cease to beg Him to preserve us from such a horrific calamity!

THE THIRD EXERCISE

This is a repetition of the first and second Exercises, with three colloquies.

After the preparatory prayer and the two preludes, the first and second Exercises are to be repeated.  I [the exercitant, that is] will note and dwell upon the points in which I have felt the greatest consolation or desolation, or the greatest spiritual relish.  I will then make these colloquies in the following manner:

THE FIRST COLLOQUY is with Our Lady, that she may obtain grace for me from her Son and Lord for three things:

1.  That I may have a thorough knowledge of my sins and a feeling of abhorrence for them.

2. That I may comprehend the disorder of my actions so that detesting them, I will amend my ways and put my life in order.

3. That I may know the world, and being filled with horror of it, I may put away from me worldly and vain things.

Conclude with the “Hail Mary.”

THE SECOND COLLOQUY is with the Son of God.  I will beg Him to intercede with the Father to obtain these graces for me.  Conclude with the “Anima Christi.”[19]

THE THIRD COLLOQUY is with our Eternal Father.  I will request that He Himself grant these graces to me. Conclude with the “Our Father.”

THE FOURTH EXERCISE

 This is a résumé[20] of the third exercise.

I [St. Ignatius] have called this a résumé because the intellect, without digression, is to recall and review thoroughly the matters contemplated in the previous Exercises.  The same three colloquies should then be made.

Although we have covered three exercises in this lesson, St. Ignatius intends each of them to be done separately.  As one can see, they build off of each other but are intended to be done one at a time.  The exercitant is asking for a more intense awareness of the malice of sin and to have a true sorrow for sin and an extreme horror of sin.  We cannot build a fervent love for God if we do not fear to offend Him.

In our next lesson we will do the FIFTH Exercise ON HELL–THE PAIN OF THE SENSES.[21]

 

 

 

 

 

                    Mary’s School of Sanctity                   

Before introducing the material for the first exercise, it is important to know the general framework St. Ignatius uses for his meditations.  Also, it is important to note here that St. Ignatius intends that the exercitant has a scheduled time period for doing the meditations.  In the structure of an Ignatian retreat this is all worked out ahead of time and the exercitant simply follows the schedule.  If doing a “retreat” on one’s own, one can set up a schedule for himself.  However, if one is doing the Ignatian exercises as part of a routine of daily meditations, then one would set aside perhaps 25 minutes or a half hour for the meditation.  Toward the end of the time set aside, one could save at least five minutes for a colloquy [closing prayer].[1]

St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises are basically a series of meditations set out in a particular order.  His series is the method he used to lead the soul on a path by which self-knowledge can be obtained as a means of acquiring humility.  St. Ignatius uses this method because he knows that once the soul, as the intended bride of Christ, knows herself better, she can then more perfectly dedicate herself to the loving service of God.  Consequently, he is teaching a sure way to sanctity.   

In general, each meditation in his Spiritual Exercises, in its turn, has a specified order.  St. Ignatius gives the subject matter of each meditation with a preparatory prayer, preludes, the principal points to consider, and suggests an appropriate colloquy.[2]

St. Ignatius has a preparatory prayer which he wishes every exercitant to use before every meditation.  It goes as follows:

I ask God Our Lord the grace that all my intentions, actions, and works may be directed purely to the service and praise of the Divine Majesty.

The preludes he gives are preliminary steps to get the exercitant ready for the meditation.  The preludes are supposed to prepare the exercitant for the mental prayer ahead.  It is in a way like preparing the soil for the planting.  In fact, he has the exercitant make a mental image in his mind which matches the topic selected for the meditation.  He calls this making of an image the first prelude.

Then, St. Ignatius usually has two or more additional preludes in each of his meditations.  He explains these at the beginning of each meditation.  His second prelude is usually a specific grace which he wants the exercitant to ask for.

Then, he sets forth the particular points that he wants the exercitant to consider.  Although he gives the points to consider, he certainly intends that if the exercitant finds his heart overflowing with things to say to God, by all means, the exercitant should stop the consideration of the points and use the inspiration given and simply talk to God.[3]   One should not worry about using all of the points for consideration because the main reason for the considerations is to foster the colloquy.

In general, one may think that the colloquy [prayer] would happen at the end of the time set aside for the meditation, but in reality, one finds that his heart is full and he longs to speak to God much sooner, so the colloquy often happens sooner. 

St. Ignatius intends that, if the exercitant has not found his heart pouring out to God at any time during the period set aside for the consideration of the points of the meditation, then he should stop making considerations and begin at once to make a colloquy.  As mentioned above there was a planned time set aside for the colloquy toward the end of the meditation time slot.  This colloquy is a prayer of thanksgiving, contrition, adoration, or petition.  

It is a good idea to read through the entire material for each meditation before actually beginning the meditation.  Now let us look at what St. Ignatius gives for the first exercise, and then we will go through it pondering on the crucial consequences of his material and how the consequences apply to our souls.

 

THE FIRST EXERCISE {The Triple Sin}

For this first exercise the usual preparatory prayer is used which is given above. 

The first meditation is on sin.  In this meditation the FIRST PRELUDE is the mental image.  Since this meditation is about sin, which is not visible, St. Ignatius says that:

the mental image will consist in imaging, and considering my soul imprisoned in its corruptible body, and my entire being in this vale of tears as an exile among brute beasts.  By entire being, I mean both body and soul."      

The SECOND PRELUDE is to ask God Our Lord for what I want and desire.  In this present meditation I shall ask for shame and confusion, for I see how any souls have been damned for a single mortal sin, and how often I have deserved to be damned eternally for the many sins I have committed.

The FIRST POINT will be to recall to memory the first sin, which was that of the angels, then to apply the understanding by considering this sin in detail, then the will by seeking to remember and understand all, so that I may be the more ashamed and confounded when I compare the one single sin of the angels to the many that I have committed.  Since they went to hell for one sin, how many times have I deserved it for my many sins.  I will recall to mind the sin of the angels, remembering that they were created in the state of grace, that they refused to make use of their freedom to offer reverence and obedience to their Creator and Lord, and so sinning through pride, they fell from grace into sin and were cast from heaven to hell.  In like manner my understanding is to be used to reason more in detail on the subject matter, and thereby move more deeply my affection through the use of my will.

The SECOND POINT is to employ the three powers of the soul to consider the sin of Adam and Eve.  Recall to mind how they did such long penance for their sin and what corruption fell upon the whole human race, causing so many to go to hell.  I say to recall to mind the second sin, that of our first parents.  Recall that after Adam had been created in the Plain of Damascus and placed in the earthly paradise, and Eve had been formed from his rib, they were forbidden to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and eating it they committed sin.  After their sin, clothed in garments of skin and cast out of paradise, without the original justice which they had lost, they lived all their lives in much travail and great penance. 

The understanding is likewise to be used in considering the subject matter in greater detail and the will is to be employed as already explained.

The THIRD POINT is to recall to mind the third sin.  This is the particular sin of any person who went to hell because of one mortal sin.  Consider also the innumerable others who have gone to hell for fewer sins than I have committed.  I say consider the third particular sin.   Recall to mind the grievousness and malice of sin against our Creator and Lord.  Let the understanding consider how, in sinning and acting against Infinite Goodness, he has justly been condemned forever.  Close with acts of the will, as mentioned above.  (St. Ignatius is referring here to where he mentioned moving one’s affections more deeply through the use of the will.)

COLLOQUY.  Imagine Christ Our Lord before you, hanging upon the cross.  Speak with Him of how, being the Creator He then became man, and now, possessing eternal life, He submitted to temporal death to die for our sins.

Then I shall meditate upon myself and ask “What have I done for Christ? What am I now doing for Christ?  What ought I do for Christ?” As I see Him in this condition, hanging upon the cross, I shall meditate on the thoughts that come to my mind.

The colloquy is made properly by speaking as one friend speaks to another, or as a servant speaks to his master, now asking some favor, now accusing oneself for some wrong deed, or again, making known his affairs to Him and seeking His advice concerning them.  Conclude with the “Our Father.”

In order to firm up our resolution made in the meditation on the Principle and Foundation, namely to praise, revere, and to serve God faithfully, we must consider the gruesome reality of sin.  Sin is truly the opposite of serving God—it is the refusal to serve God.  The world does not take sin seriously and thinks it is nothing to worry about.  Of course the devil encourages this view of sin and wants us to see sin as no big problem.

St. Ignatius, with his meditation material about sin, is now giving us an opportunity to get a thorough knowledge of the malice of sin, a salutary sense of shame while grieving with heartfelt contrition for the sins we have committed, and to form a firm resolve to never commit sins.

St. Ignatius reminds us of our mortality by telling us to imagine our corruptible bodies which we will leave behind at death.  Our souls will go forth to meet our Judge and we will see clearly how we have treated Him.

 The consideration of the points:

I. The Sin of the Angels:

Let us consider how the angels, by nature, are far more perfect creatures than men.  They have no bodies.  They are pure spirits and have intellects and wills.  They have infused knowledge that God gave them when He created them.  Catholic tradition teaches that the angels were created and in the next instant they made their fateful choice of either to serve God or reject Him.  It is thought that they were told about the Incarnation, and the fallen angels did not want to submit to God’s Plan that God the Son would be born of a woman.  Further, they did not want to have to give honor to the Woman, the Mother of God, who is a creature.  They didn’t see Mary as God’s wonderful masterpiece, she, who was fit to be Queen of heaven and of all creation.  They saw her merely as a creature below them in excellence because of her lower nature as man.  Thus, they fell because of pride.  So we can see how Tobias was so wise to advise his son to “Never suffer pride to reign in thy mind, or in thy words: for from it all perdition took its beginning.” [Tobias 4:14]

The fallen angels committed one sin.  Because of the infused knowledge of their nature and the way that their intellects work, they made one irrevocable choice.  They rejected God’s Will and Plan for them and got the punishment they deserved.  Their one sin was mortal and they lost God forever.  The devils did not want to change their nature and become gods because this was impossible and if their nature changed, they would cease to exist.  They didn’t want to serve God the way He intended for them.

Therefore, we see that their punishment is eternal and never can be changed.

Fr. Hurter, S.J., in his book Sketches for the Exercises of An Eight Days’ Retreat, has these powerful words to say:

Now my soul, what do you say?   What will happen to me?  I am not an angel; I have sinned, not only once, but many times; I have known from revelation the severity of the avenging justice of God; I have been pardoned often; I have repeatedly broken my word and my resolutions after having vowed to amend.  How ashamed must I not be as I stand before the judgment seat of God?  If the angels were punished thus, what do I deserve?  But God has spared me: “the mercies of the Lord that we are not consumed.”  Lamentations, 3:22 [4]

 

II. The Sin of Our First Parents:

Adam and Eve were created with perfect justice.  Their intellects were very keen, and they had gifted understanding and a rich fund of knowledge.  Their wills were likewise strong and their passions obeyed their wills perfectly.  They had no sickness or pain.  They were free from death. They had no anxiety about anything.  All of their material needs were supplied.  Most wonderful of all was that they were heirs to heaven. 

The devils were envious of Adam and Eve’s happiness, and with their fallen angelic natures, they didn’t want Adam and Eve to have a chance to go to heaven.  They didn’t want Adam and Eve to possess the Supreme Good, Whom the devils can never possess.

Therefore, the devil, knowing that Eve was created with an inferior intellect than Adam’s, and that she was created with a softer heart; the devil set his trap for Adam by fooling Eve first.  Then, with newly-fallen human nature, she convinced Adam to commit sin. 

What were the consequences of this?  The punishments ensued immediately.   Grace is lost and the sonship of God is lost.  Man can no longer go to heaven.  The lower appetites, namely, the passions are made strong and rebellious.  Death and sickness now enter the world.  Now man must toil with great sweat and the woman has much to suffer.  The results do not just affect Adam and Eve, but the entire human race.  What massive consequences for Adam’s fall since he is the head of the entire human race. All of these consequences are attributed to Adam.  And yet the personal sins of all the rest of mankind add to these consequences and misery in the whole world.  Each man feels keenly his personal sins and weakness, even if he would not admit them to others.  In his book Sketches for the Exercises of An Eight Days’ Retreat, Fr. Hurter says:

How shall I fare who have sinned so often, even after I had known the severity of God’s avenging justice from revelation?  What salutary fear will come over me, and how shall I stand before the tribunal of God’s justice, ashamed in the consciousness of my many sins? What am I to think of sin after such a judgment?  How thankful must I be to God, for I can attribute it only to His mercy that I am not among the lost![5]

III. The Sins of Individuals:

Here St. Ignatius tells us to quake as we think about the sins of so many suffering in hell at this moment who have not committed as many sins as we have.  Think about those souls who have not received as many graces as we have and yet they still damned their souls.  What do we deserve?  What must we expect?  Hence, I must consider sin as the greatest evil that a man can meet with!

St. Ignatius, after giving us such sobering food for thought, tells us to go the Foot of the Cross, with hearts heavy with shame and woefully confounded.  Let us see the price of sin.  Such is the cause of so much anguish and pain for Our Dear Lord.  We owe Him so much!  How have we treated Him? What can I do for Him now?  What can I do for Him from now on?  I must hate sin which is the cause of so much spiritual and physical pain for Our Dear Lord, the cause of such a price to the Eternal Father.  With no hesitation we should tell Our Lord how sorry we are for offending Him so constantly with our selfishness.  We should beg Him to forgive us, to strengthen our hatred for sin and to strengthen our love for Him Who is so loveable.  With hearts full of loving things to say to Our Lord, we pour out our colloquy to His Sacred Heart.  St. Ignatius wants us to end our colloquy with an Our Father.  We could certainly thank Our Lord for allowing us to do this meditation and giving us a better understanding of our poor selves.

In our next lesson, discussing Exercises two, three, and four, St. Ignatius wants us to treat the subject of sin again but with deeper penetration of what sin is.  Hence, we will examine the malice of sin.  We will delve into the many ramifications of the horrifying aspects of sin. So that thus being horrified and filled with a more tender love of Our Lord, we will shun sin with all our heart.

                    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.

           Mary’s School of Sanctity – Lesson #9         

In our last lesson we discussed the tactics of the evil one which he uses to drag us off our course when we are in consolation.  In this lesson we will discuss the last two Rules for the Second Week.

St.  Ignatius’s Rule #7.  In those who are making spiritual progress, that action of the good angel is gentle, light, and sweet, as a drop of water entering a sponge.  The action of the evil spirit is sharp, noisy, and disturbing, like a drop of water falling upon a rock.  In those souls that are going from bad to worse, the action of these two spirits is the reverse.  The cause for this difference of action is the disposition of the soul, which is either contrary or similar to that of the spirits mentioned above.  When the disposition of the soul is contrary to that of the spirits, they enter it with noise and disturbances that are easily perceived.  When the dispositions of the soul and that of these spirits are similar, they enter silently, as one coming into his own house through an open door.

This Rule reminds us a bit of the First and Second Rules from the First Week, where we saw how the good spirit and the evil spirit each deal with souls based on the state of the soul.  A major point to remember is that the good spirit and the evil spirit always work in opposite directions.  They always oppose each other.

Two opposing spirits for two opposing states of soul:

In his 2nd Rule for the First Week, St. Ignatius speaks about the soul that is striving to serve God.  In this case he tells us that the good angel encourages the soul to persevere in the service of God.  He says the good spirit helps the soul “put away all obstacles”[1] in order to help the soul advance.  In addition to this, the good spirit “gives courage and strength, consolations, tears [of compunction], inspirations, and quiet.”[2]

Here in the 7^th Rule in the Second Week, St. Ignatius further informs us that the good spirit is “gentle, light, and sweet, as a drop of water entering a sponge.” In the case we are considering now, the soul is in the proper disposition.  Thus, St. Ignatius explains, that the good spirit will enter silently as if “coming into his own house through an open door.”

In this same soul with proper disposition, the evil spirit, being contrary to the soul’s disposition, will enter it “with noise and disturbances that are easily perceived.”[3] Thus, the evil spirit enters “like a drop of water falling upon a rock” and his action is “sharp, noisy, and disturbing.”[4]

In addition, St. Ignatius told us in the 2nd Rule for the First Week that the devil tries to “bite, sadden and put obstacles, disquieting with false reasons, that one may not go on.”[5]

It is easy to see how this method is described accurately and how the devil would try to push the soul to scruples or some other form of pride.  One typical tool for the devil to use is to try to sow discouragement into the soul, saying something along the lines of, “It is too hard to keep going like you are.  You can’t ever save your soul.  It is impossible.  Certainly, it is impossible to keep up these efforts you are making.” Of course, the evil spirit is urging the soul into a form of self-pity, pride and despair.

We can see the good spirit would do the exact opposite and soothingly tell the soul the following types of things: “You are doing the right thing.  Hang in there, God will never abandon you.  You can make it (with His help).  Don’t give up, because every struggle is worth the effort.  Remember, God is not outdone in generosity.  This suffering is for the good of your soul and that is one of the reasons why He has sent it.  Look how much God has done for you in the past and see how He has taken such providential care of you.  Etc.”

God willing, we are in this state of soul and striving to please almighty God.  Let us strive to stay alert in order to detect the evil one playing his tricks!

Let us now examine what St. Ignatius says about the soul going from bad to worse. 

As we saw in the First Rule of the First Week where a soul is going from bad to worse, the devil encourages the soul to keep in this state.  He proposes apparent pleasures to the soul to entice it to remain living in sin.  In the 7^th Rule for the Second Week, St. Ignatius gives us further insights about the devil’s stratagems.  The devil, being similar to this wretched soul, will influence this soul “like water on a sponge,” because he will deal with the soul gently and coax it along to remain indifferent to its perilous state.  This method of the bad spirit is easy to see in the worldling who just lives to go from one pleasure to the next and doesn’t reflect on the purpose of life, namely, his final end.

For the soul in this horrible state St. Ignatius explains in the First Rule for the First Week, that the good spirit pricks the conscience.  He tells us that the good spirit will “prick the soul and bite the conscience through the process of reason.”[6]  It is thus in this 7^th Rule for the Second Week that St. Ignatius explains how the good angel enters the soul noisily like “a drop of water on a rock” in order to awaken the soul to its danger.

It is very interesting to note how the good spirit urges the soul to use its reason which is the highest faculty of the human soul.  In stark contrast, we see how the bad spirit incites the soul to not use reason.[7]

St.  Ignatius’s Rule #8.  When consolation is without preceding cause, although there is no deception in it since in proceeds only from God Our Lord, as has been stated above [in Rule 2 of the Second Week[8]] the spiritual person to whom God gives such consolation ought still to consider it with great vigilance and attention.  He should carefully distinguish the exact time of such consolation from the time that followed it, during which time the soul continues in fervor and feels the divine favor and the after effects of the consolation which has passed.  Often in this latter period the soul makes various plans and resolutions which are not inspired directly by God Our Lord.  They may be the result of its own reflections, in accordance with its own habits and the consequence of its own concepts or judgments, and they may come either from the good spirit or the evil one.  It is therefore necessary that they be very carefully examined before they are given full approval, and are put into action.

In this Rule St. Ignatius is warning us to be very careful when in consolation.  As we discussed in our last Lesson (#8), the devil knows we are especially vulnerable during consolation.  We are capable of being easily fooled by the bad spirit.  This is because in consolation we feel especially fervent and full of love of God.  We feel as if we would be willing to do any service for Our Lord.  The devil knows this and will tempt us to something perhaps rash or something that will foster inordinate self love and pride.  This is why St. Ignatius recommends getting advice from a wise person, about any resolutions we may have.  So many souls have been led astray because they get some idea to do something that is not truly good for their eternal salvation.[9]

Another key instruction of St. Ignatius for when one is in consolation is to be sure to humble oneself.[10]  Acts of humility are very important.  There are several that would be good to consider and to put into practice.  One is to count one’s blessings and all the insights that God has bestowed on him.  This counting of blessings fosters gratitude towards God.  In turn, this gratitude fosters a greater love of God.

An additional humbling practice that St. Ignatius speaks of is to consider what it is like to be in desolation.  He tells us to remember how weak and helpless we feel during desolation.  He also tells us that during the current consolation, we should build up strength upon which to rely later, when desolation returns, so that we might act well then.[11]

In our next lesson we will begin discussing the first Exercise of St. Ignatius, what he calls the Principle and Foundation.  Let us be grateful to God for these special Rules for the Discernments of Spirits which help us perceive the movements of the good and bad spirits on our souls.  By knowing these Rules and consulting them frequently, we can use them effectively to defend ourselves from the enemy and cooperate with the good spirits.  Blessed be God for His Divine assistance and assurances that He never abandons souls!

Mary’s School of Sanctity

In our last lesson in Mary’s School, we finished discussing the Rules for the Discernment of the Spirits for the first week of the Spiritual Exercises.  Now we turn our attention to the Rules for the second week of the Spiritual Exercises.  These Rules help with a greater discernment of the spirits. The more one advances in the spiritual life and the more effort one is making to work out his salvation in fear and trembling, the more complex are the subtle attacks of our common enemy, the devil. Therefore, St. Ignatius explains how to be on extra high alert for the sneaky tactics that the devil uses.  He says that these Rules are more applicable to the Second Week because the Spiritual Exercises for this week are designed to help a person to dig harder and deeper to get to know himself even better.  Thus, the soul can get to recognize the movements of the spirits in greater detail.

Yet, as we have been repeating as we go along, these Rules are applicable to our daily lives.  Therefore, it is a good idea to become more and more familiar with them so that when we need to recall them to discern a situation, they are readily available to us.

St.  Ignatius’s Rule #1.  It belongs to God and his angels to bring true happiness and spiritual joy to the soul and to free it from the sadness and disturbance which the enemy causes.  It is the nature of the enemy to fight against such joy and spiritual consolation by proposing [seemingly] serious reasons, subtleties, and continual deceptions.

 This is a general rule for us Catholics to keep in mind.  One basic fact we must remember is that the enemy always acts opposite to the good angel. 

Because the enemy is seeking whom he can devour and he is out to destroy us, he does not want us to have spiritual joys.  This Rule reminds us somewhat of the second Rule for the First Week.  In that Rule #2 we saw that when the soul is making spiritual progress, the devil tries to disrupt the progress by throwing wrenches in, as it were.  He presents false reasoning.  For example, he may tempt a soul with scruples so one constantly thinks that he is doing something sinful when the truth is quite the contrary. 

Thus, St. Ignatius is warning us that it is important that we be alert to the devil’s subtle deceptions.   We must keep in mind that one powerful tactic against the devil is simply to use our reason and, with God’s help, the devil will not be able to fool us.  Furthermore, remaining objective and matter of fact in our thinking will help us foster humility which always keeps the devil at bay.   The following Rules get into deeper details of the wiles of the devil.

St.  Ignatius’s Rule #2. It belongs to God alone to give consolation to the soul without previous cause, for it belongs to the Creator to enter into the soul, to leave it, and to act upon it, drawing it wholly to the love of His Divine Majesty.  I say without previous cause, that is, without any previous perception or knowledge of any object from which such consolation might come to the soul through its own acts of intellect and will.

One possible previous cause of consolation could be reading an inspiring spiritual book.  So, for example, one could have just read about King St. Ferdinand III of Spain spending the night in prayer and going out to conquer the Moors the next day and about the fact that he was never wounded in any battle.  This would make one glad to be a Catholic and be very edified by such a holy king.  Reading such things could naturally fill one with spiritual joy and an increased love of God.  One could easily see himself praying and thanking God for electing such a wonderful saint.  But St. Ignatius is speaking here of a consolation that God sends to us without anything we did in particular that could have been the cause of a consolation.  In other words, we sense the consolation and we can think of nothing that we thought, did, or said that might have brought on a consolation.

St.  Ignatius’s Rule #3.  When a cause has preceded, both the good angel and the evil one may console the soul but for different purposes.  The good angel works for the advancement of the soul, that it may grow and rise to what is more perfect, the evil one consoles for the opposite purpose, that he may draw the soul on to his own evil designs and wickedness.

St. Ignatius warns us to be careful when we have consolations because we can be drawn by the evil one into sin.  Especially when there has been a previous cause for our consolation, for example, having just got done reading a very beautiful inspirational spiritual book, we still do not know for certain if the consolation we are experiencing has not been inspired by the evil spirit.  We must be on our guard.  The good angel is going to always lead us to holiness, yet we know that the evil spirit wants the opposite and he can lure us away so easily.  The next three Rules explain the tactics of the evil one in more detail.

St.  Ignatius’s Rule #4.  It is characteristic of the evil one to transform himself into an angel of light, to work with the soul in the beginning, but in the end to work for himself.  At first, he will suggest good and holy thoughts that are in conformity with the disposition of a just soul; then, little by little he strives to gain his own ends by drawing the soul into his hidden deceits and perverse designs.

Rule #4 concerns temptation under the appearance of good.  Such temptations are a very common trick of the devil because with them, he succeeds so often.  Some examples of this are the following:

·         The priests and laity going along with the Novus Ordo Missae.  People went along with the “changes” because they were told it was obedient to do so.  Thus, under the “appearance of good,” people accepted a sacrilegious mass.

 

·         Women in the work force during World War II because the U.S. said it needed their help to keep up with the manufacturing needed for the war effort.  The women were told to wear pants for “safety” sake.  Safety is a good thing, so the pushing of pants for women was accepted.  Yet, unfortunately, this fashion was pushed more and more even after the War so that it came to be viewed as the “norm.”  Consequently, what Our Lady of Fatima predicted came true, namely, that fashions would come that would displease her Son very much.  A further harm is the destruction of the nature of women by such abominable attire. [As Deuteronomy and St. Paul call it.]

Another example of this tactic of the devil is found in the marriage of Louis and Zelie Martin, the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux.  The Martins wanted to live a celibate marriage.   They had both thought they had a religious vocation before they married.  Zelie had been turned away by the Visitation nuns telling her that she didn’t have a vocation to the religious life.  Louis Martin had tried to learn Latin because he wanted to be a priest and finally after spending lots of time and money, he finally gave up the idea.  When Louis and Zelie married, they decided to live as brother and sister.  After nine months of marriage their confessor told them that this was not God’s will and that God wanted them to have children.  They ended up having nine children: three of which died in infancy, one died at the age of five, and five daughters who became nuns.  Thus, under the “appearance of good” this couple, at first, was not doing what God wanted for them.

St.  Ignatius’s Rule #5. We must pay close attention to the course of our thoughts, and if the beginning, middle, and end are all good and directed to what is entirely right, it is a sign that they are inspired by the good angel.  If the course of the thoughts suggested to us ends in something evil, or distracting, or less good than the soul had previously proposed to do; or if these thoughts weaken, disquiet, or disturb the soul by destroying the peace, tranquility, and quiet which it had before, this is a clear sign that they proceed from the evil spirit, the enemy of our progress, and eternal salvation.

St. Ignatius’s warning from Rule #4 continues in Rule #5.  Not only must we be on our guard during consolations with a previous cause, but we must think carefully about any inspirations or resolutions which come to us during this time.  We must ponder where our thoughts are heading.  If we make resolutions or plans during a consolation, we must think through our thoughts carefully in order to discover if they are leading to something good and positive for our salvation.  As St. Ignatius explains, if the thoughts end up being something evil, then of course we would not want to follow those inspirations knowing that they come from the evil one.  Getting advice about any resolutions inspired during consolations of this nature would also be a good idea as a means to prevent doing anything imprudent.

This fits well with our example of the Martins given above.  If the Martins had thought about the fact that they could show God their love by raising up saints for His greater honor and glory, then surely they would have wanted to live a regular Catholic marriage.  The devil wanted to frustrate God’s plan for this holy couple so he most likely hatched this apparently “good” plan for their marriage.  Their confessor saw through this deceit and told the Martins to have children to please God.

During consolations of this type, we must watch our thoughts and the movements of our souls because it so easy to be drawn off course.  The devil will tempt us to do things which would puff us up and lead to other forms of pride.  He can use one’s virtues to deceive the soul.  He can drive the soul to want to climb too high and too fast in order to set the soul up for a fall so one will get discouraged if spiritual progress does not happen as fast as the person expects.   

Also, the devil can use the consolations to foster pride by letting us think we are so wonderful because we have these spiritual consolations.  Thus, as we have mentioned already, we must take every opportunity to humble ourselves when we have consolations and desolations.

St.  Ignatius’s Rule #6. When the enemy of our human nature has been detected and recognized by his deceptions and by the bad end to which he leads, it is well for the person who has been tempted to examine afterward the course of the good thoughts that were suggested to him.  Let him consider their beginning and how the enemy contrived little by little to make him fall from the state of sweetness and spiritual delight that he was enjoying, until the devil finally brought him to the devil’s perverse designs.   With the experience and knowledge thus acquired and noted, one may better guard himself in the future against the customary deceits of the enemy.

This Rule discusses a great strategy for the spiritual life.  When we sense that we have been fooled by the tricks of the evil one, we must retrace our steps, as it were, and find out how the devil fooled us.  On a natural level, we do not want to be deceived by others.  How much more should we want to avoid being trapped by the devil, who is the father of lies!  If we examine the situation and circumstances of our going off course, then we can know ourselves better and know our weakness, which is itself humbling. Then we can be better prepared in order to avoid getting fooled the next time.

In our next lesson, we will examine the last two Rules for the Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises.  These last two Rules consider the strategies with which the devil attacks souls based on their dispositions, and give further explanations about desolation and consolation.  Yet, even with the Rules we have considered so far, we can see plainly that with these heavenly aids Our Good Lord trains us to be His soldiers.  Because we battle, as St. Paul says, “with the principalities and powers of darkness,” we need clear and concrete rules to avoid being fooled by the evil one.  Let us thank God abundantly for these powerful aids to our eternal salvation!

In our last lesson in Mary’s School we discussed the Rules for the Discernment of the Spirits through Rule # 8. We discussed what St. Ignatius calls consolation and desolation and how to act when in desolation. In this lesson we will look at Rules #9 through #14.

St. Ignatius’s Rule #9. There are three principal reasons why we are in desolation:

➢  The first is because we are tepid, slothful, or negligent in our spiritual exercises, and so through our own fault spiritual consolation is withdrawn from us.

 

➢  The second is that God may try us to test our worth, and the progress we make in His service and praise when we are without such generous rewards of consolation and special graces.

➢  The third is that He may wish to give us a true knowledge and understanding of ourselves, so that we may truly perceive that it is not within our power to acquire or retain great devotion, ardent love, tears, or any other spiritual consolation, but that all of this is a gift and grace of God Our Lord.  Nor does God wish us to claim as our own what belongs to another, allowing our intellect to rise up in a spirit of pride or vainglory, attributing to ourselves the devotion or other aspects of spiritual consolation.

We saw in our last lesson how to react in desolation. First, we saw how it is so crucial to humble ourselves always, but especially, in the time of desolation. Likewise, we saw how Rules #7 and #8 expressly tell us how God does not abandon us when we are in desolation. Thus, by explaining our weakness to us, these Rules help us to be humble and to see the absolute need we have to simply trust in God. Yet, we need to remember that even to obtain the ability to trust God as we ought; we must beg for this gift like little children ask their parents for help.

At this point, when we are considering Rule #9, we can see clearly that desolation is a time of great merit and benefit to the soul.  Although desolation is difficult to endure, we can learn many things about ourselves when we are in desolation.  St. Ignatius explains in Rule #9 that we should examine our desolation and try to discover its cause.  This examination is, in itself, humbling.  If we discover that our desolation came from a failure of our own, then we need to tell Our Dear Lord that we are sorry and, of course, beg Him to help us improve.

Whether the desolation came from our own failing or not, it is a good idea to thank God for allowing us to have the desolation.  Gratitude is something we owe to God on all occasions.  St. Paul reminds us to “give thanks to God for all things.” Further, showing gratitude makes things easier to bear and lightens the cross.

St. Ignatius’s Rule #10. A person who is in consolation ought to think of how he will conduct himself during the desolation that will follow, and thus build up a new strength for that time.

St. Ignatius’s Rule #11. A person who is in consolation should take care to humble and abase himself as much as possible.   He should recall how little he is worth in time of desolation without such grace or consolation.  On the other hand, a person who is in desolation should recall that he can do much to withstand all of his enemies by using the sufficient grace that he has, and taking strength in his Creator and Lord.

In Rules #10 and #11, St. Ignatius tells how to act when we are in consolation and desolation. Again, St. Ignatius reminds us to abase ourselves. When we strive with all of our might to be humble, then we will be safe.[1]

The following are Three Powerful Rules to conquer the evil one:

St. Ignatius’s Rule #12.  The enemy acts like a woman in that he is weak in the presence of strength, but strong if he has his will. It is in the nature of a woman in a quarrel with a man to lose courage and take to flight when the man makes a show of strength and determination. However, if the man loses courage and begins to flee, the anger, vindictiveness, and rage of the woman become great beyond all bounds.  In the same manner, it is the nature of our enemy to become powerless, lose courage, and take to flight as soon as a person who is leading a spiritual life stands courageously against his temptations and DOES EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE ENEMY SUGGESTS.  On the contrary, if a person begins to take flight and lose courage while fighting temptation, no wild beast on earth is more fierce than the enemy of our human nature as he pursues his evil intention with ever increasing malice.

This Rule is often called the Agere Contra Rule.  Literally, this means to act against.  These Rules are really foolproof.  They always work!  If one actually recognizes a temptation correctly and does the exact opposite, the devil will leave him alone. This does not mean that the devil will not try again at some other point; however, just remember to use the same counter-defense.  One example of how to apply this Rule is given by St. Ignatius himself in his Spiritual Exercises.  He explains that when one is tempted to shorten his prayers, he should do the opposite and extend the length of his prayer. How wonderful to know that by simply doing the opposite of what the devil proposes, we can foil his plans and attempts to drag us down to hell! 

St. Ignatius’s Rule #13. Our enemy also behaves like a false lover who wishes to remain hidden and does not want to be revealed.  For when this deceitful man pays court, with evil intent, to the daughter of some good father or the wife of a good husband, he wants his words and suggestions to be kept secret.  He is greatly displeased if the girl reveals to her father or the wife reveals to her husband his deceitful words and depraved intentions, because he clearly sees that his plans cannot succeed.  In like manner, when the enemy of our human nature tempts a just soul with his wiles and deceits, he wishes and desires that they be received and kept in secret. When they are revealed to a confessor or to some other spiritual person who understands his deceits and evil designs, the enemy is greatly displeased for he knows that he cannot succeed in his evil design once his obvious deceits have been revealed.

In Rule #13, St. Ignatius is fostering communication and opening up one’s heart to an appropriate person who can help us when we are being tempted.  Prudence must be used when choosing the person to whom one will tell the temptation.   Once the temptation is told, it loses its attraction and goes away.  There are really several logical reasons for this.  First of all, since sin is inherently irrational, then it follows that temptations are not reasonable.  When one articulates his temptation to someone, then the irrational aspects of the temptation stand out and become more evident to the one being tempted.  The person told the temptation can see even more flaws in the temptation and then can explain these additional flaws to the poor person being tempted. A good little saying to remember for this Rule is things hidden, that are forbidden, are from the devil.

There are countless examples from human history of hidden plots and intrigues that were inspired by the evil one.  In our own times and surroundings as well, we can find many examples of things that were kept secret, which were diabolical, and the Good Lord allowed them to leak out and foil the plan of the evil-doers.

God does not intend for us to fight our battles alone.  Prayer is essential, yet, God intends us to use other reasonable means as well. If we keep our temptations to ourselves, then the devil will trick us into some kind of false reasoning and we will undoubtedly fall into sin.

Another aspect of the revealing of our temptations is that doing so is an act of humility.  We see our weakness and our need of help.  We see that we cannot “go it alone” and this is good to curb our fallen human nature and the pride of life.  For one to think he is an island and doesn’t need any help is clearly a form of pride. “God helps those who help themselves” is certainly applicable here.

St. Ignatius’s Rule #14. The enemy’s behavior is also like that of a military leader who wishes to conquer and plunder the object of his desires.  Just as the commander of an army pitches his camp, studies the strengths and defenses of a fortress, and then attacks it on its weakest side, in like manner, the enemy of our human nature  studies from all sides our theological, cardinal, and moral virtues.  Wherever he finds us weakest and most in need regarding our eternal salvation, he attacks and tries to take us by storm.

This Rule is a very practical one and fits with St. Ignatius’s military background.  This makes perfect sense that the devil studies us.  Lucifer was the highest angel and did not lose his nature when he fell, although he is blinded by his pride.  The devil knows human nature very well.  Of course he will see our weakest spot and attempt to catch us in a snare when we least expect it.  This Rule shows how important it is for us to know ourselves well.  The Spiritual Exercises themselves are a powerful way to get to know ourselves.  They are very humbling and foster in us a desire to see ourselves more and more how God sees us.  They foster in us the desire to please God, namely, they foster in us an eternal perspective.[2]

Later on, St. Ignatius will talk about the Particular Examine which is meant to help us find our particular fault, namely, what Rule 14 calls our weak spot.  It is a great blessing from God to find one’s particular fault. We have many weak spots but usually one particular biggest weak spot which we must try to find. We ought to beg God to help us find it if we have not found it yet.  Once we find it, then we concentrate on fixing this fault.

The devil will be at his tricks again to find the next weakest spot but we can pray and take the appropriate means to find that one too.  How good God is to give these Rules to help us fight the evil one and his helpers!  These are all of the Rules for the first Week of the Spiritual Exercises, although they apply for our whole life.

In our next lesson we will begin to look at the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits for the second week of the Spiritual Exercises (Which also are applicable to our whole lives).  The Rules for the Second Week are more about consolation; its causes; and the subtle tricks that the devil uses then.  We really cannot thank God enough for the countless blessings that He has given us, one of which is the work of St. Ignatius in giving us the Spiritual Exercises!