Ignatius of Loyola was quite the achiever. Among his exploits: he founded the Jesuit order (to squash the Protestants, it seems), and he designed a set of Spiritual Exercises to lead the student to feel the presence of God in his/her life. Oh, and in order to commit himself to his vocation as a young pilgrim, he STOOD UP, in church, ALL NIGHT, in prayer and vigil. You try that sometime.
What follow here are some excerpts from his biography that tell of a strange hallucination he experienced; this anecdote left such an impression on me that I continue to mull it over some 5 years after first reading his book (A Pilgrim’s Journey: The Autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola).
tl;dr:
Section 8: He begins to pay attention to his thoughts and the effects they have on him. This forms the core of the practice he later develops for discerning which kinds of thoughts one should listen to.
Section 19: While starting to practice asceticism, something similar to a glittering serpent appears to him and mesmerizes him… He continues to see this image off and on for the next 15 years, but his relationship to it evolves.
Section 31: He observes that the beauty of the vision diminishes in the presence of the cross; he comes to believe that the vision is from the devil, and he decides to break his attachment to it.
The excerpts: (my commentary at the end)
8. Yet there was this difference. When he was thinking of those things of the world, he took much delight in them, but afterwards, when he was tired and put them aside, he found himself dry and dissatisfied. But when he thought of going to Jerusalem barefoot, and of eating nothing but plain vegetables and of practising all the other rigours that he saw in the saints, not only was he consoled when he had these thoughts, but even after putting them aside he remained satisfied and joyful.
He did not notice this, however; nor did he stop to ponder the distinction until the time when his eyes were opened a little, and he began to marvel at the difference and to reflect upon it, realizing from experience that some thoughts left him sad and others joyful. Little by little he came to recognize the difference between the spirits that were stirring, one from the devil, the other from God.
…
19. While in Manresa he begged alms every day. He ate no meat, nor did he drink wine, though both were offered him. On Sundays he did not fast, and if someone gave him wine, he drank it. And because he had been quite meticulous in caring for his hair, which was according to the fashion of the day – and he had a good crop of hair – he decided to let it grow naturally without combing, cutting, or covering it with anything either during the day or night. For the same reason he let the nails of his feet and hands grow, since he had also been overly neat with regard to them. While living in this hospital it many times happened that in full daylight he saw a form in the air near him, and this form gave him much consolation because it was exceedingly beautiful. He did not understand what it really was, but it somehow seemed to have the shape of a serpent and had many things that shone like eyes, but were not eyes. He received much delight and consolation from gazing upon this object, and the more he looked upon it, the more his consolation increased, but when the object vanished he became disconsolate.
…
31. After this lasted for some time, he went to kneel before a cross, which was near that place, to give thanks to God, and there that vision appeared to him – the one that had appeared many times before and which he had never understood – that is, the object described earlier that seemed most beautiful to him, with its many eyes. Kneeling before the cross he noticed that the object was without the beautiful color it usually had, and he distinctly understood, and felt the firm agreement of his will, that that was the evil spirit. Many times later it continued to appear to him, but as a mark of his disdain for it he drove it away with the pilgrim’s staff he always had in his hand.
………and so…….?
The first thing this story reminded me of was how easily we can be seduced and bamboozled by beauty. We have the movie trope of the devil in high heels and a red dress. But then again beauty is also something we commonly turn to with awe, something that inspires religious minds with gratitude to God for his beautiful creation. Ignatius drew a LOT of consolation from this beautiful thing that seemed to appear only to him, like some sort of special gift. Consolation, in his terms, is often contrasted with desolation: a feeling of being isolated from the Creator and unsupported. So when he says he felt consoled, he may have felt that this vision was some sort of secret gift from God just for him in recognition of all his sacrifices. A temptation to pride maybe?
It is easy to look at lust and see how beauty gets its hooks in us that way; the fresh glow of a 17 year old exerts a powerful glamour over even the most hardened cynic. But what about art? What’s that business in the ten commandments about not creating graven images: what is the line between an idol we worship and a mesmerizing piece of art? Surely if it leads us to glorify goodness and not depravity or the mindless void, then we’re doing all right?
The best reflection I’ve found on this comes from Kierkegaard’s preface to Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing:
When a woman makes an altar cloth, so far as she is able, she makes every flower as lovely as the graceful flowers of the field, as far as she is able, every star as sparkling as the glistening stars of the night. She withholds nothing, but uses the most precious things she possesses. She sells off every other claim upon her life that she may purchase the most uninterrupted and favorable time of the day and night for her one and only, for her beloved work. But when the cloth is finished and put to its sacred use: then she is deeply distressed if someone should make the mistake of looking at her art, instead of at the meaning of the cloth; or make the mistake of looking at a defect, instead of at the meaning of the cloth. For she could not work the sacred meaning into the cloth itself, nor could she sew it on the cloth as though it were one more ornament. This meaning really lies in the beholder and in the beholder’s understanding, if he, in the endless distance of the separation, above himself and above his own self, has completely forgotten the needlewoman and what was hers to do. It was allowable, it was proper, it was duty, it was a precious duty, it was the highest happiness of all for the needlewoman to do everything in order to accomplish what was hers to do; but it was a trespass against God, an insulting misunderstanding of the poor needle-woman, when someone looked wrongly and saw what was only there, not to attract attention to itself, but rather so that its omission would not distract by drawing attention to itself.
I suppose I am trying to sort out my own relationship to the arts here. On the one hand, an artistic leaning drives us to create, to extend God’s creation, if you will, for good or ill. On the other hand, I have seen the potential of beauty to distract me from purposeful creation instead; beauty can numb the pain of the human condition for a while: it can be intoxicating, powerfully orgasmic, but it is ultimately infertile if it isn’t in the service of something greater. Whether it is the beauty of oil paint (when I first saw a Van Gogh exhibit in person, I realized I’d never seen his art at all before that — those colours are a phenomenon unto themselves) or the beauty of mathematics. Or the beauty of words, or music, or whatever floats your boat.
If there is a lesson to take from Ignatius I suppose it is the art of discernment, whereby each of us must learn for ourselves which tendencies are worth feeding and which should be starved out for our greater well-being.
I simply found this story a fascinating mirror to look into and these are my scattered reflections. Thank you for looking with me.
Like a refugee 