1. Ignatian Volunteer Corps, 112 E. Madison Street, Baltimore, MD 21202, www.ivcusa.org. [back]
2. Cabrini Immigrant Services of NYC, 139 Henry Street, New York, NY 10002, http://www.cis-nyc.org. [back]
3. A more staid biblical version is found in Proverbs 16:9. [back]
4. Jesuit Volunteer Corps, 801 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21202. [back]
5. Mercy Associates, 8380 Colesville Road, #300, Silver Spring, MD 20910, https://www.sistersofmercy.org/contact-us/#become-an-associate. [back]
6. L’Arche USA, 1130 SW Morrison Street, Suite 230, Portland, OR 97205, https://www.larcheusa.org. [back]
7. Statistics and projections on aging and life expectancy are from the 2016 Report of the Federal Interagency Forum on Aging Related Statistics, available at https://agingstats.gov, or in print form from the U.S. Government Publishing Office. The New England Centenarian Study, under the auspices of Boston University Medical School, estimates the number of centenarians at more than 80,000 and argues that “the older you get, the healthier you’ve been.” http://www.bumc.bu.edu/centenarian/overview. [back]
8. Retreat in Daily Life, Spiritual Exercises based on Annotation 19; the simplified version is based on Annotation 18. [back]
9. See SpEx 23 (Principle and Foundation). [back]
10. Margaret Silf, Simple Faith (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2012), 31–32. [back]
11. George Aschenbrenner, “Consciousness Examen,” Review for Religious 31, (1972), 14–21. [back]
12. Aschenbrenner suggests beginning with the prayer for enlightenment but notes that the first two steps are interchangeable. [back]
13. Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà, left unfinished, is in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, Italy. Their English-language Web site is at https://www.milanocastello.it/en. [back]
14. “[U]nchangeable elections”: SpEx 172; “changeable”: SpEx 173; “either indifferent or good”: SpEx 170; “God our Lord moves and attracts the will . . . ”: SpEx 175. [back]
15. Rational way of proceeding: SpEx 178–183. [back]
16. Richard J. Hauser, SJ, Moving in the Spirit: Becoming a Contemplative in Action (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986), 70. [back]
17. SpEx 179. [back]
18. SpEx 183. See commentators, e.g., Richard J. Hauser, SJ, Moving in the Spirit: Becoming a Contemplative in Action (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986), 76–79; Dean Brackley, The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2004), 151. [back]
19. SpEx 135. [back]
20. SpEx 214. [back]
21. SpEx 112. [back]
22. Museum databases: For example, the Google Cultural Institute has a growing database, already in the millions of images, including hundreds by Michelangelo, Raphael, and other Renaissance artists known for their religious imagery, https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute. A collaborative effort among fourteen art institutions, known as Pharos, has created a searchable database that will eventually hold seventeen million artworks as well as supplemental material. Ted Loos, “‘Photo Archives Are Sleeping Beauties.’ Pharos Is Their Prince.” New York Times, March 14, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/arts/design/art-history-digital-archive-museums-pharos.html. See also www.pharosartresearch.org. Individual museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Gallery in London have their own searchable online databases. [back]
23. My questions were suggested by The Adoration of the Shepherds by Guido Reni (1575–1642). The original is in the National Gallery, London. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/guido-reni-the-adoration-of-the-shepherds. [back]
24. Advice on property: SpEx 155, 166; on spending: 189; preference for poverty: 167; providing for the poor: 189. [back]
25. Meditation on the Beatitudes: SpEx 161, 278. The Jerusalem Bible, the first English translation approved after the Second Vatican Council, is approved by the Bishops’ Council of England and Wales for liturgical use. [back]
26. “Poor in spirit”: NAB, Notes to Matthew 5:3; James Martin, SJ, Jesus: A Pilgrimage (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 173. Scripture scholars differ as to whether the Beatitudes describe a present reality or instead promise rewards in eternal life. The differing interpretations are discussed in James Martin, SJ, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 170–71. [back]
27. “Motions of the heart”: Autobiography, 6. Richard Hauser, SJ, uses the phrase fluctuations of the heart in his course Discernment of Spirits at Creighton University Graduate School of Theology. [back]
28. Parmananda R. Divarkar, SJ, A Pilgrim’s Testament: The Memoirs of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1983), 6–8. [back]
29. George E. Ganss, ed., Ignatius of Loyola: Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1991), 71. [back]
30. Ibid. [back]
31. Ibid. [back]
32. Among the many discussions of broader definitions of “evil spirits” and “good spirits,” see e.g., Timothy M. Gallagher, O.M.V., The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2005), 33–34; Katherine Dyckman, Mary Garvin, and Elizabeth Liebert, The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed: Uncovering Liberating Possibilities for Women (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2001), 251–52. [back]
33. Spiritual desolation: SpEx 317; “characteristic of the evil spirit”: SpEx 315. [back]
34. Characteristics of clinical depression: Centers for Disease Control, “Depression Is Not a Normal Part of Growing Older” (2017), https://www.cdc.gov/aging/mentalhealth/depression.htm; National Alliance on Mental Illness, “Depression in Older Persons Fact Sheet” (2017). The CDC estimates the prevalence of clinical depression in the elderly as between 1 and 5 percent, whereas NAMI estimates it may be as much as 18.5 percent. [back]
35. John Beevers, trans., The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux: The Story of a Soul (New York: Doubleday, 1957), 116–18, 136. [back]
36. Thomas R. Nevin, Thérèse of Lisieux: God’s Gentle Warrior (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 312. [back]
37. Beevers, trans., The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, 140. [back]
38. Spiritual consolation: SpEx 316; “store up new strength”: 319. [back]
39. “[S]ufficient clarity and knowledge”: SpEx 176. [back]
40. Metaphors: SpEx 325–327. The “spoiled child” translation of SpEx 325 appears in David L. Fleming, SJ, Draw Me into Your Friendship: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading of the Spiritual Exercises (Boston: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996), 257, and is discussed in James Martin, SJ, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 333. [back]
41. SpEx 332. [back]
42. Avoiding decisions in time of desolation: SpEx 318; recommended responses: SpEx 320–321; 323–324. [back]
43. I have paraphrased and significantly shortened the oft-quoted definition of spiritual direction in William A. Barry and William J. Connelly, The Practice of Spiritual Direction, rev. ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 8: “help given by one believer to another that enables the latter to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship.” [back]
44. Office of Ignatian Spirituality online database: http://www.jesuitseastois.org/spiritualdirection?PAGE=DTN-20170523013142. [back]
45. Spiritual Directors International: PO Box 3584, Bellevue, WA 98009; http://www.sdiworld.org. [back]
46. Dante, The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation, trans. Robert Pinsky (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), lines 1–3; Cicero, How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life, trans. Philip Freeman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016); Gerald O’Collins, The Second Journey: Spiritual Awareness and the Mid-Life Crisis (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), 38–40 (Ignatius); 46 (Mother Teresa); 40–42 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer); 81 (disciples). His “third journey” encompasses “aging and the last years before death,” which he sees as consisting of “beauty and simplicity,” in part because of the “comforting advantage” of the company of “millions of fellow travelers,” 12–14. [back]
47. William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act II, scene 7, lines 139–166. In middle age, he sees one “in fair round belly, with good capon lin’d . . . full of wise saws” who next “shifts into the lean and slippered pantaloon with spectacles on nose and pouch at side,” lines 154–156. [back]
48. Thomas E. Clarke, SJ, “Elderhood for the World,” America (July 29, 2000), 9. [back]
49. Not showing any sign of pain: Autobiography, 2; extreme penances: 14–17. [back]
50. Perpetua’s vision: Herbert Musurillo, trans., The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 117. The text of “The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas” is one of the earliest primary sources about the lives of the martyrs. Perpetua is believed to have kept a diary while imprisoned, and her story was continued by an unknown editor after her death. The narrator described how Perpetua and her companions “marched from the prison to the amphitheatre joyfully as though they were going to heaven, with calm faces, trembling, if at all, with joy rather than fear” and viewing martyrdom as “a second baptism.” The full text is available online at a number of sites, e.g., https://www.scribd.com/document/249295097/Musurillo-Acts-of-the-Christian-Martyrs. [back]
51. Meditation on hell: SpEx 67–82; “at the point of death”: 186; “judgment day”: 187. [back]
52. Decisions about state of life: SpEx 169, 171–172. [back]
53. Suscipe prayer: SpEx 234. [back]