Editor’s notice: Sacred Area: The Prayer Guide 2026 suggests six steps of prayer and contemplation for exploring the every day Scripture passages: The Presence of God, Freedom, Consciousness, The Phrase, Dialog, and Conclusion. We’ve invited our Ignatian bloggers to discover every step in our persevering with collection.
Dialog
“How has God’s phrase moved me? Has it left me chilly? Has it consoled me or moved me to behave in a brand new method? I think about Jesus standing or sitting beside me. I flip and share my emotions with him.” (The Irish Jesuits, Sacred Area: The Prayer Guide 2026)
St. Ignatius of Loyola included a collection of annotations firstly of his Religious Workouts. Consider these as useful notes for the director and exercitant to bear in mind as they progress via the 4 weeks of the retreat.
The fifteenth annotation is considered one of my favorites. Briefly, it instructs the retreat director to get out of the best way of the Creator, who needs to deal immediately with the beloved creature. I come again to this annotation again and again, as a result of it speaks to a necessary reality of our relationship with God. Definitely, Ignatius is cautioning towards an overzealous religious director making an attempt to micromanage God’s relationship with God’s beloved. However that perception rests on an much more foundational reality: God continues to talk to us—and to talk to us immediately. We have to hear. And we have to belief that even in moments of dryness and silence, God continues to whisper within the depths of our hearts.
The knowledge of the fifteenth annotation might help bolster this subsequent step in our Sacred Area prayer expertise, that of dialog. We’re reminded that God is lively and talking and that our prayer is just not chilly ink adorned to a discarded letter, however the very lifetime of God’s Spirit working inside us.
How has God’s Phrase moved me?
If we consider that God needs to deal immediately with us, then we will look to God’s Phrase as revelatory of that want. Particularly, we ask ourselves what has stirred inside us as we learn God’s Phrase. Has a phrase caught our consideration? Has a specific picture referred to as to thoughts a forgotten reminiscence? Has an alternate of dialogue invited deeper questions? All of those stirrings—this interior motion—will be seen as God’s very self at work inside us. Consequently, we’re requested to sit down with this motion and permit God’s Spirit to talk. These moments of resonance we really feel in Scripture will not be merely private preferences for phrase selections; these are encounters with God and God’s want to cope with us in our uniqueness.
Has it left me chilly?
If reflecting upon resonance in prayer is necessary, then so too is inspecting these moments of interior resistance. Noting these locations of Scripture that depart us wanting, dry, or irritable is simply as necessary as naming these locations of comfort. God’s Spirit could also be utilizing such dryness to attract our consideration to a narrative or a scene that makes us uncomfortable. We have to ask, Is there one thing right here we have to find out about ourselves? Is God utilizing Scripture to notice injustice, alert us to misaligned values, or level out how our understanding of the human particular person has grown? Or maybe coldness in our encounter with God’s Phrase is just the Spirit inviting us to look elsewhere for God at work in our lives.
Has it consoled me or moved me to behave in a brand new method?
As a result of God is alive inside us, we will and will count on God to ask us to one thing particular and sacred in our every day lives. We might detect in Scripture a holy wink from God, some reference or flip of phrase that resonates with a specific process, venture, or relationship from our present actuality. This isn’t a magic trick, neither is it essentially affirmation that every part will work out as we want. Moments of comfort or inspiration are reminders that God is with us, alive and at work and intimately close to. Subsequently, we will and will set about God’s work with confidence, figuring out that our collaboration assures issues will work out as God needs.
I think about Jesus standing or sitting beside me. I flip and share my emotions with him.
Lastly, we flip to Jesus, our good friend and companion. We see Jesus clearly; we all know he was a human particular person like us. With him, we will communicate plainly, as with a good friend. Recall that the Religious Workouts are an ongoing encounter with Christ in his ministry. The knowledge of the fifteenth annotation, then, is main us deeper into our personal stroll with Jesus. In our prayer, we share our ideas with Jesus; importantly, we let him communicate to us too.
We would even conclude this part of our prayer by asking Jesus how God’s Phrase impacts him. In any case, isn’t that what a real good friend does? Aren’t we referred to as to share in such experiences with our associates?
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