Andrew McDonald

Essay 5

Topic: Discerned action for the Kingdom is a constitutive part of the Contemplation
on Love

The specific grace Ignatius invites us to pray for in the third prelude of the colloquy during
the Fourth Week is a reminder that the praise, reverence and service we offer to God
through our discipleship to Jesus the King is not a bitter but mandatory pill we must
swallow.1 Rather, it flows from out of the fullness of Gods love, goodness and glory, and
therefore integrates our lives with the whole array of Christs kingly mission, his servant-
hood, his passion and his resurrection joy.2 The Contemplation on Love (hereafter referred
to as Contemplation) that concludes the Fourth Week draws forth from us a response to
Gods presence and loving labour within the creation for us. Yet, the response Ignatius
envisioned in this contemplation is more than simply obeying some obligation of
reciprocity, or exchange of gifts. The Contemplation is to attain divine love; in other words
the grace of sharing in the qualities of Gods loving action in the world, or as Ivens
succinctly puts it, to grow in loving in the way God himself loves.3 It is not a process of
give and take, but of personal action that flows from the love of God we have come to
recognise labouring in our own personal history, and for many through the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus.4

For this reason the Fourth Week is often described in terms of union with Christ. However,
for this experience of divine love to be a genuine union it must be an active participation.
Divine love is the ground of existential freedom and action rather than a fleeting moment

1
Ex 23. Puhl, Louis J. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1951.
Gray, Howard J., Joy and Friendship in the Fourth Week, Way Supplement, no. 99 (2000): 12.
2
Ex 221. Here it will be to ask for the grace to be glad and rejoice intensely because of the great joy and the
glory of Christ our Lord.
Mercier, Ronald, Without the Drama: The Transition from the Third to Fourth Week of the Spiritual
Exercises., Review for Religious 71, no. 1 (2012): 12.
3
Michael Ivens, Understanding The Spiritual Exercises (Herefordshire: Gracewing, 1998), 170.
4
Buckley, Michael, The Contemplation to Attain Love, Way Supplement, no. 24 (1975): 97.
Matthew 26:28
of ecstatic delight. In other words, our awareness of Gods labour and agency in and
through creation does not constitute union unless we have discerned, chosen and then acted
in such a way that we take part in that labour. Union with God involves our action in the
world in which we are living.5 As Tomlinson writes with regard to the Contemplation,
Having made a decision about Gods will during the retreat, afterwards the individual will
seek to live out that calling in a profound sense of union with Christ.6

Understood in this way the Contemplation on Love does not stand-alone but is an organic
development growing from the first three weeks of the Spiritual Exercises.7 The
Contemplation provides the basis of trust and freedom necessary for us to act on any
previous discernment. The Contemplation also gathers together the themes and prayer of
previous weeks into a synthesis, into a single period of prayer.8

The clear parallels we observe between the movements of the Contemplation on Love and
the development of previous weeks demonstrate something of the synthesis Ignatius had in
mind.

We begin with the simple observation that the imaginative setting for the Contemplation,
I behold myself standing in the presence of God, already calls to mind the colloquy that
concludes The Kingdom of Christ exercise and the mental representation in preparation
for the Three Classes of Men exercise.9 The Contemplation likewise invites us to discern
our actions in life with an awareness that we do so in the presence of God.

During the second exercise of the First Week the retreatant calls to mind their personal
history of sin.10 The fifth point in this exercise invites a sense of wonder that the creation
itself has permitted me to live and concludes with a colloquy thanking God that up to

5
Quote from unknown author, also expressed in the Spiritual Exercises when Ignatius remarks that love
ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than in words. Exx 230
6
Tomlinson, Ian, The Contemplation to Attain Love, The Way 50, no. 4 (October 2011): 72.
7
Buckley, Michael, The Contemplation to Attain Love, 94.
8
Ibid., 100.
9
Ex 98, 151
10
Ex 55
this very moment He has granted me life.11 In like fashion the retreatant begins the
Contemplation by engaging in a similar review of their personal history, this time calling
to mind the blessings of creation and redemption...how much God our Lord has done for
me.12 Both these considerations are intended to ensure any choice the retreatant does
make is in response to the prior generosity and love of God.

As the Contemplation continues, this awareness deepens to how God dwells in creatures
and in the elements giving them life13 and then, in the third point, to how God labours in
creatures for us.14 This theme has obvious parallels with the developing themes of the
Second and Third Weeks. The Second Week begins with a meditation on the Trinity
sending the Son into the world to become man for the salvation of humankind.15
Throughout both Second and Third Weeks the retreatant is called to be with Jesus in the
labour of his ministry and his passion. Now, as the retreatant prepares to return to the
world of everyday life, the Contemplation expands the awareness of being with Jesus in his
labour, again to the work of Trinity by describing God as present and active as a labourer
in the created order.

Hence we see that the personal offering of the prayer, Take Lord and receive is not
distinct from the development of the Exercises or the evolution of the retreatants prior
decision to be with Christ. As Tomlinson points out, the final part of the of the
Contemplation sums up the retreatants desire, a desire weighed with the cost counted
during the discernment process of making an election.16 Buckley reminds us, in perhaps a
more forceful way, that through the Contemplation, It becomes religiously imperative
that a man discover and read these labours, that he merge his choices and his actions with
the workings of God.17

11
Ex 60, 61
12
Ex 234
13
Ex 235
14
Ex 236
15
Ex 102
16
Tomlinson, Ian, The Contemplation to Attain Love, 71.
17
Buckley, Michael, The Contemplation to Attain Love, 102.
We see then, that through the Contemplation the retreatant takes up the discernment of
previous weeks and grounds it in the stuff of life. As Buckley beautifully says of the
Contemplation, it is a way of prayer which grounds a way of life.18

Through the Contemplation on Love we recognise that God not only gives gifts but God is
also present within the gift. The widening focus of Gods labour is not distinct from the
particular and representative labour of Christ, which was the main focus of the Second and
Third Weeks. Rather it builds upon and gathers together the themes and prayer of all the
succeeding weeks in order to integrate our understanding, affectivity and action.

After all, if we believe deep down that we are on our own, or that God cannot be trusted,
we will be too paralysed to act. The insight of Ignatius is not that we have to go out and do
things for God, but that God labours for us and invites us to enter into that labour as
participants and companions of Christ.

18
Ibid., 97.
 Bibliography

Buckley, Michael. The Contemplation to Attain Love. Way Supplement, no. 24 (1975): 92
104.
Fleming, David L. Draw Me Into Your Friendship/The Spiritual Exercises: A Literal
Translation And A Contemporary Reading. Saint Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources,
1996.
. What Is Ignatian Spirituality? Kindle Edition. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008.
Gans, George E. Ignatius of Loyola: Selected Exercises and Selected Works. The Classics of
Western Spirituality. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1991.
Gray, Howard J. Joy and Friendship in the Fourth Week. Way Supplement, no. 99 (2000):
11-21.
Ivens, Michael. Understanding The Spiritual Exercises. Herefordshire: Gracewing, 1998.
Mercier, Ronald. Without the Drama: The Transition from the Third to Fourth Week of the
Spiritual Exercises. Review for Religious 71, no. 1 (2012): 2956.
OLeary, Brian. Third and Fourth Weeks: What the Directories Say. Way Supplement 58
(1987): 320.
Puhl, Louis J. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1951.
Tetlow, Joseph A. Choosing Christ in the World. Saint Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources,
1999.
Tomlinson, Ian. The Contemplation to Attain Love. The Way 50, no. 4 (October 2011): 65
76.