Jesuit Novitiate
Novitiate of the Euro-Mediterranean Province of the Society of Jesus
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God is patient

13 Dec 2019

We all feel the need for new possibilities. We all hope for a “second table of salvation”, we all want to find, along the way, that “hook in the middle of the sky” sung a few years ago by Claudio Baglioni. Perhaps because the human being is always a construction site, a person is always under construction. There are two Gospel parables that I particularly like to read in the light of my experience: that of the “talents” (Mt 25, 14-30) and that of the workers called to work in the vineyard at different times of the day (Mt 20, 1-16 ). In the first, Jesus reminds us of the wealth of gifts that God places in our hands throughout life. His conclusion, however, is very demanding: this treasure, this wealth of gifts, or you welcome it with love and creativity, making it fruitful, or you will lose it forever. In the other parable instead the Lord seems to remind us that there is always, in life, a new possibility, at all times, even in the most unlikely. The Father always puts at our disposal new possibilities to enhance, reorganize, make our lives fruitful. To put it in some title of Ignazio Silone, there are always for us an emergency exit, new wine and bread to satiate the thirst and hunger that emerged along the way, there is always in us a seed under the snow ready to sprout to give new impetus to the adventures of every poor Christian. God is patient and does not stop renewing to us, at every hour of our earthly day, the most important gift, the call to holiness, that is, to full happiness. The salary is assured to us in its fullness, at whatever time we have stamped the card. Even the calls to common sense, behind which our small envy or rivalry are sometimes hidden, do not count for God. He only asks us to trust him, even when, at times and in unusual circumstances, he calls us to follow a special path like the novitiate in the Society of Jesus, as it happened to me.

Massimo Sebastiani

The repetition of prayer: a frustrating or deeper experience?

by Andrea Cassar

During the month of Spiritual Exercises, I lived and experienced for the first time what St. Ignatius of Loyola calls the ‘Repetition of a meditation or contemplation exercise’. This consists in meditating a Bible passage or any other exercise described by St. Ignatius for a second time, putting emphasis on those points in which one has felt major consolation or desolation or greater spiritual feeling (Spiritual Exercises [62,2]).

When I got to know that I had to do this type of exercise, I was struck by a feeling of frustration and asked myself: “What else can this Bible passage tell me?” This thought had crossed my mind many times before the month of Spiritual Exercises and, in fact, it happened quite frequently to meditate on the same Scripture passage with wariness, lacking an attitude of engagement with the text. During this long retreat, however, I noticed that my frustration and dissatisfaction were hindering me from accepting a profound truth: that prayer does not depend on my thoughts and expectations, and that I’m not the protagonist of such a time. On the contrary, it is the benevolent presence of God that awaits me and desires to meet me as I am, even though I could feel distant from Him.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, Saint Paul writes that the word of God is alive and active and judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (cf. Heb 4:12); keeping in mind such truth, I didn’t feel the need to worry anymore about meditating the same passage and the same words of the Gospel. This experience brought about great inner freedom and it taught me how to let go of my expectations and ideals, which I usually set before starting the moment of prayer. With this disposition of the soul, I could face and engage, in much more depth, with the various repetitions of the Biblical passages, observing slightly clearer what my interior movements were telling me. Moreover, there were specific days where I experienced more “taste” in the second hour of prayer (the repetition) compared to the first hour, which proved to be hard and tedious.

I believe that this method of repetition, proposed by St. Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises, could be useful and valid not only for personal and community prayer but also for our everyday life. Often, we find ourselves immersed in long days made up of a succession of things to do and this could provoke a sense of boredom and perhaps apathy in us, giving up on the beauty and surprises that such days could offer. In a world where joy seems to depend on the latest market news and the many earthly pleasures that weigh down the soul and try to wither our heart, stopping and taking the time to reread our days and delve into the true meaning of our everyday life may seem a waste of time. This is a real temptation and none of us is exempt from experiencing it, and could lead us to live our daily lives with mediocrity. Deciding to act against this temptation will help us recognise His living and consoling presence, particularly in those areas of our life where everything seems dull, unknown and dead.

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