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The Language of the Heart
Discernment is about learning a new language. It’s actually a language that we’ve heard all our lives—the feelings, moods, emotions, leadings, intuitions, and senses that constitute the affective part of our minds. Psychologists talk about the three parts of the mind: the cognitive (reason and other mental processes), the conative (the will), and the affective (feelings and emotions). All of these are involved in the choices we make, but the engine that drives the train is the affective power. The traditional word for it is “heart.”
Ignatius’s great discovery was that we can discern the right path by listening to the language of our hearts. Discernment is about noticing and interpreting those deep currents of feeling that shape what we want, which in turn influence what we do. By no means did Ignatius neglect reasoning and the other powers of the intellect. But he thought that the rivers of feeling and emotion are where God’s leadings can most readily be found.
Ignatius didn’t think this up. It was a discovery he made at a particular time in a particular place. Psychologists speak about “aha! moments,” those occasions when a sudden flash of insight reveals the solution to a difficult problem. Francis of Assisi’s aha! moment came when God told him to rebuild his church. Ignatius’s moment came when he was lying in bed in recovering from grievous wounds suffered in battle.
The Daydreaming Soldier
Ignatius Loyola’s path to sainthood was unconventional to say the least. As a young man he was a proud, headstrong courtier and knight at the royal court of Navarre. The ladies liked him; his rivals feared him. Once he was arrested for brawling in the street (probably in a dispute over a woman), making him one of the few saints with a police record. His macho world came tumbling down in 1521 when he was seriously wounded in a battle. He was carried back to his family’s castle in northern Spain where he endured two excruciating operations to repair his shattered legs. It took him many months to recover, long months of idleness, plenty of time to reflect on his life. He harbored dreams of returning to his previous life of knightly valor, but he probably knew that those days were over. He was a thirty-year-old washed up knight with two bad legs, living at home, being nursed back to health by his sister-in-law. He was ready for something new.
When he asked for something to read he was given the only two books in the house—a life of Christ and a life of the saints. Ignatius was a Catholic like everyone else in his society, but he was not particularly observant and certainly not pious. Nevertheless, the books stoked his active imagination. He imagined what it would be like to be a knight in the service of Christ. He was inspired by the stories of St. Francis and St. Dominic. They were great saints, but Ignatius thought he could be an even greater saint than they were if he chose to be. It was the same with stories of the life of Christ. Ignatius also spent a great deal of time daydreaming about his previous life—the battlefield glory, the amorous conquests, the rivalries at court, the camaraderie of his friends. He whiled away the long days of recovery, lost in these daydreams.
But Ignatius also had a knack for observing himself. He observed himself daydreaming, and what he noticed was this: dreams of romantic and military glory left him depressed; dreams of following Christ left him excited and inspired. He realized that his surface feelings of angst and discontent, and of joy and delight, were pointing to deeper things. It dawned on him that God was speaking to him through his feelings. Years later, when he was head of the Jesuits and one of the most esteemed churchmen in the world, he described his aha! moment. He referred to himself in the third person:
This succession of such diverse thoughts lasted for quite some time, and he always dwelt at length upon the thought that turned up, either of the worldly exploits he wished to perform or of these others of God that came to his imagination, until he tired of it and put it aside and turned to other matters.
Yet there was this difference. When he was thinking of those things of the world, he took such delight in them, but afterwards, when he was tired and put them aside, he found himself dry and dissatisfied. But when he thought of going to Jerusalem barefoot, and of eating nothing but plain vegetables and of practicing all the other rigors that he saw in the saints, not only was he consoled when he had these thoughts but even after putting them aside he remained satisfied and joyful.
He did not notice this, however; nor did he stop to ponder the distinction until the time when his eyes were opened a little, and he began to marvel at the difference and to reflect upon it, realizing from experience that some thoughts left him sad and others joyful. Little by little he came to recognize the difference between the spirits that were stirring, one from the devil, the other from God.
Ignatius realized that these feelings weren’t just shifting moods that came and went in his enforced idleness. They had spiritual meaning. God was speaking through them. His fantasies represented two directions his life could take, and God was using his feelings to point him in the direction he wanted him to go. He realized that a life of dedication to Christ and his work was the life that would bring him joy and satisfaction.
Ignatius’s experience of discernment on his sickbed opened his eyes a little. There was more to come. He followed the direction indicated by his feelings. When he recovered, he put on the clothes of a poor man, mounted a donkey, and journeyed across Spain as a pilgrim, seeking to go wherever God might lead. The road led to great things. People were drawn to him. A band of like-minded brothers formed around him; they became the Jesuits, which became the largest order in the Catholic Church, renowned for its missionary work and intellectual accomplishments—and for the spiritual perspective known as Ignatian spirituality.
Ignatius’s insight into the spiritual meaning of his feelings eventually flowered into his system for discernment of spirits. It led to his rules for discernment that help us see the meaning of our inner lives. It led to forms of Ignatian prayer that build habits of reflective awareness of the continual presence of God in our lives.
What Kind of Feelings?
Feelings come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors. Some are intense but short-lived and not very meaningful. You might be powerfully moved by music—a Beethoven string quartet, a Bruce Springsteen concert—but these feelings don’t last very long, and they seldom change you in any important way. Other feelings are more significant. They draw you into relationships (or pull you out of them). They affect how you spend your time. They affect your outlook on life, which affects how you treat other people and do your work. Some feelings change your commitments and affect your most cherished beliefs. Some of these deeper feelings are intense, but many aren’t. They linger on the fringes of our consciousness; they hang around, until we realize what they mean and how important they are.
These are the affective states that discernment is concerned with—the ones that actually influence our behavior. These are the parts of the emotional life that have spiritual significance. They touch our sense of self—who we are and how we want to live. Some are triggered by external events. Others spring from our “inner world”—our imagination, dreams, prayers. Often we don’t know where feelings come from. You wake up in the morning excited about the day ahead, or dreading it. You get anxious for no apparent reason. You feel confident about a plan that no one else thinks will work.
Ignatius believed that our affective life is an arena of spiritual conflict. The Holy Spirit is at work there, but so too are malign spirits, “the enemy of our human nature,” as Ignatius called them. Discernment is concerned with determining the origin of these feelings and assessing their significance. A key question is: Where are these feelings leading us? Will they takes us in a positive, productive direction, or will they take us backward, or off on a tangent that distracts us from what’s important? Many feelings are ambiguous. A good rule of thumb is to ask whether they move us toward a deeper connection with God and other people, or whether
