August 2006 Christian Spirituality By George A Lane SJ

FINDING GOD'S WILL: DISCERNMENT Continue from ...... Ignatius exposes three tactical maneuvers of the enemy. 1) He conducts himself like a woman, weak in face of strong resistance to temptation, and a tyrant if he has the upper hand. 2) He also acts like a false lover who seeks to remain hidden and wants his proposals and actions kept secret. If his seductions and temptations are revealed to a confessor or another person, he knows he cannot succeed. 3) The enemy is like a military commander who attacks a stronghold at its weakest point, so he will assault a person with temptations where their virtue is weakest. Now these Rules for the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises are fairly straight-forward. One is just becoming sensitive to experiences in the spiritual life; the basic choice is between sin and non-sin, and the lines are fairly clearly drawn between good and evil. But people advance in the Spiritual life and their decisions become somewhat more subtle; the choices are then among alternative goods. In the Rules for the Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises the presuppositions are rather different. They suppose that there are definite movements, feelings, impulses, determinisms going on in the soul, and that the person is sensitive to them. The choice is now among alternatie good courses of action, this or that way of life, this or that mission where the choice is open and all the possibilities are good. Then the distinctions between the various choices are not too clear, but complex and sometimes confused. An example from Jean Paul Sartre's book Existentialism as a Humanism illustrates the situation of a person trying to discover the greater good. A pupil of his during the Nazi occupation was ancious to decide whether he ought to leave home and join the Free French Forces, or stay at home and help his mother who was sick and very much dependent on him. There were two alternatives, both good, and the young man was torn between the demands of filial devotion and patriotic generosity. No one could settle the problem for him; in the last analysis the student himself would be responsible for his own choice. In advising him Sartre goes on to say, "I had but one reply to make; You are free, therefore choose. That is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do. No signs are given in this world. We ourselves decide our being ... Decide your future, you alone are responsible for it." Here is a situation in which the general rules of morality do not provide a solution for a particular problem. It is not that in such a case it is difficult to decide what is right, but that it is simply impossible by Christian reason alone to know God's will precisely here and now. Another method must be sought. Ignatius proposes that it lies in the discernment of spirits. It is the method he describes in the Second Time of Choosing a State of Life, "when much light and understanding are derived through experience of desolations and consolations and discernment of diverse spirits."

- To Be Continued - © Copyright Shalom 2006. All rights reserved.