Message from Pastor Mori
The person who receives the Exercises will benefit greatly by entering upon them with great spirit and generosity toward their Creator and Lord, and by offering all their desires and freedom to him to that his Divine Majesty can make use of their persons and of all they possess in whatever way is according to his most holy will.
St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Since I live near Loyola university, St Ignatius of Loyola feels like very familiar to me even though I am not Roman Catholic. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) developed ways of praying that are intended to help us bring God our questions and hear God's answers.
Kneeling with Giants introduces St Ignatius prayer and its process: "We give thanks to God and quiet our hearts to reflect on the past day or week. In God's presence, we bring to mind both the consolations and the desolations, in prayerful silence or writing them in a journal. We ponder their significance. We close with a prayer thanking God for being present in our experiences, offering ourselves to God anew."
I want to invite you to this prayer practice. If someone asks, "What were the signs you saw of God's grace last week" what will be your answer? When we ask ourselves in our prayer this question, it will lead us to observing how God works in our daily life. And we write down and ponder their significance, we will love God with greater faith and more hope. And we can come closer to God through thanksgiving.
There are many ways to pray with Ignatius of Loyola, but I want to share only one more way of prayer which he called "Application of the Sense" To use our sense, we would have to be inside the biblical sense. Make scripture a place for prayerful listening to God Imagine and listen to what the Bible is saying and apply our senses as if you were there. What kind of sounds, smells and tastes will be there? As we are fully immersed, he tells us to talk with the people in the scene. This process invites us to a much deeper level of experience then scripture-based prayer. As we become fully engaged, we are ready to listen in the presence of the one who can answer. So we pray with Holy Scripture as our guide of the journey.
And we are return to the text the next day to listen again
I think this is great way of playful conversation with God, we keep listening and the text will be the means to guide us.
I hope you have a chance to pray with Ignatius of Loyola!!
MORI
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