Newsletter Articles

Finding God in All Things

+ Eric J. Knapp, S.J.

Finding God in all things” is a phrase that summarizes Ignatian Spirituality.
This phrase invites a person to search for and find God in every circumstance of
life, not just in explicitly religious situations or activities such as prayer.
‘Finding God in all things” implies that God is present everywhere and, though
invisible, can be “found” in any and all of the creatures which God has made,
principally because God desires to be known; the Incarnation of God in the
person of Jesus exemplifies this. All creation reveals at least a little of what
its Maker is like—often by arousing wonder in those who are able to look with
the “eyes of faith”. It is said that after a long day of work, Ignatius used to
open the French windows in his room, step out onto a little balcony, look up at
the stars and be carried out of himself into the greatness of God. Who among us
has not had a similar experience when gazing at creation, witnessed the wonder
of new life in our lives, or felt an overwhelming sense of joy, security,
serenity and peace once we stopped and paid attention to the moments of our
day?
This is what it means to “find God” and what leads us to share in the life that
God so generously offers to us moment by moment.
So how does one grow in this ability to find God everywhere? Howard Gray,
S.J. suggests the following ways:
1. PRACTICE ATTENTIVENESS to what is really there. Let that person
or that poem or that social injustice or that scientific experiment become for you
as genuinely itself as it can be. Take it as it is and its impact on your life and
attitude, paying attention to the emotions that well-up as you reflect on the
situation, conversation, experience.
2. Then REVERENCE what you see and hear and feel; appreciate it in its
uniqueness. Before you judge or assess or respond, give yourself time to esteem
and accept what is there in the other.
3. If you learn to be attentive and reverent, then you will FIND
DEVOTION, the singularly moving way in which God works in that situation,
revealing goodness and fragility, beauty and truth, pain and anguish, wisdom
and ingenuity.

Today I Awake

- Susan Anderson

How do we find God in all of God’s creation? I find that heightened
awareness leads to increased appreciation of all God’s blessings that surround
us. St. Benedict’s Rule opens with: “Listen, my son, to your master’s precepts,
and incline the ear of your heart.” St. Augustine writes: “Our whole business
therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may
be seen.” Benedict and Augustine are amplifying Jesus’ words in Matthew 13
that our ears and eyes need to be open to realize all of life as gift and grace.
Where do we see and hear God’s heartbeat of love? Our church’s daily
liturgy of Word and Eucharist especially sharpens our vision and hearing to
God’s gifts of love! The current Christ Church art exhibit is “Expressions of
Divine Beauty.” I find these expressions echo daily in such wonders as our
niece—spellbound-watching her baby daughter sleep, rosy sunsets, fresh
raindrops on waning blooms, and especially our mother who graciously accepts
her aging and thanks God daily for her safe haven apartment home and our large
and supportive family.
My sisters and I were blessed to realize more of God’s gifts through a St.
Meinrad retreat about “Celebrate Paul of Tarsus.” St. Paul sees and preaches
Christ in all circumstances despite any hardships and writes in Romans 9 that
nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Challenges and conflicts can lead to prayerful reflection and guidance. Recently I
felt disrespected and angry when it seemed to me that an acquaintance had not
really listened to my opinions. After discussion with people I trust and prayerful
reflection, I realized that I can learn to listen more respectfully myself and to find
God in such encounters. God seems especially near in the poor, sick and needy to
whom we open ourselves and when we ourselves are sick.
In summary of how and where we find God in all things, I offer for
reflection the Sunday choir Presentation song lyrics by John L. Bell and Graham
Maule:
“Today I Awake”
Today I awake and God is before me.
At night, as I dreamt, he summoned the day:
For God never sleeps but patterns the morning
With slithers of gold or glory in gray.
Today I arise and Christ is beside me.
He walked through the dark to scatter new light.
Yes, Christ is alive and beckons his people
To hope and to heal, resist and invite.
Today I affirm the Spirit within me.
At worship and work, in struggle and rest.
The Spirit inspires all life which is changing
From fearing to faith, from broken to blest.
Today I enjoy the Trinity round me,
Above and beneath, before and behind;
The Maker, the Son, the Spirit together
They called me to life and call me their friend.”

Pay Attention

+Eric J. Knapp, S.J.

“Discernment” is a loaded term filled with various understandings and expectations.

Often I have people of all ages ask me how they can know the will of God, God’s plan for them, what they should do with their lives, etc. Discernment is key to living a life that manifests God’s life in us–that is reflecting freedom, happiness, and peace.

Discernment is a process of making choices, when the option is not between good and evil, but between several possible courses of action, all of which are potentially good. For Ignatius of Loyola, this process involves prayer, reflection, and consultation with others–all with honest attention not only to the rational (reasons pro and con) but also to the realm of one’s feelings, emotions, and desires. A fundamental question becomes “where is this impulse from–the good spirit (God) or the evil spirit (leading one away from God)?” In other words, we come to know God’s will for us, what is right and necessary, by paying attention to our experiences, our desires, the emotional effect of our imagination, conversation, and attention to the matter at hand.

A key to answering this question, says Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises, is that, in the case of the person basically leading a good life, the good spirit gives “consolation”–acts quietly, gently leads one to peace, joy and deeds of loving service–while the bad spirit brings “desolation”–agitates, disturbs the peace and injects fear and discouragement to keep one from doing good.

When discerning whether to enter the seminary after my first year of college in 1988 I found myself restless, agitated, and fearful about beginning studies for priesthood at such an early age. In hindsight, what I was feeling was part of my reasoning for not entering the diocesan seminary at that time. I also recall conversations with my mother, who–although supportive of my vocation–did not think I had enough life experience to become a priest; she was right and my decision not to enter the seminary but deciding to return to college, get a degree, live a little, and ultimately move to Chicago and meet the Jesuits, was what God wanted for me. The feeling that came from not entering the seminary was one of freedom and consolation, quite the opposite of what I was experiencing while forcing myself to complete the application to Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit. I recall quite the opposite feeling while investigating entering the Jesuits in 1993; I had lived life, had greater self-knowledge, and a better understanding of God’s will for me. My heart was on fire as I contemplated being a Jesuit; and while I had no idea what being a Jesuit would ask of me or be like, I felt assured that in this least Society all would be well and that I could grow to be closer to Jesus as a Jesuit than I could on my own or in another way of life.

The process of discernment is life-long and can be used for “big” or “small” matters. The key words for discernment are PAY ATTENTION: to God, to our situation, to ourselves.

Taking Time for God

-Mr. Al Cucchetti, coordinator of Faith Formation and Spirituality for St. Xavier Church.

God comes to us disguised as our life. When I was thirty years old I was at a real cross-roads in my life. I had been working as a teacher and coach at a public high school and I was chasing what I thought was the dream I wanted for me and my family. But there was an unsettledness deep within me, a hole that I could not fill. I had a wonderful marriage, three children at the time, a great job and good friends, but I was not happy.

I decided that I needed to stop and take some time to do some “soul searching”. Now I am a person who has had the privilege of knowing God all my life. What I mean by that is I have experienced God’s presence active in my life and I knew that God only wanted good things for me all I had to do was just learn to trust and to listen. During this time I started to read about two people who have had and continue to have a deep influence in my life.

St. Francis of Assisi and St. Ignatius of Loyola. What drew me to these two men was first and foremost they were very passionate men who were also searching. What I discovered from Ignatius was that central to everything he was about was that God can be found in all things. That every human experience we have has a religious meaning if we want to discover it. As I began to read, pray and reflect I discovered that for me my heart’s desire is to seek and do the will of God. That is where my happiness lies. I also discovered that the spiritual life itself is first of all life. And if I want to have a spiritual life it will be shaped by the end I live for. As I continued to read I saw that for Ignatius life was also a battleground between the Evil One and God for our hearts and minds. And that nothing we do as human beings is insignificant because at every moment God and the Evil One are at work. If I wanted to know what God’s desires for me were it was absolutely necessary that I start paying real careful attention to how I make my decisions to act and to live. What I knew for certain is that God wants all of us to live as God’s sons and daughters, as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ and that God is working all the time in this world to achieve this end.

Whenever I have to make a major decision about how I spend my money? Where should I be working? What decisions do I need to make to continue to be very married to Kathy? What do I need to do to be a better father, grandfather? What is the next loving thing that God wants me to do? I know this for certain, God is always actively working to bring about God’s kingdom and I can choose to be in tune or out of tune with God’s intention. How do I know whether I am in tune or not I believe is through prayer and spiritual direction. This is where discernment works for me. Through prayer I put myself in a place where I can listen to the Holy One who resides within me. Through spiritual direction I have an active listener and truth speaker in my life.

Prayer and spiritual direction allow me to see that when I am out of tune with God I start acting out of fear for myself and I stop loving others. My world, Me becomes the center from which I move. When I start to act counter to what God wants I start to experience myself as being somehow out of sorts with myself and with others. There is no peace, no calm in my life. On the other hand, if you have ever experienced a time when there was no fear you were able to live in the now knowing that God is right here right now. That for me is when I know I am in tune with God We are one. I know I am in the right place at the right time. I don’t need to justify or explain it is right to be who I am right here and right now. What Ignatius continually is teaching me is that through prayer and spiritual direction I can discern which decisions allow me to truly become what God is continually creating me to be, in every moment of my life. Which decision makes me most true to myself, the deepest self, where I find God?

St. Ignatius of Loyola

+Eric J. Knapp, S.J.

July 31 is the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Since St. Xavier Church is a Jesuit parish, it would seem appropriate to write about Ignatius of Loyola for this month’s Fifth Week.

Inigo was the youngest child of a noble Basque family fiercely loyal to the monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella. Raised to be a courtier, Inigo was trying valiantly to defend the fortress town of Pamplona in 1521 when a cannonball shattered his leg. During a long convalescence, he found himself drawn away from the romances of chivalry that had filled his imagination from an early age to more spiritual reading—an illustrated life of Jesus and a collection of saints’ lives.

After his recovery, he set out for the Holy Land to realize a dream of “converting the infidel.” On the way he stopped in the little Spanish town of Manresa and wound up spending nearly a year there during which time he experienced both the depths of despair and great times of enlightenment. He wrote down his experiences and meditations and compiled them into a journal which became known as the Spiritual Exercises. The meditations from his time in Manresa reveal an inward desire to encounter God as a “loved sinner” called to follow Jesus in the world and thereby give glory to God.

After being in Palestine a little more than a month, he was ordered to leave because of his lack of learning. Inigo decided that he needed an education in order to be able to “help souls.” In Barcelona, he went to school with boys a quarter his age to learn the rudiments of Latin grammar, then moved on to several other Spanish university cities. In each place he was imprisoned and interrogated by the Inquisition, because he kept speaking to people about “spiritual things”, having neither a theology degree nor priestly ordination.

Finally, turning his back on his homeland, he went to the foremost university of the time, the University of Paris, where he began his education all over again; with diligence, after five years, was finally awarded the degree “Master of Arts.” It was at Parish that he changed his Basque name to the Latin Ignatius and its Spanish equivalent,Ignacio.

While at the university he had roomed with and become good friends with a fellow Basque named Francis Xavier and a Savoyard named Peter Faber. After graduation these three, together with several Paris graduates, undertook a process of communal discernment and decided to bind themselves together in an apostolic community that became the Society of Jesus. They were ordained for the service of the universal church and took up residence in Rome. Unanimously elected superior by his companions, Ignatius spent the last 16 years of his life there directing the order, while the others went all over Europe, to the Far East, and eventually to the New World. Wherever they went they founded schools as a means of helping people to “find God in all things.”

St. Ignatius – following his passion and desire…

-Glen Chun, S.J.

One thing that I admire about Ignatius was his availability. This was not a passive “do unto me according to your will,” but a combination of both incredible passion and flexibility. From the beginning of his autobiography, he described himself as a passionate person – one given over to extremes, of expressing and following his desires, of a person who would “go for the gusto.” He was not just a soldier, but a valiant courtier who would courageously fight to the death for a woman’s honor; not just a pilgrim, but on a personal mission to convert all the infidels in the holy land.

Much of his autobiography is also given to describing his turning to God’s will, which was often expressed in ways significantly different than Ignatius’ own desires. Ignatius describes how time and again, he set out to accomplish some mission – following his passion and desire – and discovered that God’s will was vastly different. Yet Ignatius did not just recognize God’s will, but seeked to understand it as best as he could, even challenged and questioned it, but ultimately embraced it with great sincerity and love. This was Ignatius’ way of being available to God.

This way of being available is, for me, a valuable attitude in discernment, as well as obedience (for a Jesuit). It means that I can, and I should, uncover and express my passionate hopes and desires, yet be flexible to the reality of God’s will unfolding in my experience and through the decisions of my superiors. This Ignatian way of availability is not passive and controlling, but is active (passionate) and freeing (flexible).

Cura Personalis (care for the person)

+Eric Knapp, S.J.

The care for the person is a hallmark of Ignatian Spirituality and therefore Jesuit ministry. Jesuits are encouraged and challenged to establish a personal relationship with God’s people by listening to them in and out of the context of their ministry. Jesuits are, in turn, formed and shaped by the people they serve.

The ministry of presence is perhaps the greatest ministry a Jesuit can do. After all, that is basically what Jesus did: he spent time with people in various settings and people’s locations. While he healed and taught from time to time, it is his willingness to enter the lives—oftentimes chaotic—for which he was often remembered and what we as disciples are called to imitate.

Care of the person is an attitude that reflects the dignity of each person, a conviction that comes from the Judaeo-Christian vision of human beings as unique creations of God, of God’s embracing of humanity in the person of Jesus and of human destiny as ultimate communion with God and all the saints.

AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM

Eric Knapp, S.J.

If you look closely at the crest of any Jesuit work or building that hosts a Jesuit ministry throughout the world you will likely see the words, “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” or its abbreviation, “AMDG”. The phrase, common to Jesuits and countless others, means “for the greater glory of God.” In short, it is not only a stock phrase that characterizes and denotes something Jesuit, but a way of proceeding that can guide and direct our lives.

The use of this phrase allows us to realize that no matter what we do throughout our lives, no matter what the reasons are for doing it, and whether we succeed or fail at the task, we do it for more than just the sake of doing it. Our actions and our lives—if we are truly living—are dedicated to God’s greater glory, because God is the author of all life and the generous giver of all good things. This puts an intense value on our words and actions and can help lead us to strive for a greater good, rather than being influenced by selfish motives, which can many times have an adverse effect on our relationships with others in the community. AMDG also helps us to evaluate situations before we decide to take action. If we are being continually influenced by temptations, we can remember that everything we are doing is for God’s greater glory, and that realization may help us to make the right decisions.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” says that “human beings are God’s language.” In a way, this statement embodies at least part of what “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” conveys. God wants us to be instruments of peace and love on earth and by doing everything for a glory beyond ourselves we are helping God to succeed in that mission.

When we dedicate our thoughts, our words, and our actions to God’s greater glory, we are acknowledging the fact that we are God’s children and that life is God’s gift to us and that we are God’s gift to the world. Not only recognizing this, but also by applying it to our lives every day, we can live life to the fullest by using our gifts and our talents and sharing them with others to make the world a better place and to influence others to do everything “for the greater glory of God.”

AMDG - Then and Now

Sandy Keiser

A.M.D.G.…letters that I diligently wrote in the upper left hand corner of every grammar school assignment. In the mind of a small one, it was as if those letters would magically make the math problems and spelling tests easier and more pleasing to God. There was little explanation other than the literal translation, “for the greater glory of God.”

In the ensuing years I have come to learn that God is already pleased with us and genuinely wants us to enjoy the gift of life He has given us. It is relieving to know that I don’t have to do good works in order for God to be happy; rather my goodness flows from being aware of God’s presence and work within myself and others. Because God reveals Himself in relationship, I believe that the core of AMDG has to do with giving glory to God in everyday life by how we live in relationship to others. How that translates into my everyday life has to do with how I initiate and respond to others in the smallest ways. It is in those small, ordinary encounters that we have the opportunity to build the Kingdom with those we love, and carry it forth. It involves being intentional about what I say and, more importantly, how my words are conveyed. Am I rushing to get on to the next task? Am I preoccupied or distracted? Am I invested in a particular outcome that I don’t hear what the other person is saying? Do my words and actions match? Do I need to give myself time to think about something before giving a response?

Often I miss the mark. Not intentionally, but perhaps because I’m not paying attention to what’s really important, or get absorbed in the hurried pace of life, taking life or myself too seriously. We all have things that we allow to get in the way of the true spirit that God has for each one of us. It is part of being works-in-progress and the challenge is moving ahead and knowing that God truly desires for us to be one with Him. How does this play out in your life?

˜ Sandy Keiser, April 2008