Feed and Tend

We reach now the next-to-last of Ignatius' 14 rules, and this is his classic Rule 13. Now, earlier when I spoke of Rule Five, I begged of us never to forget Rule Five, saying that Rule Five—don't make changes in desolation—would get us safely through almost any darkness in the spiritual life. Now I'll amplify that statement. I beg of us never to forget Rules Five and Thirteen together, because these two rules together will get us safely through any spiritual darkness we may ever experience in life. Don't make changes in the darkness, and don't be alone with the burden.

Find a wise and competent spiritual person and speak about it. If you do those two things, you're going to get safely through any spiritual darkness you may ever encounter along the spiritual journey. So in my rendering of Ignatius' text, when you find burdens on your heart in your spiritual life—temptations, confusion, discouragement—find a wise and competent spiritual person and talk about it. In one of the books that I've done, I call this rule "breaking the spiritual silence," because the enemy will try to get you not to talk about it.

So here’s, you know, that experience—if I may describe this very reverently. I would feel so free to accept Your love, Lord, and to respond to it as my heart desires were it not for—and there’s the burden. There’s the thing that weighs upon us. And maybe, if I can speak with great reverence, something in the past that we’ve never spoken about and that weighs on us in our relationship with the Lord; maybe something in the present; maybe just something that surfaced more recently in our lives. But there’s the burden.

And the enemy's whole urging will be: you can talk about other things, but not about this. Because as long as we don't talk about it, the burden will go on. And so Ignatius' counsel is: when you experience burdens like this in your heart, don't be alone with them. Now, he doesn't just say find anybody and talk about these things, but a wise and competent spiritual person. Who might that be?

Maybe a priest that you know through the Sacrament of Confession or in some other setting, and you know that this is a wise and competent spiritual person. I think Rule 13 is one more indication of why the Sacrament of Confession is so valuable to us, because you find a good confessor who is a wise and competent spiritual person, and you'll always have a place, at least briefly, in which you can speak about these burdens. Regular confession is a wonderful blessing in so many ways, but also from this perspective of a place to talk about the spiritual burdens in our hearts. It might be a trained spiritual director. It would be somebody who is wise and competent, knowledgeable about the spiritual life.

Find that person and talk about the burden on your heart, and you will be walking in a beautiful way on the path to liberation. Perhaps the most beautiful experiences over the decades of my priesthood have been those times when I have been privileged by God's grace to be the person or the space, let's say, in which people have been able to put these kinds of burdens into words. You see before your eyes captives set free. It's a beautiful thing. So don't make changes in the darkness of desolation, and don't be alone with the burden.

Find a wise and competent spiritual person and speak about it, and you will love what will happen. We'll take for this session yet another of the apparitions of the Risen Lord, and this is in John 21, verses one through 19—the encounter by the lakeshore, and then the dialogue with Peter. So let's again let our hearts be at peace, just open to the Lord. And again, as Saint Ignatius invites us to do before every prayer, allow our hearts to see, our eyes to see the gaze of love in the Lord's eyes as He looks upon us now as we begin this prayer. After this, Jesus revealed Himself again to His disciples at the Sea of Tiberias.

He revealed Himself in this way. Together were Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee's sons, and two others of His disciples. Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing." So, as they awaited the Lord, they returned to the familiar. They said to him, "We also will come with you."

And there's a wonderful spirit of harmony there among them. So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. And we can join with them in the boat. We can be there as hour after hour of fruitless toil under the darkness of the night sky passes, and there is no fruit; they catch no fish, and their tiredness and discouragement grow.

Does that seem familiar? Have we ever been in that space in our own daily lives? And certainly we have. When we've made effort after effort and nothing seems to change—the problem in the family, or at work, or in our relationships with others as we work in the Church, and so forth—these seem unchanged.

When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. And again, we have this situation which takes place in so many of these Resurrection apparitions of Jesus present to His disciples, but they don't know it, and present to them in the time of their need, even desperate need, when everything in them wants Him to be present. And He is present, but they haven't yet seen it. What would happen in our lives is the space between the time when we call out to the Lord in our need, and He is there, but we don't see it, and the later time when we recognize that He was there, if that space were to diminish, and more and more we were able to see the Lord in the moment. Ignatius, in his famous phrase, calls this finding God in all things.

Jesus said to them, "Children, have you caught anything to eat?" Jesus has an almost maternal quality in this passage. He speaks of His disciples as children. He prepares the breakfast for them. They answered Him, "No."

So he said to them, "Cast the net over the right side of the boat, and you will find something." So they cast it and were not able to pull it in because of the number of fish. So the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord." And here's the moment of insight when their eyes are opened, and they realize that all the time they are waiting for the Lord, needing the Lord, their labor seems so fruitless, yet He's right there. What if we had those eyes to see Jesus in our daily lives?

And I'll just say parenthetically that what can really help us in this is the daily exercise of the Examen prayer, which is a way, a kind of examination of conscience which we pray daily for some minutes, but which also looks at things like discernment. Was there spiritual desolation? Was there spiritual consolation? Where was the Good Spirit active? Where was the enemy trying to discourage us?

So you have this beautiful moment. The disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord." When Simon Peter heard it was the Lord, he tucked in his garment, for he was lightly clad, and jumped into the sea. This is always the energetic Peter. The other disciples came in the boat, for they were not far from shore, only about a hundred yards, dragging the net with the fish.

When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread. Jesus had prepared the meal for them. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish you just caught." So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore, full of 153 large fish—the superabundance of the fruitfulness of our work when Jesus blesses it. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn.

Jesus said to them, "Come, have breakfast." And none of the disciples dared to ask Him, "Who are You?" because they realized it was the Lord. This is a moment where we may wish to pause in prayer. This moment when the disciples are seated around the meal together with Jesus by the lakeshore, and there is silence.

No one speaks. No one asks, "Who are you?" because they know, and they know that all they need to do is simply be with the Lord. Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them, and in like manner the fish. This was now the third time Jesus was revealed to His disciples after being raised from the dead. And now we have this threefold dialogue between Jesus and Peter through which Jesus so sensitively heals Peter of the threefold denial.

And this is another thing I always love about—oh, this is Jesus throughout the Gospels—the sensitivity of Jesus to pain in the human heart. There are no recriminations here. “Peter, how could you have said that? How could you—” none of that's there.

All Jesus does is heal his heart by allowing him to express the love which both of them know is so real. When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?" He said to Him—and he has no hesitation—"Yes, Lord. You know that I love You."

He said to him, "Feed my lambs." He then said to him a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord. You know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep."

He said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, Do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. Jesus said to him, Feed my sheep.

So what stirs in our hearts as we read this passage and pray with it, as we are there with Jesus and the disciples, as we think of the times of fruitless labor in our own lives, the times when Jesus was always there but we didn't see it until later, those blessed moments when our hearts know that the Lord is with us. It is the Lord. The tender, sensitive love in Jesus' heart as He prepares the meal, as He heals Peter's bruised heart. What is the Lord saying to us? Where is He leading?

And I'll conclude now by returning once more to the Pope in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, and I want to focus essentially on one sentence. Because this one sentence, of all that Pope John Paul II said and wrote over twenty-seven years as Pope, is the one that I go back to more than any other. And I would beg of us never to forget it, because it will change the way we look at the world. So why should we have no fear? And we've heard the Pope say, because of the Redemption, because God came into human history, because this was not just in the past, because it's every day, it's the heart of human history.

The victory is certain because of the Redemption. And this leads the Pope. He speaks of the light. This is the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And then he says the power of Christ's Cross and Resurrection—that's the Redemption.

The power of Christ's Cross and Resurrection is greater than any evil we can or should fear. Say that again. The power of Christ's Cross and Resurrection, the Redemption, is greater than any evil we can or should fear, and I love the realism of that. Yes. There are evils in the world that we can fear.

Even more, there are evils in the world that we should fear, and we are well aware of them. But there is a power in this world that is greater than any of them, and it is the power of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ that is the redemption that is real every day of human history. May that hope bless us always on the journey. Amen.