In a confusing introduction, by a Father Robert Gleason S.J., to an Image Classics reprint of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola (1964), we learn that the Exercises are not to be read as spiritual reading by an individual, but are to be given by a retreat master to exercitants. These are people assembled in one place for eight days, ideally thirty days, of silence for the purpose.
Thirty days of silence sounds marvelous. Also, even though we, especially lay people, are not going to profit much by only reading the Exercises, they remain valuable in introducing us to topics we would never think of. Who would think to divide up a month’s retreat into four weeks of contemplating, first, sin; then, the life of Christ up to Palm Sunday (“twelfth day … introduction to making a choice of a way of life”); then, the events of the Passion; finally, methods of prayer and Contemplation to Attain Divine Love.
Who would think of improving his spiritual life in this firm scheduled way? Ignatius of Loyola did. I imagine the know-it-all character Cliff the mailman from Cheers. He stomps into the bar, hot from a fight. “Tell me I can’t do the Ignatian Exercises without a retreat master! I can read a book as good as anybody!”
Very early, Ignatius speaks of idle talk. “By idle words I mean words which serve no good purpose, and do not profit me or anyone else, nor are they intended to do so.” Talk must be directed to a good end. So, words are not necessarily idle even if “one speaks of matters which are foreign to his state, for example, if a religious speaks of wars or of commerce.” There is still merit even here, if words are directed to a good end: if the religious, the nun perhaps, means to say something valuable about war or commerce.
“Matters foreign to our state.” We will have to think about this phrase. You remember how struck we were by Christopher Ferrara’s history Liberty: the God that Failed. This book called into question the entire foundations of America and our government as a living, enshrined, secular, intractable, once-Protestant but now amoral rebellion against the Church, and thereby terrifyingly founded on sand — founded on sand compared to the rock of the Church, no matter how smashed the Church seems to be in any moment. Suddenly being asked to savor and delectate the concept of “matters foreign to our state” reminds us how readily we presume everything belongs to our state. We presume everything lies within our purview because we are free, and “we the people” reign. We are nobody’s flock.
But suppose that is not so? Suppose the one matter native to our state, needful to think about, is our salvation, which we cannot allow to be built on sand? We must surely carry on with the Exercises, written by a Spaniard in the golden era of the Spanish monarchy. Published in the mid-1530s, just when Henry VIII was putting away Catherine of Aragon and executing Anne Boleyn; just about when St. Teresa of Avila was entering the convent at the age of 21.
Pluot 