INTIMACY WITH GOD - Jesuit Retreat House

Section I of notes taken fromINNER COMPASS, by Margaret Silf

“If you felt someresonance with the statement “I desire to know God better,” then you areexperiencing the call into deeper intimacy with Him. If you respond to thatcall, He will draw you more deeply into friendship with him through your prayerand through everything in your lived experience. That friendship will develop byyour revealing yourself more and more to Him and He to you, in a process oftalking to and listening to each other, just as in human friendship.” (Pg.151)

“Ignatius teaches ushow to open ourselves up to the intimacy with God through Gospel-basedmeditation, through which we can, in our prayer, become participants in the lifeand ministry of Jesus and discover its reality for us where we are here and now.Intimacy, whether with God or with another human being, challenges us to comecloser, to take risks, to be open to change and transformation in a dynamicrelationship that we cannot control. It engages us in:

§ LISTENING– by opening our hearts to God. We learn to become inwardly still andreceptive to what God wants to show us.

§ DISCLOSING– revealing ourselves to God in prayer, just as we are.

§ SHARING– allowing the life of the Lord to become deeply connected to our own byabsorbing His Word and by sharing in the events of his living, his dying, hisrising.

§ REFLECTING– deepening our experience of God by becoming more and more aware of the waysin which he meets us in our daily lives.

§ GIVING– freely offering to others the gifts we have received ourselves; sharingGod’s love and spreading His Kingdom” (pg. 151)

Childrenlearn the language of those to whom they are closest. A baby whose mother spends time holding her child and talking to it willbecome articulate more quickly than one who is left alone for most of the day.

“The same dynamics seems toapply in the way we learn to express the deepest desires and movements of ourhearts. We will express ourselves in the language of the One to whom we areclosest. Like a baby, our language will be formed by those we are close to. Thefurther we draw away from God, the more garbled will be our heart’sself-expression, until it reverts to the chaos of Babel. The closer we stay to God, the more surely our deeper desires will form aroundhim and his desire for us, and the more our way of being will be conformed tohis. At first our desires crowd around like a baby’s first babbling, butslowly our words are forming. We are writing the words of our own personal songof love. It begins in listening and leads to imitation.

It draws us, word byword, prayer by prayer, into relationship with the Word, until all our words aresuperseded and we are ready to be with him in union and silence.” (Pg.156-157)

“When we are praying in the spirit of the Third Week of the SpiritualExercises, the question is turned around. In response to: “Where is God in ourexperience of suffering and dying?” God challenges us with his own question,“Where are you in mine?”

The friendship and intimacy withthe living Lord to which the Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises invited usnow bring us up against a moment that we may have experienced in our humanrelationships, when we are asked to be alongside a loved one who is sufferingand dying.

“Inthe Third-Week prayer we are led to discover those places where we arepersonally present to, and implicated in, the suffering and dying of the Lord.In that discovery, he reveals to our painfully opening eyes the mystery of hisown all-powerful presence in ours.” (Pg. 165)

“The third weekinvites us to see a connection between our personal pain and the agony of Jesusin the last days of his earthly live, so that his pain becomes fused with oursand ours is taken into his. This may sound like just another pious platitude.Only you can discover whether it has real meaning for your own experience, byletting yourself be drawn into the events of the Passover.”

“When we praywith the events of the passion and death of the Lord, we are taking part in apersonal Eucharist, in which he is drawing us into the very heart of his ownconsecration in order to consecrate us for his service…the power and love ofthe Lord becomes present in our lived experience by bringing our two stories,lives together in His suffering.” (Pg. 165)

“Inpraying the passion we come face-to-face with our own involvement in Jesus’experience. For example, we might find ourselves identifying with those who arehammering the nails into Jesus’ hands or betraying him for their own gain, ordenying all knowledge of him because of their fears. Or we may want to wash ourhands of the whole thing, with Pilate, or run away and hide behind locked doorsin the upper room. In other scenes, we may be filed with compassion and takenwith the Lord as companions in his captivity and as cosufferers on the cross.Only in the depths of our prayer will we discover what the passion narrative ismaking present to our personal lived experience and in what ways it is callingus toward change and transformation. We are, quite simply, bringing Jesus’story into the present tense of our lives.” (Pg. 166)

“It allows us, with realtruth to say, “Your suffering is mine, Lord. In my own small way, I haveconnected to it and felt it in the secret depths of my prayer. I offer you

my heartfelt repentancefor my part in causing it, and I offer to you my heartfelt compassion in wantingto share it with you and make it a little more bearable.” (Pg. 166)

“When we can do this,the transformation begins, and some glimmer of the mystery of redemption startsto penetrate our hearts. We discover that God, there at our center, isresponding to us in ways that we might express like this:

Your suffering is mine. Because you have opened yourself to experience at least a small fragment of my suffering for you, so I shall fulfill my promise and draw you through this experience into the fulfillment of resurrection. The suffering and dying that you experience in your life may not appear to be alleviated in any way, but once your suffering has met mine, the deeper mystery is revealed.

The deeper mystery is: When our suffering is connected in prayer to God’s itbecomes, like His, redemptive. This is the hidden power and mystery locked up inour suffering and our dying. The act of consecration that our prayer has madepossible has released it and made it effective to act upon the given-ness of ourworld and its narratives.

Forthe Eucharist to be fulfilled the consecrated elements must be broken and sharedour in communion. Our consecration means nothing if it is kept to ourselves.Consecration is always for some purpose; it is not an end in itself. We areconsecrated for God and for each other, not for ourselves alone. God declaresHis desires and intention that we shall be consecrated to His truth and that ourlives shall become a space where He can be at home. He then lives in our lives,fulfilling in them the purpose for which He consecrated them.

“Likethe Eucharist we are consecrated in order to broken and given to others. Likethe Eucharistic wine, we are consecrated in order to be poured out for others.Consecration is always a community matter. It is an act of inclusiveness,expressing the all-inclusive love of God. Consecration, understood in this way,is a vocation for all believers and has sacrifice as its heart. We can’t sharein the consecration that was first enacted during the Last Supper and isreenacted in every Eucharist unless we are willing to become part of thesacrifice.” (Pg.168)

Resurrection experience

“Ifwe seek the risen Lord, we will find Him standing behind each of our brothersand sisters in their need, and He will become real for us at precisely themoment when we reach out to them.” (Pg. 175) Try to remember it is the Lordwho stands behind every person – try to remember this especially when someoneis being difficult, is making demands, or is in need of your love in someparticular way.

“Resurrection isa now moment, a sacramental moment that at once both points toward and bringsabout the fulfilling of God’s dream. Itis the working out, in time, of God’s eternal dream, and each of us is engagedin it in every breath we take.”

“Whenwe take the risk of faith, we open ourselves up to the experience of God, andthat experience is our proof, living and lived proof, of His reality and Hispower and His love – proof first to ourselves and then to others who begin tonotice its effects on us.”

§ I am called to be an expert witness for Christ in the courtof his creation.

§ I am called to become fully who I most truly and eternally AM

Hence–

1. I can give Him the evidence of my lived experience as a sign ofHis real and loving presence in the world.

2. I can give Him back – fulfilled – the dream He first had of mewhen He created me.

Thefirst is a collective gift to God. The second is an individual gift that each ofus must work out for ourselves with God, in our prayer and in our living.

We arecalled to be “expert” witnesses of the Gospel and of Jesus Christ. An expertwitness reveals God out of one lived experience of Him and in the authority ofHis truth that I now hold in my heart.

Questionsto test my inner sincerity, trust, strength, faith etc.

1. Have I tried tracking mymoods and noting when I felt close to God and when I felt far away? Have I triedlistening to Him, at a personal level, in my prayer and in His word, and lettingwhat I hear take root in how I live?

2. Do I trust my experienceof God? Do I merely believe that God holds my life in His hands, or do I trustHis guiding in my living it?

3. Do I have the courage tostand up and show that trust, even when that means swimming against the flow?Who I am speaks louder than what I say? Can others see anything in me that theywould like to have in their hearts?

4. The three questions are a)Have I tried it? B) Do I trust it? C) Will I let it show?

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