Fr. Salvador Villota, O.Carm.
Fr. Salvador Villota is a Carmelite from the community in Valencia, Spain. The following text was derived from a transcript and abridgment of one lecture from the exercises, which were led for us Carmelites - religious, in Kostelní Vydří in August 2016. Therefore, this article contains advice on how to experience the exercises well. However, the ideas presented here are beneficial for the pursuit of prayer and for all spiritual life.
We will now meditate on the greatness and holiness of God, and we will do this with the help of our Mother Mary and her hymn Magnificat. Mary brings us and mediates the graces that are the most important for our spiritual life. Because she is the mother of our souls. It is very important that she is the mother of our souls. Thus, we have in Mary a spiritual mother, yet we have not been fully born yet. We need a mother who will constantly "give birth" to us.
Mary is the mother of our souls, and she alone can shape the fundamental attitudes of spiritual life within us. She gave us Jesus as our mother. And in her hymn, Mary speaks of God and His greatness. This is because she is completely filled with His presence, lives in the presence of God, and is constantly connected with God. Mary is a woman of prayer.
Thus, from Mary, we learn that it is very important to ask God the Father - with humility, but persistently - to continually bring us into His presence and fill us with faith in His presence. Without this personal relationship with God, prayer has little value. Meditation then becomes merely an activity of our mind, which lacks spiritual significance. If I am not in God's presence, then such activity has no value. (The same goes for the Eucharist. I can celebrate the Eucharist as something I thoughtlessly believe I am doing on my own. And it doesn’t even occur to me that I am in the presence of God, Jesus, and all of heaven, thus also the whole Church... But that is a mistake, blindness, and I greatly impoverish myself by it.)
Even if we spend all the time designated for our prayer just placing ourselves in God's presence, and we do not develop any reflection (meditation) at all, it will be well-spent time, beneficial for our spiritual growth. We must do everything we can to be in God's presence. I am face to face with God. God's presence is more important than any other thought. Realize right now: we are in God's presence. That changes everything! And also at other times: whether you are cooking in the kitchen or doing something alone in your room, this changes everything. Because in God's presence, you will not do things that are forbidden, that God does not like. His presence leads you to do what is good.
So God's presence is very important. It is more important than any other thought or even an original idea we might have. We people of today often seek something original. Often we wait for something unusual from this preacher, this exercitator. No, I do not have anything like that for you now. But I urge you: Enter into God's presence! - And you will see how "original" this truly is.
With every meditation, we must be aware of how important our deep relationship with God and contact with Him is, with the Father full of love, compassionate and merciful. He has overcome us all with His love.1 Without this relationship with God, everything else becomes unnecessary and useless. And the goal of spiritual exercises is also not to turn one's gaze inward to oneself, that is a great mistake. It would be a significant error if we wanted to focus the exercises solely on ourselves. If we were to carefully analyze our successes or our failures, what we desire or fear, our abilities or our weaknesses...
The goal of the exercises is not to meditate on the great questions of human existence. We are not philosophers. So we are not even thinking about life and death, about material and spiritual wealth, to deepen all these truths. Yes, all of this is useful, and we do not want to despise it. But it is not the main goal of spiritual exercises. If we dedicated ourselves to this, our minds would overheat, but our souls would remain cold.
The goal of the exercises is to step out of ourselves, out of our egoism. For we are "pagans who worship themselves". And the goal of the exercises is to enter into God's presence and re-establish as deep a contact with Him as possible. God is present in my life and loves me. That is the most important thing. Therefore, the goal of the exercises is: to find the Lord. He has gathered us here to let Himself be found by us. Saint Benedict wrote that when a novice is to be admitted, it is necessary to "carefully examine whether he is truly seeking God".2 And that is what we should be focused on now, that is why we are here in the exercises. Whereas if you are looking for yourself, you probably will not find yourself. If you are looking only for solutions to your life problems, you won't find that either. Because God desires for you to find this in Him. And then - when you are filled with His presence - you will be able to live everything else in a different way. So we want to seek God, meet God, deepen our relationship with Him, let ourselves be drawn to Him, and let ourselves be transformed by His love.
So: let yourself be captivated by God. Allow your soul to fall in love. Mary focused on God and teaches us to do the same. Mary expresses the wonder that fills her soul when she contemplates in her heart the unspeakable greatness of God. And this wonder is expressed in the words: "My soul magnifies the Lord." Mary thus tells us that it is essential to contemplate the greatness of the Lord. But how can I contemplate it? In the love that God shows me. Only if I realize how much love God shows me can I glorify His name. When you see little love, you glorify Him little. In fact, you have nothing to say to Him. You will then speak a lot about yourself but little about Him. Therefore, we must contemplate God's greatness in the love He reveals to us, so that we recognize the love we receive from Him, and genuinely thank Him for it deep within us. God loves you! Just you!
I often find it hard to love myself - and God loves me! He created me! For me, He sent His Son! He has done great things for me, for I am truly dust, and He made me flesh. God is great, He is great towards me, therefore my soul magnifies the Lord.
Let the glorification of the Lord arise in the soul under all circumstances. This should always be our first reaction. Remember Teresa. When she was coughing blood, she praised the Lord and glorified Him. Yes, Lord, you are here, come to me!3 Whereas we want mainly that nothing bad happens to us... Because we are not in God's presence.
To glorify the Lord is also a sign of gratitude for His love. For His merciful and mighty love, which transforms us, gives us salvation, and awakens life within us. Notice: in order to live, we depend on life. I speak of the material aspect of life. We eat what has previously been alive. We can only eat that. Stones do not satisfy. We eat what has previously been alive. This is a sign that we are absolutely dependent on God. What is true about material things is also true in the spiritual realm. If you depend on water, plants, and animals to live on earth, then you need to be fed by God and nurtured by God to live in your soul. Thus, we depend on life - both in the material and the spiritual realm.
To glorify the Lord. Spiritual exercises should help us reach this attitude. Here there is no difference between who is more intelligent and who is less. Someone may lack intelligence, but they can praise God with all their soul and be closer to God than I am with all my education. I serve the Holy Mass, and at the same time, some ordinary, simple old lady is closer to God than I am. Because she thanks God with her entire life and glorifies His name. To glorify means to proclaim His greatness. Magnificat... Magnus in Latin means: great. Such is God.
(Continued in the next issue.)
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