and joy. The other category is “desolation.” It’s the opposite of consolation—anything that takes us away from the love of God and others. We experience desolation as a troubled spirit: anxiety, restlessness, doubts, self-loathing, and dejection. One of the surest signs of desolation is spiritual lethargy. If you think that God is nowhere to be found, and that it’s not worth the trouble to establish contact, you’re probably in a state of desolation. Other signs of desolation are feelings of self-pity and meaninglessness. If you feel incompetent and your work seems pointless, desolation has settled on your soul.
We’ll have a lot more to say about consolation and desolation later when we get into Ignatius’s rules for discernment.
Conversion of the Heart
The true object of discernment is something deeper than emotions. The shorthand word for it is “heart.” “Heart” does not mean the emotions (though it includes our emotions). It refers to our inner orientation, the core of our being, the things we love. This “heart” is what Jesus was referring to when he told us to store up treasures in heaven instead of on earth, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Lk 12:34). This is the “heart” Jesus warned about when he said, “For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander” (Mt 15:19). Jesus observed that our heart can get untethered from what we say and do: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Mt 15:8). When we don’t have any enthusiasm for a project we say, “My heart isn’t in it.” The heart is what we really are. We’re betraying our heart when we hurt people we love and do things that are contrary to our best idea of ourselves.
What we’re after is a change of heart. We need to align our actions with our deepest desires. This is what happened to Ignatius. He underwent a profound conversion, but it was not a conversion of the intellect or will. Before his conversion he was an orthodox Catholic who followed the religious practices expected of him. That was not what changed. His conversion involved his deepest desires and commitments. His religious practice and intellectual understanding deepened over time, but it was his heart that was transformed.
Ignatius developed the Spiritual Exercises to bring about the same kind of conversion of the heart in others. He wrote that the purpose of the Exercises is “strengthening and supporting us in the effort to respond ever more faithfully to the love of God.” Note what Ignatius did not say. He did not say that the Spiritual Exercises are designed primarily to deepen our understanding or to strengthen our will. He did not promise to explain spiritual mysteries or enlighten our minds. We may emerge from the Exercises with enhanced intellectual understanding, but the goal is a response of the heart to Christ’s invitation to follow him and be like him.
Something Pedro Arrupe said sums up what Ignatius had in mind. Arrupe was superior general of the Jesuits from 1965 to 1983. By all accounts he was a lovable, enchanting man, deeply spiritual, infectiously optimistic. He seems to have been one of those rare characters who lights up the room, who makes you feel like he’s your best friend as soon as you shake his hand. One of Arrupe’s best-known quotes begins this way: “Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.” He continues:
What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
There’s no better description of the goal of discernment. It’s about falling in love. It’s about tapping into those deep currents of feeling that shape what we want, which in turn influence what we do. Understanding is important, and the will is vital, but what gets you out of bed in the morning is what you love. This is what discernment is about.
We often think about spiritual renewal as a matter of changing the way we think. This is a danger even in a book like this, which sets forth ideas, concepts, and principles to broaden our understanding of discernment. Understanding is important, but it’s not the goal. We can understand many things without our knowledge affecting the way we live. The goal is a response of the heart, which truly changes the whole person.
We Can Trust our Experience
Most religions have codes and rules, things to avoid and things to believe. This is particularly true of Christianity, which has greatly valued creeds and doctrines and theology from almost its earliest times. Ignatian spirituality emphasizes the inner experience that gave rise to the creeds. The Ignatian way of discerning what is “of God” looks to our personal experience. Ignatius would have us experience God from the inside out, constantly discerning what leads us away from God as well as those things that bring us deeper into the divine life. Our Christian choices and decisions are often beyond the merely rational or reasonable. “The heart has its reasons of which the mind knows nothing,” Pascal said.
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