First Week Of The Spiritual Exercises                                    Chapter 7

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Chapter Seven

Some General Observations
Listening To The Beginning Of The First Week
Overall Dynamic Of The First Week
Introducing Prayer Unit 7 With The Second Exercise

        Before you read the suggestions for the coming interview, it will be helpful to familiarize yourself again with notations [6], [7], [8], [9], [12], [13], [14], [16], [17], along with the First Set of Guidelines for Discerning Spirits [313]-[327]. These notations and Guidelines will become part of your "tool kit" for discernment now and for the rest of the Exercises journey. Once recognized, understood and practised, these will help you to understand why you discern and make the judgements you do. This empowers you to grow in the skill and art of prayer guidance.

        Note that this First Set of Guidelines for Discerning Spirits is introduced as being more suited to the First Week [313]. The supposition is that these "rules" are flexible guidelines. As with most guidelines, there are times when they may not be suitable at all. Perhaps plain common sense is all that you need to use. A person falling asleep in prayer may not be experiencing Desolation; it may simply be fatigue or a case of sleep apnoea!(1)

        This First Set refers not so much to the First Week but rather to a directee who is in a less sophisticated phase of stage of spiritual growth at this moment in life. This means these guidelines could be applicable all through the Exercises journey and through one's entire life. One may never need the Second Set of Guidelines. Even when the Second Set is more applicable, the First Set may continue to be applicable and vice versa. To believe otherwise is to think of human living in a very static way. Note that the directees for whom the First Set is intended are "the persons who are going on intensely cleansing their sins and rising from good to better in the service of God our Lord" [315]; that is, good persons who are seeking to grow in God's love and service.(2) They are still struggling with many Inordinate Attachments and sometimes obvious temptations and habits which interfere with their following of Jesus [9] -- being tempted by the opinions of others, fear of difficult struggles, desire for status, etc.(3) The First Set of Guidelines is often still needed throughout all the Weeks of the Exercises journey and, certainly, during life afterwards.

        At first, listen to your directee's experience of the week more generally and, only later, more specifically: "What has been happening in your prayer experience of the past week? ..."(4) Your directee's answer to such a general question might give you the information you need to know without asking many more questions. Obviously your questions should not be in the style of an interrogation, but you will need to discover some of the following:

 What has been his felt appreciation of the context of God's mercy and protection? ... Has he been distressed with fear or apprehension? ... What has been his general mood during the past week, both in and outside the prayer exercises? ... Has he been able to fulfil his commitment to the time for the prayer exercises? ... Has he been in Consolation or Desolation?
These are some of the questions that are at the back of your mind regarding the First Week as a whole. When you listen to your directee, your key work is to reflect back and highlight his articulation of his own prayer experiences so that he will notice what is going on in them.

        If the technical terms of Consolation and Desolation have not yet been used, it may not be helpful to use them with your directee at this point. It would be better to use such words as comfort/discomfort, meaningful/not meaningful, easy/difficult, something there/nothing there, ease/struggle, etc. If your directee is experiencing some difficulty in entering the exercises of the First Week, the words that you use to understand what is going on in his interior experience are less important than your discovering the issues behind the difficulty.

        After listening to your directee's general experience of, and on the supposition that your directee has in fact made some headway with, the First Week, move to questions that deal more specifically with the content of the First Exercise: "Let's look more closely at that First Exercise. How did you find it? ..." or "Let's look at your day-to-day experience of prayer. What has been happening in your heart? ..." or "Do you feel that you have been receiving the grace of the First Exercise? ..."

        Through a few of these more precise questions, you are attempting to discover some of the following information:

        Obviously, these aspects are also at the back of your mind and are not for an interrogation session with your directee! You might be wondering at this point: "Why so structured? Why be so careful about the exact use of Ignatius' text? Does it really matter?" At this point, remembering my supposition that you are dealing with a directee who has reached the Contemplative Attitude or who has been touched deeply by God's love, the focus of your discernment questions is whether he has actually been doing the prayer exercises [12], [13]. Once you recognize that he has been doing them, you can pull right back and stand, as Ignatius suggests, "in the centre like a balance" [15]. Then your focus for discernment is whether he is in Consolation or Desolation.

        Once your directee is doing the prayer exercises and is moving ahead in true Consolation, you will have very little to do as a prayer guide since God is communicating more immediately [15] and is disposing him [5]. When he is in Desolation, you will have more to do; you will be asking yourself what it may mean.(5) Obviously, if you are dealing with a directee who is still developing the proper dispositions to make the Exercises journey, but using the material of the Exercises text to do so, your approach will that described in the first six chapters of this manual and in Chapter 31, "The Early Stages In Ongoing Spiritual Direction." In this situation, you will be doing all you can through teaching, encouraging, active and reflective listening, conversing, correcting images of God, helping him notice, etc. -- and all this is to help lead him to the Contemplative Attitude. You may have to do this patiently and gently for a very long time! Hence, none of the above concerns about his entering into the specifics of the prayer exercises may be important!

        Towards the end of this interview, introduce Prayer Unit 7. Here you will be giving two different prayer exercises for the coming week; namely, the Second and the Third Exercise, the latter one being for the prayer period marked f). Simply indicate to your directee when the Third Exercise is to be done and tell him that you will go into it next week. There is no further need here to explain it. The reason the Third Exercise is in this prayer unit is to enable the directee to deal experientially with it before your explanation. This will also be the case at other points in later prayer units. Learning takes place more effectively when there is a felt need!

        Most of your remarks will concern the Second Exercise. The following is a way of introducing it:

a) "Let's read through this Second Exercise together. (Take time to read it together.) Notice that this exercise invites you to look at your personal history of sin. Last week you were praying on how God is saving us from the sin situation into which we are all born. The evil we experience is part of our human family, of our environment, and of our relationships to them. Throughout our own lives we contribute to it. Sinful structures and the environment of iniquity continually affect us all. We, in turn, have sinned against others and have contributed to those sinful structures. Now you are being invited to acknowledge and bring your own self with your own disordered or sinful history to God's forgiving love...."

b) "Look at the Grace. Continue to pray for the shame and confusion of the First Exercise. But now, ask more specifically for sorrow and even tears. Ignatius means what he writes. Ask for tears, not tears over your own image of yourself which you can't live up to, but tears because you put Jesus on the cross, just as I did! Ask for them and allow God to give them to you. This is grace -- not something you force -- not something superficial or sentimental. Remember the more important gifts are the deeply felt tears of the heart...."

c) "You may feel moved to continue the Colloquy with Jesus on the cross...."

d) "Of the five points that Ignatius gives in this exercise, the first is very important. Let's look at it. It is a review of all one's sins `... bring to memory all the sins of one's life, looking from year to year, or from period to period, etc.' This sounds like the fourth step of the Twelve-Step A.A. program or like the examination of conscience in some Christian traditions. If you think it is important to make such a detailed accounting here,(6) then it may be wise to do so as part of this exercise. Remember you are dealing with a God who is love, not with a person who needs every little account settled. The way to go about this point is with the Risen Lord. Ask him to take you hand-in-hand down memory lane -- now looking at this, then looking at that. Let memories bubble to the surface. Allow memories to touch off other memories. Talk to Jesus about them, and with him, try to come to some understanding of the sin dimensions of your past. In many ways we are our past, and broken and sinful dimensions of our lives often stay with us. They influence our choices even now and into the future.... Recall the sin events of your past with detail. Look at the persons involved. Listen to what they are saying. For example, you might look at how you cheated in a game of marbles in elementary school.... See your decision to do so.... See the marbles.... Be with the kids with whom you were playing.... Dialogue in imagination with them.... Try to get hold of the incipient evil within that one event.... Talk with Jesus about it and ask him for the gift of true sorrow...."

e) "As you pray through these exercises, you will become more and more aware of the sin dimensions of your life and how they continue to affect your decisions and choices. They are part of your Composition; that is, they are a real part of your own personal environment that you carry around with you. So, as you enter into each prayer exercise, compose yourself with all the dimensions that God is revealing to you. For example, you could begin tomorrow's prayer with that same image of being "trapped" that you used in the prayer exercise last week. But now include that sense of smallness you experienced last Monday or that inappropriate anger you experienced with the salesperson on Friday. Enter into prayer being trapped and being small ... and with that inappropriate anger on Friday.... Be all that with God.... This is your truth as you enter into prayer.... Your truth is also that you are loved even in your being trapped and small and flying off the handle...."

f) "As you pray with these different exercises of the First Week, you will probably discover how one prayer exercise blends into another. You will also become aware of how you need to carry unfinished business from one prayer exercise into another...."


Comments That Apply Generally To The First Week

        As mentioned before, once you are satisfied that your directee is doing the spiritual exercises as faithfully as possible, your role begins to shift. Now, you, as guide for the Exercises, are to remain on the sidelines -- letting God do the revealing and communicating [15]. If your directee is allowing interior movements to take place and proceeding in Consolation, you will have very little to do.

        A greater challenge will take place when your directee is being affected by spiritual Desolation. In this situation, recall the remarks I made in the third chapter. There I discussed the importance of reflective listening to encourage a directee to express his real feelings to God, and I suggested that this is particularly appropriate when a directee's prayer shows the beginning signs of resistance.

        Usually, Desolation is a result or symptom of resistance. This does not imply that Desolation is bad and Consolation is good. God communicates and teaches about God's self and God's relationship to us through both kinds of experiences. However, in Desolation, a directee is more susceptible to discouragement, inappropriate decisions, false guilt, etc. There is one experience of Desolation which is often a part of the experience and gift of forgiveness for which the directee is praying. It is the experience of being helpless, separated and impotent; it is often associated with the emerging gifts of sorrow and tears. Generally, soon after, it is followed by the experience of Jesus' forgiving love. Confronted by such a phenomenon of Desolation, you can:

Two Dynamic Models Of The First Week

        If one were to plot these experience as models, they would look something like the ones on the next two pages. These are models of the kinds of experiences that may take place during the First Week. The represent two generalized patterns that many directees will have encountered by the time they complete the First Week. Perhaps you may be able to recognize one of these patterns from your own experience of the First Week on the Exercises journey.

        These dynamic models are based on a distillation from the many different ways directees generally experience the First Week. Realize, however, that these phenomena may not take place at all and your directee may be led according to his unique needs at this time, not necessarily according to a dynamic model of the process.

Model #1: Smooth, Wave-Like Movement
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        The first dynamic model of the "typical" First-Week experience is illustrated by a smooth, wave-like movement.(7) Illustrated by this model is a downward cycle of Desolation that usually occurs. Frequently it is preceded by dryness which masks negative feelings -- anger, hurt, hostility, rage, resentment, pain, etc. -- touched off by the prayer material. The psyche is distancing itself from these unwanted feelings. In the struggle that ensues, the directee often experiences a sense of hopelessness and separation. Then there emerges a profound awareness of his helplessness to get out of this on his own. In this awareness, he experiences the effects of evil in his life. This is the deep-felt knowledge of sin that he asks for during the Third Exercise. In conjunction with this experience and awareness, often there springs:

Model #2: Sail Boat Moving Through Storms
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        The second dynamic model of the "typical" First-Week experience is illustrated by a sail boat encountering a series of storms and emerging from each encounter with a certain level of resolution. We could call it a dialectical model because it is like the clash of thesis versus antithesis moving into synthesis in a repeated fashion. This model represents the First-Week experiences taking place in a less thematic way than in the previous model. It often takes place when a prayer guide is using the From-Outside-In(8) approach with a directee.

        Accordingly she leads her directee into the First Week by proposing the material and then waits for the directee's reactions and responses to the material proposed. Thus the directee reacts or responds here, there, back again, searching for the desired Grace, waiting for the enlightenment to be given in God's time. At first the directee experiences the prayer exercises as making little sense:

"The First Exercise is too foreign." ... "The Second Exercise contains too much material." ... "The Third Exercise is too mechanical." ... "The Fourth Exercise is not much different from the Third." ... "The Fifth Exercise is unbelievable!"
Very little makes any sense. He can not relate to the material. There is a sense of confusion and anger that he is being asked to pray over such negative things! He knows that he has sinned but he isn't that bad! There is misunderstanding or an inability to relate easily to this material.

        Then by the time he has done Prayer Unit 7 or 8, something important begins to happen. A kind of patient waiting begins to emerge and glimmers of the possibility of relating to such material takes place. Then one or other of the Graces being prayed for begins to manifest itself. Little by little there is a deepening of sorrow or enlightenment, now a bit of freedom, an insight, now shame, now a sense of helplessness. Through each of these "stormy" moments, as his blindness is gradually removed, the directee sees a little more clearly and some of the First-Week graces emerge:

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Desolation Can Lead
To Deeper Encounter With God

        From these two models it can easily be understood how Desolation is often the prelude to a deeper encounter with God. A directee's Desolation often indicates an unwillingness to let Jesus save him. It often conceals that less-than-conscious and false belief to which each person is heir; namely, that I need to fix myself up before I can allow myself to be loved or forgiven! Hence a prayer guide must learn not to rescue her directee from this experience.

        The practical wisdom in dealing with your directee is to encourage him according to notations [7] and [8], all the while waiting for him to work through the desolating experiences with God. If your directee needs a little more help, explain the three reasons for Desolation given in notation [322]. By doing this, you heighten your directee's awareness that he is experiencing Desolation and needs to be patient.

        It may be more appropriate in a later interview to engage your directee in a discussion about the possible meaning of the Desolation. Then, during the prayer exercises, he can work with God to discover its meaning and can wait for God's enlightenment. Working through such experiences with God is always preferable to your giving him active help. From such experiences, learning takes place at a greater depth [2]. This deep-felt understanding empowers your directee to recognize and deal with such experiences on his own.

        Perhaps here in this interview, but certainly at other times along the journey, you will need to assist your directee more actively to work through the meaning of the Desolation. Frequently this is accomplished by helping him to isolate the issues behind the Desolation, and then, by encouraging him to act against the Desolation and to persevere patiently [13], [319], [321].

        In attempting to discover the significance of the Desolation, remember that it is not your understanding that you are seeking, but rather the meaning that makes sense to your directee; that is, the perspective that fits his meaning-scheme, not your own. For example, you may perceive his struggle as an inability to let Jesus forgive him. This is the sentence and judgement that fits your own personal understanding, but as the interview progresses, you come to realize that this understanding does not quite fit his own meaning of the experience which he comes to express as "fear of trusting Jesus." "Fear of trusting Jesus" fits his meaning-scheme and captures for him the meaning of his Desolation. It gives him a better handle to deal with the issue much more effectively than your interpretation. Once he has a handle on the issue that may be involved in the Desolation, he can proceed to deal with the Desolation according to notations [319]-[321].

        A prayer guide's role is always to help the directee to come to his own meaning. Prayer guides and spiritual directors don't have to know exactly what is going on in a directee's experience. Their role is to recognize that the directee knows what is going on!(9)

Typical Issues That Occur
During The First Week

        Many directees enter into the First Week without a real belief in personal evil and its effects. They do not like some of their behaviours and limitations. Often they feel unacceptable and unworthy, and they dislike some of the ways that they get irritable and judge others. However, they do not understand how sin and evil are part of these.

        Most directees would admit and believe that there is sin and evil in society in general. In their own lives, they might still be suffering from abusive experiences of the past. Close to where they live, there are often crimes, drugs, violence, greed, etc. Further removed, there are wars and injustices perpetrated around the globe. They understand that such events emerge out of national pride, desire for wealth, and desire to protect economic systems. They might feel a kind of guilt because they "have it so good" while others do not. They would probably put all these under the heading of evils or sin but not under the heading of their own personal sins. They really `disbelieve' that they are personally responsible for any real evil. Consequently, they do not really believe that they are capable of refusing God's love in a fundamental way. There are many reasons for this:

a) In a more classicist worldview, particularly before the early sixties, Christians were taught that sin was something people did or omitted in a clear and distinct way.

b) At that time, sexual misbehaviour was stressed so much that it was looked upon as the key form of immorality. Next in line were drunkenness and loss of temper.

c) We have come to attribute inappropriate behaviour to psychological causes only; for example, irritableness to a lack of communication skills; competition to unconscious needs for approval; etc.

d) Popular religious language has trivialized and confused the notion of what is sinful by referring to human limitations as weaknesses and weaknesses as sins.

e) Until recently, the scientific method led us to believe that evils, and hence sin, can be remedied with sufficient research.

f) Our `private' lives have become separated from our `public' lives. We think of personal sin as belonging to a private world. In the public sphere of business and other institutional activities, we recognize sin in others, in groups, or in the system beyond our private lives. We do not think of ourselves as sinners in the public domain. In that domain, we often change our value systems in the same way we put on special clothes for special public activities -- business clothes for business, evening clothes for evening events, sports wear for recreational activities.
g) The popular media has made evil and sin ordinary and trivial,(10) and at the same time has self-righteously exaggerated our idealistic expectations for total functionality and wholeness.

        Our cultural disbelief in sin influences various reactions to the prayer material of the First Week. This is certainly the case with the generous directee who worries that he can't think of any sins to pray over. Another directee cannot appreciate deeper dimensions of sin because he gives too much importance to his past experiences of disordered sexuality. Yet another has been so affected by some past event -- his own sin or someone else's sin against him or some hurt or block to forgiving, etc. -- that he cannot transcend the negative feelings, the false guilt or the sense of unworthiness so that he is able to pray about sin in different facets of his life.

        Most persons entering the First Week fail to appreciate how mysterious and incomprehensible evil really is. This is even true of those directees who bring a lot of conscious guilt to the First Week. Jesus said that we prefer the darkness (Jn 3:19). Evil blinds us to its own significance. Why do we have such difficulties in transcending early traumatic experiences? For years, we repress hurtful things; we continue to hold on to negative feelings that erupt in unexpected ways. Why is it that, in spite of all our efforts to extricate ourselves from the power of something that happened years ago, we find ourselves still controlled by it? We repress; we avoid; we don't even recognize the sophisticated techniques we use to deny what is in our hearts. The mystery of iniquity is at work even when we cannot claim it clearly or call it by its right name!

        It is a truth of spiritual theology that only God can reveal sin to us. Often we get a glimmer of it on our own. Often a prayer guide will capture a glimmer of it in a directee; but that's all. Only God can give a directee the revelation he needs to become free from its hold on his choices in life. However, a prayer guide can steer a directee in helpful directions with a few practical tips such as one or other of the following:

        With almost every directee making the Exercises, it is more helpful, wherever the prayer exercises use "sin," to use terms and phrases such as `disordered behaviour,' `disorder,' sinfulness, going against God's desires, compromising with evil, etc. Such words and phrases have more practical significance for your directee than the use of the word "sin" by itself; they represent aspects that remain within him long after the forgiveness for sin is received. Disordered Affections will continue to influence his decisions in life even when he has become free from sinning. If God so chooses, God will reveal later the particular areas that should be called sins. These disorders without God's grace -- such is their inherent thrust or internal inertia -- are capable of leading to eternal loss. We would be lost now without God's love all through our lives! That is how dependent we are!

        From the comments so far, it would seem that we presume that directees are in the `state of sin' before they experience the graces of the First Week -- that directees need to move from the personal condition of being separated from God's love to the `state of grace.' This is not the presumption. Most of the directees you will meet are already in the state of God's love -- the state of `sanctifying grace.' However, what we are presuming is that through this First-Week experience, they will be moving from the state of grace to the experience of the grace they already possess -- from being in God's love to experiencing God's love. I am also presuming that a prayer guide disposes the directee for this added `actual grace' by using the same materials as if he were disposing a directee for the kind of conversion implied in the movement from sin to grace! Here in the Exercises journey, our hope is that directees will receive this added grace as a result of praying the First Week. Hopefully, this added grace will give them such freedom from the sin-effects in their lives that Inordinate Attachments will not influence the choices which they are likely to make in the next six months.
 
 

Summary

Specifically: Generally:



 
 

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Endnotes For The First Week

1. "If it waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, flies like a duck, call it a duck!" (Thank you to Joseph McArdle, S.J., for this one.) "Don't scratch where it doesn't itch!" (Thank you to John Haley for this one.)

2. These directees are basically beyond the notation-[314] type of person who could care less whether they sin or not. The temptations of the notation-[314] persons are more "serious" than those which Ignatius calls gross and obvious [9].

3. Please note that what we popularly mean by gross, blatant, and obvious temptations is not what Ignatius meant by "gross." Read again notation [9] and take note of his examples. They are not temptations to embezzle, murder, abuse others, behave promiscuously, refuse others a humane standard of living, etc. In this manual, consult Chapter 29, "Guidelines For Discerning Spirits," p.409ff

4. Hopefully, after several interviews and as the Exercises journey is under way, your directee will be able to express in chronological order what has taken place in his prayer experiences. This becomes more and more important as he enters the Second Week because this practice gives both you and your directee a way of appreciating the movement of spirits important in the decision-making process.

        Spiritual movements are not simply one's reactions in a moment of time. Reactions, both spiritual and psychological, develop, move forward, move backward, come to a greater fullness. So often, directees tend to report the results (their conclusions, their thinking after the movements have taken place!) of the movements rather than the movements themselves. Directees will usually give you what they consider the most important experience first and pay very little attention to what went on before and after. Others will report only their more recent experiences and it takes a rather long time for them to appreciate that a significant interior movement may have led up to this recent phenomenon.

5. The experience of Desolation can have various meanings as exemplified in notations such as [7], [10], [13], [16], [322], [327], etc.

6. Roman Catholic directees may want to do this in preparation for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

7. William A. Barry, S.J., "The Experience Of The First and Second Weeks of the Spiritual Exercises," Review for Religious, vol. 32 (1973), pp.102-109. For a presentation of this same model in the context of the Conversion Cycle, consult the section entitled, "During The First Week Of The Exercises," in Chapter 32 of this manual, p.499.

8. Consult Chapter 30, "Different Perspectives In Understanding And Using The Exercises," p.457ff

9. Thank you to Petin Romallo, S.J., who gave me this seminal and very useful insight in 1969.

10. Trivialization takes place on many different levels -- with humour, with repetitive news reporting, with talk shows which reveal people's private worlds, with gossip columns, etc. On the other hand, the media has also created righteous expectations of our leaders in public life.

11. In human relations theory, you have moved from feeding back and clarifying what the directee is expressing, to helping him notice the meaning that lies behind what he is expressing.

12. It is for this reason that Repetitions are placed in the very first prayer unit.
 

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