Know the Lord

As we begin, I want to reread just two sentences from that text of Saint Anselm with which we began our first day. Let's just hear this lovely invitation again: O little soul, escape from your everyday business for a short while. Hide for a moment from your restless thoughts. Break off from your cares and troubles, and be less concerned about your tasks and labors. Make a little time for God and rest a while in Him.

Now, with our eleventh session, we move into a new step in the Exercises. Ignatius calls this the Second Week. It's the longest part of the Exercises, and it is all focused on praying with, getting close to, and assimilating Jesus as we see Him in the Gospels—His hidden life and His public life.

This is introduced in the Exercises by a classic meditation that Ignatius calls the Call of the King. And just to summarize it, basically what Ignatius invites us to do is to consider the most noble human leader we could ever imagine, who is engaged in the most noble task we could ever imagine, and who invites us to join with him in it.

Use whatever comparison you'd like. Let's say it's a doctor who is doing research that will solve cancer, for example, or someone who is working to resolve hunger in the world or to bring peace between nations. And this is a good and noble and upright leader in a noble, upright task and who asks us to share with him or her in the struggle so as to share also in the fruitfulness.

And then Ignatius says, if that is worthy of consideration, how much more the Eternal King, Christ the Lord, who invites all of us to dedicate our lives to joining in His task of redemption, and that is to overcome the real evils in the world: sin, death, evil, war, strife, and all the suffering and sorrow in the world, and to bring people to find the only true peace, which we find in God.

So that sets the tone for the whole of this part of the Spiritual Exercises. This is the human heart that is now prepared through what has preceded, is available, wants to respond, and essentially says, show me, Lord, where you are calling me to grow in my spiritual life, to enter more deeply into my vocation, to take the next step in growth and holiness, to serve you more fully in my vocation—in marriage, priesthood, religious life, the single condition, wherever God has placed me in life.

And the first of the contemplations—Ignatius turns above all now to contemplation in this stage of the Exercises—is the Incarnation. So the Gospel passage is the Annunciation, Luke 1:26–38.

And Ignatius does this with a broad sweep. It's a kind of triptych, if you've ever seen his—let's say, over an altar. And so there are three panels, as it were, three places of consideration. He invites us throughout, as we pray with the Annunciation of the angel to Mary and the Incarnation, to amplify our gaze to the whole of the world and all the suffering and sorrow. It could be as simple as when you read the paper or you watch or listen to the news. And a sense wells up in our hearts of all the sufferings, struggles, and sorrows in the world, and how desperately this world needs a Savior. For me, so often when I read the paper, that's my conclusion: this world needs a Savior.

So we see the world and its need for the Savior. Then Ignatius invites us, in some way, to be present to the ineffable mystery and communion of the Trinity, when from all eternity, the Persons of the Trinity decree the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity to work the redemption of the world.

And then the third panel in the triptych, as it were, is the home of Mary in Nazareth and the encounter of the Angel and Mary.

Now in his text, when Ignatius describes to us how he invites us to pray with the Annunciation, he spells out for us the grace for which we are to ask, and it's the same grace that we will ask over the next number of sessions as we go through the hidden and public life of Jesus.

This is the grace for which we'll ask. This is to ask, Ignatius says, for what I desire. Here it will be to ask for an intimate knowledge of our Lord, who has become man for me, so that I may love Him more and follow Him more closely. So there are three steps in this very rich grace.

We ask for intimate knowledge of the Lord. That's why we pray with the Gospels. Intimate knowledge—we can get to know someone through reading about the person or through hearsay and so forth, but it's very different when we get to know the person through actual time spent with the person, in conversation with the person, sharing life together. And the Gospels are our privileged place to gain this kind of intimate knowledge of the Lord.

And we ask for that intimate knowledge so that as we get to know the Lord more on this deep level, our love for Him will grow. And consequently, our following of Him in our lives as we live our vocations will also grow: intimate knowledge, deeper love, more close following. That's the grace that we're asking for as we go through these contemplations of these events, what Ignatius calls the mysteries in the life of Christ. So let's look at the text.

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, "Hail, favored one, the Lord is with you."

But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, as so often in the Gospels, Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David, his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And now a sign: behold, and Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible for God.”

Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

So, is God calling you? Is God asking you to take the next step? Have you been aware for some time that God is leading your heart to make this choice—to let go of that thing which is not good spiritually for you, to take this new step toward living your vocation in marriage, priesthood, religious life, in the single in the world, wherever God has placed us? And can we ask for the grace to respond like Mary?

I want to quote from this famous classic homily of Saint Bernard, which the Church gives us in the Liturgy of the Hours during Advent. In the homily, what Saint Bernard does is speaking on the passage of the Annunciation, and the angel has just told Mary that God is asking her to be the Mother of the Lord, of the Christ, of the Messiah. He pauses the text at this moment when the question has been put to Mary and she has not yet replied.

And in the name of us all, he speaks to Mary. How all of us are begging Mary to say yes to this. Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you, O loving Virgin, in their exile from Paradise. Abraham begs it. David begs it. All the other holy patriarchs, your ancestors, ask it of you as they dwell in the country of the shadow of death, and even the whole world asks this of you. This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet. It is right in doing so, for upon your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the captive, freedom for the condemned, indeed salvation for all the sons of Adam, the whole of your race.

And he turns to Mary and says, “Answer quickly, O Virgin. Reply in haste to the angel, or rather through the angel to the Lord. Answer with a word. Receive the Word of God. Speak your own word. Conceive the Divine Word. Breathe the passing word. Embrace the eternal Word." And then, in the conclusion of the homily, he quotes Mary's words—her yes: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word."

So Ignatius, in giving us this passage as we begin to contemplate the life of Jesus, asking for the grace of a deeper and more intimate knowledge of Him, consequently a deeper love of Him, and therefore a more close following of Him in our lives. Let the example of Mary—the call and her response—we can let that speak to our hearts, and ask:

Was there something in this passage that really spoke to my heart? Some word, some aspect of the interaction between the angel and Mary? What is the Lord asking me to take into the day as I live this day in communion with Him?

Amen.