Context and Spiritual Direction

AUSTRALIAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL FOR SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

INAUGURAL GATHERING 2006

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

“CONTEXT AND SPIRITUAL DIRECTION”

Friday, 30 June, 2006

James Haire [1]

I am deeply honoured to-day to deliver this Inaugural Address on this important occasion of the Inauguration of the Australian Ecumenical Council for Spiritual Direction. My topic is “Context and Spiritual Direction”.

The contemporary reality of many parts of the world, is one of deep unease. The irony of the ending of the Cold War is that it has coincided with the unleashing of uncontrollable violence in many parts of the world. The combination of high technology and seemingly medieval tribal conflict has become the pattern of our times. Behind all of this lies the development of a new ideology which “legitimatizes a culture of violence by invoking God arbitrarily to suit a particular agenda for aggression. As a result, insecurity, fear and anxiety characterize the lives of many people” [2] throughout the world.

This culture of unease manifests itself in many different ways.

There is the negative impact of economic globalisation, which continues to widen the gap between the haves and the have nots. There is also the structural violence of domineering or negligent governments in relation to their populations. Corruption and the abuse of power often manifest themselves in violence. In addition, there are often structural forms of traditional violence, mainly based in patriarchal societies. These result in gender discrimination, forced labour migration, discrimination against young people and those with disabilities, and discrimination based on race, caste, and class. Surrounding our very life is the violence against the environment.

Against this rather gloomy picture, positive signs must also be noted. There is a yearning among young people for true manifestations of peace and of peaceful communities. In the aftermath of the Tsunami we have observed remarkable efforts to create communities of peace and harmony in various places. Again, the speed of reconciliation after ethnic and communal violence often has been very rapid. Despite violence, there is evidence of a vast amount of resilience among populations who have been deeply wounded.

In 2001 and 2002, I visited Halmahera in the North Moluccas , where I had served for 13 years in the 1970s and 1980s, and saw the results of the Christian – Muslim violence. Events too terrible for words had occurred. Both Muslims and Christians were involved in violence. Let me just give one example. Six of my former students in Indonesia , all ordained ministers, were killed. One of them was the Rev Albert Lahi. He was in the vestry of his parish church when terrorists arrived. He knew that his case was hopeless. He asked to be allowed to pray. His wish was granted. He put on his preaching gown and knelt by the communion table. He prayed for his church, for his nation, for his congregation and for those about to kill him. The Sunday School children who observed the whole incident told me what happened. Then he stretched his head forward and was beheaded. His head was carried on a pole around the village. His body was dragged by the feet for all to see. Yet in this same village, and in this whole area, reconciliation has come about. Since 2002 both the Muslim and the Christian populations have been slowly but surely slowly working their futures out together, in a quite remarkable display of creating peaceful communities.

Against the situation in which we find ourselves, how do we engage in spiritual direction ? How do we listen to the voice of God? ow do we hear the H It is not our task primarily to invoke God for our particular view of the world, but rather, in humility, to sit and listen as that divine voice comes to us.

Let us first go to the very heart of our existence as Christians, and as the church. The inexplicable will of God to be for, and with, humanity implies that the church’s life cannot begin to be understood in terms of the structures and events of the world. Equally, God’s inexplicable will to be God with, and for, humanity implies that we should always understand our life as Christians theologically. These simple, yet profound, facts derive from the mystery of the triune God not to be God apart from, or separate from, humanity, but rather to make God’s very life intersect with the unity of the Son of God with us. Our theological basis as Christians and as the church is in the wonder of God’s condescension, in the intentionality of God’s solidarity with sinners, that is, with those who find their self-identity solely within themselves, and find their self-justification and sole solace in themselves alone, without any reference to the Triune God. The church is called to exist solely through the solidarity of Jesus Christ with those who are alienated from God, by Christ going to the extremes of alienation for humanity, so that humanity might through Him come close to God. At the heart of our faith is expressed the fact that God does not wish to be alone in celebrating the wonder God’s inexpressible love for humanity. God in Christ calls into existence an earthly Body of His Son who is its heavenly Head, in order that humanity may responsively rejoice with God in the harmony and peace which God has established for creation.

If the being of the church and its life is predicated upon the grace of Jesus Christ as itself defining God’s action in the world for the reconciliation of creation, including humanity, then its life of peace is that which it receives from Him, Who is its life. The church’s very existence will be shaped by the manner in which it confesses this truth to be its very life.

Let us now look through one particular lens at the processes of the spread and development of world Christianity and its varying contexts. Let us look at the varying ways in which Christianity developed, and how those varying ways influenced spirituality and spiritual direction. Christianity was born within an immediate Jewish cultural environment, surrounded by an Aramaic and Hebrew vocabulary, and Semitic expectations. However, this integrated Judaism in its strict and official vesture, rejected Jesus of Nazareth and later turned against Paul as he championed freedom from the Law through Jesus Christ. As the New Testament and second and third century C E writings demonstrate, Christianity penetrated much more easily into Hellenistic culture, including Hellenistic Judaism, than into the culture of Judaism itself. From Hellenism Christianity developed into the wider Graeco-Roman culture, and subsequently moved into Northern and Eastern Europe , in addition to its movements into Asia . Why was it that it found its movement into Hellenism much easier than its movement into Judaism? It was because Hellenism was more of a culture in the original sense of that word than Judaism. Hellenism was much more related to primarily agricultural societies whose deepest concern was with being in harmony with nature. The Christ Event spoke of birth, growth, development, maturity, death, resurrection, and new life. This was a cycle. It fitted the cyclic world of agricultural life. It was a cyclic culture. That world spoke of planting, development, maturity, harvest (or death), new life, renewed fertility of the soil, and new growth. The Jesus story fitted the pattern of agricultural life. It had also been similar to the Old Testament dramas of the Prophets and Psalms, where they had spoken of destruction and rebirth.

However, in first and second century C E Judaism, a different world had emerged. There was no longer the drama of the Old Testament Prophets and Psalms. Now first and second century C E Judaism tended to stress the precise following of particular divinely-inspired words, which had been uttered up until the time of Ezra and the “Men of the Great Synagogue” and thereafter had ceased. [3]

So the gospel lived and flourished in a cyclic and agricultural mode as it was interwoven into agricultural societies. In this way, on the whole, the gospel moved north and west, in addition to its movement east. However, it did not enter the world of Judaism to any large degree. As it moved west and north and east, the transfiguration of agricultural society meant that the gospel was totally interwoven into the fabric of the culture. It also began to mould and to direct the cyclic impulses of the culture. Wholeness, harmony, rhythm, and ritual (in water, and around a thanksgiving meal) were the means by which the gospel was expressed. Baptism was the water ritual; Holy Communion was the thanksgiving ritual. Both were central means of expressing the faith. Many parts of central, northern and western Europe were evangelised in this way. The movement was slow and halting. Yet the interweaving continued. Celtic Christianity developed in this way – deeply cyclic, and deeply agricultural. There were movements also into western Asia , to India and to areas further east where Christianity developed in this way in the first millennium.

There was, of course, from time to time, resistance to the gospel, but on the whole the development of Christianity was communal. Christianity thrived in this cyclic world, and expressed itself communally. However, another world existed in which Christianity had not been able to develop so well. This was the world of a trading- and word-culture. It was the world of first and second century C E Judaism into which Christianity had not been able to develop in the first millennium. However, with the rise of travel and trade, Christianity began to develop into a trading- and word-culture, that is, into a culture in which wholeness, community, harmony, and ritual received less attention, and more attention was given to common standards to guide diverse peoples as they sought to live together. The development of trading- and word-cultures occurred largely in the period from the fourteenth century C E, often referred to as the Modern Period, taking in as it did the European expansion in trade and commerce, the Renaissance and the Reformation, and industrial modernisation.

This was a world quite different from that of the agricultural world. Journeying individuals and communities needed clear-cut ordinances in warding off their dangers and temptations, far from the cyclic life of the soil which they had left behind. That cyclic world had been so clearly transfigured by the Christ Event, and celebrated in ritual as a means of expression and teaching. The trade- and word-culture was different. Guidelines were needed to bind communities together. Doctrine, ethics, church polity, and management were all important. The emphasis was to be on the Book (the Bible), the Guide to the Book (Confessions and Catechisms), and the Interpreter of the Book (the Preacher).

Parallel cultural emphases occurred in other trade and word religions, specifically Judaism and Islam. In Christianity, in this word and trade form, there is emphasis on the Bible, the Confession and Catechism, and the Preacher. In Judaism, there is a parallel emphasis on the Torah, the Mishnah and Talmud, and the Rabbi. In Islam, there is a parallel emphasis on the Koran (Qūran), the Sharī’ah, and the Faqīh.

So now Christianity succeeded in operating in two cultural modes, the cyclic- and agricultural-mode on the one hand, and the word- and trade-mode on the other. However, the critical issue arose during the period of evangelisation, from the late 18^th century C E onwards. Could Christianity, which largely existed in a word and trade cultural mode in the mission-active nations, translate itself again into the cyclic and agricultural cultural modes of the receptor cultures? If the mission-active cultures had been those that were still in the original cyclic and agricultural mode moving into new cyclic and agricultural receptor cultures, then the spread of the gospel would have been relatively simple. However, mainly they were not. They were trade- and word-cultures. In the process of evangelisation a variety of reactions occurred. In some situations, the spread of the gospel was highly successful, as, for example, in many parts of the Outer Islands of Indonesia , in North-East India , in much of the Pacific, and in parts of the African continent. In other situations, it was extremely difficult, as, for example, in Japan , in parts of India , and in parts of China .

In the development of Christianity in the cyclic and agricultural mode, great emphasis was placed on the baptising of communities and cultures into the faith. Once whole Christian communities had been established, then there tended to be harmony and peace both within those communities and in relation to the surrounding societies. However, although trade- and word-culture communities encouraged peace within their community, they did not necessarily encourage community with those outside the faith-group. Often colonial Protestant communities were internally cohesive, but aggressive towards the world around them, including toward indigenous religions. So in the West Indies and in the Southern States of the United States , the local population was enslaved, or slaves imported, and the slaves simply acquiesced in the colonists’ religion. There was little attempt to translate the gospel into the indigenous community. In Australia , minimal attempt was made to translate the gospel into indigenous cultural terms. In China , Japan , and India , parts of the population was antagonised by Christianity. [4]

Now we come again to the issues of spirituality and of spiritual direction. In theological terms, we need the gospel in both cyclic and word cultures. Where the church has been primarily related to an agricultural- or cyclic-culture, it needs the struggle with the divine graceful criticism of that transfiguration in order to be semper reformanda. It needs to hear the voice in word form to be constantly reformed. Equally, a church which is primarily related to the gospel in a word- or trade-culture, needs always the struggle with the divine fact of incarnation, that God has placed God’s church in the world.

Therefore, in spiritual direction, a number of things are incumbent upon us.

First , we need to be aware that Christianity needs both its cyclic- or agricultural-culture forms on the one hand, and its word- and trade-culture forms on the other. Spirituality and spiritual direction need to interact with these two Christian forms. We need carefully to work through what that means in terms of how we exercise spiritual direction.

Second , contextual theology, therefore, is not simply a matter of engaging in word-culture exercises (in, for example, doctrine, ethics and polity). It is as much an expression of faith through liturgy, drama, dance, music, and communal living.

Third , this way of communal harmony is necessary in the ways in which the Churches live their lives. Consensus decision-making and mutual celebration are important in spirituality and in spiritual direction.

We in our time live in a deeply ambivalent age, an age of high technology and of medieval conflict, and an age as strangely confident of the saving powers of the market-place as a previous age was strangely confident of the saving powers of collectivism . In this age, Christians are called to follow Jesus Christ in speaking of, and living out, the wonder of God’s mercy, peaceful harmony and reconciliation with humanity. Christians are thus called to a life of praise, which embraces all of our personal and social life, in all its practical, ethical, religious, political and intellectual aspects. That praise will be both culture-transforming and culture-renewing, over against the self-worship of individuals and nations in our time

This vision of Christian community is eschatological in nature. It pictures the end of time as now already beginning to be operative. One of the great leaders of the ecumenical movement, Archbishop William Temple, served as Archbishop of Canterbury for only two years from 1942 to 1944. When he arrived in Canterbury , he was already ill. One of his lasting images to the ecumenical movement was that of the Christian with bi-focal lenses. In his writing he says that we should look through the top part of our glasses to see the church as God intends it to be. With the bottom of our lenses we see the church as it actually is. Although we look at the church day by day with the bottom part of our spectacles, we should also always live as if the top part were reality, as if the church was already completely pure, loving and united.

So it is with ourselves and with our communities. With the top part of our spectacles, as it were, we see a world as God intends it. With the lower part of our spectacles, we observe the world as it is. Although we daily look at reality through the lower part, we must live as if the upper part is reality too. In the church, we have to model that. For Christians, it is not just what we do, but how we do what we do that is important. Let us take peacefulness as an example. Just for a moment think of the violence of language structures and procedures in our churches. How can we speak of peace unless we model it? The ways in which we express theology, the ways in which we preach, the ways in which we engage in the worship of God, the ways in which we engage in our communities, the ways we live need to express this shalôm.

One Saturday afternoon in the city of Belfast , a bank was robbed by a terrorist group. During a car chase, the car in which the terrorists were involved and the police car following were both engaged in an accident. A mother was pushing a pram along the road, holding her toddler in her hand, with her baby in the pram. One of the cars slammed into them, and the two children were killed instantly. The mother’s name was Betty Williams, and she had a friend, a social worker named Miréad Corrigan. The two of them, as a result of this appalling accident, formed a group called the Peace People. Subsequently both of them went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

I was involved on my leave from Indonesia with this group, trying to build a community of peace in Ireland . Although within Christianity, it tragically represented all the elements of inter-faith and ethnic violence. To overcome this, we sought to live out a single community of peace. When a Protestant was killed, Catholic clergymen would carry the person’s coffin into the Protestant church for the funeral service. When a Catholic was killed, Protestant clergy would carry that person’s coffin into the Catholic Church for the funeral service. One Saturday afternoon we were engaged in the regular marches which became a pattern of those times, walking through Protestant and Catholic areas, so as to show our unity in Christ. I had a friend who had been teaching Scholastic Philosophy at the University in Belfast and had recently become a Bishop. His name was Cahal Daly. He subsequently became Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of the Catholic Church in Ireland . He was not a natural hero. He was a small, scholarly, introverted man, a large leprechaun, as he once referred to himself. On that Saturday afternoon we locked arms and walked at the head of a procession through a joint Catholic / Protestant area. Protestant young people were jeering at me because I dared to walk with a friend, now a Catholic bishop. We were at that time both doing a bit of teaching at the university.

A person came charging out of a Catholic church, flailing a great crucifix above her head. The person hit Cahal on the back of the head with it, at the same time questioning whether his parents had been married at the time of his birth. She was able to express this idea with a single word. Cahal fell to the ground, blood coming from the back of his head. I asked him if he would like to sit in a shop doorway until we sorted things out. He looked at me with steely eyes, which I shall never forget, and he said “James, put your hand into my pocket, get out a handkerchief, wipe the back of my head, clean me up, and up we get and on we go.” He was over seventy at the time. He said to me, “If at this point we fail, if at this point we do not go on, than all those words that we spout from the pulpit will be shown up for the hypocrisy that they are. True spirituality and living spiritual direction will be seen by what we do now”

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[1] The Reverend Professor James Haire AM KSJ MA PhD DD DLitt DUniv is President of the National Council of Churches in Australia; Professor of Theology, Charles Sturt University, Canberra; Executive Director, Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, Canberra; Director, Public and Contextual Theology Strategic Research Centre, Canberra; and Past President, Uniting Church in Australia.

[2] KOBIA, S, quoted in World Council of Churches News Release entitled “Restating the Ecumenical Vision demands Conversion, says Kobia”, Geneva, 15/02/2005. Cf. BURTON, J. Conflict: Resolution and Provention. London: Macmillan Press, 1990, 1 – 2; 13 – 24.

[3] As in the first words of the Pirqê Abôth. See DANBY, H. The Mishnah (translated from the Hebrew by H. Danby), “The Fathers” (“Pirqê Abôth”). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933, 446 – 461.

[4] See, for example, BOYD, R. H. S. India and the Latin Captivity of the Church: The Cultural Context of the Gospel (Monograph Supplement to the Scottish Journal of Theology, No. 3). London: Cambridge University Press, 1974, 117 -119; HAIRE, J. The Character and Theological Struggle of the Church in Halmahera, Indonesia, 1941 – 1979 (Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums, Band 26). Frankfurt am Main und Bern: Lang, 1981, 322 - 323.

Discernment of the Holy Spirit - Denis Edwards

Discernment of the Holy Spirit

Denis Edwards

Discernment is integral to spiritual direction. One who is truly called to spiritual direction has every reason not only to ask for the gift of discernment but also to trust that this gift will be provided. [1] In the early church, Paul saw the discernment of spirits as a manifestation of the Spirit, a gift given to some in the Christian community for the good of all ( 1 Cor 12:7-10) . A fundamental way in which this gift of the Spirit is exercised in today’s church is in the relationship of spiritual direction.

The idea that discernment is a gift of the Spirit does not, of course, absolve those of us who are involved in spiritual direction from using every human means to learn about discernment from the wisdom of the Christian tradition. As always grace works upon nature. The gift of the Spirit works in and through our humanity, and in and through what we learn from the great figures of the past and from our own experience. In this brief outline, I will not attempt to deal with the whole tradition, but will gather together some practical helps from Ignatius Loyola, and build on these with further insights from John of the Cross and Karl Rahner.

Some fundamental things are being assumed here. One is that, for a Christian, the discernment of the Spirit is exercised in the context of discipleship, in the day to day following of Jesus within the community of disciples (1 Cor 12:13; 1 John 4:1-2) . A second assumption concerns the centrality of Jesus’ command to love God with one’s whole self and to love one’s neighbour as oneself (Mark 12:29 -30) . A third is the specification that this love involves what today is called the preferential option for the poor, a practical commitment to stand with those without power and resources, to see and to act from the side of the poor. A fourth foundational assumption comes from the Gospel imperative to see things in terms of their practical outcomes:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits. (Mat 7:15-20)

The long tradition of Christian discernment is shaped by the teaching that things are known by their fruits, and by the understanding that the fundamental fruit is love of God and of those God places in our lives. Paul’s list of the fruits of the Spirit has been a constant reference point: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal 5:22 ) . All of this is basic to the Christian approach to discernment. It seems clear, however, that we Christians of today need to rediscover this ancient tradition in new ways for a new time.

A New Context for Discernment

Contemporary theologian Anne Car has pointed out how the ideas of God’s power and providence have developed in recent theology. In the past, she says, God’s power tended to be seen in king-like terms. What was emphasised was God’s sovereign power over the whole creation and the pre-ordained plan of God that governed all things. Discernment was a matter of finding this plan which tended to be thought of as clearly defined and pre-existing. In our time she sees more experience of ambiguity, as we struggle to discern some direction in the confusion presented to us by world events and the complexity of our own lives (p. 84) . God is thought of as inviting and luring us forward from within the complexity. We are seen as called upon to take up the responsibilities that are ours for our personal and communal future.

Recent theologies of divine power, including feminist theologies, have understood the power of God not as dominating power, but as a power-with and as power-in-love. The focus in discernment is more on responding to the action of the Holy Spirit at work in all the messiness of our lives. We have been reminded that our spiritual lives involve not only prayer but also practice. The mystical-political connection in recent theology points to the need to see prayer and the struggle for justice as interlinked in an authentic spirituality (p. 85) . In this new context, we can see God’s provident care in terms of the Spirit of God as always with us in the ambiguity and untidiness of our lives and always leading us into the new.

This line of thought raises the question as to how discernment of the Holy Spirit is related to the more general idea of discernment of spirits. What are these other spirits? From biblical times Christians have seen themselves as subject to a variety of impulses, desires, moods and feelings. In the Bible all of these could be called spirits. Good and bad spirits were seen as responsible for events in nature and for what impacts on the human person. Biblical scholar John Pilch writes:

Our ancestors in the faith did not have a concept of impersonal causality. Hebrew has no expression like ‘it rained.’ Rather God sent the rain. Some person is always responsible. If no human person can be identified, then it must be an other-than-human person, namely, a spirit. (Pilch, p.8)

The Christian tradition continued to talk in a biblical way about the various impulses we experience as movements of “spirits.” The great mystics were well aware of the psychological nature of many of the impulses that spring from within and the social pressures that come from without. They were well aware of the danger of self-deception, recognizing that the human mind and heart are complex and that human consciousness is many-layered.

In recent times we become even more aware of the complexity of our inner selves. Psychology has taught us that we are capable of acting out of needs and drives that are partly or completely unconscious. Liberation theology, feminism and the sociology of knowledge have taught us how easy it is to be unaware that we are operating in ways that reinforce the privilege of our own economic status, class, race, or sex. The drive to maintain a privileged position can shape our consciousness, limit our awareness, impinge on our freedom, and influence our decisions. This new awareness reinforces the traditional understanding of the complexity of Christian decision-making.

In this context how can we know what is of the Holy Spirit? How can we be led by the Spirit in our times as Jesus was “led by the Spirit” (Luke 4:1) in his life and ministry? Ignatius, and with him John of the Cross and Karl Rahner, can continue to offer some helpful and practical suggestions. In what follows, I will gather insights from their work in a three fold structure of discernment that involves 1. weighing up a decision, 2. the discernment of interior movements, and 3. discernment on the basis of the experience of the Holy Spirit.

Weighing up a Decision

Ignatius distinguishes three “times” or ways in which a person can seek to find the invitation of God. The first time is when God’s call is clear and unmistakable. The second time is when a person is pulled in different directions, and there is need for a discernment of these different movements. The third time is when a person who is peaceful uses a more cognitive approach, weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of a decision (Spiritual Exercises, pars. 175-8) . As Harvey Egan notes, in the concrete, “the Three Times are not three distinct ways of finding God’s will, but actually aspects of one core experience and election in which all three aspects are present in varying degrees of intensity” (p. 152) . While Ignatius sees this last approach as particularly useful when we are not experiencing turbulent feelings, it can be a helpful part of any discernment, and it often a good way to begin a process of discernment.

This kind of discernment involves using our minds to evaluate all the information available to us. This, of course, includes the Scriptures and the teaching of the church, but it may also include information about the decision we are pondering that is available to us in other ways, including books, newspapers and the internet. This process of cognitive discernment is relatively simple. It is an approach that many would see as a matter of common sense. Perhaps precisely because it does seem relatively straight forward and obvious, it is easy to overlook, or to approach without enough care. In involves the following elements:

v Prayer for freedom and openness to whatever way the Spirit might be leading-including the way that seems less appealing

v Clarifying the options before us

v Making a list of what supports one option and then the alternative

v Taking time to mull these over and weigh them up

v It may involve consultation with a friend or spiritual director

v A decision needs to be confirmed in prayer. It is placed before God and tested to see whether it leads to peace in God

A decision made in this way needs confirmation in prayer and in everyday life. The matter can be placed before God in prayer and tested to see whether it leads to a sense of peace in God. And what is truly of the Spirit will find confirmation in freedom and peace in the demands of life, even in the midst of complexity, challenge or opposition. What is of the Spirit leads to a deep peace in God, and the freedom to love those God gives us. This kind of cognitive discernment, weighing up the options, leads to and involves, to some extent, the other levels of discernment discussed below.

The Discernment of Interior Movements

We very often find ourselves influenced by a variety of feelings, thoughts, desires, commitments and prejudices. We are drawn simultaneously in opposite directions at different levels of our being. I may, for example, be convinced intellectually that I ought to forgive someone, while finding, at the same time, a level of my being where there is unresolved anger and resentment towards the person. Ignatius offers some “rules” that can help to distinguish between various inner movements and promptings. His approach is embedded in the retreat process of the Spiritual Exercises. [2] I will not try to summarize all that he says, but will pick out six insights that I believe are useful aids in the everyday discernment to which all Christians are called. The last of these six will provide a bridge to insights from John of the Cross:

1. The best guide to the discernment of interior movements is the discovery of the direction in which they lead.

According to Ignatius, what best reveals the nature and origin of our inner experiences, such as thoughts, feelings and moods, is their orientation. The basis question is always: where does this line of thought lead? Where does this emotional state take me? The ancient biblical maxim provides the foundation for all discernment of interior movements: “You will know them by their fruits” (Matt 7:16 ). Does this feeling lead towards God, or away from God? Does it lead to a profound sense of peace in God, or to a lack of interior peace?

I find myself, for example, desiring to retreat from those around me. How do I know whether this is a God-given, life-affirming instinct or irresponsible escapism? According to Ignatius’s principle, I can best answer this question by noticing where my inclination tends to lead me. Does it lead towards interior restoration, to a sense of God’s presence, and to a renewed commitment to those I am called to love? Or does it lead to an experience of self-indulgence and emptiness? This same principle can also be used to discern in a more communal way. As the Roman Catholic Church to which I belong, for example, seeks to discern the Spirit in its present crisis over ordained ministry, it needs to question, among other things, its practice of ordaining only celibates as priests. Key questions in ecclesial discernment will be: Where does the maintaining of the requirement of celibacy lead the church? What effects will it have? Where would restoring a married clergy lead? What effects would it have? Which direction seems likely to result in a richer eucharistic communion for the People of God throughout the world?

2. We can expect to experience both consolation and desolation in our spiritual journeys and awareness of these can help guide discernment .

Ignatius uses the word consolation to describe the experience of being caught up with the love of God. Consolation is an interior movement that leads a person to God. It can involve interior peace, spiritual joy, tears, and any increase in faith hope and love (316). All of these are the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Desolation involves the opposite: darkness, turmoil, laziness, tepidity, and lack of faith, hope and love (317-8) .

However, it is not always easy to distinguish between genuine consolation and desolation. A choice that takes me beyond my comfort zone may seem at first like desolation, but may actually come to be seen as a genuine consolation. This can be true in such ordinary things as taking up work, beginning to write, or embracing any kind of new challenge. On the other side, acting in a way that brings comfort may at first feel like consolation but end up in desolation. Examples of this might be the taking of too much food or alcohol or engaging in gossip. The crucial issue is the discovery of what leads to a deepening of relationship with God, to peace in God.

Joanne Wolski Conn offers an example of how Ignatius’s guidelines on consolation and desolation can work in assisting in a feminist approach to Christian spirituality. A woman who has been given a one-sided and false view of self-sacrifice may feel insecure and uncomfortable in her first attempts at learning to care for herself. This discomfort may at first seem like desolation. But if it results in the experience of a more mature and loving relationship to God, then this would show that the real result of her care for herself is authentic consolation. Another example might be the experience of frustration that leads to anger. This may seem like desolation, but if it finds expression in healthy anger, including anger at God, and this results in a more candid and adult relationship to God and to others, then this may be truly be seen as consolation ( p. 315).

3. Decisions about one’s life should not be made in time of desolation.

Ignatius insists that the time of desolation is never the time for making a change (par. 318). It is not the time to reverse a previous decision or to make a new decision. In desolation we are easily misled into a path that is not of God. All the good directions of our life seem under attack. We experience turmoil and lack of peace. All of this means we are not in a position to discern the quiet and subtle invitation of the Spirit of God.

Times of desolation include those where we experience emotional conflict with others, confusion, distress, depression at the state of the church or the world, distress at our own failure and inadequacy, dryness in the life of faith and doubt about God’s existence, goodness or love for us. These kinds of experience can leave us inclined to make a decision that involves abandoning long-held commitments. Ignatius’ advice is to hold fast to the decisions that have been guiding us. The time of desolation is a time for continuing and deepening our commitment and our prayer.

Perhaps it needs to be said that this advice would not apply when it is quite clear, as in a case of sexual or physical abuse, that a person needs to change their life immediately because to continue things as they are would be destructive of self or others. In such a case there is no doubt where the Spirit is leading. Ignatius is concerned with situations where there is lack or clarity and where a person is being swayed in different ways, and where the prompting of the Spirit needs to be discerned.

4. When a person is being drawn towards God, interior movements that are of God will tend to be at one with this direction, while those that are evil will be disruptive. When a person is being drawn away from God, evil movements will tend to be at one with this direction, while those that are of God will be disruptive.

This rule appears in different forms at the beginning and the end Ignatius’s rules for discernment (pars. 314-5 and 335) . He says that the grace of the Holy Spirit touches a person going in a good direction sweetly and gently, like a drop of water being absorbed into a sponge. In this case, it is evil that appears as incongruent and disruptive. Ignatius says it is violent and noisy, like water falling onto stone. For those going away from God, however, it is precisely the opposite. For them, the promptings of the good spirit will be disruptive and challenging, while those of the bad spirit will appear sweet and gentle.

If I find myself carrying a state of hurt feelings after a disagreement, I might eventually come to see that this direction does not lead to authentic life or to God. Then I might use Ignatius’s principle to see that the apparently “sweet and gentle” tendency to remain locked in a state of self-pity is actually of the bad spirit. I might come to see that the “disruptive and challenging” voice that suggests a movement towards creative rebuilding of connections is ultimately of the Holy Spirit.

When evil is being done, the promptings that come from the Holy Spirit are not gentle and soothing but opposing and resistant. This principle can be seen at work in Spirit-led prophetic resistance to injustice and evil. When Catherine of Sienna came to see that the popes of her time were leading the church in a direction that was not of God, she recognized that remaining passive, and the way of being “sweet and gentle,” was the way of complicity in evil. She knew that she was called by the Spirit to offer an active and disruptive challenge to church authorities. When Archbishop Romero came to know the extent of the oppression of the poor in El Salvador , he saw that remaining quiet and peaceful, “keeping out of politics,” was the way of collusion in evil. He knew that the disruptive path of identification with the poor was the way of fidelity to the Spirit of God.

5. Apparent consolation can come from an evil source

According to Ignatius, it is proper to God and God’s angels to give true consolation and it is the enemy who normally fights against this with subtle and fallacious reasoning, raising up doubts and anxieties (par. 329) . But he insists that the experience of consolation needs to be tested because some forms of apparent consolation can come from an evil source. Evil may take on the appearance of the good. It can appear as an angel of light, which is present in apparently good thoughts, desires or ambitions (par. 331-2) . The presence of a deceptive angel of light is revealed when an apparently good beginning ends in something distorted.

I might find myself, for example, reacting to a situation with what at first appears to be righteous anger, but eventually discover that I am actually being self-righteous and intolerant. Or I may find myself taking on extra commitments in response to those with whom I work, but find that this apparent generosity leads to into a situation that damages family or community relationships. What appears in the beginning to be good is revealed to be evil masquerading as an angel of light. Ignatius insists that when we find this pattern at work in ourselves, it is an occasion for learning about discernment. It gives us the opportunity to grow in discernment, by noting all the stages we have passed through from the apparently good beginning through to its evil conclusion (pars. 333-4). This will enable us to be aware of the way we are moved, to be on guard against this pattern, and to learn the freedom of the Spirit.

6. Apparent desolation as a time of grace – the Dark Night

Ignatius points to three kinds of reasons why we may suffer desolation (par. 322) . The first is because of our own tepidity, laziness or neglect. In this case the right response is to act against the desolation with prayer. The other two instances are times when desolation comes to us as a gift of grace. God may allow a period of desolation as a trial period in which we learn to follow God’s call in darkness or be leading us towards an inner purification of spirit. The experience of desolation after consolation can help us recognize that consolation was a pure gift of the Spirit. In these kinds of experiences, God is at work in the dryness and darkness.

At this point Ignatius’ thought connects to the experiences that John of the Cross describes in much more detail as the Dark Night. John of the Cross was imprisoned in a tiny dark cell in Toledo and was whipped and humiliated for nine months by his own Carmelite brothers. In and through experiences of suffering, his beautiful poem of love, The Dark Night, took shape. He had found love at work in the terrible experience of abandonment and suffering. In the poem, John of the Cross tells us that this dark night is the “night more lovely than the dawn” the night “which unites the lover with the beloved” (Collected Works, p. 711). It is “the inflow of God” (Night, p. 355) . As Constance Fitzgerald points out, the dark night is not primarily some thing, an impersonal darkness, but someone – a presence leaving an indelible imprint on the human spirit and on one’s whole life. It is the presence of Jesus, the Wisdom of God (pp. 100-1) .

In his book The Dark Night, John of the Cross describes two parts of the journey in faith that he calls the passive Night of the Senses and the passive Night of the Spirit. In the Night of the Senses a person may experience only darkness and desolation in prayer. The words, thoughts and images that were so meaningful in the past now seem to lead only to dryness and emptiness. John of the Cross invites such persons and their spiritual directors to consider that they may be being called by God from active forms of prayer to a more contemplative form of prayer. Such a person, he says, should be encouraged to liberate themselves from thinking and meditating and “be content simply with a loving and peaceful attentiveness to God.” (Night, p. 317) . They should “learn to remain in God’s presence with a loving attention and a tranquil intellect,” even thought it seems like idleness (Ascent, p. 149) . Gradually such a person will be led to know the subtle sense of the presence of God in what at first seems like only darkness.

John of the Cross goes on to describe a far more painful aridity and suffering that he calls the Night of the Spirit. He writes in detail of a variety of terrible experiences of emptiness, aridity and seeming abandonment. Kieran Kavanaugh points out that John of the Cross’s deepest concern in writing The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night was for those who were suffering in their spiritual life. He wanted to make sure that those who suffer could find themselves in his description: “If his vehement portrayal of the afflictions of the dark night proves frightening to some, it is only because he wished to describe these suffering in their most intense form and thereby exclude no one” (Collected Works, p. 29) . John of the Cross insists that one who experiences such painful darkness may be being led by God into a deeper, transforming love, a passionate union with Christ crucified and risen. What appears as the bleakest of experiences can be a movement in love. Like fire acting on a log of wood, drying out and blackening the wood before it bursts into flame, so the fire of divine love can be experienced as drying and purifying when the soul is being transformed by the living flame of divine love.

These six principles of discernment from Ignatius and John of the Cross, in the case of the last one, can help spiritual directors in the process of accompanying others as they seek to understand the interior movements they experience. This discernment would be greatly helped if we could find in our lives a touchstone for discernment. Ignatius points to such a touchstone—an experience that clearly comes from God alone.

Discernment on the Basis of the Experience of the Holy Spirit

Ignatius speaks of being drawn wholly into the love of God. Such an experience comes upon us as sheer grace. It appears simply as a gift. There is no thought or event that can account for it. What we experience goes beyond our own efforts, our images, thoughts and words. Ignatius calls this a “consolation without previous cause” (par. 330) . It can be distinguished from the more superficial experiences of peace that may have their source in ourselves. In such an experience there is an encounter with God that is beyond images and words, even though we can interpret it only by means of our human images and words.

John Futrell sums up Ignatius at this point by saying that this kind of experience involves two characteristics. First, it is always experienced as sheer grace. And, second, it is always an experience of the presence of the Other who cannot be contained in any concept, thought or image (p. 158) . Such an experience can be understood as an experience of the presence and action of the Spirit. It is a gift by which human beings are enabled to taste and experience the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Ignatius goes on to point out that in all our interpretation of such experience, human limits come into play as we use our images, concepts and words to express what we have experienced (par. 336) . Contemporary philosophy and theology would say that the human person brings an interpretative framework to every new experience. This interpretative framework is at work not only after the experience, but also precedes all new experience. Our interpretative framework, with all its possibilities and biases, enters into the interpretation of experience at every stage. All experience, no matter how profound, is filtered through our finite human preconceptions and limited human language.

Karl Rahner offers an important contemporary reading of Ignatius’s “consolation without previous cause.” He sees it as experience of the Holy Spirit, a moment when we are open to the mystery of the incomprehensible God, an experience of presence and love that is beyond all concepts and words (pp. 132-5). While we interpret this encounter only through human images, concepts and words, these point beyond themselves towards the mystery that transcends them. He holds that not just the great mystics of the church, but all of us experience grace. And this experience of grace is nothing else than the Spirit of God, graciously present to us at every moment in self-offering love. All of us are called to what Rahner calls the “mysticism of everyday life.” This experience of the Spirit can become the touchstone for discernment in the ordinary circumstances of day-to-day life.

The process he has in mind for Christian decision-making is a kind of prayerful thought experiment (pp 155-6) . The idea is to bring to conscious attention our deepest experience of God’s grace and the matter to be discerned. It is a matter of testing to see whether a potential decision “sits” well with the place in our being where we are most open to God. Avery Dulles describes the process: “Through a process of ‘play acting’ we imaginatively place ourselves in the situation we are on the point of choosing, attempting to measure whether it is translucent to pure consolation” (p. 36) . Such testing may need to take place over a long time. In this process the choice we make is not directly revealed by God. We make the decision in the light of our perception of the “fit” between the matter being discerned and our experience of God. Does the proposed course of action sit with our deepest experience of God in such a way as to produce a sense of peace in God?

As philosophers have clarified the systematic logical rules that govern human thinking, so Rahner sees Ignatius as offering a systematic approach to the logic of Christian decision-making. While he recognizes that Ignatius builds on the ancient tradition of discernment, he sees Ignatius as offering “the first and so far the only detailed method” for discerning the invitation of the Spirit in the concrete circumstances of everyday life (p. 115). The experience of grace, the experience of the Spirit, functions as a kind of first principle in the logic of Christian decision-making (p. 130).

Just as an ordinary person uses logic without having studied it, Rahner argues, ordinary people often make important decisions more or less in the way suggested by Ignatius. A person might ponder something to be decided over some time, and then make a decision on the basis of what feels right and in harmony with her global sense of herself. Theologically, Rahner points out, this global sense of herself may include her deepest sense of herself before God. This deepest sense of self is the place of grace, the place of the Holy Spirit.

Such a decision is made not only on the basis of rational analysis, but also by a sense of what “suits” a person deep down. Many people express the need to “sleep” on a decision. It seems that they need time to find out what is congruent with their true sense of self in a particular context. In the light of this, Rahner suggests that faithful Christians “who have never heard of St. Ignatius’s instructions nevertheless instinctively make their decisions by their everyday religious logic in essentially the same way as Ignatius provides for” (p. 166-7).

It must be admitted that we always face the danger of delusion: If I decide something on the basis that I feel “at home” with it, this can easily be a self-centered judgment. It simply indicates that the proposal does not take me out of my comfort zone. The more refined process suggested by Ignatius creates the possibility of finding freedom to make the hard choice. It seeks to ensure that I am testing a decision not against a superficial sense of myself, but against a real openness to the otherness of God.

David Fleming encapsulates the heart of discernment when he writes that discernment is “a grace given to a lover.” One who loves has a “lover’s instinct” – a “sense” or a “feel” for what pleases the one who is loved (p. 565) . One who loves God will have a lover’s instinct for what it of God. By way of conclusion it might be helpful to list the key elements in Christian decision-making that emerge from this reflection:

v Prayer for the freedom to recognize that God might be leading in either direction of a proposed choice.

v The intellectual assessment of the “pros” and “cons” of a proposed decision, perhaps by listing them and pondering them

v The discernment of inner movements, such as thoughts, desires, feelings and moods, particularly through recognizing whether they lead in the direction of deeper life in God or away from God.

v Calling to mind the central experience of the Spirit in our lives, holding this together with the proposed decision, and seeking to determine whether the union of the two produces a sense of peace in God.

v Testing and confirming the decision in a life lived in love and in prayer that leads to peace in God.

References

Carr, Anne E. “ Providence , Power and the Holy Spirit.” Horizons 29/1 (2002): 80-93.

Dulles, Avery. “The Ignatian Experience as Reflected in the Spiritual Theology of Karl Rahner.” Jesuit Spirit in a time of Change edited Raymond Schroff. Westminster , Maryland : Newman Press, 1968.

Egan, Harvey D. The Spiritual Exercises and the Ignatian Mystical Horizon ( St Louis , Missouri : The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1976.

Fitzgerald, Constance. “Desolation as Dark Night: the Transformative Influence of Wisdom in John of Cross.” The Way Supplement 82 (1995): 96-108.

Fleming, David. “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Review for Religious 58 (1999): 564-5.

Futrell, John Carroll. “Commentaries on Ignatius’ Rules.” Marian Cowan and John Carroll Futrell, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola: A Handbook for Directors. St Louis : Ministry Training Services, 1981.

Ignatius Loyola. The Spiritual Exercises, in the translation of Louis J. Puhl, The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius: Based on Studies in the Language of the Autograph. Chicago : Loyola University Press, 1951.

John of the Cross. The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night in the translation of Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. Washington , D.C. : Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1979.

Pilch, John J. Cultural Tools for Interpreting the Good News. Collegeville , Minnesota : Liturgical Press, 2002.

Rahner, Karl. “The Logic of Concrete Individual Knowledge in Ignatius Loyola” in The Dynamic Element in the Church. London : Burns and Oates, 1964.

Wolski Conn , Joanne. “Revisioning the Ignatian Rules for Discernment.” Women’s Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development, edited Joanne Wolski Conn. New York : Paulist Press, 1986.

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[1] This article is based on a paper given at the first national gathering of The Australian Ecumenical Council for Spiritual Direction, 30^th June - 2^nd July 2006. It builds upon chapter 11 of my Breath of Life: A Theology of the Creator Spirit ( Maryknoll , NY : Orbis, 2004).

[2] Ignatius provides two sets of rules for the discernment of spirits, the first set appropriate for the first week of the Spiritual Exercises (pars. 313-27), and the second set appropriate for second week (pars. 328-36).