This article has been kindly provided by our friends at Thinking Faith.An audio resource, Women of God, Women of the Cross, from the Jesuits in Britain introduces you to the women who encountered Jesus during his passion. Using our senses to enter into their stories as we listen to them is not an end in itself, says Gemma Simmonds CJ. The application of the senses, as Ignatius calls it, is an instrument of prayer and discernment, and one that extols faculties that have been – and, too often, still are – associated with women and disparaged. Of all the ways of praying recommended by Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises, the application of the senses is probably the most baffling. Ignatius encourages the application as a way of getting out of our heads and going deeper into the perceptions, feelings and promptings that have taken place over a day, especially at day’s end, when tiredness can make other kinds of prayer burdensome. The purpose is not for us to imagine ourselves smelling, touching and tasting our way through a first century Palestinian market or banquet or whatever it might be. Not only would that challenge the most vivid imagination, but it’s hard to see how it would be of significant help in the general process of seeing more clearly, loving more dearly and following more nearly that the Exercises are about. Ignatius is not asking us to imagine bodily sensations, but offering a very contemporary focus on the body as in and of itself a conduit for contemplation and discernment. It is a mode of prayer that can lead to the concretisation of whatever movements the Spirit is prompting, as we reach a deeper understanding of our own senses by experiencing and sharing how the embodied eternal Word uses his. Our imitation of Christ becomes more exact as we feel each sensation with and in him. It is a way of praying and discerning that may have particular resonance for women.It helps to think how often we refer to bodily sensations in order to describe a powerful and instinctive reaction: ‘I had a gut feeling’, ‘I found that hard to swallow’, ‘it took my breath away’. We incarnate within our bodily sensations some of our strongest responses, and in the gospel we see Jesus doing the same. In the English translation of John’s Gospel, we find him deeply moved as Mary weeps for her dead brother Lazarus. The Greek verb indicates the snorting of a horse or the growling of an angry creature. It is a strong bodily reaction indicative of many possible emotions: grief, frustration, anger – a general sense of being overwhelmed by his own feelings and those of others.The Spanish word sentir carries the same ambiguity as ‘to sense’ in English, in that it includes mental as well as bodily processes, but it is a broader word still, including intuition and emotional feelings. In week two of the Exercises especially, the senses are seen as an instrument of prayer and discernment. Being present to Jesus as he acts through his own bodily senses we come to share more deeply in his human experience and self-understanding. Earlier on in the Exercises, Ignatius remarks that it is not complex thinking and theological speculating that will bring about a change in us but ‘sensing and tasting things interiorly’ (Sp Exx §2): looking, listening, savouring, relishing and embracing what we contemplate. The process we undergo of deepening our spiritual, intellectual and sensate familiarity with him changes the way we perceive and experience reality, imitating his response to every aspect of human need and desire as ‘contemplatives in action’, transformed transformers.Ignatius knows that it is not enough to be convinced of something intellectually for our lives to change concretely and definitively. Our life options need to be sustained by what he calls the ‘activity of the will’. Our will goes where our feelings and desires go, and they are indicated to us through our senses. The purpose of the Exercises, he says from the beginning, is to rid us of disordered attachments and to ‘order our lives’ (Sp Exx §21). We come to a choice of how best to do so through the contemplation and imitation of Jesus, using our senses as the ultimate confirmation of where our affective will lies. In this sense praying to share Jesus’s way of sensing and feeling is not a way to pray when our minds can take us no further but a culmination and confirmation of knowledge found through meditation and contemplation. It requires praying to be transformed at what is often for us the source of dislocation and ambiguity when our sensual and affective longings take us in different directions from our rational thought processes.[i]A medieval adage claims that we will understand nothing that we have not previously sensed. The application of the senses takes us to different levels of consciousness, both in the contemplative process itself and in the transformation of our contemplation from prayer into action as we gain a deep interior knowledge of Christ so that we can more deeply love and follow him.[ii]If this is all true, then it has particular implications for women. Repeatedly in the gospels we see women connecting to Jesus and intuiting his meaning through their bodies and senses. Elizabeth discerns the significance of his coming as she experiences within her womb the quickening of her unborn child. The woman of Samaria comes to growth in understanding of herself and of God through the sensation of thirst. Mary of Bethany confirms her intuition of Jesus’s impending death by anointing his feet. The same anointing and bathing with tears are the means and sign of a sinful woman’s liberation in the house of Simon the Pharisee, whose lack of physical gestures of welcome are noted by Jesus. The women of his following stand by the cross, watching each bodily sign of his dying. They enact their grief in the intimate anointing of his body for burial, and clasp his feet when they see him risen.The ancient world categorised women and men by placing their bodies in a hierarchy of value. Men were cool, dry and rational while women were moist, hot and sensual, incapable of clear thought and ruled by their bodily instincts. Such classifications persisted into the modern era with women being judged prone to hysteria because ruled by their wombs (Greek: hystera). The simultaneous fearing and exploiting of women’s bodies coupled with the despising of their minds persists in multiple forms today, from the instrumentalising of pornography to the manipulations of Hollywood and the airbrushing of women’s competence from so many versions of history. The application of the senses confirms the body and its senses as a trustworthy conduit for intuiting and understanding the things of God. It confirms as reliable the sensus Christi (1 Cor 2:16), which enables us to feel with the feelings of Jesus as well as to have his mind. Through our bodies we learn to relate to him and to all whom he meets, and whom we meet in him, growing, through reflection on our everyday reactions, into a close union with God mirrored in the heartbeat of Jesus.[iii] In a poem written a millennium ago, Symeon the New Theologian gives powerful expression to this prayer in and through the body, which is part of the application of the senses.For if we genuinely love Him,we wake up inside Christ's bodywhere all our body, all over,every most hidden part of it,is realized in joy as Him,and He makes us, utterly, real.And everything that is hurt, everythingthat seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,maimed, ugly, irreparablydamaged, is in Him transformedand recognized as whole, as lovely,and radiant in His light.He awakens as the Belovedin every last part of our body.[iv] Gemma Simmonds CJ is Director of the Religious Life Institute and a lecturer in Pastoral Theology at Heythrop College, University of London. [i] See Antonio Guillén, ‘Imitating Christ our Lord with the Senses: Sensing and Feeling in the Exercises’, The Way, 47, 12, pp. 225-241 for a detailed study.[ii] James Walsh, ‘The Application of the Senses’, The Way Supplement, 27, 1976, pp. 60-68, 61.[iii] Guillén, ‘Imitating Christ’, p. 241.[iv] Stephen Mitchell, ed., The Enlightened Heart: an Anthology of Sacred Poetry (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 38.

This article has been kindly shared by our friends at Thinking Faith.It was precisely an exercise in discernment of spirits that enabled Rob Marsh SJ to offer this Ignatian introduction to the practice that will be the focus of our attention this Lent. Join him in a careful consideration of ‘one particular microsecond of one particular life, and one paragraph of many where Ignatius catalogues the way the good and bad spirit work’, and see an example of Ignatian discernment at work. Just a microsecond of my day:I am looking at my computer and hesitating to open this file. I want to try and write some more of this article. I am feeling discouraged and thinking that of course I am going to run aground again in no time. ‘Who wants to read what you write anyway?’ ‘Wouldn’t it be better to come back later when you feel more focused?’ And then I remember the deadline is looming and a feeling of anxiety grows but rather than motivating me to type I feel lethargic and stuck. Running in parallel, I am aware of the bright winter sky and glowing Oxford stonework in my peripheral vision. The light wants to lift my heart. There is the hint of a memory of walking down a road under a similar sky, head up, having just finished a dissertation. I can begin to remember feeling alive, relieved … elated.Ignatian spirituality has been called a ‘mysticism of choice’ and that is true. But it means more than it being a methodology for making big decisions: at the heart of Ignatian spirituality there is a developed practice of discernment. The term discernment often gets used these days to refer to two quite distinct but related things: making big apostolic decisions, life choices, and such – what Ignatius called ‘election’; and the more humble practice of discernment of spirits. Both are practical skills; both are aimed at making choices, either big decisions or the small stuff of moment-by-moment, hour-by-hour, day-by-day practicality – what I think of as micro-choices. So exactly what do I mean by micro-choices?Ignatius regarded human experience as being saturated with a succession of dynamic psychological events, each succeeding the other as in my microsecond above – what he called the motions of the soul. These include thoughts, feelings, ideas, images, desires, perceptions, insights, emotions, inclinations, moods, self-talk, etc.: all the stuff going on in our head, our heart, our gut. That sounds reasonable to a modern ear. What might not seem so modern is his belief that these motions come from three distinct sources, the first being the natural – though often complicated – working of the human person. But he traces the origin of our inner motions to two outer forces, too, what he calls the bad spirit and the good spirit. The good spirit is at work to bring us closer to God and closer to the purpose for which we were created while the bad spirit is intent on sabotaging all of that. And in Ignatian terms that gets played out on the very humble playing field of the many, many microseconds that make up our lives, even when most of those microseconds’ motions make no direct reference to God.Discernment – discernment of spirits – is first of all about telling apart the motions arising from these three sources and, in his ‘rules for discernment’ (and elsewhere), Ignatius gives an eloquently pithy catalogue of what the work of the good and bad spirit looks like in the human heart, in terms of the motions they inspire. Let me quote just one of his descriptions:… it is characteristic of the evil spirit to cause gnawing anxiety, to sadden, and to set up obstacles. In this way he unsettles these persons by false reasons aimed at preventing their progress. […] it is characteristic of the good spirit to stir up courage and strength, consola­tions, tears, inspirations, and tranquillity. He makes things easier and eliminates all obstacles, so that the persons may move forward in doing good. (Spiritual Exercises, §315)As easy or difficult as it may be, the process of ‘telling apart’ is only the start. Ignatius heads his treatment of discernment in the Spiritual Exercises with the following, carefully convoluted title: ‘rules to aid us toward perceiving and then understanding, at least to some extent, the various motions which are caused in the soul, the good motions that they may be received, and the bad that they may be rejected’. We are to perceive first, then understand and then choose to receive or reject insofar as we are able. Take my microsecond. Applying Ignatius’s characterisation of the good and bad spirits it is easy, once I have perceived – and how difficult it can be even after half a lifetime of practice to bring one’s motional life to the point of perception – to understand the various motions at work in terms of their origin in the good and bad spirit. But what happens next is crucial! Once I know (‘to some extent’) which bits of my microsecond’s worth of inner stuff are coming from where, I find myself with the opportunity to choose (‘to some extent’) which threads I pay more attention to. Which do I receive and which do I reject? Well I am sitting here typing (and deleting – so much deleting), which bears witness to the micro-choice I made. I chose to reject the thread inspired by the bad spirit and receive the thread coming from the good spirit.That sounds a bit … static: let’s look closer. I want to say that getting to type wasn’t a matter of will-power. Rejecting the bad spirit’s inspirations is less about opposing them and more about laying them aside, giving them less airtime, starving them of attention. Direct suppression more often than not serves to amplify the din the bad spirit makes. Rejecting the bad spirit’s motions is best done gently, if firmly – and anyway, rejecting the bad spirit only gives us a direction not to go in. In fact, it is primarily by receiving the good spirit’s motions that something good happens. How do we receive them? I like the resonance between receiving and hospitality. Receiving is best done by paying attention to, dwelling with, relishing, engaging with the good spirit’s motions, because when we engage them something more moves, something we won’t notice until we engage. In the case of my microsecond that hint of a memory was at first just a hint, a trace, an echo of a blue sky and bright stone asking for my attention through the window blind. But noticing it, paying attention to it, let it open up and bring to awareness bodily sensations (the weight of reams of paper I was carrying, the set of my shoulders as I took in the sky) in memory and in real-time. Staying with that physical awareness allowed me to notice feelings of life and potential. From there a few words offered themselves. I opened this file and started to type. The good spirit, ‘makes things easier and eliminates all obstacles’.Notice the asymmetry of the two sets of motions. The bad spirit (in this case and often) stagnates, nothing happens and an old opinion is set deeper in stone. The good spirit doesn’t just do the opposite but goes somewhere creative, opens up a new space. Even though it hinges in my microsecond on the evocation of a 32-year-old memory it leads somewhere new and unstuck. This isn’t the first time lately I have sat down to write and encountered the same discouragement and anxiety and difficulty. And it isn’t the first time I have been able to say to myself, ‘this is all bad spirit, reject it’. But brute force opposition has failed me for weeks. I have been focused on the strategy of rejection; I have been fascinated by the bad spirit. Today I was able to be intrigued instead by the good spirit.Now all the above is based on one particular microsecond of one particular life, and one paragraph of many where Ignatius catalogues the way the good and bad spirit work. People differ and the good and bad spirit have many strings to their bows but I think I can advance a general rule of thumb here: when making micro-choices – and macro-choices, for that matter – we do best to engage with the good spirit rather than oppose the bad.‘Of course’, people say when I suggest my rule of thumb … and then go on to rehearse for me at length all the bad spirit’s opinions and how bad it has felt to live with them. It is hard not to be fascinated with the bad spirit’s view of things and inadvertently receive it, pay disproportionate attention to it. We do the same when we try and out-argue the bad spirit – a dialogue with the devil is one we always lose or, rather, we go round and round, over and over old ground. A particularly nasty trap in our psychologically astute times is to try to get to the bottom of why the particular thing the bad spirit is ‘saying’ to us has a hold: to map out our pathology. The promise is that self-knowledge will set us free but far too often while we seek to understand we give the bad spirit endless heart-space and God very little.Now I’m in danger of falling into my own trap here. I feel compelled to write about all the many ways that the bad spirit fascinates and monopolises attention. I have a schema of illuminating examples! But I refuse, in my fascination, to give the bad spirit more airtime than it deserves. So I’ll delete those five brilliant (believe me) paragraphs and see if I can finish instead by engaging with the good spirit a little more.Strangely, it takes more effort – or at least resolute intention – to engage with the good spirit than with the bad, initially at least. Given that the fruits of such engagement are so life-giving and creative and delightful (and challenging!), you would think we would all take every chance to dwell there. But, while the bad spirit is fascinating, the good spirit tends not to draw attention to itself: like the God it serves, it specialises in humility and gives itself freely and without fuss.Yet the good spirit repays whatever attention we manage to give. My microsecond has developed as I have been able to receive it: first the sky and the light, then the memory, then the words. And moreover as I have written about it and returned to it another fruit of the good spirit has slowly ripened: a presence has turned up. There is now someone present in my prolonged microsecond, someone beside me, and as I stay there I recognise him. I say ‘him’ because it is Jesus that the good spirit has brought me to, at once familiar and a little startling. He has his own feelings and thoughts and a desire to be involved. Right now we are writing but there is a conversation to come.The bad spirit is clamouring for my attention again: ‘but there you go pretending, against the evidence, that good spirit can always be found alongside the ubiquitous bad… such wishful thinking!’ If I trust my experience as a spiritual director, the evidence is that the good spirit can almost always be found even when the work of the bad spirit seems all-encompassing: there are nearly always nuggets of gold among the mud – the slightest glint needs to be panned for and washed bright. And the good spirit is worth engaging with even then, or especially then, when creativity is so needed.Even when the gold seems all panned out – to stretch the metaphor further than it should go – there are ways to invite the good spirit into any particular experience. I’ll mention just three. There is, for example, the practice of active gratitude: scanning your experience with a deliberately grateful eye in the way Ignatius mandates in his Consciousness Examen. Then there is the practice of imaginal presence: spending a moment considering how God is looking at me right now (Spiritual Exercises, §75) and seeing what follows. Thirdly there is what Ignatius calls ‘colloquy’ or conversation with God, as ‘one friend to another’:  in this context taking the experience presented by the bad spirit to God, naming it as such, and letting God give an alternative point of view. Such practices – there are many more – give a little new space for the good spirit to be found when it seems to be absent, for I believe my rule of thumb still holds: when we discern, we do better to engage with the good spirit rather than oppose the bad.Discernment of spirits gives us the practical opportunity to become aware of the many microseconds making up our lives, to tease apart the different motions that make them up, and then to choose to lay aside those from the bad spirit and engage more with those from the good. In the process we grow closer to God, deeper into the purpose for which we are created and we turn experience into prayer. Rob Marsh SJ is a tutor in Spirituality at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.

This article comes from our friends at Thinking Faith. What is Ignatian spirituality? There are, of course, as many answers to that question as there are people who have encountered it, and Hermann Kügler SJ ventures his. How does he understand the way in which Ignatius of Loyola was moved to serve Christ, and to help others do the same? How does a life characterised by Ignatian spirituality look to the secular world? Being able to answer this question in a simple way can help us to share the riches of the Ignatian tradition with those who are outside of it. It can also provide those of us who have received the gifts of St Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises with a way to see how our lives continue to be nourished by those gifts.I suggest that a helpful description of Ignatian spirituality is thus: ‘Fight – Failure – Love’. For those whose lives are shaped by Ignatian spirituality will:- fight for the values of the gospel;- not seek to avoid personal failure; and- love God, their fellow human beings, themselves and creation with all their heart.FightThere is no doubt that Ignatian spirituality has a militant element,[1] which I mean in a positive sense as a commitment of the whole person to whatever means lead to freedom, peace, the integrity of creation, or any good and just cause. It is not enough simply to analyse challenges from a distance and then be satisfied with saying, ‘it’s good that we talked about it’, but reflection must lead to action: ‘There is a lot to do, let's do it!’Ignatius’s own life was characterised by fighting, in many different ways. He initially fought for his social position, for the affection of women and on behalf of his employers. After being wounded in Pamplona, he had to start again and then fought for his self-image, for health, against suicidal thoughts, for the knowledge of God's will and for the service of faith. And later he fought for ecclesiastical recognition (he was accused by the Inquisition several times), to gain companions and, above all, for and on behalf of people and their salvation.Ignatius wanted to share his own spiritual insights with others. The resulting book of Spiritual Exercises is the systematised form of a path of practice ‘to conquer oneself and regulate one's life’ (SpExx §21).Vitus Seibel writes of the order Ignatius founded that Jesuits want to enter into the world's areas of tension and live with and in these tensions, instead of rashly resolving them in one way or another. Daring instead of fearfulness characterises their approach. ‘Thus the constitutions tend to lead to a certain aggressiveness, a willingness to take risks, a daring to experiment’.[2]To put it in starkly martial terms: Ignatius was looking for companions who wanted to fight. The prayer attributed to him reads: ‘Lord, teach me to be generous, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labour and not to look for any reward, save that of knowing that I do your holy will.’I am convinced that this desire is characteristic not only of Jesuits, but also of all people who want to make a difference in the world in a manner informed by Ignatian spirituality. This is not an esoteric wellness programme for personal comfort. Of course, the concrete form it takes will depend on someone’s individual circumstances. But courage instead of fear, facing challenges instead of making demands, characterises the Ignatian approach. Anyone who has to wade through a swamp – metaphorically speaking – will inevitably get splashed.FailureIf I speak on behalf of those who have no voice, it is inevitable that I will encounter resistance from those who don't want to listen, and that I may fail personally despite my good will and commitment. I don't seek failure, but I don't avoid it either.The tension between fighting and failure is present in Jesus's life. With earthly eyes, it is hard to see anything other than that, in the end, he failed. In the Spiritual Exercises, this is the subject matter of the third week.[3] Those who do the exercises of the third week enter, as it were, into a community of destiny with Christ. I share his failure in his mission, which has become his existence. He is treated unjustly and mocked, his disciples abandon him. Peter denies knowing him. He is powerless at the mercy of his enemies and a pawn of political interests with no prospect of salvation, apparently abandoned even by God.If you search the writings of Ignatius for the word ‘failure’, it does not appear. Failure is obviously not something that particularly interests Ignatius. This is all the more astonishing when you consider that he himself ‘failed’ several times. For Ignatius, being wounded by the cannonball in Pamplona signalled the end and thus the failure of his third professional career (as a cleric, as an administrative official and here as a soldier). At the end of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he is hit by another ‘cannonball’: his lifelong dream of being able to stay there forever is dashed. But both events led him to a radical deepening of his relationship with Christ.[4]In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius encourages us to seek and find God in all situations of life: in health and in sickness, in wealth and in poverty, in honour and in shame, in a long life and in a short one. Jesus walked this path. He did not remain on the ‘sunny side’ of life, but ‘descended into the realm of death’.Ignatius trusts people of faith and explicitly encourages them to ‘seek and find the will of God’, and thus become co-workers of the working God. If we seek and find and do the will of God then, Ignatius would say, the question of the meaning of earthly failure shifts. It is no longer central. This does not mean that it cannot be a major concern for a person. But first and foremost, life is about doing the will of God and not about avoiding failure. Because whether life ‘succeeds’ or ‘fails’ now depends on whether someone is connected to God and does God’s will. Anyone who has ‘nothing’ to show at the end of their life, in worldly terms, is therefore not necessarily further from God than someone else who has made an outwardly significant and important contribution to the world.LoveHow does a Christian live love of self, love of neighbour, love of God and love of creation?[5] And how does he or she organise these four fundamental relationships that constitute us humans? He or she will orientate themselves around the person of Jesus, who knew no fear of intimacy; he was capable of deep feelings. For Jesus, there was no contradiction between love for people and love for God. In our human view, we might assume that the more we love God, the less room there would be in our hearts for love for people – or vice versa: if we loved a person with all our heart, there would be less and less room for God.In Jesus's view, the exact opposite is true. ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind ... you shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Mt 22:37, 39), he tells his disciples: love of God and love of neighbour interpenetrate and interpret each other without falling into one. They are ‘unmixed and undivided’. Jesus lived like this on many occasions. When he allowed himself to be touched and moved, he felt that ‘power had gone forth from him’ (Mark 5:30). He welcomes the faith of little children (Mk 10:13-16) and takes them by the hand (Mk 5:41). He heals a blind man with a paste made of saliva (Jn 9:6). He allows himself to be anointed (Jn 12:1-11). He washes feet (Jn 13:1-20). He seeks the companionship of his disciples on the Mount of Olives (Mk 14:32-42). He allows his wounds to be touched (Jn 20:27). He breathes on the disciples (Jn 20:22). He embraced his friends in the greeting of peace (Lk 24:36). His love releases and leads to freedom: ‘Do you also want to go?’ (Jn 6:67), he asks his disciples.A touching and impactful biblical story is the encounter of the risen Christ with Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18). Mary obviously wants to keep the risen Christ for herself alone. ‘Do not hold me’, Jesus says to her – not, as some old translations say, ‘do not touch me’. The point is not that she should not touch him. What she has to learn is that love sets you free. The moment she is tempted to cling, she has to learn that freedom is a child of real love. Then she goes to the other disciples and proclaims: ‘I have seen the Lord’. Love is fruitful, here in such a way that it has comforting, healing and hope-giving effects on other people.Jesus is a compassionate man who has a heart for his fellow human beings. His behaviour shows that God is tenderly and lovingly devoted to people. This is the basic idea behind the devotion to the Sacred Heart cultivated in the Catholic tradition and especially by the Jesuits. Certainly, in professional life, it is common practice to judge people on performance and also on utility. But in genuine human encounters, these are not categories.Three clues from the Spiritual Exercises and from the life of IgnatiusFirstly, ‘Fight - Failure - Love’ could be seen to correlate with the second, third and fourth weeks of the Spiritual Exercises. Ideally: after I have organised my life in the first week, I discover my vocation in following Jesus in the exercises of the second week. When it becomes concrete, it has a militant element. I am very consciously seeking and deepening my vocation as a person and as a Christian. I want to follow Jesus, not only for the ‘feel-good factor’ it might give me, but also to enter into a community of destiny with him – even where it gets difficult and is not ‘fun’.In the imagery of the second week of the retreat, a ‘fighting spirituality’ can be seen in important places: in the exercise of the Call of the King, I imagine both that the king wants to conquer (‘conquistar’) the ‘land of the unbelievers’, and that I want to come with him and fight for him (SpExx §§93, 95). The reflection on the Two Standards (SpExx §§136-148), is about visualising two different ‘army camps’ (SpExx §§138, 140). Before the planned campaign, one commander addresses a speech to his ‘demons’, motivating them for the forthcoming battle, the other to his ‘servants and friends’ (SpExx §146). The images used are certainly rooted in the context in which they were written, but the questions they raise remain topical.In the exercises of the third week, I am ready to share in the suffering of Christ as my friend. I can seek and find God even in personal failure, because I also share in Jesus's relationship with God. I do not avoid personal failure.The events of the third week are not isolated in the framework of the Spiritual Exercises, but they have a place at the centre of life. Discipleship of the crucified one not only applies to a certain period of practice, but should also characterise a life ever more deeply and intensively. ‘The aim of this week is to become awake to the possibility that God wants to involve me in co-suffering with Christ in a way that corresponds to my life and my mission.’[6]In the third week, the meaning of my own existence can be lost: everything has become meaningless, nothing that once sustained me is still alive. This can go so far that I perceive in myself reproachful attitudes, paralysis, despair, stubbornness, rebelliousness and flight into distractions. I want to avoid the ‘power of darkness’ and avoid failure. The feeling creeps over me that I have made a mistake. Instead of turning to Christ, I turn to my own self.In the exercises of the fourth week, though, I realise: my life succeeds because I live it in the light of the resurrection, of the risen one, turned towards Christ, even if he ‘is not here’ and I cannot ‘hold on to him’. I walk my path through life in the power of the Holy Spirit, who works in me. I love my fellow human beings in a liberating way.In the great final meditation of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius presents one of the greatest and most central of his texts: the Contemplation to Attain Love (SpExx §§230-237). You will probably only understand this text if you not only read it, which you can do here, but meditate on it.This spiritual exercise comes at the end – not the beginning – of a four-week training programme in which you have meditated and prayed about how to live a life of faith. You have experienced for yourself the meaning of living more and more in union with God, following Jesus Christ and practising active love for your neighbour, both in an individual environment and by influencing this often problematic world.Secondly, Ignatius's image of Christ, which is the foundation of Ignatian spirituality, is a Jesus who carries his cross and works hard to redeem the world, suffering as he does so, and who does not shy away from his own failure. ‘Fight – Failure – Love’ can be seen in the vision of St Ignatius at La Storta. In his autobiography, Ignatius himself talks about an experience in the church of La Storta on the Via Cassia, about 14 kilometres from the gates of Rome: ‘Then he felt such a transformation in his soul and saw so clearly that God the Father had joined him to Christ, his Son, that he no longer dared to doubt that God the Father had joined his Son to him’ (Autobiography, 96). Diego Lainez, who was travelling with Ignatius and Peter Favre at the time, mentions an important detail about this event in a lecture he gave to the Roman Jesuits in 1559: ‘it seemed to [Ignatius] as if he saw Christ with the cross on his shoulders and next to him the eternal Father, who said to him: “I want you to accept this one as your servant”, and so Jesus accepted him and said: “I want you to serve us”.‘[7]Hugo Rahner has comprehensively and convincingly explained that for Ignatius the vision of La Storta was one of the most important mystical experiences of his life. ‘The actual effect of the vision is the henceforth unshakeable awareness of having entered into an indissoluble communion of life with the poor Jesus, who is the head of the small community whose name they want to bear’.[8] From the outset, the newly founded order was convinced that this view applied not only to Ignatius, but to all those who wanted to follow this way of life.Ignatius saw himself called to go to Rome out of love for God and people, to ‘fight’ for the good causes there – and that he might fail in the process did not seem out of the question to him. The tension between fighting and failing, between being committed and being able to let go, becomes visible. He is able to live it in actions borne by love.Thirdly, the image that Ignatius most frequently uses for a life of following Jesus is that of the labourer in the vineyard of the Lord.[9] This image does not appear in the Spiritual Exercises, but more than a dozen times in the Constitutions. This is how Ignatius sees himself in Rome: no longer as a pilgrim or soldier, but as a labourer. He had arrived there through the school of Spiritual Exercises, and he was looking for collaborators for the work in the vineyard of the Lord. Shaped by the experience of the Spiritual Exercises, these collaborators too should participate in this work in action borne by love, militantly, and while not seeking failure, also not avoiding it if it has to be: ad maiorem Dei gloriam. Hermann Kügler SJ is a pastoral psychologist and the Provincial's delegate for the elder Jesuits in the Central European Jesuit province.  [1] Hermann Kügler and Jörg Nies, ‘Spiritualität des Kämpfens - Potential und Grenzen’, Geist und Leben 96, no.2 (2023), pp. 125-133.[2] Vitus Seibel, Architektur einer Gemeinschaft: Impulse aus den Satzungen der Jesuiten, Ignatianischer Impuls 59 (Würzburg, 2013), p. 62 (my translation).[3] See: Hermann Kügler, ‘Die dritte Woche der Ignatianischen Exerzitien: 10 Thesen’, Geist und Leben 92, no/ 4 (2019), pp. 345-355.[4] I am grateful to Franz Meures SJ for this comment.[5] Fabian Moos, Paris, draws my attention to this fourth ‘love relationship’ with reference to Pope Francis in his 2015 encyclical, Laudato si’. ‘Disregard for the duty to cultivate and maintain a proper relationship with my neighbour, for whose care and custody I am responsible, ruins my relationship with my own self, with others, with God and with the earth. When all these relationships are neglected, when justice no longer dwells in the land, the Bible tells us that life itself is endangered.’ Pope Francis, Laudato si’ (2015), §70.[6] Karin Johne, Geistlicher Übungsweg für den Alltag (1989), p. 244 (my translation).[7] Quoted in J. Stierli, Ignatius of Loyola, Gott suchen in allen Dingen (Olten, 1981), p. 53.[8] Hugo Rahner, ‘Die Vision des heiligen Ignatius in der Kapelle von La Storta’, in Ignatius von Loyola als Mensch und Theologe (Freiburg, 1964), pp. 53-108, p.73 (my translation).[9] See: J. Peter Schineller SJ, The Pilgrim journey of Ignatius. From Soldier to Laborer in the Lord's Vineyard and Its Implications for Apostolic Lay Spirituality, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 31 (1999).

Written by Dunstan Rodrigues SJDuring my first experience of a week-long silent retreat, my spiritual director suggested I pray with Psalm 138/9. I had the whole day simply to meditate and reflect on the words of the psalm. 'A whole day!', I thought to myself, 'for one single psalm!'. Such a suggestion left me feeling a bit disappointed. 'I mean, while I have so much time with nothing much to do,' I thought, 'why not try to read a bit more – to make the most of this free time?' Despite these thoughts, I accepted the suggestion yet felt a bit annoyed and even slightly humiliated as I left the room. 'This is going to be boring…' I said to myself. It took about a minute to finish reading the psalm. Shortly afterwards I decided to go out for a walk. Happily, it was a beautiful, breezy day and I felt unusually cheerful while walking - even sometimes skipping – along the country lanes by the retreat house. I looked upon the spacious, fresh landscape and the words of the Psalm 139 came to me in the form of the hymn by Bernadette Farrell: O God, you search me and you know me, all my thoughts lie open to your gaze. When I walk or lie down you are before me, ever the maker and keeper of my days. You know my resting and my rising, you discern my purpose from afar and with love everlasting you besiege me, in every moment of life or death you are. Singing these words to myself a few times, something suddenly struck me, something I had never really noticed before. It was the phrase 'you discern my purpose from afar'. You see, discernment was something that I had been trying to do for some months before the retreat. I was trying to discover and work out the best direction to take in my life and heard that this thing called 'discernment' was a way to do so. So, I had been trying to discern; weighing up different options, looking at the pros and cons, looking for signs that would help me become clearer etc. It was hard work. It involved sifting, searching, deliberation, looking for coherence and meaning. It demanded self-awareness, self-critique and often asking and posing questions: What is the state of my heart? What are the emotions, feelings and thoughts at work within me? What should my next step be? Reading the phrase 'you discern my purpose from afar' helped me see discernment in a new light. For - it dawned on me - maybe you can think of God as the One who discerns? Maybe you can think of God as the protagonist of discernment? To think of God, rather than myself, as the One who searches, sees and knows? Whatever its credibility, such a thought helped me relax. It seemed to take the pressure off a bit. Yes, I would and could continue searching. Yes, I could continue looking for the right answer, for the best direction to take. But, in a sense, I was not alone in my discernment and deliberation. It was possible to relax and let myself by seen. This has been a theme to which I have returned at different points in my life. Searching for coherence, for meaning, trying to make sense of things, to find the right way. This is what discernment, and indeed life, is often about. Yet, at the same time, it is also about simply letting yourself be seen. It is about becoming attuned to another kind of narrative, one which does not demand that you push too hard for clarity through the use of various exercises and techniques but rather which invites a simple sharing of heart. Bring everything into the light. Share your desires, questions, hurts, hopes, fears, loves, losses etc. Share your heart. And then simply live life, waiting for clarity to emerge, waiting for a clarity which will help you find your way and see the right direction to take.

There are five steps to the Examen as it appears in the Spiritual Exercises (n.43) of St Ignatius Loyola: 1 Give thanks Spend a few moments in gratitude for the gifts and blessings of the day. 2 Ask for light Ask God to enlighten you, showing where he has been at work and present in your day through events, people and places. 3 Examine the day Review the moments of the day, noticing what has led to consolation and what has led to desolation and my reactions to these events, people and places (see below on consolation and desolation). 4 Seek forgiveness Ask God's forgiveness for the times when you have acted, spoken or thought contrary to his grace and calling for you. 5 Resolve to change Decide what in your behaviour or attitude you will try to improve tomorrow.

St Ignatius' use of the concepts of consolation and desolation are critical to understanding and practising the examen. Consolation is when something is deeply and genuinely good for us, good for our souls, leads us towards God and away from our selfish preoccupations. Desolation is when something is not good for us, when we are wrapped up in ourselves, and careless of God's gifts and grace working in us, when we substitute other things in place of God. Note that Ignatius means spiritual consolation/desolation. While these may be found in our thoughts and emotional responses, they are not the same as our feelings of delight and despair. St Ignatius gives us a quick rule of thumb to 'test' whether something is truly consolation or truly desolation: by noticing the faith, hope and love in us. Something that is truly consolation will show itself in an increase in faith (i.e. self-confidence in myself, in my family, in my colleagues and pupils, in society in general and in God), an increase in hope (i.e. I am positive about things, always seeing the best, seizing the little opportunities that come my way, having a reason to get out of bed in the morning), and an increase in love (i.e. the loving and compassionate ways I treat those around me, especially those I find difficult to love).

‘Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult,’ wrote G.K. Chesterton. Luckily, St Ignatius is on hand to help us to cultivate gratitude, so that our hearts may be disposed ‘to receive more, to appreciate more, to love and be loved more.’ Sarah Broscombe views gratitude through psychological, spiritual and Ignatian lenses, helping us to see how and why growing in gratitude is a priority as well as a joy. Virtually every language has words for it, and all the world religions encourage it.[1] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn1] Positive psychology is researching its sources, attributes and impact, and popular psychology is extolling its virtues. Gratitude, long understood as a spiritual heavyweight, is now known to be a psychological heavyweight, too. But why? What is it? Why is it important? And how can we use St Ignatius Loyola’s insights to cultivate gratitude in our lives? WHAT IS GRATITUDE? The science of gratitude that has emerged within positive psychology provides us with useful definitions, distinct from the more generic ‘thankfulness’. Gratitude is ‘an acknowledgment that we have received something of value from others’,[2] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn2] ‘a compound of admiration and joy’,[3] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn3] ‘a felt sense of wonder, thankfulness and appreciation for life’.[4] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn4] ‘An individual experiences the emotion of gratitude… when they affirm that something good has happened to them and they recognise that someone else is largely responsible’.[5] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn5] The etymology of gratitude shares with grace (from the Latin root, gratus) the sense of unmerited favour and intentional benevolence. My working definition of gratitude, therefore, is: ‘appreciation of unearned favour, intentionally given’. Positive psychology also gives us a helpful distinction between ‘state gratitude’ (an emotional state of gratefulness) and ‘trait gratitude’ (a disposition that makes gratitude relatively easy). We can see both types of gratitude right through the Christian scriptures and spiritual writing; for example, the Psalms are full of moments of state gratitude: ‘What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?’[6] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn6] This poem by G.K. Chesterton gives a vivid expression of trait gratitude: Here dies another day During which I have had eyes, ears, hands And the great world round me; And with tomorrow begins another. Why am I allowed two?[7] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn7] Measures have been developed to help researchers understand and explore the origins and impacts of both state and trait gratitude. This is important for psychological research because the correlations between life satisfaction, mental wellbeing and gratitude are so strong. Evidence is also emerging that if gratitude is instrumentalised, i.e. you cultivate it because you want happiness as payback, the demonstrable benefits may not occur.[8] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn8] WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? Why be grateful? The scientific and spiritual answers to this question are complementary. In brief, positive psychology evidences that ‘gratitude is important to the good life’; it has the ‘potential to enhance happiness’ and is one of the strongest predictors of subjective wellbeing.[9] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn9] Brother David Steindl-Rast’s hugely successful TED talk on gratitude[10] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn10] summarises this succinctly: ‘If you want to be happy, be grateful’. The positive impact on relationships is also demonstrable. Because gratitude recognises a gift received, it is intrinsically relational, and thus ‘prosocial’. Gratitude is about both me and ‘the other’, to whom I am receptive and appreciative. In brief: Highly grateful people, compared to their less grateful counterparts, tend to experience positive emotions more often, enjoy greater satisfaction with life and more hope, and experience less depression, anxiety, and envy. They tend to score higher in prosociality and be more empathic, forgiving, helpful, and supportive as well as less focused on materialistic pursuits, compared to their less grateful counterparts.[11] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn11] Gratitude helps us in quite practical ways. Where the psalmist is ‘cast down … and disquieted’, he uses remembering deliberately to invigorate his own gratitude: ‘These things I remember as I pour out my soul...’[12] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn12] Samuel does the same, on behalf of Israel, raising an Ebenezer stone to aid remembering.[13] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn13] Gratitude is a virtue – but Ignatius approaches it from a different perspective, focusing less on benefits and virtuous practice, and more on the logic of gratitude. IS THERE A DISTINCTLY IGNATIAN UNDERSTANDING OF GRATITUDE? In the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, gratitude is not just beneficial to us, it is the only logical response to the grace of God. There is a logic of gratitude that grows through the Exercises, a dynamic of grace building upon grace. Ignatius does not begin the Exercises with his great call to trait gratitude, the Contemplation to Attain Love – he ends with it. First, we need to see clearly and in true perspective. We begin by seeing ourselves in the context of creation, of the Fall, and of the decision by the Trinity to enter into our ensnared world and set it free. We then walk with Jesus step by step, through birth, life, agony, death and resurrection. The daily drip-feeding of state gratitude with the Examen culminates in the trait gratitude of the Contemplation to Attain Love. So gratitude is the fruit of all that we have experienced. We do not create it; it is brought to birth through our encounter with Jesus. We also do not force it. Ignatius urges us throughout the Exercises to be honest about our desires and our responses. He notes that we do not always desire the best, and that sometimes we need to pray for the desire for the desire. Tell the truth, and then pray for the grace you need: this is the process. Gratitude is perspective. When I see myself contextualised in the whole of salvation history, my response will be ‘the cry of wonder’. There is a natural welling-up of gratitude and love, which is intended to last, to make us people of gratitude at a deeper level. For all Christians, there is a distinctive quality to their gratitude: belief in God as the giver. In a secular worldview, gratitude may be a response to a series of gifts from random ‘others’. For Christians, our lens is our ongoing relationship with God, the architect of salvation. Our root gratitude is to the One who has given, who gives now, and who can be utterly trusted to keep on giving. As Michael Ivens SJ explains, ‘Gratitude for the past… leads to trust for the future.’[14] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn14] Ignatius structures the Contemplation to Attain Love to reflect this past, present and future engagement with grace in my life and in the whole world, coming personally and intentionally from God. There is broad agreement that gratitude is good for you, and that it’s linked to happiness. But where the science of gratitude seeks to understand gratitude, Ignatius wants us to orient ourselves through it. Where positive psychology notes that ‘gratitude has good outcomes’, for Ignatius it is much stronger than that: more like, ‘if you see God’s world and your life as they really are, gratitude will well up in you’. All agree that ‘if you want to be happy, be grateful’, but for Ignatius it’s fundamental: gratitude is the only disposition that makes sense. WHAT ABOUT INGRATITUDE? In 1542, Ignatius wrote in a letter that ingratitude is, ‘the cause, beginning, and origin of all evils and sins.’[15] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn15] People whose upbringing, character, temperament or inculturation are conducive to trait gratitude may be baffled by trait ingratitude, and unable to understand why gratitude does not come easily and naturally to everyone. But Jesus healed ten lepers[16] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn16] – it was not the majority that came back to express their gratitude, but the minority, the one. Fluency in gratitude is a gift; perhaps a rare one. If trait gratitude does not come easily to you by character or habit, that is not abnormal. Eyesight is an apt metaphor – some eyes naturally see the world with gratitude. Some of us need to put on glasses, to choose this lens, because it is not intuitive in our way of seeing. Just as gift is a received thing, gratitude sometimes comes as a grace. We may need to pray for it. Furthermore, for many of us, ingratitude carries some precious and distinctive insights into our own habits of thought. Curiosity is more useful here than self-blame. It is worth considering whether the ingratitude in question is ‘state ingratitude’ or ‘trait ingratitude’. For ‘ingratitude’ is surely not one condition, but several. Certainly, the ingratitude of entitlement, dissatisfaction, forgetfulness and sloth are dangerous. Sloth/acedia[17] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn17] is a refusal of the gift of each day; all the things you should care for have lost their savour. The spiritual response to such a state is to cultivate diligence. Entitlement (‘I deserve all the goods that I experience’) is certainly the antithesis of humility – ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men.’[18] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn18] Forgetfulness is the great sin threaded right through the history of Israel, and is prime territory for ingratitude. Dissatisfaction (‘it’s not enough’) may spring from materialism and lead to envy. It seems to me that the case of the nine lepers is different. Often, our momentary state of ingratitude comes from simply not noticing, and from the inattention that comes with stress or hurry. Ignatius places more emphasis on the Examen [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/tags/examen] than on any other form of prayer. The Examen cultivates in us habits of remembering, of paying attention, and of noticing the fine grain of our experience. It can be a profound antidote to accidental ingratitude. We may also find ourselves, or others, in a state of ingratitude for good reason. A truthful impulse of ingratitude may be pointing us towards some disjunct that merits attention. Ingratitude is logical, for example, as a response to instrumentalised generosity. Conditional gifts, or love, or relationships, may trigger a less-than-wholehearted gratitude in us that is connected to the giver as well as to the ‘ungrateful’ one. Because ingratitude is often considered the worst of sins,[19] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn19] the temptation is to make it taboo, deny it altogether, or focus on self-blame. When we bring curiosity to it, we may find simply that our expectations were mismatched with the reality, or that we have an incident out of perspective. I suspect that truthful ingratitude is more useful than forced, dutiful gratitude. Whatever the source of our ingratitude, de Mello reminds us, ‘be grateful for your sins: they are carriers of grace’.[20] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn20] HOW CAN I CULTIVATE GRATITUDE IN MY LIFE? All schools of thought agree that gratitude is an unequivocal good, and that we can grow in gratitude. This can happen in three ways – behaviour (adopting gratitude practices), mindset (cultivating a different attitude) and receptiveness (praying for the grace of gratitude). Whilst the science of gratitude focuses on practices, we may also find prayer vital. I would summarise an Ignatian approach to cultivating gratitude into these five steps. 1) Tell the truth. Start from where you are. When gratitude is real, it wells up of its own accord. If you aren’t grateful, what are you? Your desires and reactions, even if they are frustration or dissatisfaction or anger, are the right place to start. 2) Pray for the grace of gratitude in abundance. 3) Pay attention – or, in the words of Frederick Beuchner, ‘listen to your life’.[21] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn21] Using the Examen, relish and savour your experience. Recent neuroscientific discoveries corroborate Ignatius’s instinct: due to our brain’s hard-wired negativity bias, negative experiences register instantly, whereas positive experiences generally have to be held in awareness for up to twenty seconds for them to register in emotional memory.[22] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn22] In the words of the late Gerry W. Hughes SJ, Ask yourself every day ‘Has any event today surprised or delighted me?’ More simply expressed, have I enjoyed anything today? Then focus your attention on what you enjoyed, relish it and suck all the enjoyment out of it that you can. It is only by doing this that you will begin to understand the wonder that is already in your life.[23] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_edn23] Notice where your mind is dwelling. There might be learnings in your experience of ingratitude, too. When we notice what prevents, blunts, dulls, sabotages, hijacks, or sours gratitude for us, we can take action against it. 4) Cultivate a conducive environment. Whatever is conducive to gratitude for you, find it and do it. The science of gratitude researchers note that this will be different for different casts of mind. I find that, for me, gratitude comes in waves. I have days when I know without doubt that I am the most blessed person alive (and I can articulate exactly why, too). Sadly, I also have days when I feel ungrateful, and then stalemate myself with guilt and self-blame. I find Ignatius’s past/present/ future insight of the Contemplatio extremely helpful here. You might find that remembering helps cultivate gratitude; you might find intentionally giving to others more stimulating. 5) Receive. When gratitude comes, don’t rush away. Pay attention to the giver, to the gift and to the impact on your grateful self. Savour and relish this, too. GRATITUDE AS GIFT According to Ignatius’s Contemplation to Attain Love, gratitude disposes the heart to be able to receive more, to appreciate more, to love and be loved more. How utterly relevant to Advent! Gratitude can help us prepare our hearts to receive Christ, and Christmas, and one another more fully. Gratitude enlists your past (remembering) and your present (paying attention) to bless your future. It’s a nursery of trust as well as happiness. We can practise gratitude. But sometimes, by the grace of God, gratitude just happens to us. It arrives, freely, as a gift. Sarah Broscombe is a freelance trainer, facilitator, retreat guide and coach, from the UK but now mainly working internationally. Her connection with the Jesuits began in 2002 in the field of social justice, then international development, and is now in the fields of leadership and spirituality. ---------------------------------------- [1] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref1] Watkins, van Gelder & Frias, ‘Furthering the Science of Gratitude’ in C.R. Snyder & S.J. Lopez (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, 2nd ed. (OUP: Oxford, 2011), chapter 41. [2] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref2] R.A. Emmons & A. Mishra, ‘Why Gratitude Enhances Well-Being: What We Know, What We Need to Know’ in Sheldon, Kashdan & Steger (eds.), Designing Positive Psychology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward (OUP: Oxford, 2011), Chapter 16. [3] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref3] Ortony, Clore & Collins, referenced in R.A. Emmons & C.M. Shelton, ‘Gratitude and the Science of Positive Psychology’ in C.R. Snyder & S.J. Lopez (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology (OUP: Oxford, 2001) Chapter 33. [4] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref4] R.A. Emmons & C.M. Shelton, op. cit. [5] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref5] Watkins, van Gelder & Frias, op. cit. [6] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref6] Psalm 116:12 [7] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref7] G.K. Chesterton, ‘Evening,’ in Aiden Mackey (ed.) The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Volume X: Collected Poetry, Part I (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1994), p.38. [8] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref8] Carey, Clicque, Leighton & Milton, referenced in Watkins, van Gelder & Frias, op. cit., p.8. [9] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref9] Watkins, van Gelder & Frias, op. cit. [10] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref10] https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful [https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful] [11] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref11] G. Bono, M. Krackauer & J.J. Froh, ‘The Power and Practice of Gratitude’ in Positive Psychology in Practice (Wiley & Sons: New Jersey, 2015), Chapter 33. [12] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref12] Psalm 42: 4-5. [13] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref13] 1 Samuel 7:12. [14] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref14] M. Ivens SJ, Understanding the Spiritual Exercises (Gracewing: Leominster UK, 1998), p.64. [15] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref15] From a letter by Ignatius dated 18 March 1542 quoted in Brian Lehane SJ: http://www.jesuits-chgdet.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Partners_FA09.Sprituality.pdf [http://www.jesuits-chgdet.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Partners_FA09.Sprituality.pdf] [16] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref16] Luke 17: 11-19. [17] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref17] Rob Marsh SJ, ‘Sloth’ in Thinking Faith (15 March 2012): https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20120315_2.htm [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20120315_2.htm] [18] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref18] Luke 18:9-14. [19] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref19] R.A. Emmons & C.M. Shelton (op. cit.) cite Thomas a Kempis, Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux. [20] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref20] Anthony de Mello SJ, taken from Hearts on Fire; Praying with Jesuits (Institute of Jesuit Sources: Missouri, 1993) p.33. [21] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref21] Frederick Buechner, in both Listening to Your Life and in his second memoir, Now and Then. [22] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref22] Rick Hanson has written extensively on this subject. A brief summary can be found here: https://www.rickhanson.net/train-brain-taking-good-key-points/?highlight=taking%20in%20the%20good [https://www.rickhanson.net/train-brain-taking-good-key-points/?highlight=taking%20in%20the%20good] [23] [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/how-be-grateful#_ednref23] Gerry W. Hughes SJ, ‘There is nothing we can change except ourselves’ (17 November 2014): http://www.jesuit.org.uk/blog/there-nothing-we-can-change-except-ourselves [http://www.jesuit.org.uk/blog/there-nothing-we-can-change-except-ourselves]

Audrey Hamilton, a spiritual director who runs courses in parishes to help people with their prayer life, reflects on how we can make space for prayer at home.I read a tweet recently that said ‘This has been the Lentiest Lent ever’ which amused me at the time though I find myself agreeing with it more and more. As the sheer scale of the Coronavirus crisis has become apparent, normal life has been severely impacted. The death toll and figures for those infected increases daily and none of us are unaffected. ‘Self-isolation’ has impacted our mobility and family connections and, as Christians, we are also now faced not only with the absence of our regular liturgies but also find our churches locked, even for private prayer. [This blog post was written during the lockdown of March 2020.]An invitation to meet God In these difficult new times, we find the Gospel we heard at the beginning of Lent, on Ash Wednesday, taking on even more significance – “When you pray, go to your private room and, when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in that secret place…” (Mt 6:6). There is both invitation and promise in those words – an invitation to meet God as and where we are, in our homes, with the assurance that God is indeed with us.We may already have a time and space when we do pray at home – in the morning or evening perhaps – but now we might want to make this more intentional and really try to recognise the sacredness of the space in which we find our ourselves, seeing it indeed as ‘holy ground’. A space for prayer A candle on a window-sill, or on a small table in a quiet corner, can mark out a sacred space – with perhaps a Bible or prayer book, a small icon or image, or something from the natural world to recall God’s beauty such as a flower, a pebble from the seaside, a pinecone (perhaps brought back from your ‘socially distanced’ daily walk). It need not be elaborate - just something that serves to remind you that God is indeed with you and looks on you with great love. God looking at you with love And this awareness of God looking at you with love is how St Ignatius advocates we come to our prayer space – just spend a few moments pondering that love, receiving that love and then entering into it as we pray. May your domestic prayer space be, during these challenging times, a place of rich encounter between you and the God who loves you. > “If you find it hard to pray, don’t give up. Be still; make space for God to come in; let Him look at you, and He will fill you with His peace.” Pope Francis Audrey Hamilton [https://www.pathwaystogod.org/resources/profiles/audrey-hamilton]

Most people want to live life to the full, but how do you go about that? One way is through a heightened use of our senses. Becoming consciously aware of what each sense has to offer can greatly enrich daily living. This ‘way’ calls for pausing, maybe just for a second, on the use of a particular sense. Senses can be aroused randomly, for example by an unexpected sound, smell or touch. If the stimulus is attractive, or even repulsive, give it a few seconds of your attention. The experience of a particular sense might evoke memories, something entirely new or simply be valued for what it is offering you in a particular moment of time. Our senses can also alert us to something significant in our life – maybe arouse feelings of joy or alternatively of sadness. Our senses can ‘speak’ to us of many things through their ability to bring to our attention a large variety of reactions such as: surprise, delight, challenge, sadness and fear.