The Dynamism of Desire: Bernard J. F. Lonergan on the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
Liddy, Richard M.
THE DYNAMISM OF DESIRE: BERNARD J. F. LONERGAN ON THE SPIRITUAL
EXERCISES OF SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA. By James L. Connor, S.J., and the
Fellows of the Woodstock Theological Center. Saint Louis: Institute of
Jesuit Sources, 2006. Pp. xii + 492. $31.95.
This volume, emanating from the Woodstock Theological Center, is a
commentary on Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises in the light
of Bernard Lonergan's philosophical theology and complemented by
outstanding literary illustrations. The whole is Ignatian in
inspiration, Lonerganian in explanation, and literary/artistic in
execution.
The volume first traces Ignatius's spiritual development from
Pamplona to Rome, from romantic warrior to disciple of Christ, and
highlights those graces Ignatius desired to share with others. For
example, his mystical experience at Manresa gave him an understanding of
the Trinity that he likened to hearing music so powerful and lovely that
he broke down in tears. The Exercises flow from such experiences and are
meant to evoke similar experiences.
There follows a commentary on the four weeks of the Exercises and
its various meditations. The authors insist that "the retreat
invites you to an encounter between you and the living Christ and his
message. Meet the Risen Lord in prayer, and in all likelihood you face a
showdown" (124). Or, as Lonergan described the process of
conversion, "Once such options are taken and built upon, they have
to be maintained or else one must go back, tear down, reconstruct. So
radical a procedure is not easily undertaken; it is not comfortably
performed; it is not quickly completed. It can be comparable to major
surgery, and most of us grasp the knife gingerly and wield it
clumsily" (125).
This book evokes the experience of the Exercises themselves.
Sections could easily be used on retreat. Throughout, it is a call for
conversion, for the purification of human desire by Ignatian
"indifference," an indifference that is itself desire as it
reaches a level where ardor and charity prevail. The book evokes the
"point blank" call for openness, repentance, and conversion
mediated by the Exercises.
Ignatius's text--as the Scriptures themselves--needs to be
interpreted anew in each age. The authors frequently evoke the long
tradition of commentaries on the Exercises. The task is facilitated by
Lonergan's analyses of the structure of human consciousness, of the
biases to self-transcendence, and of the experience of grace as the Lord
replaces our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. Readers somewhat
familiar with Lonergan's work will certainly be surprised by the
many parallels traced here between the Exercises and Lonergan's
analyses of consciousness. Amid what Lonergan calls the
"polyphony" of voices in consciousness, the Exercises help one
to discern and elect to follow the voice of the Good Shepherd.
Such analyses of consciousness are pushed to their full existential
import. The authors quote Jerome Miller: "To be fully intelligent,
fully rational, we must side with wonder and against the self-evidence
of the present-at-hand, with horror and against the recoil that wants to
flee from nothingness, with awe and against the self-importance that
refuses to acknowledge the possibility of there being a reality greater
than ourselves" (70). Lonergan emphasizes that the Augustinian
restlessness of the human spirit is rooted in the human "capacity
for holiness, a capacity for love that, in its immediacy, regards not
the ever-passing shape of this world but the mysterious reality,
immanent and transcendent that we name God" (30).
The authors marshal literary examples to compliment Lonergan's
theoretical analysis. For example, when illustrating the magnanimous desire that Ignatius sought in his retreatants, they adduce Dorothea
from George Eliot's Middlemarch, a woman of a "passionate,
ideal nature" who experienced "the rapturous consciousness of
life beyond self." Or, when illustrating inflated egoism, they
point to John D. MacDonald's novels and one of his characters, Elmo
Bliss, the small-town Florida business man and county commissioner:
"I want the most people possible saying 'Here comes Elmo'
and 'there goes Elmo.' I want people anxious to make sure
I'm comfortable." Whether it is Hopkins's or Rilke's
poetry, John Keegan's military history, Jonathan Raban's
social analysis, or Abraham Maslow's psychological analyses, the
illustrations bring the text alive.
Above all else, this book is a manual of prayer and a holy text. It
demands slow, attentive, heart-felt religious reading. You get the
point--and the point is you. Ignatius's Exercises do not leave you
room to escape from the heart-breaking experience of being loved.
RICHARD M. LIDDY
Seton Hall University, South Orange, N. J.
