 All right, good evening. Welcome back to those of you who are able to join us for our first session a couple of weeks ago. And for those of you who are tuning in for the first time, we're happy to have you. My name is Jessica Colligan, and with me again is Father Jerry Bloschek, who will be leading our discussion of A Pilgrim's Journey, the autobiography of St. Ignatius of Loyola. As always, I ask that you please keep your microphones muted while Father Jerry is speaking, just to minimize distractions. And we do want this to be interactive. So please use the chat, use the raise hand feature, whether you're responding to a prompt from Father Jerry, or if you have a question or a thought of your own, we would love to hear that. So we'll kind of monitor that and keep an eye on the comments and call on you too to come off of mute to ask questions if you'd like to do that as well. I just wanna quickly mention that tomorrow is Stag Giving Day here at Fairfield, and that's a day for our alumni, parents and friends to come together in support of the university and our students and our programs. And you are able to direct your support to an area of interest, like the Murphy Center for Ignatian Spirituality, Campus Ministry or many, many other options if you're so inclined. So we do hope you'll consider participating in that tomorrow. And now I will turn things over to Father Jerry. Thanks, Jessica. Already I see many names of my dear colleagues and friends, and I see names of folks who were with us two weeks ago, and I see new names that I don't recognize, and I wanna welcome you all. Let's begin with the prayer, but ever faithful and true. God of our ancestors, God of our present, God of our future, we believe that you are with us on each step of our life's journeys. Each of us are pilgrims. As we remember the story of your son Ignatius, our brother, who chose always to call himself a pilgrim, help us to accustom ourselves to a life of pilgrimage, a life of constant learning, a life in which you and all the circumstances of our life keep revealing ourselves to us, and you and your dream for the world, for this universe to us. Help us to travel our pilgrim journeys with confidence, with compassion for one another, with a readiness and a flexibility to adjust to what you show us, to what you reveal to us. Give us a desire above all else to do and to be what is true, to be and to do what is authentic to your desires and your vision for us. Bless each of us who are participating in this evening. Help us in this time together to be open to what you want to say to us because we truly believe that you are with us, that you are working in us and for us and among us. To you, oh God of mercy and compassion, ever faithful God, to you be glory and honor forever. Amen. Again, thank you and I thank Jessica for organizing. I thank Jessica for being my moderator too and for being my reminder that we did and we intend for this session to be interactive. And I apologize that I think last time I was blabbing on too much. And so Jess, I count on you to let me know when people would like to speak. We were looking, I asked you and I advised you to read the text of the autobiography and judiciously take a look at the notes that Father Talenda offered, but secondarily, but primarily to focus on the story of St. Ignatius. And we were looking at the section of St. Ignatius when he would, for this meeting, the section of St. Ignatius's remembrances or recital for when he was in, thank you Mary, thank you Mary Elizabeth Carmody, who assures me that I wasn't blabbing too much. Thank you. When you get older, I think it's wise to always check yourself, not think that everybody needs to hear your wisdom. So thank you everybody. We were gonna look at the section where Ignatius recounts what happened to him at Van Rysa and what happened to him as he undertook his journey, his pilgrimage to the Holy land. Before we get to that, I want to be sure that we didn't miss anything very, very important or that you wanted to talk about from the first section, which was St. Ignatius's encounter with that cannonball in Pamplona, with his recovery in Loyola, with his journey to the great shrine of our Lady of Montserrat. So I wanted to be sure we didn't miss anything. There was something I had meant to share with you. There's a wonderful, the Jesuits have a great, beautiful retreat and spirituality center in Van Rysa. And there's a young Cataloni and Jesuit by the name of Javier Maloney. And Javier reflected on this cannonball moment in Ignatius's life. And maybe as a prompt for our discussion tonight to get us started, I'll share with you a paragraph or two of what Javier Maloney offered from his own heart. And so as he thought about what happened at that cannonball moment. And as you know, of course, as I just said, it's the way Ignatius chose to begin his account. Not for nothing, right? He could have chosen a lot of other ways of introducing his story, but he begins with the cannonball. So Javier Maloney writes, how is it that we start this story with the defeat, with the failure, with pain? Isn't it often the case that our own stories begin with confusion? Where does this injury of Ignatius lead us? It is important to ask ourselves this question. Where have we ourselves been wounded? Or where do we still have to be pierced in order to approach the standstill that Ignatius experienced at Loyola and then later at Monresa? Don't forget that the cannonball was the divine means for Ignatius's conversion. Each one of us has sustained some shelling at least once in our lives or as many times has been necessary to redirect us and to remind us. That palm shell has been forceful and that wound has been deep, proportional to our distraction and our disorientation. Each of us and all of us in this pandemic need to ask what is the metanoia, the transformation that this cannonball of the pandemic and whatever cannonballs we experience personally, what is it that is happening so that we may stop and be more capable of responding to the voice of God? It would be a conversation in spiritual direction and a conversation among us all that would be worthy if certainly more even than one hour. But I just want to draw your attention to the fact that so many things in my life and in yours that you might be, or our lives as a church, as a community, that we might initially be inclined to think of as some huge crisis, some great tragedy that is throwing us off track are in fact a wake up moment. And I don't want to be overdramatic about this, but the wake up moment can be of all different sorts. It can be a diagnosis. It can be the loss of what we thought was the opportunity of the goal that we were orienting ourselves to. The refusal, I'm speaking as an academic now, the refusal of the major publisher to accept our manuscript that we thought was the work of our lifetime. It can be the collapse of a project. It can even be the end or the challenge of a relationship or a crisis with people that we love very much. It can be sometimes an attack on our character and a collapse of the status or of the arrangement we spent many years trying to put together for ourselves. So these cannonball moments are not necessarily moments that we have to say were in themselves good things. They can be unjust things. They can be unfortunate things. They can be tragic things. But the wonderful alchemy of God's grace is such that these events can be used by God if we are attentive, if we're open to stop us and help us realize maybe that there's more to our lives and that there's a great deal that maybe we have to let go of or priorities that need to be rearranged or maybe illusions on which we were building our lives maybe even false identities that we had very artfully constructed that are getting us nowhere. That's the case obviously with St. Ignatius. Let me just stop right there. Does that resonate at all with you? Does that resonate at all with you? Has that ever happened to you? Have you been hit by a cannonball? Certainly. That's why I'm in Fairfield right now. What happened Glen? I had a series of failures in my previous position which encouraged me to just see what else was out there. And so I applied to Fairfield as well as one other position in Connecticut that had virtually the same job description. I actually thought I had it in at the other place because I knew somebody there. They never called me but Fairfield did. So here I am, 20 years later. And Glen, I think it's fair to say and I want to put the words in your mouth but I think it's fair to say that for you given the range of your interests and your passions could you have been at a better place? No, I don't think so. Yeah. And for our benefit, God also sent you here for us, Glen. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Have you had a cannonball moment? Thank you. Someone, I'm gonna observe anonymity. Someone says, yes, professional challenges, a young family with cancer. There's a wake up call. I mean, it is so, you know, Bishop Barron whom I think many of you know, Bishop of, auxiliary Bishop of, I think San Francisco or Los Angeles and a wonderful theologian and spiritual teacher says Christianity is so much a matter of seeing. And we have so, we so easily lose sight of who we are and what God is calling us, who God is calling us to be and to develop and very often in our stories and the story of Ignatius and in the story of so many of the great women and men of our tradition, the breakthrough, the great breakthrough comes only when our arrangements, I call them arrangements collapse. I don't wanna get too autobiographical only because I don't want to scandalize anybody or to lead you to try to track down whom I'm talking about. But for me, it was very significant at a certain point in my Jesuit life to really be unfairly, unfairly judged and to be treated in a way that felt like a betrayal. And I have to say that had that not happened, there's a huge, huge part of my own personal life and spiritual development that would never have occurred. I mean, it wasn't true what people said and it wasn't right, what was done, but there was something that was liberated in me. I began to think there's nothing now that anybody can take away from it. You know, you've tried your best and I discovered that I was with God. But before we go any further, anybody else wanna say anything on this particular topic or the beginning of Ignatius's conversion? How about the beginning of Ignatius at Loyola, during his conversion at Loyola? Is there anything else anybody wants to share about that before we move on? Okay. Now, what happened to St. Ignatius at Loyola? Please remember that what happened to St. Ignatius of Loyola, this extraordinary experience of God speaking to him, heart to heart person to person, happens while Ignatius is not a monk, not a priest, not a religious professional, if you will. It happens while Ignatius is a layperson and it happens as a result of getting his leg blown apart and it happens while he's lying in his convalescent in a hospital or in his family's castle. Now, in our long, long tradition of Christianity, both in East and West, of course, of course the spiritual leaders of our tradition have said, oh God indeed can share God's very self with devout souls. But here is this, but usually there were people who were in monasteries and usually they were quite exceptional people. Ignatius is not exceptional. Ignatius is a bozo. Ignatius is ambitious. Ignatius is, from the point of view of the world, a failed nobody. I mean Ignatius is the paradigm of a failed aristocrat. But that Ignatius' story is the story of somebody who's not a religious professional, who's not particularly devout, who's certainly not faithful, who's certainly whose record is not clean. Ignatius tells us the story that at that moment, God and God's sublime mystery and then God's tremendous mercy reaches out to him and communicates God's very self to him. So what is Ignatius telling you and me and anybody who reads his story, Ignatius is saying it is possible to have a personal intimate contact with this great mystery whom we name God. It is possible because God by God's very nature desires to reach out and connect and communicate and to give God's very self to the person whom God is searching. I don't know whether that strikes you, but I think a lot of people grew up thinking that this sort of experience that Ignatius narrates in his story, that belongs to the great mystics, to the exceptional people. There's nothing exceptional about what God wants to give us, which is God's very self. This is revolutionary in the way that most of us were brought up. We thought that there were some few, few, few, chosen souls to whom God wanted to have a special relationship. Ignatius's story is saying, no, there are no limits. It is the very nature of God to want to share God's very self. Glenn, isn't it your experience in spiritual direction? The people are astounded when they experience that. Absolutely, absolutely. So, and I'm always astounded that it's different for each individual person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The people who come to the Murphy Center are people who are so hungry for something more. They've been to church, whether they're Lutherans, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Muslims, they're looking for something more. And somehow or other, they're suspecting, though maybe they were never told. In fact, they were told quite the opposite, but they're hungering for a personal encounter with the mystery of God. And because we come from this Ignatian tradition, our assumption, our operating assumption is that that is what God is looking for. That God wants to give God's own self to each person. In fact, later on, in St. Ignatius's spiritual exercises, I think I told you, it's a manual for coaches, for people who are accompanying others, who are seeking a deeper relationship with God. The spiritual exercises are all, if you like, the distillation of the experience that Ignatius is describing in the autobiography. But then when he distills them, we get maybe the undercurrent, maybe we get the meat of what Ignatius was experiencing. Listen to this. Ignatius says toward, in one of his exercises, it's for those of you who know the exercises, it's number 231 and following contemplation to attain divine love. Love consists in the mutual communication between two persons. The one who loves, gives and communicates to the beloved what he or she has, or a part of what one has or what one is. The beloved wants to give one's very self to the beloved. Whether it's knowledge or not, honors riches, see myself before God and be stirred to great gratitude. Ignatius is saying, that's the paradigm for what God does to us. If you're looking, this is Ignatius's experience, we were talking about this, Ignatius says, I was maybe painting him as a, you know, is really a rogue in his Caliwag, but he did learn something about love. He learned that real love is about love, that real love is about sharing your very self. And it's the best metaphor that he can reach out to use when he's talking about what he experiences and what he believes God wants to give to everybody, that God is the divine lover and that God wants to share God's very self with God's people. And that's not for the elite. There's nothing elitist about Ignatius' spirituality. It's the common woman and the common man to whom Ignatius assures us, God wants to give God's very self. I wanna share with you one quote. And then I promise you, I'm gonna shut up. This is Father Hugo, Father Karl Rahner, a great German theologian who had a great deal to do with what led up to and what gave a theological foundation for Vatican II. Still in Vatican II, whose message is still misunderstood and embattled by some people who would like to recreate the church of the 1940s and 50s. Father Karl Rahner wrote a book, Ignatius speaks to the Jesuit of the 20th century. So Rahner said, let's imagine that Ignatius was speaking to young Jesuits or even old Jesuits of the 20th century. Here's what Ignatius, Karl Rahner, this experienced old Jesuit, German Jesuit says. So these are Ignatius' words in Rahner's mind. Please listen, because for me it's a great summary of what happened at Loyola and what motivated Ignatius to have all of these quotes and quotes, spiritual conversations. Did you notice throughout the autobiography that Ignatius is forever talking about spiritual conversations? And they were all about helping people to be alert to how God was giving God's very self to them. So the core, the core, the core of all Ignatian spirituality is this confidence that Ignatius had, that God is a communicative God, that God is not closed in on God's own self, but that God gives God self, not only messages, not only mandates, not only orders, but as a lover, God gives God's very self to God's people. So listen to Rahner. I was convinced during my illness at Loyola and then later and decisively during my time in Manresa that I had a direct encounter with God. This experience, I longed to communicate to others. To hear that, Ignatius wants others to have a direct experience of God because it is possible because it's what God wants and because it's what the human heart desires and longs for, back to Rahner and not Jerry. This experience, I longed to communicate to others. All I can say is that I knew God, nameless, unfathomable, silent, and yet near, bestowing upon me, bestowing himself upon me in the fullness of his mystery. I knew God beyond all concrete imaginings. I knew God in such nearness and grace as is impossible to confound or mistake. So this remains certain. It is possible for a human person to know God. Now, Jerry now, not completely, not in God's fullness, but it is possible to say that I have authentically been touched by God, back to Rahner. And now Rahner is speaking to Jesuits. And that's why we have something like the Murphy Center. That's why people like Glenn and so many others who may be on here have been trained as spiritual directors. This remains certain. It is possible for the human person to meet God. And so your ministry must keep this goal in mind always at every step unwaveringly. I mean God really and truly, the God of incomprehensibility, the God of ineffable mystery, yet the God who comes close. And so we live and become and are loved. And if we allow ourselves to be taken up by him are not destroyed, but given ourselves back to us truly, truly, perhaps for the first time. I'm sorry if I've spent so much time on Loyola because it's really, it's the beginning of what continues at Monresa. And it lies at the heart of everything that we try to do in campus ministry and the Murphy Center and everything that we do at a Jesuit institution. We proceed from the fact that God gives God self to us and desires to live with us and in us. Any, I'm gonna stop for a second. Anybody wanna say anything here and now about that? Hi, Father. Hi, how are you? Good, how are you? So just something that was very fascinating for me in the very last pages before he gets to Monresa, it's that he had the determination that he was going to Jerusalem. And on his way, he even bought clothes that he thought he would use once he arrived there. But as he continued in his journey and arrived to Monresa, it seems like he found somebody that needed clothes. And he gave up everything he bought. So it's just like, I know he was early in his faith and probably he hadn't had that commitment that later on he had. But how beautiful it is that he had in mind Jerusalem and that was his goal and that kind of led the way for what came next. Aura, thank you so much for sharing that because it's a great expression of what happens to the pilgrim. So, you know, so was Ignatius wrong when he thought that God was calling him to live his life visiting the holy places and spending his life helping souls in Jerusalem? No, you know, we know what we know at that moment. And then we respond according to what God and God's people need of us at that next moment, right? So he gives everything he has to that pilgrim, to that poor person, right? So think about this. Well, you know, it's toward the end for the end of the material we were looking at today. But is it was Ignatius mistaken when he thought that he was going to spend his life in Jerusalem? How is it? Was God playing with him? What do you make of that? The Dominican, the Franciscans throw out. They look at this guy, he's right. He has no money. He's talking about helping souls. So get in the hell out of here because we have to be responsible to the Turks who are controlling life in Jerusalem. So was Ignatius deluded? What happens? What do you make of that episode? Ignatius of the Holy Land. I think I was one of them. I mean, he just found a way for Ignatius to be engaged. And after that, he led the way, but it was just like a way to hook him up, if you will. I think there's one thing that's very important is that Ignatius wants desperately to be close to the places where Jesus was. And so the Christocentric aspect of Ignatius' spirituality is always dominant, right? Ignatius, something happened at Manresa, which we're gonna go back to. Something happened to Ignatius so that Christ is now not just on a pedestal. Christ is not some distant figure that somehow, I don't know, Ignatius, who knows how he imagined it or whether he imagined it or not, but somehow Christ is the one who does our salvation by dying on the cross. But, and maybe somebody was supposed to be imitated, but it was at Manresa that Christ becomes so real to Ignatius that he wants to know so much about him. He wants to follow the scriptures. He wants to go back and reread and pray through with his imagination, everything that this life of Christ that he had read in his sister's castle back in Loyola, that life of Christ, everything he had there. He wrote it all out and he wanted to go back to it. It grabbed his imagination and told him, this is for you. And so he wanted to go back and he wanted desperately to be in those places where Jesus was, even to the point of that silly story, which I have to believe Ignatius recounted with a smile on his face saying, you know how crazy this was? I insisted before I left on going back to the Mount of the Ascension and I gave away my pen knife so that I could put my feet so that I could see the place where Jesus was footsteps were. I think he had to be abused at himself but he desperately wanted to be in that place where Jesus was, his heart was on fire. Something happened in Manresa. Okay, you remember among the great illuminations that he recounts in Manresa, there was a shift for Ignatius between Jesus who is somebody who is admired to someone who is alive. Somebody who's not just one more model like Humphrey or Francis or Dominic but somehow at Manresa, Jesus becomes alive and Ignatius is taken up now, not in wanting to die. I mean, think about that shift when Ignatius is in Loyola. There's almost no mention of Jesus, right? Do you remember? He's not talking about Jesus. He's talking about all I wanna imitate Francis and Dominic and the great saints who did really hot stuff who really did extraordinary stuff but not after Manresa. After Manresa, he just wants to stay in the holy land. He wants to be close to Jesus but something else happened in Manresa. Manresa helped Ignatius to understand that Jesus is not some distant figure from the past but a real live figure who invites Ignatius to get to work. That Ignatius now somehow and Ignatius later will say to people my whole concept, my whole vision of what would later become the society of Jesus has its origins in Loyola, in Manresa when I began to experience the call of Christ. Ignatius tells us that it was in Manresa that he began to realize that whoever Jesus was, Ignatius was numb. I mean, remember he's a lay person. He's had a miserable education. He's spent his whole life flirting and jousting. So he has had no education to speak of his Latin is terrible and that was the language of education. So Ignatius freighted all that away because he was interested in vanity and making a world for himself. So he hadn't paid much attention to Jesus. And now Ignatius begins to sense that Jesus not only is what the church told him Jesus was supposed to be but that now Jesus is alive and Jesus is calling him. Remember among the great illuminations he experiences Jesus present. Remember that? And Ignatius is accounts of what happens among the illuminations on Manresa. He has an experience of Jesus present and he keeps saying that he keeps encountering Jesus. So really what there's a breakthrough. Somehow Jesus is no longer, Jesus doesn't belong to the past. He's not locked up in the Tabernacle. He's not on a pedestal. He's alive and Ignatius encounters him. And even when he's going toward Jerusalem on his way back to Jerusalem, he keeps encountering these experiences of the living Jesus. But then in Manresa he also experiences Jesus as saying to him, I want you to be a part of my mission for this world which is not over yet. That's huge. That's huge. And we're talking about something that happened in the 16th century and most Christians haven't gotten it now. That Jesus is not some distant past figure but that he's alive and that he invites people into a relationship and that he invites people to share his work of bringing fullness of life to the world. Let me stop there. Questions, comments, protests, corrections. You all know about, you all have studied this. You think, please tell me what you're thinking. If I could just a comment. Sure, who is this? Who is this? This is Kevin. Hi, Kevin. I found that a couple of things happened in these two chapters that were interesting first. He had this realization that he wants to have a relationship with this personalized or unique relationship with God and that prompts him to want to take action. But then he seems to retreat to his traditional views that he will figure out how to get this done. And so he goes through asceticism and kind of the hubris of that. And he has all these theories on how it's going to go that he's wanting an outcome rather than a journey. Kevin, beautifully put, beautifully put, please go ahead. And so once he, and all these all along the way, these what look like obstacles are actually pauses to remind him there's a journey ahead. And the journey may take him differently. And I made the comment that, and he tends to give things away then. He puts coins on a ship, wherever it was. And he gives away his clothes. And it's always at these pivotal moments when his journey is taking a different route. Right. Interesting. When his journey is taking a different route. But you're right, Kevin, something is sparked. There's a new life in him, but you're right. He falls back to his old paradigms, right? And he falls back to the old paradigm of let me get this under control. Let me take care of this, right? Right. And don't we all, right? Don't we all until that sublime moment when, and it's not one moment, but we get on a trajectory when we begin to understand that this is about letting go and not about holding on. Right. Don, you look like you're ready to say something. Yeah, I was warming up. No, the thing is, no. But all seriousness is- I had Don in class for two years, so I kind of know who he was. But the thing is the great trust that he placed in God, that he's very open, even though the courts changes his direction, whether it's going to the Holy Land, staying there, he's able to, with his trust in God, even give away stuff. He says, because, you know, that proves I trust in the Lord. He has this great open relationship and wherever he encounters, he takes advantage of it, either to talk about spiritual, in fact, he seeks people out. Of course, we never like to take a cruise with him, but the thing is, you know, he was- He'd pick up your tab constantly. But all seriousness is that I admired that because in all these encounters, he looked for opportunities to be Christ-like. His favorite book is The Invitation of Christ. He's reading that, and he's doing his best. And he's very adaptable because he's open to where Christ is leading. Don, beautifully put, beautifully put. All of those instances, and I think, look, remember, this book he assumes is going to be read by not only lay people, but the early Jesuits, who are going to be tempted to say, oh, God, we need security. We got to make sure we have enough money for everything. Ignatius is saying, come on, you have to finally trust in God. The only way you can be a pilgrim and have any authenticity is believing that finally you're in God's hands. And again, you talk about the long-term meaning and impact of Ignatius's story, how many of us are content with the fact that we're on a pilgrimage and that we haven't figured it out and that our lives are not all that we would like them to be and that we haven't reached the destination yet. But Ignatius is saying, that's the paradigm, the pilgrimage is the paradigm, not reaching the goal, but rather adjusting constantly to the new revelations, to the new experiences, to the new ways that God is both revealing things and asking things of you. But as you say, Don, you can do it because you have this confidence that finally the one thing that doesn't really seem to be steady, right? Ignatius is a, Ignatius is and was, and I think till the day that he dies was a narcissist, just like a lot of us, right? He's on a pilgrimage. He's always kind of construct, I mean, think about the scruples. What do you think about the experience of scruples in Manresa? That's a very important part of the story. What do you make of that? Elevyn Sansa has her handphrase. I don't know if we want to address that before we get into... Go ahead and say, you know, do we have some of the handraces who want to talk about scruples? All right, let's just do with the scruples for now. Then we'll come back and pick up the handraces. It looks like she just came off mute. If you want to go ahead, Vincenza, you can. Well, I don't know if that would, yeah, I wouldn't fit in with there enough, but what I was thinking about was in the early part of the chapter on Manresa, I mean, it's talking about, you know, coming to that relationship with God, and he notices noticeable changes. He goes to that whole period when he's tempted all the time by the devil, and he goes, you know, during the week, he eats nothing. You know, he fasts the entire week, and then on Sunday, he gives himself a break, but he also goes to confession every Sunday. So he put himself back and forth, and I guess the scruples start in there too, where he was never satisfied. He always felt he didn't do it good enough. And finally, the confessor says to him, listen, you gotta stop. Stop, we can't have any more about this past life because, you know, you're kind of like doing yourself in, but I kind of thought that part brings it into right where we are today. I think that's, I see it as, this is the contemporary connection that Anishis brings to today's world because the whole idea of the temptations and being tempted at mass, that's something that those of us in different various ways of studying and learning about our faith, that drives me crazy. When you're at mass and you get the temptations and it's like, okay, and you do what he says, you know, get behind me, you know, like Jesus said in the Bible, get behind me Satan, you know, and how we struggle on our pilgrimage to deal with all of that, deal with the world, deal with the pandemic, deal with whatever. And, you know, the secularism, the all the, I don't know, the turmoil that we seem to be experiencing is sort of like what he experienced and how we have to depend ourselves on surrendering to God, counting on confession, praying and doing all the things that he did, maybe not his level of asceticism. Vincenzo or anybody else, I think you're dead on, Vincenzo, what is the relevance of Ignatius' struggle? Remember to the point of potential suicide. Right. What is, is there a message there that Ignatius has for us? Why does he tell us that story? It's an embarrassing, it's a horribly embarrassing story. I was so, I was so screwed up, you know, that I was at the point of committing suicide. What is Ignatius? What spiritual malady that is, is there a spiritual malady that we are still individually or culturally suffering, you know, that Ignatius' story can tell, can somehow address anybody? It says, I think it says that what I was going down that path is that no matter what you're doing, you know, it makes it contemporary. We are in the same situation today and we have to sort of do what he did, which is constantly seek out somebody that can help us understand whatever God is, help us understand how to deal with ourselves. And when he realized that, oh, I was going to commit suicide, that's a terrible sin. You know, we have to deal with our own, you know, recognition and what do we do to, to deal with that? So that to me is the contemporary connection to the term right now. Anybody else have anything to add to that? Go ahead. I kind of think that he was self-indulgent in this time period, right? Like it's all about him and his past and he's constantly mining for issues. And it's supposed to be about the future. You know, it's supposed to be about your future and your relationship with someone else. And when he finally gets to that, he suddenly, well, suddenly his scruples go away. Don, Don McCaffrey, Don Woody, are you there, Don? Can you say it? Don Ross says, I think Ignatius teaches us to avoid extremes and inordinate navel gazing. Don McCaffrey says, I think this is Ignatius experiencing it. This is not, that this is egotistical and selfish, self-centered. So rather than his eyes on God, his eyes are on his performance, right? This is very dangerous. Spirit, so-called spiritual people can be incredibly proud. You know, the whole project of their spiritual life can be an exercise in self-aggrandizement. My spiritual journey is my little, is my project. And it doesn't work for Ignatius. And then Ignatius has to say, and here's where Ignatius, the master of discernment, of thinking things through. Ignatius says, wait, let me stop here because I thought that this line of thought which I think Don McCaffrey said is perfectionism, I think you're right Don. Ignatius is saying, let me keep hammering myself. Let me keep fasting. Let me keep praying. Let me keep checking out every spiritual master on the, in the book. Where has it gotten me? It's gotten me to the point where I'm such despair, such sadness, such self-absorption that I'm ready to commit suicide. So then Ignatius. And I think, you know, people who know a lot more than I do can correct me on this. But I think Ignatius is like a real pioneer in self-awareness that Ignatius steps back and he says, wow, if this train of thought leads me to the point where I despair and where I'm so focused on myself and that I'm ready to kill myself, well, that can't come from God. Do you see? Right? Yeah, yeah, Vincent Vincenzo. Yeah, he thought Vainglory and drawing attention to himself was part of his problem. He's still stuck there, right? You know, Ignatius later has a very sharp observation. And again, those of you who have studied the exercises know this. Ignatius says, watch this. The enemy of our human nature is always on the prowl. The enemy is like an enemy commander who makes the circuit of a fortified city and looks for in this fortified city, where is the weakness in the fortification? Clearly for Ignatius, it was his perfection. Or what we would call probably some sort of almost clinical narcissism. But it also has a spiritual meaning. Ignatius wants to control and dominate his own life. And Ignatius says, look, whatever I thought maybe appeared as an invitation from God to perfectionism and to extraordinary expressions of fidelity that God has ended up with me focused more on me than ever before to the point where I want to give up my life, which I know is a sin. So this could not possibly have come from God. You see how Ignatius is watching and begins the kinds of rules for discernment of spirits that are all packed in that little book of spiritual exercises. And so we all have to, if I now jump into the application to our own lives, the quotes unquote enemy of our human lives makes a circuit of our temperament, of our personalities and looks for the place where there's a way to get in and to distort us. And for Ignatius, it was certainly his always this need to go over the top, right? To be better than anybody else. And so that's the way that that's the formula for his auto-destruction, right? So whatever it is in you and in me that is our characteristic and dare I say tragic flaw, that's where quotes unquote the enemy is looking to get in. If it's doubt, if it's fear, if it's arrogance, if it's a drive to be special like Ignatius, you name it. There's a way that the enemy will figure out a way to get in and turn that upside down. Let me, you know, let me stop there. Anybody else want to make any comments on that or corrections or observations? Especially those of you, not only but I want to make sure that those of you who have had experience in Ignatius spirituality, I have a chance to add or comment, please. I think like any other Christian, when we see ourselves in our lives, we realize that Christianity isn't easy. So it can be a little bit scary. So I think that's something that he experienced as well, especially if he read, you know, the life of many other saints, all the good things they did. And like just doing the self reflection, what I have done, right? Like I am so far from reaching any of the saints and that can be depressing, you know, if we, because we think that's something that we can do by ourselves, but we actually need God's help to be able to get there and it's a journey. But if we see the goal from far away, it can be really intimidating. Absolutely. And this is why Ignatius in his letters, nobody at his time in history wrote more letters than Ignatius. He spent a lot of his time, I spend most of my time either seeing people on email, but Ignatius wrote letters. And in his letters, Ignatius keeps warning people against discouragement. He says again and again, if somebody is trying to make progress from one place to another in holiness, discouragement is not from God. In fact, he says just the opposite. Listen to what Ignatius in his rules for discerning spirits will say, hold on here, let me get it. It's worth waiting for. Listen to this, this is extraordinary. And remember that this is Ignatius years later, distilling his own experiences to help other people. And all of these spirits will, let me just say, do you notice how his primary, this is before he's a priest, right? He's not a religious, he's not a monk. He's not ordained, but he has this ability to help people grow spiritually. And that freaks out the hierarchical church. By the way, because most people are not equipped to do that. But people are drawn to Ignatius because he has this ability to help people grow. And the fact that Ignatius hasn't studied theology is not ordained. It makes people very suspicious. But this is what Ignatius from his experience gleams, and this is the kind of wisdom, but I'm assuming Ignatius was sharing with the people of his time. In the case of persons who are earnestly progressing from the good to the better, the service of God, the procedure of the enemy of our human nature is this. To cause gnawing anxiety. Sound familiar, Alra? That's what you were describing. Gnawing anxiety. I'm not making enough progress to sadden and to set up obstacles. In this way, the enemy unsettles these persons with false reasoning aimed at preventing their progress. Good people are inclined to give up and say, I'm not making any progress. I'm still as miserable and awful as I always was. That's kind of a scrupulosity or perfectionism. And that's where the enemy takes an initially good thing, which is a desire to please God and twists it into something that turns us in on ourselves, rather than out with greater confidence and peace and confidence before God and attentiveness to people around us. Let me just reiterate that in the major, so in this scrupulosity, Ignatius comes up with this principle that watch where things end up. They may start like a very good idea. Like, oh, I'm gonna struggle, I'm gonna be holy, I'm gonna get fast and abstain. And Ignatius says, look, if that led you to the point where you want to commit suicide, and maybe you were wrong to begin with. Do you understand? So maybe there was something that was a miss from the very start. If at the end of it you become more self-absorbed, I mean, think of the number of holy people, so-called holy people, devout people that you know, who end up being bitter, sarcastic, cynical, and destructive of themselves and other people. Well, I don't know how they started, but where they got tells you that wherever they got started it was not from God, right? And you can also get people, I mean, from the other side who say, God is inviting me to greater freedom, and to greater accessibility, and to greater openness, and they end up being, again, utterly self-absorbed and self-indulgent. Well, the enemy crept in, right? The enemy crept in. All right, in the eliso, scrupulosity tells us to know that we don't control God and that finally the battle against scruples is the battle of saying, I'm in God's hands and my life will change and I will become who God wants me to be out of God's mercy and the strength of God in my life, not my moral perfectionism, not my clenching my fists and pushing and tugging for God to make me somebody who God probably never wanted to make me. The illuminations at Manresa remind us of basic characteristics of Ignatian spirituality. One, the centrality of the person of Christ. Two, the holy trinity, Ignatius, to the time he dies, never anybody masters the mystery of the holy trinity, but God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God constantly giving God's self and being present in creation. Maybe when we get together again for the next time, I'll double back and say more about, so one of these illuminations, especially the one at the card in there, gives Ignatius a sense of God's presence in all creation. He has that experience and he has an experience of the Creator giving the Creator's very self into creation. We don't have a lot more time left, so I wanna stop and just ask you, please, questions, comments, shareings, insights. Supposed to be a book club, not just Father Jerry Yammering. Anybody? How about those of you who have had experience walking with people in the spiritual exercises? Do you see resonating, Don, please? Yeah, I was just gonna say. Don was, Don McCaffrey, let me introduce Don. Don was trained as a spiritual director at the Murphy Center. And so, Don, thank you, good to see you again. Oh, thanks, Father Jerry. Just as it relates to scruples, it's so interesting that Ignatius apparently saw his own tendency to pride and perfectionism by going to the extreme of growing his hair and letting his fingernails grow long and the clothing that he chose. So he was trying to do everything in his control, it seemed, to fight that which he saw as a flaw. And yet, to your point about, you know, the enemy spirit finding the weak link, that was still there. That was still there and there pops up again as scruples. But he doesn't seem to recognize it. Right, right. Not early on, anyone. You're absolutely right, Don. Ignatius recognizes that he's, you know, he's obsessed with his appearance. By the way, I think that's what's behind. I was gonna ask you what you thought about the serpent image that Ignatius is tortured by, the serpent who's covered with eyes. So Ignatius always wants to be seen. I think Ignatius, I think that that emerged. What do I know? Right, I mean, I've read every commentary that I can find, but nobody really knows what that serpent is about. Who knows, right? But I think the serpent is Ignatius, he's fascinated, he's riveted in his, again, narcissism, right? To use a contemporary term, his fascination with beauty and how he is seen. You think he were an Italian boy. He's a Spaniard instead, but how he is seen matters to him more than anything else, right? And so the serpent is, I think, kind of the symbol of, you know, his passion to be beautiful and to be seen. But to Don's point, he knows something about that, right? He has an instinct that that is gonna get him in trouble. So he says, instead of trying to look beautiful, I'm gonna look like a mess. I'm not gonna take care of my hair. I'm gonna let my beard grow. I'm not gonna be clean. Even by those standards, I've got my nails drawn to be filthy. But he, but all he does Don is you're right. He just switches it to his spirits, his kind of narcissism just switches to, I'm gonna become a, you know, I'll be, I'll be an ascetic, right? But I'm still gonna be the one in control. And I'm still gonna be self-constructing. I'm still gonna be the one who manages my own perfection, whether it's physical beauty or moral and sanctified and holy beauty. But what he's got to reach is the point where he says, that leads me to suicide. That can't be from God. And he said, I'd rather be like a little dog, you know, following somebody because this is not getting me anywhere. Ignatius reaches the point where he has to renounce and say, all I wanna do is whatever God wants. And I'm not in control. Do you understand, my friends, how destructive our passion and our illusion that I have to control my own life, that I'm the protagonist of my life? Crazy, crazy. All right, eight o'clock, how did we get here? How did we get here? Jess, what are we doing next? Where are we going next? Our next session will be in weeks on April 19th and we'll be covering chapter six through eight, which is pages 108 through 157 in this print version. Remember, don't get bogged down with the notes, use them insofar as they're helpful, but use the text to refer you back to your own experience and what it might be telling you about your own pilgrimage. The point is, does it help us understand more about our own pilgrimage? Okay. Before we see you again, it'll be Easter. So it'll be after Easter. So bless it Holy Week, blessed Easter. We'll be getting together during Easter week. That's all I look forward to seeing you then. God bless you all and thank you for being together. Thank you, thanks a lot. Have a good night. Thank you, happy Easter. Happy Easter. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.