+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

​

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.

​

O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.

​

St. Ignatius of Loyola: pray for us.

​

Introduction

​

The Principle and Foundation①: the first consideration of the Spiritual Exercises. We can distinguish three elementary truths in the Principle and Foundation:

 

1. The end of man;

2. The end of creatures;

3. The Ignatian indifference. We are going to divide its content into three parts:

​

First, “Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul”.

​

Second, “And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created. From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it”.

​

Third,  “For this, it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honour rather than dishonour, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created”.

​

Preparatory prayer②: “The preparatory prayer is to ask grace of God our Lord that all my intentions, actions and operations may be directed purely to the service and praise of His Divine Majesty”.

​

Composition of place: we can read Genesis 1, 26-31: “God said, 'Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves… God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. God blessed them… God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good. Evening came and morning came: the sixth day”.

​

Petition③: “[It] is to ask God our Lord for what I want and desire. The petition has to be according to the subject matter; that is, if the contemplation is on the Resurrection, one is to ask for joy with Christ in joy; if it is on the Passion, he is to ask for pain, tears and torment with Christ in torment”. Here, we will ask God for the grace of understanding and of living in accordance with the Principle and Foundation.

 

Corpus of meditation

​

FIRST PART: MAN

​

St. Ignatius says that “man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul”.

​

“But what is man? About himself, man has expressed, and continues to express, many divergent and even contradictory opinions. In these he often exalts himself as the absolute measure of all things or debases himself to the point of despair. The result is doubt and anxiety”④.

​

Famous philosophers and writers have given very different definitions of man:

 

• For Schopenhauer man is an animal capable of lying and making promises;

• For Hobbes man is a wolf to man;

• For Leibniz man is “a little God”;

• For Pascal man is a thinking reed (cane);

• For Rousseau man is a corrupted animal;

• For Sartre man is a useless passion;

• For Heidegger man is a “being-towards-death”;

• For Freud man is polymorphously perverse;

• For Democritus man is a universe in little (microcosm);

• For Protagoras man is the measure of all things;

• For Epictetus man is a part of God;

• For Caba man is the only being that wears glasses;

• For Desmond Morris man is a dressed monkey;

• For Seneca man is a clean and elegant animal;

• For Spengler sees man as a beast of prey, a creative predator.

 

These definitions fall far behind of a “realistic” philosophical point of view, because some of them only focus on the animal aspect of man, some others just focus on negative aspects, some others are very funny, some others very pessimistic… and these definitions fall far behind of a theological point of view: none of them see man as he really is, that is, a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image and likeness of God.

​

For what end man was created? We also have expressed this question in our life: for what reason do I exist? For what purpose do I live?

​

Two different answers may be given to these questions: one is the answer given by the world; the other is given by faith.

​

The world (understood as all that is not God, and all that is opposed to God) proposes man to seek happiness in richness, beauty, pleasures, fame, honour, power, knowledge, progress, strength, dominion, health… it is plain fantasy. None of these can be kept forever; none of these things can satisfy man’s thirst for the Infinite; none of these things are man’s essential principles, but accidental circumstances; however so many people do believe they can find happiness in them!

​

On the contrary, St. Ignatius says: “man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul”.

 

“To save his soul…” Jesus says in the Gospel: “what gain, then, is it for anyone to win the whole world and lose his life?”  (Mark 8, 36). If we don’t save our soul, winning the whole world, is totally useless. Once the soul is lost, everything is lost, and lost forever. For this reason we need to meditate about this reality seriously.

​

So what do we have to do to save our souls? St. Ignatius says: “praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul”.

​

This is the answer given by faith. It says that our last end is God. If God is our last end and if God has planned it like that, therefore, this last end must be possible to attain, since God does not do anything bad or in vain. For this reason, this answer leads to hope.

​

SECOND PART: THE CREATURES

​

Till now, St. Ignatius has been talking about two characters: God and me. Now, he introduces a third reality: “the other things”. Consequently, they comprise all, except God and me. We generally call them “creatures”: the natural things, the material things (richness, power, health, beauty…), the spiritual things (wisdom, sciences, arts, gifts…), friends, and relatives… all that are not God.

​

About the creatures we can say:

​

a) They are God’s works: they are created things, out of nothingness, they manifest they have a Creator. They are good (“God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good”). They are the opaque reflection of God, Romans 1, 20: “ever since the creation of the world, the invisible existence of God and his everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind's understanding of created things”; Wisdom 13, 4-5: “And if they have been impressed by their power and energy, let them deduce from these how much mightier is he that has formed them, since through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author”.

​

b) But they are not God: They are nothing. Isaiah 40, 6-7: “A voice said, 'Cry aloud!' and I said, 'What shall I cry?' -'All humanity is grass and all its beauty like the wild flower's. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of Yahweh blows on them”.

​

St. John of the Cross, in the Ascent of Mount Carmel shows how:

​

• The beauty, goodness, wisdom, freedom, pleasure, delight, and glory of creatures, cannot be compared with the beauty, goodness, wisdom, freedom, pleasure, delight, and glory of God;

• In fact, compared with God, the creatures are nothingness, the summit of deformity, ugliness, evilness, supreme ignorance, the most miserable slavery, affliction and captivity, bitterness, poverty and misery;

• And the person who loves them [disorderly] instead of loving God above all, becomes what he loves: nothing, the summit of deformity, ugly, evil, a supreme ignorant, the most miserable slave, surrounded by misery;

• And as a result, that person will not be able to unite himself with God.

 

St. Ignatius says: “the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created”.

​

All that God has placed before me is a gift given with the purpose of helping me possess God. The creatures are scala coeli (stairs to Heaven). The most beautiful expression of this great truth is what St. Paul wrote to the Romans: “all things work together for the good of those who love God”⑤.

​

“From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it”.

​

The creatures may be of great help for us, we need them. But we are not angels. We are human beings, with soul, flesh and bones.

​

Because of uncontrolled inclinations, we try to find satisfaction in creatures for our hearts. And this is an idolatric use of creatures. When man seeks in creatures what he should only find in God, he missuses creatures and his own degradation begins.

​

When creatures are sought just for their own sake (that is, not because God has given them to me, to help me attain holiness, but because I find in them a disorderly pleasure or benefit), they not only don’t make us happy.

​

Therefore, the key for making use of the creatures is to consider them according to what they are: creatures, recognising that they are not God and that they cannot give what only God can give.

​

For this reason, St. Ignatius proposes this rule: the tantum-quantum rule, that is, to use the creatures as much as they help me, and to rid myself of them so far as they don’t help me to attain my last end.

​

In other words, before every creature, I should observe the relation that it establishes between me and God, just as St. Louis of Gonzaga used to say: Quid est hoc ad aeternitatem? (What is this in the light of eternity?).

​

THIRD PART: INDIFFERENCE

​

While meditating on the Principle and Foundation, we discover three truths closely connected: the end of man, the end of creatures and the indifference, in other words: my last end is God, the end of creatures is to help me reach this last end, and the necessary disposition for rightly using of creatures is an interior disposition called “indifference”.

​

St. Ignatius says: “for this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honour rather than dishonour, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created”.

​

Indifference does not mean insensibility, that is, the indifference of the apathetic person to whom all things have the same value, to whom all is the same. Certainly, it was not the same for Jesus that Lazarus would be alive or dead. It is not the same for us to be healthy or sick, to live long or to die in a couple of days, to live close to our family or far away from them, to be praised by others or humiliated. Our intelligence shows us that things have different values.

​

So, what is indifference? It means that although I understand the value and hierarchy among the creatures around me, my will still remains detached from any of them, my heart is not enslaved to any of them, until God’s will appears clearly before me, showing me which of them is the concrete way that will lead me to Him.

​

 

Indifference produces two effects in us:

​

1. It gives us true freedom of spirit. Thanks to it, there is no thing that could enslave us; there is no thing that may condition our actions.

2. It makes our will to be identified with God’s will. By being indifferent, we only desire what God desires, likewise, we only reject what God rejects.

 

Spiritual slavery is opposed to indifference. To be slave is to lack two powers as our own:

​

• To be slave it is to lack the power of self-movement: the slave is moved by other, he doesn’t move freely, he doesn’t decide what to do or where to go, he is pushed and pulled by other whom is called his lord;

• To be slave it is to lack the power of acting for his own benefit: the slave, whatever he does, he does it for his lord who uses him.

 

All this happens in the spiritual aspect, regarding our will. When we live conditioned by our vices, by our imperfections, by our inordinate affections to some things, then those things are the ones that move us, and they are the ones that receive the benefit of our actions, not us. They are our true lord. This is the meaning of slavery.

 

Do we really need to acquire indifference? We should say that indifference is absolutely necessary for holiness. It is impossible to follow the inspirations of the Holy Spirit without indifference. Without indifference, the inspirations of the Holy Spirit will be conditioned by our disorderly affections.

 

Georges Bernanos in his screenplay “Dialogues of the Carmelites” describes the story of a sister who was not indifferent before fear: she could lead a life of penance, privations, vigils, and long periods of prayer… but she could never face fear to danger, fear to death. For that reason, she was unfaithful to her vocation and to God when, during the French Revolution, God inspired her to give her life up thru martyrdom: she refused and hid, abandoning her community. But God’s grace touched her at the end. Out of curiosity, she went to see the martyrdom of the sisters. She saw how they climbed the platform singing the hymn to the Holy Spirit: one after another sang one verse before dying. But when the hymn was about to end, she realised that the last verse was going to be lacking, nobody would sing it: she realised that that was a sign from God. When the sisters also realised that the hymn was going to be incomplete, they heard somebody singing with them. It was the sister, who finally joined the group of martyrs. That act of confidence before death, gave the sister the indifference and courage she never had before. She realised the importance of the end to be achieved; and the mean to achieve it? Better let God decide it.

​

What things does indifference consist in?

​

• Health or Illness: none of them are needed for holiness; Fr. Damian, The leper priest, the hero of Molokai, lived among lepers, he also got leper and died of leper.

• Richness or Poverty: see the example of Job, “naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall return again. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken back. Blessed be the name of the Lord!” (Job 1, 21);

• Honor or Dishonor: St. Joan of Arc, a very pious farm girl of France, heard interior voices telling her she had to help the King of France. France at that moment was invaded by England. She convinced the King about her mission, and he told her to lead his armies. She won a lot of battles and became very famous. During a battle, she was captured, accused of heresy, and condemned to death by burning.

• Long life or Short life: Antonietta Meo, an Italian girl born in Rome in 1930. She was a cheerful girl, diagnosed with bone cancer at the age of five and as a result had to have a leg amputated. She accepted her fate. She wrote many prayers in the form of letters which, according to Vatican experts, reveal a truly extraordinary life of mystical union with God. In one of the letters she wrote: "Dear baby Jesus, you are holy, you are good. Help me, grant me your grace and give me back my leg. If you don’t want to, then may your will be done". She died in the midst of terrible pains. She had not even completed seven years of age. She has been declared “Venerable” by Pope Benedict XVI on December 17th, 2007.

 

How do we acquire indifference?

 

We have indifference when our actions are performed following no other reason than the will of God, when we are not moved by any other object different from God. We acquire indifference when we do what God wants us to do, and only because God wills it.

​

Colloquy

 

St. Teresa of Avila expressed this reality with a poem, we can use it for making our colloquy with God:

 

“I am Yours and born of You, What do You want of me?

Yours, you made me, Yours, you saved me, Yours, you endured me, Yours, you called me, Yours, you awaited me, Yours, I did not stray. What do You want of me?”

​

​

​

Footnotes:

① Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola (SE), 23.

② SE 46.

③ SE 48.

④ Gaudium et Spes, 12.

⑤ Romans 8, 28.

⑥ SE 23.