“Growing Pains”

In the joyous realization that our inner life is really growing and beginning to take shape, worry, concern and even anxieties can arrive.  We may feel hesitant to take the next step, whatever that may look like.  

We may even be tempted to believe that moments of deep connection with God were only “in our heads,” and not real.  

We may feel a need to safe-guard, or protect all that we have come to trust because it is familiar and comfortable.   However, such resistance may limit the growth before us.   

What are we to do or not do during this time? 

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola

The Spiritual Exercises grew out of St. Ignatius’s personal experience as a man seeking to grow in union with God and to discern God’s will. Ignatius organized the Exercises into four “weeks.” These are not seven-day weeks, but stages on a journey to spiritual freedom and wholehearted  commitment to the service of God.

In the Spiritual Exercises we’re offered a suggestion:  that we engage in remembering.  The word remember, in this sense, means “to put back together,” or “make present here and now”, a recent time when we experienced evidence   or signs of God’s deep and abiding love.  

Aids to this kind of remembering could be: 

  • The action of opening your prayer journal,

  • returning to a song or prayer

  • “God sighting,” that once provided assurance and confidence of God’s love.  

Doing so can help us re-invoke the “heart beat” or “picture” of new life that once provided encouragement and consolation. 

Week one: to “reform the deformed”—the focus of the first week is to recognize God’s unconditional love and to come to terms with our failure and the failure of all of humanity to respond generously to that love.

Week two: to “conform the reformed”—the focus of the second week is to reflect on the person and life of Christ so that we may freely choose to love him and follow him more closely and faithfully.

Week three: to “confirm the conformed”—the focus of the third week is on the Passion and death of Jesus so as to share in and identify more closely with his suffering and to deepen our commitment to him.

Week four: to “transform the confirmed”—the focus of the fourth week is to grow in desire for Jesus to reveal the joy of his Resurrection and to embrace this joy as the foundation of our call to share in Christ’s mission.

Further information on the Spiritual Exercises: