Solomon utters a most edifying prayer when he asks for an understanding heart to govern well. Solomon set the standard in becoming a person for others whose goal was to build up the common good. God rewards him with the gift of discernment to choose what is best for one’s soul. He is given the gift of discernment and the confidence to do the right thing in complex situations. That’s often what we want.
We can replace Solomon’s name for Ignatius because his life’s work was to help people discern what is best for their souls. His Spiritual Exercises is a guide to help people become more loving people daily by helping them to clarify how God is acting through each person and each difficult situation. He helps us to deepen a friendship with God who calls us into a living communion of saints. God wants us to always act lovingly with a discerning heart, and Ignatius set forth a methodology that has healed people for five centuries. Because of his constant healing, Ignatius needs to be considered a Church Doctor.
The Gospel concludes its parables on the reign of God by claiming that when a person gets a glimpse of God’s world, it offers immeasurable promises that nothing else can provide and one can only treasure it as one’s highest priority. This is what God revealed to Ignatius as he sat daydreaming on the banks of the River Cardoner after his period of prayer. His mind and imagination were filled so thoroughly with God’s love for the world that he had to share it through the Exercises. This is the point of the Exercises – to be able to see and love and know the world that way that God sees and loves it. Think about it. This reign of God means that we are loved so radically, forgiven so wholeheartedly, reconciled so thoroughly, that we know deep down in our soul that this love is personal and profound. It is meant for you. We are meant to know it with certitude. With God’s acceptance, with God’s inclusivity, with God’s magnanimous mercy and respect for human dignity, we fully know that we are in a good place with God even if there are times when church does not accept us. No human judgment, no human exclusion, no human derision or hurtful words, or no human-created categories of being can ever separate us from God’s mercy and saving work. God wants us most deeply to know of God’s already affectionate care for us. God calls us into deep friendship.
God granted Solomon an understanding heart and Ignatius with spiritual wisdom because God freely shares what God has: a living compassionate wisdom. God understands your suffering – and your joys. God knows human suffering better than we know it, and God also knows the badness that a human heart can do. We hurt people so much that we nearly break them. We are the cause of so much suffering and loneliness, and sometimes the church is the cause, and the effects are long-lasting and indelible, but fortunately, we have a treasure that erases that suffering and reconciles us to God and to one another.
Our God makes sense of what we need. This is a God who abides and saves. This is a God who brings us joy even when the world seems dark. This is a God of hope and optimism and wants us to celebrate what’s right with the world. This God gave us Jesus as the one to follow and to imitate because he holds the same understanding heart as God. This God gave us Ignatius so that we have a pathway to develop a friendship with Jesus and to teach us to trust in him as he did in God. This God gave us friends and companions who share the joy of God’s vision, and this God gave us ourselves as a gift to cherish and to share with others. This God gave us the Resurrection of Jesus to be confident of God’s closeness.
When we recognize the undeserved gift before us, we rejoice, and we celebrate with those who likewise have found this gift and treasure it. Together, we hold onto it tenderly and reverently as it nourishes us with the compassion, care, and understanding that are signs and proof that we believe. Our treasure is the work that God is doing with and for us. Ignatius helps us to see this clearly in the Contemplation to Love as God loves. Any increase of mercy, any increase of hope, any increase of acceptance shows that God is at work in the human heart, in our hearts. For this, we rejoice, and we celebrate that God has called us to be companions to one another and to a world that wants to know God as we do. May the Spirit of Ignatius bless us today. May the Holy Spirit continue to lead us deeper to a place we call home – into the heart of our all-loving God.
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