Seeking God's Will
[1.] In our last post we introduced St. Ignatius and the general outline of his Writings called the Spiritual Exercises. We proposed the purpose of the Exercises by quoting from the second annotation in the Spiritual Exercises:
of seeking and finding God's Will in the ordering of our life for the salvation of our soul." [Ganss, #2]
[2.] Now that we have indicated how important a notion it is in Biblical Spirituality in both old and new testament. We would like to here present a few relevant passages from sacred Scripture showing how revelation has presented this notion. It should be known that Saint Ignatius uses this term 'buscar' over fourteen times in the autographed manuscripts. Many languages have variants of the notion of searching as can be seen here. The etymology of the use of "para buscar y hallar la voluntad diuina en"[ IC,115] buscar, in the passage referred to above St. Ignatius is referring to the first and third person singular infinitive of one who seeks. Buscar is used in Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese languages. The Hebrew word would have the general meaning of tread or trample; that is, to walk and to visit often. In the Ignatian term it means to use every type of spiritual means possible to come to God's signified or permissive will in one's life. This coming to the conformity of oneself to God's Will is the whole purpose of the Spiritual Exercises. St. Francis DeSales (1567-1622) and St. Jane De Chantal (1572-1641), following St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) also taught this spirituality of abandoning oneself to God, while seeking it with one's devotion. St. Francis De Sales relied heavily upon the Spiritual Exercises in his work.
There is both an exterior seeking and an interior seeking in oneself. Ignatius is referring first to a person seeking interiorly what signifies God's Will to oneself; secondly, to this will manifested in temporal authority in the Church. This becomes clearer as one continues along the way of the Exercises themselves, since the very one who guides the person in the Exercises is supposed to have an understanding of how the Holy Spirit guides a person under normal conditions of spiritual growth as well as the opposite effects of disordinate movements of natural movements of the soul outside of God's guidance.
[3.] Getting back to Sacred Scripture, we find this word darash used in many instances thru the Old Testament, but most importantly it is used to note a personal seeking of the subject as when one seeks God. The Grk. word for seek zeteo is used over 230 times in the Old Testament and has the same meaning of seeking.
[4.] As we can see seekign God is a common theme running thru the Bible and Christian spirituality, so St. Ignatius in writing his Spiritual Exercises composed a method of allowing others to seek God's will unencumbered by things which would hinder their finding it. More about this later in this IgnatianBlog.
Clinton R. LeFort
Immaculata Publishing 2006 ©
There is both an exterior seeking and an interior seeking in oneself. Ignatius is referring first to a person seeking interiorly what signifies God's Will to oneself; secondly, to this will manifested in temporal authority in the Church. This becomes clearer as one continues along the way of the Exercises themselves, since the very one who guides the person in the Exercises is supposed to have an understanding of how the Holy Spirit guides a person under normal conditions of spiritual growth as well as the opposite effects of disordinate movements of natural movements of the soul outside of God's guidance.
[3.] Getting back to Sacred Scripture, we find this word darash used in many instances thru the Old Testament, but most importantly it is used to note a personal seeking of the subject as when one seeks God. The Grk. word for seek zeteo is used over 230 times in the Old Testament and has the same meaning of seeking.
[4.] As we can see seekign God is a common theme running thru the Bible and Christian spirituality, so St. Ignatius in writing his Spiritual Exercises composed a method of allowing others to seek God's will unencumbered by things which would hinder their finding it. More about this later in this IgnatianBlog.
Clinton R. LeFort
Immaculata Publishing 2006 ©
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