To Follow You, Light of Life: Spiritual Exercises Preached before John Paul II at the Vatican
202
To Follow You, Light of Life: Spiritual Exercises Preached before John Paul II at the Vatican
202Paperback
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Overview
Translated by David Glenday
A little more than a year before his death, Pope John Paul II gathered his closest aides for an extended retreat at the Vatican. During this retreat Bruno Forte offered a series of meditations revolving around Jesus' words in John 8:12: "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life."
Now translated by David Glenday and collected in this lovely book, these meditations draw us into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and orient us toward the mission of the church. A master of thoughtful questioning, Forte shepherds his readers through the classic Ignatian spiritual exercises: a day of purification, a day of illumination, and three days of reflection on Easter, the church, and mission.
Each day includes four meditations, two reflecting on the day's theme followed by two careful considerations of scriptural texts. Forte concludes his meditations with questions that provoke deeper reflection on our own faith journeys.
Thoughtful, insightful, and nurturing, Forte's book has much wisdom to offer all Christians who desire to follow more closely the "Light of life."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802829351 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2005 |
| Series: | Italian Texts and Studies on Religion and Society (ITSORS) |
| Pages: | 202 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.54(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
To Follow You, Light of Life
Spiritual Exercises Preached before John Paul II at the VaticanBy Bruno Forte
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2005 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing CompanyAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8028-2935-X
Introduction
In this introduction I intend to respond to four questions: First, what are the "spiritual exercises"? Second, where do they start from? Third, what is their purpose? And fourth, in whose company are they to be undertaken?
The "Spiritual Exercises"
Both in the church's spiritual tradition and in its ongoing experience, the "spiritual exercises" are perhaps best understood as a time given us by God so that we may in our turn return it to him with sincere love: a time, that is, spent listening reverently to his Word and guarded by his silence, so as to come to know the truth about who we truly are in his presence and attain ever greater personal conformity to his will. St. Ignatius of Loyola, the father and first teacher of the exercises, affirms that the aim of those who do them must be to "conquer oneself and regulate one's life" ("vencer a sí mismo y ordenar su vida"), thus achieving in ever increasing measure the end for which the human person is created: "to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord" ("alabar, hacer reverencia y servir a Dios nuestro Señor").
They are called "exercises" because they call for serious and persevering commitment in terms of several periods of intense prayerdistributed throughout the day and over several days. These times of prayer are spent in an attitude of attentiveness, understanding, judgment, and decision, with the help of some rather straightforward suggestions about how to meditate and discern. They are called "spiritual" because at work in them above all is the Holy Spirit. It is to him that our spirit is invited to open itself in docility and freedom, so as to know that love of God which the Spirit himself pours into our hearts (cf. Rom. 5:5). Without the Spirit, the exercises could be neither undertaken nor understood.
The complete form of the exercises - from which we will take inspiration for our own - is that set down by St. Ignatius of Loyola, who had long experienced them in his own life before going on to offer them to others as a particularly helpful journey toward conversion and personal renewal. In this Ignatian form, the use of the exercises has been recommended by the church on a number of occasions. In 1929, for example, Pope Pius XI dedicated to them his encyclical Mens nostra. In this letter, he laid down that the exercises should be "given" each year in the Vatican, as an example for all and a gift to himself and his closest aides. The reasons why the church has shown such special favor toward the exercises may be more clearly understood if we consider their starting point, the journey that they propose be undertaken, and the destination to which they lead, together with the spiritual climate and conditions in which they are done. It is to these matters that I now wish to turn.
The Landscape of the Exercises: Where Do We Start From?
The landscape in which the exercises are situated is none other than that "history of salvation" in which are inscribed the life and mission of each one of us, the church we love, and the human family to which we belong. Three words can help to describe this landscape - "garden," "desert," and "word."
We could say that, in the beginning, according to the Bible, God was the gardener. As the story is told at the opening of the book of Genesis, God labored for six days to make a garden (Hebrew: gan; the Greek and Latin words indicate "paradise") where everything was beautiful (tov, meaning both good and beautiful), and where at the same time every single thing was at one with all the others, while remaining distinct from them, in a wonderful harmony at the summit of which stood the human person, the guardian of paradise.
Sin transforms this garden into a desert (Hebrew: midbar), the arid ground that fallen Adam would have to till by the sweat of his brow. This is why the sense of longing expectation evoked by God's promise of salvation expresses itself in the vision of a time when the desert will flower and the earth will once again be the garden of God: "until a spirit from on high is poured out on us, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field" (Isa. 32:15). Then the new shoot will sprout - and this shoot will be the Messiah himself (cf. Isa. 11:1).
The power that will transform the desert into a garden is the word (Hebrew: dabar). This word will vanquish the desert and cause life to flower there again. The play on the words midbar and dabar - so dear to the rabbinic tradition - expresses the dramatic struggle that lies at the heart of Israel's hope, and so also at the heart of the hope of the church, of which Israel is the "holy root" (Rom. 11:16-18). Only the Word of the living God will turn the earth made lifeless by sin into a garden full of the new delights celebrated in the Song of Songs. To achieve its mission, the Word - coming down from on high like rain (cf. Isa. 55:10) - will have to disappear into the earth. Then it will give life to the desert of the world and to the desert of our hearts, as the prophets had foretold: "I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her" (Hos. 2:14).
It is against this backdrop that we can understand why the intensely rich symbolism of the Fourth Gospel places the world's new beginning in a garden, and why the woman who goes to the tomb takes the Risen One for a "gardener," the caretaker of God's new garden (cf. John 20:15). The divine, incarnate, and now exalted Word thus reestablishes and renews the beauty of the origins. Today, as in every age, the human heart needs this Word more than the very air we breathe.
Indeed, after the collapse of so many myths that have played out afresh the drama of the first sin on a dramatic and global scale, the human heart perhaps needs this Word more today than at any other time in history. After the season of "light" - the age of the heady ideologies that recognized in reason alone the ability to transform the world and life - the violence produced by the historical forms taken by those ideologies has brought humankind to an experience of deep darkness. This is the "night of the world" of which Martin Heidegger spoke: the darkness of this night is not so much the absence of God as the fact that human beings feel nothing for this absence. This is the night of nihilism, that indifference to eternal values which corrodes the very capacity of human beings to set out in search of the meaning of life and history. It is the condition expressed by the rabbinic saying quoted by Martin Buber: "Israel's real exile began when the Jews learnt how to bear that exile." Exile does not begin when we leave home, but when we no longer miss it. We can emerge from the night of exile only by rekindling in our hearts the passionate longing for home. This is what happens every time the Word is proclaimed, sending us back to search for lost meaning and pointing to the dawning of the new day.
This especially is what is required of the church today: at this time of the world's night, of the crisis of modern utopias and postmodern disillusionment, in this world often perceived as scarred by the clash of civilizations and religions, the church is called more than ever before to make the desert of the world and of our hearts flower again so as to become God's new garden.
Thus it is that the garden and the desert provide the landscape of our exercises, as well as their starting point. Here we hear the call to seek the Word so as to make the desert in and around us flower afresh.
Journey and Destination: Jesus Christ, the Light of Life
This Word is Jesus the Christ: he is both our journey and our destination in these spiritual exercises. Jesus himself is the Word able to transform our desert into the garden that we have been promised and for which we long; he is the light that the world needs to emerge from the darkness that otherwise would envelop all things: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).
We are led into a deeper understanding of what these words mean by the Transfiguration, when this is read in the light of an ancient rabbinic tradition according to which in the beginning Adam was clothed in light (Hebrew: 'wr); it was only with the appearance of sin that this light was covered by the skin of fallen man (Hebrew for "skin": 'wr, which only adds an initial aspirate to the 'wr of light). When the Messiah comes, this skin, this veil, will once more make way for the light of the beginnings: the new Adam will be the Adam of light.
This is what happens on the mountain of Transfiguration: "His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white" (Matt. 17:2). On Tabor, Jesus shows that he is the new Adam, in shining light, dwelling in God's new garden. So it is that the Transfiguration becomes the door to saving beauty: "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah" (Matt. 17:4). To experience the exercises will thus mean to experience here and now in the Spirit the gift first given on Tabor: to go up the mountain, to let ourselves be flooded with God's light, and to come down again, transfigured by the One who is light from light, so as to be his witnesses before our fellow women and men. This, then, is the purpose, the destination, of these exercises: to dispose ourselves to receive the grace of transfiguration on God's mountain and in Jesus' company.
To come to know Jesus, to welcome his light into our deepest selves, to fall evermore in love with him, the rule and hope of our lives, to let ourselves be molded in his image by his living Spirit - this is the goal to which our journey tends. The exercises aim at nothing other than our becoming, ever more radically, disciples of the One who said: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).
Thus it is that we will walk with Jesus in the choices he made in his life, in lively remembrance of his journey of freedom toward the cross and the dawn of Easter, so as to let ourselves be flooded by the Spirit poured out by him, who alone can make us free. This will be our via purificativa: this will be the way we walk on the first day of the exercises - the day of freedom. We will climb the mountain, to experience the mercy that saves, the gift of our heavenly Father (deformata reformare). Thus his promise will be fulfilled: "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness...."
Then we will walk with Jesus toward the Cross, pausing with him on Tabor: this will be our via illuminativa, which in the darkness of Good Friday will bring us to know the light that enlightens every human being and that will flood our hearts and lives, too, so that we may be conformed to him (reformata conformare). This will be the second day - the day of the cross: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness...."
Then we will let ourselves be drawn by the splendor of the Easter revelation: this will be our via unitiva, which will lead us to live with Christ in God the last three days of our retreat - the day of Easter, the day of the church, and the day of mission (conformata confirmare; confirmata transformare), coming down from the mountain of the Transfiguration so that the word of Jesus may be fulfilled in us: "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life."
The contemplation of the mysteries of our Savior - which each day will occupy the two morning meditations - will be the door to life for us: the beauty of the One who is "the beautiful Shepherd" (ho poimen ho kalos: John 10:11) will become ours too, because we will be able to come to know ourselves hidden with him in the beauty of God (cf. Col. 3:3). We will also be able to say with Peter on the mountain, and with Peter present among us: "Lord, it is good for us to be here...."
Who Will Walk with Us?
In this journey of transfiguration with and in Christ we will not walk alone; as our traveling companions we will have that "cloud of witnesses" (Heb. 12:1), who like us have encountered the Lord and become his disciples, beloved in the Beloved. Each day the two afternoon meditations will lead us to encounter in the Bible some of those who witness to the faith that changes lives, so as to learn from them to do what they did and walk together in the way of Jesus. They will help us to climb our own Tabor, to remain there in the light of the Transfiguration, and to come down the mountain toward the future God is preparing for us. In the saints it is the gospel that speaks, the Word of salvation written not on tablets of stone but on hearts of flesh beating with life. They will be our companions. To them - to those of whom we will speak, as well as to all the others of whom we will not - we entrust our exercises, so that they may intercede for us to obtain the grace of that conversion of heart out of which shines the light of the beauty that saves.
In a unique and excellent way, however, from among all this "cloud of witnesses" shines forth Mary, the All Holy, the Virgin Mother of the Beloved, the Spouse of the new and eternal covenant. In her, the first and the new covenants meet, and in her we are promised and granted a foretaste of future glory: she is the Daughter of Zion, the Ark of the Covenant, the Queen of heaven. In the lectio divina at the conclusion of each day of our exercises, we will turn our hearts and minds to her. To Mary, "sanctuary and resting-place of the blessed Trinity," this woman in whom is reflected, as in an icon, the entire mystery of our redemption, to her whom "all generations will call blessed" (Luke 1:48), we entrust our exercises.
We ask her especially to help us accept the conditions necessary so that the grace experienced here may bear abundant fruit, mirroring in some way what she experienced when she let the Spirit come upon her. In the church's spiritual tradition these conditions have been expressed with the threefold formula of totus introibo, solus manebo, and alius egrediar. We enter these exercises with our whole being, bearing with us all the challenges that may be troubling us and the hard things that make us suffer, as Mary did when the angel visited her: Totus introibo. Then, in the exercises we will remain alone before God alone, like Mary at the annunciation, attentive guardians of the silence in which resounds that Word of life before which we are called to make our decisions. No one can make for me the decisions I am called to make regarding my eternal salvation and my vocation to serve my fellow women and men: Solus manebo. In this way, the miracle of the Transfiguration can happen here and now, and we will be able to emerge from these exercises as new creatures, different from what is old in us, new according to the Adam of light that Christ has made of us, and of whom he has given us an image and a model in the woman Mary: Alius egrediar. With her, we will ask her Son, the light of the world, to welcome us back renewed among his followers, sealing us in these days with the fire of his Spirit of love:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Redeemer of humankind, send your Spirit upon us to help us experience these exercises in truth and freedom, following you, light of life! Grant us the purification of our hearts, following you, light of life! Lead us to understand the Father's will for us, following you, light of life! Make us new so that we may do his will, following you, light of life! Let us be your witnesses, following you, light of life! Lead us to contemplate eternal beauty, following you, light of life! Because you alone are the light of the world, you alone the light of our lives, now in the hour of our journeying and always, in the day of the light that never dies. Amen! Alleluia!
(Continues...)
Excerpted from To Follow You, Light of Life by Bruno Forte Copyright © 2005 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company . Excerpted by permission.
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