Quam dilecta: Start:Stop - St Ignatius Loyola

Tuesday, 31 July 2018

Start:Stop - St Ignatius Loyola

Start:Stop offers the chance for busy commuters to Start their day by Stopping to reflect for ten minutes. Starting every quarter hour between 7.45am and 9.00am on Tuesday mornings at St Stephen Walbrook, in the heart of the City of London, we invite people to drop in for as long as they can to hear a sequence of bible readings, reflections and prayers or simply to sit and reflect. For more information visit our website. This reflection is from Tuesday 31^st July 2018.

Thank you for joining us for Start:Stop. My name is Phillip Dawson. This reflection will last ten minutes. We begin with a bible reading, which can be found on page 18 in the New Testament section of the Bible.

Bible Reading – Matthew 15.21-28

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

Reflection

Today the church remembers Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits. One of the many gifts of Ignatian spirituality is the technique of imaginative prayer; immersing ourselves in the stories from the Gospels – imagining the sights, sounds and smells, feeling the heat of the day, following Jesus as he walks; seeing the expression on his face. Looking through the eyes of those described in the scriptures can help us to see God at work in our own lives, in all things – a key characteristic of the Ignatian tradition.

In his reflection “Three Mile an Hour God”, the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama leads us through his own imaginative prayer, based on the reading we’ve just heard. By wrapping ourselves in the narrative of the Gospel, we come to learn with him, that the nature and timing of Jesus’s response to the Canaanite woman teaches us as much about the slow work of God as it does about the woman’s perseverance in prayer. He writes;

“We do not know much about this woman...but we do know that [she] was hit by a storm…It is not that someone next door is possessed by a demon, but my daughter. It is not that my daughter once a year suffers possession by a demon. She is severely possessed by a demon. She is exposed to naked threat and danger…Strangely, Jesus ‘did not answer her a word.’ What is the matter with Jesus Christ? Why did he not willingly and quickly grant her desire as he did on other occasions? Could he not see at once the faith she had in him?"

Koyama leads us to reflect on these questions and concludes: “Love has its speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed….It is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks…The Canaanite woman believed in Jesus Christ against all her own speeds by trusting the speed of the promise of God.”

Whilst not a Jesuit (Koyama was a protestant theologian), his image of walking at the speed of God’s love in the ‘Three Mile an Hour God’ brings to mind the incarnational nature of Ignatian spirituality as well as another characteristic of the tradition; that of the ‘contemplative in action.’ This is not a spirituality confined to one place – but one that is out there, living, breathing – and walking - in the world; as the Jesuit priest and writer James Martin explains: “Instead of seeing the spiritual life as one that can exist only if it is enclosed by the walls of a monastery, Ignatius asks you to see the world as your monastery…. In Ignatian spirituality there is nothing that you have to put in a box and hide.”

In ‘Sane New World’ the comedian Ruby Wax says that most of us are “living the life” even though “we are too busy to have one”. For us, (she writes) “busy-ness is our God, we worship busy-ness. People ask me if I’m busy, I tell them ‘I’m so busy I’ve had two heart attacks’. They congratulate me on this achievement.” The book is an easy-to-read version of her MA thesis in which she sets out a variety of coping strategies for obtaining peace of mind through the principles of Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy; a technique used widely by psychotherapists to support the treatment of anxiety, depression and other mental and physical health problems. I was introduced to the practice some years ago.

Mindfulness is characterised by dispassionate self-awareness; and it is the dispassion which left me wanting. We believe that we are made in the image of God – and that God is love – and our greatest commandment is to love one another; to live in Christ – and his Passion - every day. The emptiness of mindfulness – its dispassion - left me cold.

Our search for guidance in reconciling our call to live in Christ in the face of the challenges and temptations of daily life still draws many to Saint Ignatius’s most famous work, the “Spiritual Exercises” (or to give them their full title the “Spiritual Exercises to Overcome Oneself, and to Order One's Life, Without Reaching a Decision Through Some Disordered Affection”.) Written nearly 500 years ago, the Exercises train us through prayer and reflective practice over a thirty-day guided retreat, to develop a freedom or detachment from the things or situations that keep us from the joy of growing in union in the love of God; to achieve a state of being that Ignatius described as;

“like a balance at equilibrium without leaning to either side, that I might be ready to follow whatever I perceive is more for the glory and praise of God our Lord and for the salvation of my soul.”

From the first week of the Exercises, we are guided to recognise and accept God’s unconditional love for us; many people do not find it easy to realise that they are loved. In the final week, Ignatius invites us to surrender ourselves to God, using a prayer known as the Suscipe;

Take, Lord and receive all my liberty,

my memory, my understanding and all my will –

all that I have and possess.

You, Lord, have given all that to me.

I now give it back to you, O Lord.

All of it is yours.

Dispose of it according to your will.

Give me love of yourself along with grace

For that is enough for me.

Sounds like a tough call? Fr James Martin, author of the New York Times Best Seller The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything, agrees. He concludes the book by confessing :

“I don’t think I’ve ever been able to say that prayer and mean it completely. But as Ignatius says, it’s enough to have the desire for the desire…God will take care of the rest.”

As we spend a moment in silence, perhaps we might give thanks for the life of St Ignatius; for the gift of imaginative prayer, the joy of finding God in all things, the wisdom of the Exercises in freeing us from that which separates us from God – and for the knowledge that whatever life throws at us, God’s love is walking with us at every step we take.

Prayers

A Personal Prayer of Pedro Arrupe, Superior General of the Society of Jesus in the 1970’s and 1980’s:

Grant me, O Lord, to see everything now with new eyes,

to discern and test the spirits

that help me read the signs of the times,

to relish the things that are yours, and to communicate them to others.

Give me the clarity of understanding that you gave Ignatius.

The response to Lord of life and love is

Open our eyes to your presence.

Lord of life and love