Last week, I was still in a pensive mood about Lent and began scrolling through Youtube. I could feel the algorithms stalking me, throwing videos my way about Ash Wednesday but I think God was too, that is, stalking me. He knew what I needed to hear.

I came across Fr Eric Immel’s video1 where he exhorted me to answer the question “Where are you?”. The first thing that came to mind was the song by Alan Walker2 where his lyrics included a similar phrase “Where are you now?” and included the haunting strains of “I’m faded. So lost. I’m faded.”

Where are you?

This was God’s first question to Adam and Eve. Face palm. God is probably asking us the same question, right here, right now. Where are you? Before I can even digest this, I am also dumbfounded by another question. What is your purpose in life?

St Ignatius of Loyola to the rescue. His writings suddenly made things a bit clearer for me. In his book on Spiritual Exercises ref. The First Principle and Foundation, he says explicitly:

“God created human beings to praise, reverence, and serve God, and by doing this, to save their souls. God created all other things on the face of the earth to help fulfil this purpose.”

God created me for a purpose. Yes, he created a million others but he created me, a human being, and he wants to save my soul to live with him in eternity. Everything else on the face of the earth is to help us fulfil this purpose — to save our souls.

SEMPER MAIOR – Always More, Always Greater. This is the motto for the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus, that St Ignatius founded. Doesn’t it remind you of the Olympic Motto – Faster, Higher, Stronger? Both work for me as it seems I can be like the witch Elphaba, defying gravity – as whatever we do, it should be all for the glory of God! How much higher can we go?

Be indifferent

St Ignatius has some good advice for us who think we are doing what we can already for our spiritual life. He wants us to do our best, nothing less, and to do that we have to be indifferent:

“… it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things as much as we are able, so that we do not necessarily want health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honour rather than dishonour, a long rather than a short life, and so in all the rest, so that we ultimately desire and choose only what is most conducive for us to the end for which God created us.”

Many of us prefer good health, wealth, honour, a good long life, etc. How can we be indifferent to these things?

Fr Claude3 in his talk on St Ignatius opened my eyes to the fact that some suffering before death is not a bad thing. No one wishes for it, we are not being masochistic here but it may be a time of contemplation and to seek the Lord to reconcile ourselves to getting ready for heaven. Alas, I now realise that I should not be hoping for a swift death, like to pass away in my sleep with no suffering. If you truly understand that your goal is to reach heaven, then whatever suffering that comes is not about the pain, but about being ready for the ultimate end, to save our soul.

Holy Hour

So our focus should be on our Creator and not being obsessed as many of us are by the material things on earth, or our pride, or to save face. St Ignatius encourages us to spend time in silence as he did with the Lord. I understand he wept a lot during prayer.

As you sit with the Lord, understand you are a sum of your memories, intellect and will. You could spend time asking the tough questions to your Creator: Is this girlfriend/boyfriend helping me get to heaven? Or to step away from heaven? Why am I so obsessed with going to the gym that I can’t try to go for daily mass? St Ignatius says try to stay an extra minute in prayer, defy temptation to leave. That extra minute in prayer is many times, the most fruitful and full of grace.

God our Creator is waiting for a conversation with you. Where are you?

 

Shared by Karen R-Fong, a wannabe tai-tai who desires to retire in a library of books and to read with our Lord to her last days.

 

References:

(1) Fr Eric Immel, Society of Jesus, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn9kcxW0X9w&t=34s

(2) Alan Walker – Faded https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ItHLz5WEA

(3) Fr. Claude, (Miles Christi), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbWAJzfgA54