The A-Ha Moment

I have been struggling with the 19th annotation retreat since October, wondering what I was doing, and what I was supposed to be getting out of it.  This morning I had my a-ha moment.  I was reading a homework assignment on the graces of the Principle and Foundation, the First Week and the Second Week of the Exercises and realized with a start that indeed I have received those graces. 

The section I was reading came from "The Graces of the Third and Fourth Weeks" by Dominic Maruca as reprinted in Notes on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, edited by David L. Fleming (St.Louis: Review for Religious, 1983).  It read, in part:

     When considering the Principle and Foundation, the exercitant should have received a dual grace: (a) since God is the Lord of history it is His prerogative to demand that we serve Him at each specific moment of history, cooperating with Him in directing the course of history; (b) since we are dependent creatures, we are relieved of the oppressive burden of autonomous agents serving rather as instruments of the Source of all being and activity.  This balanced dual grace enables him to be both accountable and yet not overanxious.  Moreover, he has acknowledged the relativity of all things; no thing is made absolute: neither wealth nor penury; neither health nor distress; neither honors nor disapproval; neither longevity nor a short life-span.  He is truly free and fearless and yet conscious of his responsibility to utilize the means and opportunities which God provides.
        In dwelling upon the enigma of sin in history, he has been assured that the process of alienation from God began long before he came on the scene and that it will continue long after he has taken his leave.  He has considered how this outcast state was compounded by subsequent sins of man which have woven a tangled skein of sinful structures in which we all find ourselves enmeshed as part of the human race.  ... In accepting God's judgement upon this past personal sinfulness, however, he has experienced God's healing forgiveness and been freed from oppressive guilt and the frustration of sheer futility.
           With a sense of gratitude toward Jesus Christ, his liberator, he has felt the inspiration to enlist in a corporate enterprise, to enter into the mystery of how Christ is continuing his work of liberation through the joint efforts of many brothers.  This grace of the Call of the King has several dimensions: the earnest desire to promote the Kingdom on a grand scale is balanced by the realization that his own person - body and soul - must be the immediate focus of his zealous concern, since the roots of all evil are lodged within himself.  
            Next, by entering into the mystery of the Eternal Council of the Holy Trinity, he has felt a sharing of God's own concern and compassion for mankind, which he views as wandering about lost in its own blindness and powerlessness.  ...
...The graces of the 1st and 2nd weeks are not something which were communicated en bloque; rather, each exercitant has realized them to some extent, depending on the lived experiences of his relating to the living God and his involvement in the course of human events.  His actualization of these graces, however, will continue in a spiral-like fashion as he is progressively blessed and burdened with a new lived-experience of sin and redemption.  Grace is an evolving, relational organic reality which God is continually communicating to each person.


This means, in a nutshell, that this morning I realized that I have been called to follow and to ministry, that I must take compassion not only out into the world, but also into my own home.  That I am truly a graced, forgiven sinner and that Jesus is an intimate friend.  

These words are not easy for me to write in what may be a public forum, but I feel quite different today.  Renewed in spirit.  

Also, last night during the bereavement group I am co-facilitating, I realized that I truly am called to ministry.  I am a minister.

The Vatican Rip

I just finished The Vatican Rip by Jonathan Gash. Lovejoy is blackmailed into stealing a valuable antique from the Vatican museum. A good book, but a bit more confusing than his others. I am still waiting for a copy of his book The Spend Game to arrive. I skipped it for this title.

Now I have to work on homework. To begin with I have to compare the second week Ignatian Spiritual Exercise on The Kingdom, with the exercise The Two Standards. There is a whole bunch more, but I take it one piece at a time.

My Busy Sunday and a Reading Update

Today I must begin work on my next class assignment. I am reading about and writing on the 2nd week of the Spiritual Exercises and the Prayer of the Senses. I have five topics to consider for my paper and have managed to get two of them into a rough draft. The next one is going to require a reread of the material - a short handout from Sandra Schneiders' The Revelatory Text.

I also finished yet another Jonathan Gash book, The Grail Tree. I have not mentioned what his books are about. They take place in a village in England. The main character, Lovejoy, is an antique dealer and a "divvie." A divvie is someone who can tell if something is an antique through his own internal senses: think of a water diviner for antiques. The books are murder mysteries with plenty of antiques information thrown in. I think any antique collector would enjoy them. I am not into antiques, but he talks about human greed frequently, and I confess that if I could make money off something priceless I just might.

The Grail Tree assumes that there has been a finding of the Holy Grail and the machinations of the various characters to acquire it and profit from it.

The Lovejoy books are irreverent, definitely chauvinistic and fun.

Ignatian studies

I began reading about the second week of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius today. This section includes the Prayer of the Senses. I have a report to write on this and several other topics. Slogging through the reading all day today with many unwanted, but not unexpected, naps.

Meanwhile, my own adventure with the Spiritual Exercises has me traveling through the first week, a week of contemplation of my sins and the sins of the world.