Another intense read

Many years ago Husband and I bought Do It At Home Retreat and have been meaning to continue learning about the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola ever since. Alas, those were the babies' years, with diapers, nursing, strollers. And they were also the beginning homeschooling years, and nomadic years at that... the spiritual exercises went into the back burner.

More recently an opportunity appeared: we have been attending, since earlier in the fall, a series of lectures by Fr. S. T. at the cathedral, on St. Ignatius' Discernment of Spirits. As it is, the last lecture helped shed a huge amount of light on the rules and I feel as it a door has been opened in my mind!

With great delight I noticed at breakfast time that the latest issue of Homiletic and Pastoral Review has a very favorable book review on the book we are using to accompany the lectures: The Discernment of Spirits by Fr. Timothy Gallager. The book review is very favorable and encompasses three books written by the author and published by Crossroads.

Some quotes from the review, by Fr. J. W. Koterski, S.J. of Fordham University:

"....as Gallagher explains in his introduction to The Discernment of Spirits, these rules do not apply only to the formal time of retreat but also to the ongoing spiritual experience of all who seek the Lord. Once they have been learned, these rules for the discernment of spirits are irreplaceable for understanding and responding to the various sorts of stirrings of spirit that one meets day in and day out.

(...) Following Ignatius' ordering, the next pair of chapters explores the proper definition for "spiritual consolation" and "spiritual desolation" (Rules 3 and 4). By expanding the description of the various items that Ignatius lists in each categoory, Gallagher does a fine service for his reader. As Ignatius had insisted, these terms refer not so much to moments of natural elation or discouragement, but to specifically spiritual consolations and specifically spiritual desolations, even when including various physical phenomena and psychic disturbances.

The purpose of the initial rules, of course, is to begin to understand what one is experiencing-is the movement of spirit something coming from God, or rather from the "enemy of our nature," or just something from our own history? But there remains the question of what to do about it. The remaining ten chapters of the book are dedicated to the first week rules, and the corresponding portion of the book on the second week rules go through each of the directives that Ignatius provides about what one ought to do about the movements of spirit that one is experiencing.

For each rule (e.g., Rule 5, that we should not make any change of course in a time of desolation, or Rule 6, that one should re-double one's efforts to act against a temptation) Gallagher provides not only a clear account of the meaning of the rule but also some helpful distinctions that will prevent misunderstandings. Acting against a desolation (what the tradition calls agere contra), for instance, is not a matter of imposing lots of new spiritual practices but of summoning the energy to do whatever one's normal duties require (the very things that someone in desolation is tempted to abandon) until the desolation passes and one returns to a state in which it will be possible to deliberate and decide on these matters without undue interference from the desolation.

But in addition to these explanations and clarifications, Gallagher also plays the storyteller by recounting relevant scenes from the life of St. Ignatius and from the experience he has garnered in years of service as a spiritual director. (...) Gallagher is very mindful of many factors that can obscure one's vision of these matters and that can make reform of life difficult, whether merely because of strong habits or by reason of all too sturdy patterns of rationalization. The stories about how individuals made some breakthrough, or found confirmation in questions on which they were deliberating, will prove a source of enlightenment as well as of encouragement.