The Epiphany

One of these days I must tell you more about St Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish Basque who lived from 1491 to 1556 and founded the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. His Spiritual Exercises have had a huge influence on me and on thousands of others and it’s his life that’s depicted on the ten paintings hung like the Stations of the Cross in the hall. I mention him today because one of his great insights was the importance of desire in our lives, and in particular, the importance of getting in touch with our deepest desires. These, he came to understand, are the key to discerning the movement of God in ourselves. They are the equivalent in our lives of the star which led the Wise Men to Jesus and if we follow them and go where they lead, they will lead us to Jesus too. And so I would like to look more closely at them today.

The first difficulty, of course, is that there are as many desires surface in us in the course of our lives as there were stars in the sky the day the Wise Men set out on their long journey, and the challenge, then as now, is to know which of them to follow. Not all our desires lead to God, just as not all the stars in the sky two thousand years ago led to Bethlehem. Those of you even remotely familiar with the theories of Freud will know about the ‘id’ the ‘ego’ and the ‘super-ego.’ The ‘id,’ according to Freud, is where our raw, primitive desires lie, desires which we quickly learn as children have to be controlled by the ‘ego’ if we are to fit into society and be acceptable to others. And so we know from childhood that we cannot live out all our desires, many of which are dangerously selfish, destructive and cruel. And, of course, one of the dangers connected with the great emphasis we put today on things like counselling and psychotherapy is that, in the hands of those who do not fully understand them or choose not to understand them, they can degenerate into an excuse for just doing whatever we feel like; the ‘if it feels good, do it’ approach to life which is widespread in our culture today. But these dark inclinations and desires lie deep within us and when, in certain individuals, they are let loose and not controlled, the results, as we read in the papers every day, are horrific. So, clearly, these are not the deep desires St Ignatius was talking about.

What he was talking about, however, was the importance of taking seriously what goes on inside ourselves. A brilliant psychologist before psychology as we know it was invented, he noticed during months of lying in bed with nothing much to do while recovering from a wound received in battle in Pamplona in Northern Spain, that among the myriad of thoughts, feelings, inclinations, ideas and desires which passed through his consciousness every day, there were particular ones to which, in time, he gave the name ‘spiritual’. They were gentle movements which did not force themselves on him. If he had been living a busy life at the time he may never even have noticed them. But with nothing to do but read a handful of books and reflect on the experience, he came to see that they were God moving in him and that if he followed them, as the Wise Men did the star, they would lead him to Jesus. And that central insight, undeveloped as it was at the time, became the basis of everything he did and wrote afterwards and which have affected the lives on so many people since.

But if Ignatius is right, if God is moving in every single one of us in the way he describes, then how do we recognize this movement? Not everything that sounds like God or quotes the Scriptures or uses pious words and religious vocabulary is of God. The world, as I said a couple of weeks ago, is full of nutters who are convinced God is speaking to them. Ignatius, of course, knew this and so his answer to our question is this: Search inside yourself for any movement or desire which builds up faith, hope and love and you can be sure that it is of God. And the reason is simple. Only God can stir these things. They are what are known in theology as the theological virtues and, provided they are genuine, and not mutton dressed up as lamb, or, to use Ignatius’s phrase, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, they can only come from God. And so I would like to offer you two things the presence of which would indicate the genuineness we speak of.

And the first is very simple. The movement or desire we experience will be entirely consistent with the Gospel and the teaching of Jesus. Among such movements would be a desire for justice, a sense of sadness in the face of injustice, poverty or hunger, and a longing to respond in some way. It could also be a sense of shame or regret about our past actions which have not been consistent with the Gospel or the teaching of Jesus, manifesting itself in things like a heightened awareness of past selfishness and a desire to be more generous to others than we have been. Or it could be a felt-sense of hope and trust in God, especially in situations where there was no obvious reason at a human level to feel such hope and trust and where, on other occasions, we might have been more inclined to pessimism or despair. And many others.

And the second indication that a movement is genuinely of God is that there is resistance to it in us. Discerning the movement of God in ourselves is not at all about self-indulgence or an excuse for doing what we like. Where there are things in us which are not of God, the movement we speak of may well be experienced as disturbance. It will not always be easy but will invite us to embrace truths about ourselves which are challenging and involve quite deep and radical conversion. It will involve doing in some way what the Wise Men did and setting out on a journey which will take us across new frontiers into places we have never been to before and where things are so different that, for a while, we may feel lost and disorientated. Our star, unlike the one in the story, does not shine in the sky. It shines deep within us. In some way it will involve returning home changed and by another route and, in the end, there is only one question:

Are we willing to follow it?


BIDDING PRAYERS


We are all created in the image and likeness of God and called to make him present in the world. The particular form this universal vocation takes in each person, however, is unique, and the clue to what it is lies within us. It is there that the Spirit of God moves, inviting, pointing, indicating, inspiring, encouraging. He never forces himself on us but nor does he ever give up or go away. And so we pray for the wisdom to recognize this movement of God in us and follow his star wherever it leads........................Lord hear us

The key to recognizing what the Spirit is calling us to lies deep within the many thoughts, desires, hopes, fears, dreams and longings which go on inside us every day. Not all of these come from God. In the course of any given day there are many other spirits at work in us which have nothing to do with God and everything to do with our own selfish selves. But it is possible to sift through our inner experiences and discern the deep movement of God in us and we ask him to teach us how................Lord hear us

Millions in the world today are searching for God without knowing exactly who or what they are searching for. But to search for the truth is to search for the God who is the source of all truth. To hunger and thirst for justice is to hunger and thirst for the God from whom true peace and true justice come. To search for something deeper than the externals of religion is to search for the God who cannot be contained within the narrow limits of such things. And so we pray for all searchers in the world today................Lord hear us

The wise men in today’s story came from the East, the home of all the great cultures and civilisations of the ancient world. People in places like China, India, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on were highly civilised and educated at a time when our ancestors were little more than savages. Even today, much of what passes for culture in the West is little more than materialism, consumerism and greed. And so we pray for a deep sense of respect for people from the East and a willingness to understand them......Lord hear us

Today’s feast means that, in Jesus, all national barriers between peoples have come to an end. Jesus is the saviour of every human being, revealing to the world a God for whom every man, woman or child is a beloved son or daughter, making us all brothers and sisters in Christ. Two thousand years later the world has still not understood this. We are still divided according to race and nationality. But we pray that, in the course of this millennium, the world will finally move beyond this way of thinking....Lord hear us

There can be few things worse than to come to the end of our lives and be filled with deep regrets about the way we have lived, haunted by bad decisions made at crucial moments, opportunities squandered and lost through laziness or fear, potential unfulfilled, dreams and ambitions which came to nothing because we kept putting them off until it was too late. And so we pray for the courage we need to grasp life now and to follow our star while there is still time..............Lord hear us