What is a book? When is a book not really a book? Before now, I thought I knew; that doesn’t seem like a terribly complicated question after all. War and Peace is a book. So is Thus Spake Zarathustra. So is Go, Dog. Go! But what about a lengthy instruction manual for a Television? It’s bound like a book, and is longer than many things which are obviously books. Is it a book or is the category “Instruction Manual” not contained in the set of things called “books”?
Now Your Humble Narrator is not unaware that the Mythical
Reader does not find this question interesting in the least. But wait, Mythical Reader—by the end of these
ruminations, you will surely be utterly convinced that you were right in
doubting that the question is interesting.
The question is prompted by a {insert appropriate
description} I just read:
The Spiritual
Exercises of Saint Ignatius.
I enjoyed reading this…what do I call it?…that is where I
get stuck. It looks like a book; I thought
it was a book. But, it is an instruction
manual. It is much more like the instruction
manual for my television than like anything I have in my office (well other
than itself—technically it is most like itself).
Ignatius set out a series of exercises which, when followed,
will over the course of weeks draw one closer to God. It is a pretty rigorous set of exercises—hours
a day for roughly four weeks. Broadly
speaking, the exercises would fall into the category of prayer, but here again
we run into a definition problem. For
example, one of the exercises is to spend the hour (Ignatius is really insistent
on the fact that you need to spend an hour at a time doing each exercise)
imagining the Last Supper. Picture where
everyone is sitting, what they are wearing, what they are saying to one
another. Imagine the room and the food
on the table. (Is there a dog?) Fill in all the details. This is all part of a reflection on the Last Supper. This sort of imaginary thought experiment is
quite common in the Exercises—there are lots of things to picture here. So, is that prayer? Again, I am not sure. (I am now running through the types of prayer
described in the Zaleski’s excellent book, Prayer:
A History (reviewed somewhere in the archives of this here space)—as they
note, parts of the Ignatius exercise fit cleanly into their category of devotional
prayer, but I am not sure if a meditation on hell (week 1, fifth exercise)
counts as prayer or not.)
What I am sure about is that I would not make a very good
Jesuit. Not only would I have a hard time
spending an hour imagining the details of the Last Supper or most of the other
things in these exercises, I have a really hard time even imagining the act of imagining
them.
Clearly some people find such exercises meaningful and
profound and worthy of their time. Is it
a failing that I think I would get nearly nothing out of the attempt to follow
these exercises? Is it possible I am
wrong when I read them and think, “Not for me?”
In other words, are the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius for universal
application? Ignatius does note that not
everyone is ready for the whole series of exercises—some people may not graduate
from week one to week two, but does that mean week one is suitable for
everyone? If I spent a month in the summer
at a Jesuit retreat going through these exercises, would I learn something and become
a more Godly person? I don’t think so, but
how would I know if that is just being shortsighted?
But to return to the writings of Ignatius—as I said above, I
am glad I read them, but the only point in rereading them would be to actually
go through the exercises. And so, you
Mythical Reader have now been warned—don't pick this up expecting a book.
On a related subject: the new Pope is a Jesuit (presumably
he has gone through these exercises). On
that subject: a really remarkable insight from the ever-insightful David Mills
in the January 2014 issue of First Things:
“So what do you
think of Pope Francis?” asked my friend, a young New Testament scholar at a
Southern Baptist seminary. I said that I thought Francis was a perfectly
orthodox man who wanted people to live out the faith more deeply, but whose
method was a risky one. He frowned. He wasn’t buying it. “I was really worried
by that interview,” he said, referring to the long interview that ran in America.
“And some of the other things he said . . . ” he added, and frowned again.
I tried to
reassure him, and after a pause, he said, “He’s not Benedict.” He had drawn
heavily upon Benedict’s moral theology in his latest book and thought the
former pope understood the modern world with rare insight and knew how to speak
about it. Of Benedict, he was a fan. But Francis, Francis bothered him.
Later, thinking
about the conversation, I was struck—and cheered no end—that my friend, a
committed Southern Baptist, is so personally invested in Francis’ success. He
looks to the pope as a crucial, if not the central, spokesman in the world for
the Christian mind and morality. He feels the pope to be his guy.
His predecessor in
his chair at the seminary would not have felt this. Things have changed.
Mills is right; there is no doubt that I care more about the
new Pope than any Catholic of my acquaintance.
(Perhaps I need to meet a better class of Catholic, but nonetheless, it
is true. ) (And speaking of Mills—I wish
his section of First Things was
longer.) (Also, speaking of First Things—I used to review it regularly
when it was declining. It is now
excellent. Even the book reviews are
vastly better than they used to be. If
you abandoned your subscription at some point, it’s time to resubscribe.) (No, First
Things is not paying me for this blurb.
(Not that I would object if they wanted to do so.)) To return to the Pope, as I said, Mills is
right that things have changed at Southern Baptist seminaries. But it is also fair to note, things have changed
over at Jesuit Central too—Francis is not your grandfather’s Jesuit.
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