Ignatius the Pilgrim – PRINT

Ignatius the Pilgrim Poems for Prayer – Andrew Bullen SJ

20th Anniversary Edition

© Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process, electronic or mechanical, without permission from the publisher.

Design & layout: Peter Barker Published in Australia by Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview Development Office, Tambourine Bay Road, LANE COVE, NSW 2066 www.riverview.nsw.edu.au Published in 2012 ISBN: 978-0-9592758-8-9

Every care has been taken to trace and acknowledge copyright.

The publisher apologises for any unintentiontal infringement where copyright has proved untraceable.

Wherever possible, the images used in this publication have been acknowledged.

Front Cover: José de Ribera (1591-1652) Ignatius writes the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus.

Painting in the General Curia of the Society of Jesus, Rome (probably from around 1609) jesuitinstitute.org Back Cover: Seal of the Father General of the Society of Jesus and wax impression Ars Jesuitica

Ignatius of Loyola’s Pilgrimage In May 1521, Iñigo of Loyola, Basque nobleman, thirty years old, led the defence by the Spanish forces of the town of Pamplona in northern Spain, against the invading French forces. When all had seemed lost, it was Iñigo who had stirred his fellow soldiers to renew their efforts. His inspiration was successful until Iñigo himself was hit in the legs by a cannonball.

Severely injured, Iñigo was carried to his ancestral home deep in the Basque country. At Loyola, he underwent painful operations and began a long period of convalescence. With nothing to do, he day-dreamed, sometimes of a lady whose love he ambitioned, possibly the Infanta herself, and then since the only books available were a life of Christ and lives of the saints, he imagined himself emulating their penances and great deeds in the service of Christ. His faith, firm, traditional and somewhat neglected, flared into life. So Iñigo was converted. He now ambitioned undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Once he was well enough to travel, he began with a wayside stop at the local shrine of Our Lady of Aránzazu, where a small statue of Our Lady rested on a carved thorn bush. He then moved onward towards the port of Barcelona, but the route took him to the famous monastery high in the mountain vastness of Montserrat. Here, in the sackcloth clothes of a pilgrim, he spent the night in vigil before the Black Madonna. He then walked to the nearby town of Manresa, where he intended spending only a few days.

His stay extended to ten months, in which Iñigo underwent some of the momentous experiences in the shaping of his spirit. Periods of intense consolation and happiness were followed by times of acute desolation and distress. At one stage he was driven towards suicide and was so desperate that he would, as he recounted years later in his Autobiography, have followed a dog to gain direction. As all this was happening, Iñigo reflected on his experiences, noting patterns which he realised would operate in other people as well. So he began his lifelong habits of discerning the interior spirits and helping others to do so. From his discoveries while living in the ‘cave’ (really a rock overhang) at Manresa Iñigo began writing what became The Spiritual Exercises.

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With notes or Annotations guiding the way, The Spiritual Exercises are a carefully arranged sequence of prayers, meditations and contemplations, which bring a person undergoing these exercises of the spirit to commit him or herself to the praise, love and service of God, by following Christ as fully as possible, ready to live and die for Him. Before resuming his journey, Iñigo underwent one of the most intense mystical experiences of his life on the banks of the River Cardoner: his sense of Father, Son and Spirit, of creation and salvation, of eucharist, were renewed to the depths. The serenity of this experience lasted him a lifetime.

So, desiring to follow Christ as literally as possible, Iñigo headed for Jerusalem. At Barcelona, he took ship for the coast south of Rome. Having received permission in Rome to visit the Holy Land, Iñigo walked to Venice, where the pilgrim ships set sail for his destination. After many adventures, Iñigo reached Jerusalem in September 1523, and for nearly three weeks followed in the footsteps of his Master. It was Iñigo’s hope to remain there and work for the conversion of the Infidel, but the Provincial of the Fransiscans, who had the authority of the Holy See and the delicate task of keeping access to the Holy Places open, in a land under the power of the Turks, ordered Iñigo to return to Europe.

His hopes frustrated, Iñigo obediently returned to Spain. He began, at the age of thirty two, to study. In the universities, both at Alcala and then Salamanca, his austere life and patent holiness drew followers, but his spiritual advice to them stirred the suspicion of the Inquisition. Because he was not able to continue his work of helping souls, Iñigo decided to go to the University of Paris. Here his studies during the next few years progressed smoothly. While living at the College of Sainte Barbe, Ignatius as he now called himself, again found companions. Drawn by the forty year old fellow student, a group of young men, including the popular, intelligent Francis Xavier, whose family had supported the French at Pamplona, became permanently linked with Ignatius. Brought to a full Christian life by The Spiritual Exercises, the six of them with Ignatius formed the nucleus from which the Society of Jesus would grow. In 1534, their studies completed, they vowed themselves to lives of poverty and chastity in the chapel at Montmartre and determined to go to the Holy Land, if possible.

Ignatius, who had then been sent back to Loyola to restore his health, joined his ‘Companions’, as they now called themselves, in Venice during 2

1537. Their hope of venturing to Jerusalem was frustrated by war with the Turks, so they moved into the territory around Venice, preaching in broken Italian, working in hospitals, living in great poverty. If the route to the Holy Land were to remain closed, they had decided to go to Rome and place themselves at the disposal of the Pope. Accordingly, in 1538 they did so.

Towards the end of his long walk to Rome, Ignatius, a priest now but yet to say his first Mass, entered the wayside chapel of La Storta to pray. Again he received an intense mystical experience which gave shape to the rest of his life and was heartened by the thought that God would be with him in whatever lay ahead.

The last sixteen years of Ignatius’ life were spent in Rome. The Pope, Paul III, readily commissioned the Companions to undertake various tasks in Italy and beyond. So, they had to deliberate how they were to hold together as a group. Out of their prayerful discussions was born the Society of Jesus in 1539. Ignatius, indisputably their leader and from 1541 their ‘General’, put himself to the task of nurturing the new Order. The quick growth of the Society and the need to write ‘Constitutions’, for an order that wanted to be so flexible it could answer whatever call appeared most important, kept Ignatius at his desk for fifteen years.

Ignatius would pray before the small painting of Our Lady of the Way, or at night from the balcony exercise his lifelong habit of contemplating the stars. He had sent his closest friend, Francis Xavier, on one of the greatest of all missionary journeys: to India, Indonesia, Japan, and finally to the shores of China, where he died alone in 1552. Ignatius himself worked on, in failing health, until his own death in 1556 – rather suddenly at night with nobody else present. The Society of Jesus already had a thousand members placed throughout the known world; they were preaching and teaching in seminaries and schools, working with the poor and the powerful, everywhere under its motto, Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam – ‘For the Greater Glory of God’.

Fr Andrew Bullen, SJ Feast of All Saints and Blessed of the Society of Jesus 5 November 1991 3

For my mother and father

Contents Ignatius of Loyala’s Pilgrimage .................................................... 1 Pamplona ........................................................................................... 5 Loyola ................................................................................................ 6 Aranzazu .......................................................................................... 7 Montserrat ............................................................................... 8 & 9 Manresa ................................................................................ 10 & 11 Cardoner ......................................................................................... 13 Map ........................................................................................ 14 & 15 Jerusalem .............................................................................. 16 & 17 Montmartre ................................................................................... 18 Venice .............................................................................................. 20 La Storta ................................................................................ 22 &23 Rome ................................................................................................ 24 Lady of the Way ............................................................................ 25 Ignatius and the Stars .................................................................. 26

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Wherever Pamplona is: you mistake the enemy and overtrust your own boldness flourish an outdated flag for the last time and with style you’re on the defensive.

The yells and roar and fire are a dazling confusion; then the long quiet proclaims defeat.

Pain tells the soldier his leg The walled city of Pamplona, at the time of is turned to a mess of blood Ignatius of Loyola and the Loyola Coat of Arms – the wound will heal all his life.

Call this Pamplona.

Fr Michael Hansen SJ

Pamplona

Pamplona is whatever wrenches failure into blessing.

It is the end of noise and can happen anywhere.

Whenever fame goes – and style goes – and you’re useless is Pamplona.

Only later will it announce a new way of being history.

1521

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Pamplona is the lifelong beginning of the journey into silence.

Fr Michael Hansen SJ

1522

Ignatius the Pilgrim (foreground) and Loyola Valley, in the Basque region of northern Spain.

Loyola

Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview

Not the doctors' bungling and sawing away again, not his will clenched and pitted against the pain; his glittering future – that lady's smile – vanish: he learns at last to be ill, to heed the wounds.

Soft rain on the iron valley of Loyola.

Now the world is only this narrow valley, now he has all the slow time in the world to be bored, to know death tastes like metal, to count his countless blessings, to be healed.

Healing comes gently or not at all.

How still he must stay! He dreams his desires, generous and restless: a lady, a soldier, his high enterprise; stories of hermits, of pilgrims, and their deeds, eternal and bold. How his heart wanders and wavers!

Give him, healer, only your love and your grace.

Again and again, imagination captures and releases him. Even peace can taste like iron.

Hour by hour, he transcribes the Vita Christi into his heart.

Peace is soft rain. He surrenders and at last is free.

Find Christ the Lord in Loyola's holy land.

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No more of the old Basque song and dance, no longer to labour for her smile.

Learning to walk again is an exercise in repetition: pilgrims do it.

Remember Loyola is every day.

Soft rain on the iron valley of Loyola, Healing comes gently or not at all, Give him, healer, only your love and your grace, Find Christ the Lord in Loyola's holy land, Remember Loyola is every day.

Bob Marsh

Mediaeval statue of Our Lady of Thorns at Aranzazu (named after the Basque word for a place of thorns ‘aransa’.

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Aranzazu Lady of the thorn bush keep me safe from myself.

The sky is your colour: shelter me.

For you and your child I will travel the world.

Your presence will be my pilgrim's staff.

Mother and nurse to me, be my lady of the way from sweet Aranzazu to wherever I find Jerusalem.

Ars Jesuitica

Take this memory: a boy, he careers with his fellows through the topmost walnut trees all the way down the iron mount – Izarraitz – risking crippling falls to Azpeitia.

Soft rain on the iron valley of Loyola.

1522

Montserrat All night long his sword glittered on the altar like an abandoned road.

He knew the darkness shift around outside and inside.

His wounds made kneeling as painful as walking; he knelt all night long.

Bob Marsh

Bob Marsh

Annotation 1 For pilgrims (always limping), strolling, walking, running are exercises in love, in prayer.

The serrated mountain of Montserrat, overlooking the monastery.

8 8

Released into the public domain by Departament de Premsa i Comunicació de Montserrat

High on her golden throne the dark lady smiled and did not smile.

Her majestic child raised his hands to bless all night long whatever the soldier had to offer.

Outside the mountain glittered like a serrated sword.

At dawn the sun was red with the blood of his friends following the way that was and was not his own, and the chanted music moved like a journey uphill and downhill all night long.

The Black Madonna of Montserrat

Annotation 2 Stripped of possessions and home, a pilgrim can only travel light.

Grace and a pilgrim’s staff take your weight.

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Manresa Why move away from lofty Montserrat and the holy places?

To here, which is nowhere much, just a place made of mud-dust: the cave and the river and the bridge, the cathedral a dark slab; the Cardoner, indigo and lurid green, an industrial drain.

He eats no meat, he drinks no wine, he begs alms every day.

Is he a hermit, a pilgrim, another failed soldier, or a sackcloth man?

Whatever he was is threadbare: dirt brown – and dirt black; everywhere the air is hot and metallic, dogs nose him with interest.

A form in the air glitters, and gives queasy delight; his past life hunts and hunts him down.

Is this where his efforts get him?

Seventy years of self threaten ahead.

He is a twist of rope twisted and twisted on itself.

The waters of the well glint oblivion: can light spit at him? can it be darkness lunging?

He is so lost he would follow a little dog.

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© Some rights reserved: CC BY-SA 3.0 Spain Photo: PMRMaeyaert

Santa Maria de Manresa, also known as La Seu

A cloak snatched from his shoulders; the Lord awakens him as from a dream.

He has nothing to do but watch the unnerving shifting patterns of darkness, and so learn by heart the grammar of light.

He puts the strategies of love into his little exercise book.

He is schooled at length in lessons he will relearn throughout his life.

Imagine a human king, imagine Christ King eternal; Imagine Babylon, imagine Jerusalem.

Under the rockshelf he and some locals and the dogs make a primitive church.

On the horizon: Montserrat, a shining altar of the the whole world – with his life upon it.

Already they call him ‘that holy man’.

A whole year his Master teaches him to be generous; all his hardness is eroded by the gift of tears.

1522-23

Annotation 1 For pilgrims (always limping), strolling, walking, running are exercises in love, in prayer.

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Pont Vell and the River Cardoner at Manresa

Annotation 3 Footfall after footfall, weary or fresh, a pilgrim never walks alone: Christ the Lord is beside you on your way Annotation 4 The imperatives of walking: start again, faster, turn here, stop, go back, keep moving, whittle the heart into prayer and love.

1522-23

Annotation 5 Places are made holy by their story, the spirit in which you journey to them, receive their gift, and leave them.

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Cardoner Now I am given to see ripples and current of this river cast water lights which interlace into a diamond and flash white fire.

From white light streams white light to suffuse all creation with its shining power.

Now I am flooded with light, which was not so before.

Now I see wherever life bears those wounds, the breath, the wind, of love is there.

It hovers like white fire over all creation, for light and life and love are one.

My road runs forever alongside this river, which now I see was not so before. Š Some rights reserved: CC BY-SA 3.0 Spain PMRMaeyaert

Bob Marsh

Now I see white light stream from the Cross, as if all life and love were concentrated there.

The letters of the Holy Name are made of bent nails and surrounded by the halo of his thorns.

Now I know the host of Christ’s body, which was not so before.

The cave at Manresa has become a shrine.

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North Sea London 1531 l

Bruges l l Antwerp

1529, 30 & 31

Paris l

1528-35

Bay of Biscay

FRANCE Genoa l

Pamplona Loyola l l 1521

Venice l

IT

Manresa l 1522-23 l Barcelona

Salamanca S P A I N

1527 l Alcalรก de Henares l 1526-27

E U R O

l Valencia

d i t M e e

Peter Barker

Pilgrimage to Jerusalem 1522-23 Return from Jerusalem1523-24 Studies 1524-1535 Return from Paris 1535 Departure from Spain 1536 Journey to Rome 1537

A

F 14

R

r

A

Ignatius of Loyola

Soldier, Pilgrim, Scholar, Priest & Saint

P E

AL

A S I A Black Sea

Y

1523-24

l Rome

r a Rhodes n e a n S e a 1522-23

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C

A 15

Cyprus

Jaffa l

Jerusalem l 1523

The Old City of Jerusalem

1523

II Imagine Ignatius here at nightwatch: 'Guards were set'.

The tomb, holy of holies, is empty: another cave.

His heart insists: 'First Christ appeared to the Virgin Mary'.

Stillness is spiced with sunlight.

Annotation 5 Places are made holy by their story, the spirit in which you journey to them, receive their gift, and leave them.

Annotation 6 The oldest printed view of Jerusalem

by Hartmann Schedel, NĂźrnberg 1493 The stars will guide you, people you meet will be signs, and your prayerful heart your compass.

Annotation 7 Maybe footsore, maybe footloose or waylaid, despite missteps and wrong turns, take up the Cross again: resume your pilgrimage.

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I Imagine Ignatius there: he follows his Master's path.

Towers, walls, a sudden dome: everywhere is holy. the golden muffled sound of bells: he lives inside the stories.

Grace and footsteps: his whole life brings him to this holy place.

Resinous heat in dusty pines; sunlight is spiced with silence.

Sion, Cenacle, Sepulchre: his body is his prayer

Š Some rights reserved: CC BY-SA 1.0; Gugganij

Jerusalem

© Some rights reserved: CC BY-SA 2.5; zehnfinger / Wikipedia

III Remember Ignatius then: his dream of being nowhere else obedience crucifies.

Your pilgrim footfall on stone shows the way to die into life.

You cannot be an apostle unless you are sent away from your desire to remain.

At the Mount of Olives see the Lord’s footprint in the rock: he too quit Jerusalem.

‘Man of Loyola,

Men of Galilee, why stand you looking to heaven?’

With nothing for the journey but your own readiness you are ready for anything –

even the threat of blows from infidel and believer: Christ is above you the whole way.

Your heart, your spirit, your book, take Jerusalem everywhere.

From the holiest of places turned away, departing, imagine Ignatius then.

Via Dolorosa – †he Way of the Cross

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Montmartre Saturday, August the fifteenth, fifteen thirty four: the Solemnity of Our Lady’s Assumption.

Regina adstat ad dexteram tuam

ornata auro ex Ophir.

On the edge of this city of learning, a nondescript chapel stands on a hill dedicated to the martyr Saint Denis and his forgotten companions.

The queen stands at

your right hand

arrayed in gold of Ophir.

In the dim crypt, they are at Mass.

Peter Faber raises before them the sacred host:

Ignatius of Loyola, who is not worthy . . .

Francis Xavier

of Navarre, who is not worthy

that the Lord enter under his roof.

Simon Rodrigues,

of Portugal, Domine, non sum dignus,

Diego Lainez, ut intres sub tectum meum

Alfonso Salmeron, sed tantum dic verbo

Nicholas Bobadilla,

all of Spain et sanabitur anima mea.

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‘In order to imitate and be more actually like Christ our Lord, I want and choose poverty with Christ poor rather than riches, opprobrium with Christ replete with it rather than honours; and to desire to be rated as worthless and a fool for Christ, rather than wise or prudent in this world’.

Ignatius the student has taught them all he knows; Paris has no more to teach them.

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Honour Roll at the Sorbonne, Paris.

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Ignatius of Loyola (left) and his First Companions, including Francis Xavier (centre) and Peter Faber (right), took a vow in the crypt of the Chapelle du Martyre (upper left), which stood on the Butte de Montmartre (Mount of the Martyr), Paris.

Annotation 8 Remember Christ the Lord walked many a mile, sweet and hard, knew tiredness and rest, staggered through brutal streets to Calvary’s hill.

1534

Annotation 9 You meet the world on the way, but are not held by it.

For pilgrims, the horizon is always the universe.

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© Some rights reserved: CC BY-SA 2.5; Errabee

Panorama of Venice: ‘Gilded horses, domes and cupolas, every palazzo, flouish banners of light.’

Venice Light here flaunts itself over the lagoon, pink and gold. Canals bustle with wealth and light.

Marble panels, windows and vast mirrors shimmer serenely with luminescence.

Everywhere water sweetly lisps and slaps.

The gilded horses, domes and cupolas, every palazzo, flourish banners of light.

The pilgrim and his pilgrim companions will have none of it.

They serve hour by hour, in the din, the stench, of the hospitals; crazily waving their hats for attention they preach, in the marshtowns, with foreign tongues the Christ-foolery of the gospels.

They await ship to Jerusalem, which will never leave, and the call to Rome, if God so wills: each is the other place.

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Š Some rights rerved: Dgt84

Below: 'Venice: The Upper Reaches of the Grand Canal' Canaletto 1697–1768.

1537

Annotation 1 For pilgrims (always limping), strolling, walking, running are exercises in love, in prayer.

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La Storta Eight Miles more before nightfall to reach the holy city; weary, footsore he stops here at La Storta, rests, and prays.

Eight miles, and the journey’s done.

He begs the Lady yet again to place him with her Son; another year before he says priestly words to bread and wine.

Lady, place us with Your Son. A change, sudden and great, overcomes his soul; he sees all light: The Father and the Son Who daily shoulders His Cross.

All is light, and light crucified.

At the wayside chapel of La Storta (above and below), Saint Ignatius received a mystical experience, which gave shape to the rest of his life.

The Father desires the Son to take the pilgrim as His servant; the Son desires the Father’s will: to obey is how He loves.

Father, place us with Your Son. A servant is not greater than his Master; every day the Master carries the Cross.

In the company of Jesus

pick up your cross and follow.

He finds his Master each day in all the hungry, the thirsty, the strangers and the naked, the sick and those in prison.

Place us Father with Your Son. His Master is Christ poor, replete with opprobrium, and crucified, every day.

The servant desires nothing more.

Calvary, not Babylon.

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Another gift, great and sudden, overcomes him: whatever happens, the Father promises to be favourable to him in Rome.

This is another beginning.

Public Domain: Copyright expired; {{PD-Art-100}}

He continues on his way towards the eternal city, where all the windows are closed against him. Only eight miles

and your pilgrimage is done.

Place us, Father, with the Son.

Public Domain: Copyright expired; {{PD-Art-100}}

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Christ the Lord calls His servant no longer servant but friend; break now the bread, take the wine, say the words in an upper room.

Father, place us with Your Son.

Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri) c1622 ‘Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s Vision of Christ and God the Father’.

1537

Annotation 10 Your destination is always a surprise, a holy place always gifts you with silence: leave the Holy Land and it remains with you for ever.

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S

eek the face of Ignatius wherever he is: often sick, always happy, always writing, and sometimes fierce; he never leaves the eternal city.

Glance at his tears of joy whenever he recalls the Lord's gifts at Manresa; that face teaches us how to live, and love ad maiorem Dei gloriam.

Seek his face as he journeys everywhere: in pain from Pamplona; at Montserrat; at the Cardoner, paused, for the last time; calm in sea-storm towards the Holy Land; sent back to Spain; waiting for the others near Montmartre; and reaching Venice again; moving inside La Storta, and outside; on the way always to Rome: see that face.

Š Some rights reserved: CC BY-SA 3.0; Matthias Kabel

Rome

Ignatius celebrated his first Mass

He is so exercised in the life of prayer that his eyes flicker with heartshifts, heartcalm; his voice is a quiet petition for light; he leans to hear the colloquies of love.

Always here, he looks as if somewhere else: in or near the Holy City, the Lord close, everyday a Friday, or a Sunday; in our company he's more himself than ever.

Walnuts at table stir his memories of home.

He's brightened our faces with a Basque dance.

Hidden from us at Mass, we cannot see his face. For the greater glory of God throughout the world he has started something small.

His body breaks under the Lord's love.

He limps about this his final city barely seen or known. The look on his face is beyond words, or poetry, or song.

Seek him.

Seek the face of Ignatius

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Lady of the Way Lady, your presence

and prayer make wherever we go

home and holy.

The stony tracks of Galilee,

Judea's bitter hills, the blood-flecked streets in Jerusalem

reveal your holy way.

Your child is always with you,

cradled in your arms; you place him in our care;

we are straw; take our lives, love is in our care.

Ars Jesuitica

Public Domain: Copyright expired; {{PD-Old}}

at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome.

portrait by De Ribera, painted in 1622.

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1537-56

Lights there in the dark flicker and go, and come again.

Awake alone in the sleeping house, I have the stars for company.

What is light, I wonder?

Peter Barker

Ignatius and the Stars

God our Lord labours there: the darkness (a vast, silent solace), those lights flung out, are his exuberant work.

What is love? I wonder and know. He is in the stars and between them, and beyond.

Naming the stars is counting blessings, is praise and thanksgiving.

Watching them move is slow

My companions are scattered

as prayer, as the rhythm of the breathing of God our Lord.

Stars are seeds of light sown in darkness.

Watching them I know the dense clarity of light, of life, of love, inside and outside.

There is light and light crucified and and light among us hovering.

Light speaks – to all of us, to me.

Contemplation gains love.

So make the heart an astrolabe to reach the furthest star.

Xavier is Sirius, the brightest star, he shines towards Cathay; Bobadilla is the Bear: this is the hearsay of the heavens.

Of the most distant stars, I can say 'They are companionable'.

My companions move in the universe; the sky rings with their happiness; their deeds are the interchange of light.

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Rooms of Saint Ignatius, in Rome

Public Domain: Copyright expired; {{PD-Old}}

My companions are scattered over all the world, where each can see the sky: however apart, we are together.

The voicing of their prayers, brimful of joy, echoes the music of the spheres.

Far south, men claim, shines the Cross; let the configuration of the companions shine like that.

Their shining makes a temple of me.

The sun's rays fall on all my life: we are made holy places.

The stars shine on Pamplona; on whichever of my pilgrim places they shine, they sign the way to Jerusalem.

. . . over all the world

Bob Marsh

Even if I die alone, the stars will be my companions.

Take, Lord, the heavens I have and possess . . .

1537-56

Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my intellect, and all my will – all that I have and possess.

You gave it to me.

To You, Lord, I return it.

All is Yours, dispose of it according to Your will.

Give me Your love and grace, for this is enough for me.

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With Permission of Superiors

Anthony Renshaw

Andrew Bullen is a Jesuit priest . . .

He spent his childhood in old South Wales and when aged 13 lost a leg to cancer. His family migrated to Sydney in 1964, where he finished his education at Saint Aloysius’ College. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1967, studied History and English at Monash University and then Theology at Jesuit Theological College, Melbourne.

He was ordained in 1979.

Today

What did I do Today?

How did I do Today?

‘As long as you did it to one of these least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me (Matthew 25: 40).’

‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God. Whoever does not love, does not know God for God is love (1 John 4: 7-8).’

‘I am the Lord your God . . . who created you . . . who formed you. I have called you by your name, you are mine . . . You are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you (Isaiah 43: 1-4).’

Amen

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Examen Evening Reflection

Awareness Examen

First I try to relax and be at peace.

I ask God to help me as I look back over the day.

I ask myself: What are the good things that happened for me today?

What good things did I do today?

I thank God for all of these things.

Now I ask myself: What was not so good about today: the things that annoyed me, frustrated me, hurt me, made me feel sad?

I ask God to help me deal with these things.

I also ask myself: What things did I do today that were not so good?

I tell God I am sorry for these things.

Now I look ahead.

I ask God to help me be a better person tomorrow than I was today.

I finish with the prayer that Jesus taught us: the ‘Our Father’.

Amen

Footfall after footfall, weary or fresh, a pilgrim never walks alone: Christ the Lord is beside you on your way Places are made holy by their story, the spirit in which you journey to them, receive their gift, and leave them.

The stars will guide you, people you meet will be signs, and your prayerful heart your compass.

You meet the world on the way, but are not held by it.

For pilgrims, the horizon is always the universe.

Ars Jesuitica

Your destination is always a surprise, a holy place always gifts you with silence: leave the Holy Land and it remains with you for ever.