Imago Dei Christian Community

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He leads me beside the quiet waters.  Psalm 23:2

For the Israelite, the essence of good life is measured by the quality of menuha it enjoys.  Menuha means “tranquility.”   Psalm 23, for instance, translates this word as “the quiet waters.”  Menuha is what the practice of Sabbath promises to bring to our lives—still waters which restore our souls.

The Sabbath ennobles not only the soul, but also the body by giving us rest in which to recover our sense of primal truth.  Physical comfort and delight are a big part of the experience of such restoration.  As the ancient Midrash Tehillim counsels us,

Call the Sabbath a delight: a delight to the soul and a delight to the body.  Sanctify the Sabbath by choice meals, by beautiful garments.  Delight your soul with pleasure and this very pleasure will reward you with life.

Because such opportunities for physical and spiritual delight await us each week, we are to eagerly prepare ourselves for our Sabbath day.  We anticipate it, and welcome it as we would welcome someone we love who was coming to visit us.   The Rabbi Shimon, in the first century, wrote of the Sabbath customs of his day saying,

For the Israelites the day is a living presence and, when it arrives, they feel as if a guest has come to see them. And, surely, a guest who comes to pay a call in friendship or respect must be given a dignified welcome.

On this day—a day the Lord Himself calls holy—we have opportunity to meet with God in a special way   And the way we anticipate this meeting can be an expression of the very relationship we desire to have with God’s presence.

In some Jewish traditions, the Sabbath is also spoken of as a bride.  It impresses that we are, in a sense, to espouse the seventh day. The root of the Hebrew word le-kadesh, which we translate as “sanctify,” means “to betroth.”  As another ancient rabbinical Midrash states,

Just as a groom is dressed in his finest garments, so is a man on the Sabbath day dressed in his finest garments; just as a man rejoices all the days of the wedding feast, so does man rejoice on the Sabbath; just as the groom does no work on his wedding day, so does a man abstain from work on the Sabbath day.

These ancient traditions depict something of the joyful quality of relationship that is ours to anticipate each week as the sacred day approaches us.  Consider how you might look forward to your next Sabbath, whatever day you have put aside to welcome God in your week.  How can you treat this day as a special guest that you look forward to hosting into your house?  How might you more fully anticipate the goodness that God has prepared for you to receive in your coming day of rest?

If you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’s holy day honorable…, then you will find your joy in the LORD.

Isa. 58:13-14

I want to test the sincerity of your love.
2Cor. 8:8

In his book, Drinking From A Dry Well, Thomas Green SJ suggests that there are three stages to a growing life of prayer that can be defined according to what we most seek in our relationship with God.  These three stages can also be understood in terms of the natural evolution of love—from a desire for knowledge, to one for experience, and then to a growing acceptance of the need for transformation.

In the courtship stage we mostly seek knowledge of God.  As Green states, “We cannot love what we do not know.  Thus the first stage in any love relationship is getting to know the person we are drawn to.”  But facts about a person do not, in themselves,  constitute a relationship.  Even our feelings about God can, at this stage, be misleading.  As Green says,

There may well be infatuation at the beginning of a relationship.  But infatuation is not love, precisely because we do not really know the object of our infatuation.  We are in love with our own romantic notions of the person rather than with the reality of the person before us.

As love progresses beyond the “getting-to-know” stage, we find in ourselves a growing desire for intimacy with the object of our love.  Green calls this the “honeymoon” phase.  He writes,

The courtship eventually leads to the honeymoon.  In terms of what we now seek in our relationship with God, we note a transition from knowledge to experience.  The relationship moves from the head (knowing) to the heart (experiencing, loving).  We no longer seek insight about God as much as the joy of being with the One we love.

As our desire for intimacy with God grows we might also find that we are not as inclined to reflect or meditate on the Scriptures as we did before.  Instead, we are more drawn to the presence of God, to simply sit before Him and bask in His love.  As pleasant as this stage is though, it too must evolve to a maturity beyond itself.  As Green says,

This whole purpose of the “getting to know” stage of meditative prayer is to lay a solid foundation for love.  At the “honeymoon” stage, it will be good to remember that this too will eventually come to an end, because what looks like true love on the honeymoon still contains a great deal of self-love.  I love you, yes; but to a large extent this is because you fulfill me and all my desires.

Unfulfilled needs are, of course, a valid reason for the early stages of relationship.  As Green would say, “There is real growth in discovering that I cannot fulfill myself, that I need to go out of myself in order to find my own happiness.”  But this stage is still not true love since my “love” is focused primarily on my own needs, my own fulfillment.  A mature relationship will wean us from love that begins and ends with me, to one that has its source and goal in the other person.  And this weaning will often feel like a loss compared to the subjective delights we once knew.  Green puts it this way,

When the honeymoon ends, we have to come to terms with the ordinary days that do not always make us feel good and fulfilled.  We then begin to realize the true meaning of the “better or worse” clause of the marriage vows.  In the “better” we learn the joy of loving; in the “worse” we learn how to love unselfishly, not because I feel good about it, but because the other’s happiness and well-being are important to me.

So, if in the first stages of love we seek a growing knowledge of God’s love.  And in the second stage we long to rest in the experience of that love.   In this third stage we find ourselves joyfully submitting to the transformation that love invites us to.  No longer satisfied with only insight or experience, we now give ourselves more fully to the transforming work of Christ’s love in us.  It is a love that is now rooted in the Other.  And it is at this stage that we finally discover what love’s objective has been all along—to fashion us to Itself, in order that we might then become Its instrument in the lives of others.

The beauty of submitting to the Potter’s molding is that the transformation God works in me also benefits others.  If I allow the Lord to transform me I can be a more effective instrument of his love—what Ignatius calls “an instrument shaped to the contours of the hand of God.”

-Thomas Green, Drinking from a Dry Well

You show that you are a letter from Christ,…written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 2Cor. 3:3

In the first week of the Ignatian Exercises we are invited to reflect on the story of our lives, asking God to help us recognize signs of His presence with us through times of consolation as well as those of desolation. This exercise is sometimes called a “graced history.” It is, in a sense, an expanded version of the Awareness Examen applied not only to our day, but to our whole life.

A graced history is an opportunity to examine our lives more objectively, as narratives in which God’s grace is the principle actor. It is not so much our own story that we consider, but the story of God’s initiatives in our life. As such it provides a unique opportunity to appreciate the many ways that God has encouraged our seeking Him over the course of our lives. Listening to someone else’s “graced history” can also be a helpful exercise and I could encourage facilitators of Imago Dei groups to explore this as another resource for your time together.

Fr. John English S.J., who helped develop the idea of a graced history as part of the Spiritual Exercises offered at Loyola House asks, “if the Exercises are mainly an invitation to see ourselves as “the Beloved of God” where do we go to find evidence of that truth?” For most of us, it is through our own life story that we come to discover the experience of being loved by God. Fr. John reflects on the experience of his own graced history saying, “My life story is a unique story. And, in my unique life there is a unique expression of God’s love that I must come to more fully appreciate.”

Just as the Hebrew people were often reminded of their history in terms of the Exodus, so we come to know our own history in terms of God’s grace. John English comments,

When I interpret the events of my life from the viewpoint of God’s love I see that my life is an experience of the grace of being loved. And this applies even to the shadow side of my life. It’s not just in moments of crisis that God loves me, but God is always there, loving me with benevolence, compassion and mercy. My whole life is a graced experience in the sense that God is present with me in all of the events of my life.

We sometimes trace our life story according to our work history, our health history, our relationship history, or our geographic history. So can we also consider the history of different aspects of our relationship with God. Fr. John expands on this saying,

I can, for instance, go through my life considering all the moments of consolation in which I have recognized God’s grace. I can do the same thing with respect to my times of desolation. I can also recall the times when I have not responded to the love of God, as well as those hope-filled moments in my life when I remember how light came out of darkness.

The story of God’s ways with us can also be traced through our sin history, through the history of opportunities we’ve been given, of ways that God has protected us, or used the relationships of our lives to lead us.

Consider exploring such a prayer on your own, or have someone share the observations of their graced history with your group. For those who might benefit from a more guided prayer format, Fr. Savio Rodrigues SJ offers these instructions for considering the various aspects of our graced history.

A Meditation on Your Graced History

• I seek the grace to be present to my life story as it is lovingly revealed to me by God, and I pray that I may respond generously to God’s love.
• I consider my life story in terms of grace-filled moments, looking perhaps at: relatives, friends, incidents of childhood, school, church, health, positions I have held, helps given or received.
• I look for times when I have specifically experienced the presence of God.
• I contemplate these times, re-living the event by seeing the persons, hearing the words, observing the actions and remembering my responses.
• I regard the events of my history as I would sacred Scripture, as a Word spoken by God into my life. How has God blessed me through this Word? How has God humbled me? How has God encouraged me?
• I discuss these events with God and seek a deeper appreciation of their meaning.
• Using any of these moments from my history, I take time in prayer to deeply abide with them, knowing that God has used such moments to form part of the foundation of my being, and of my growing relationship to Him.