The Jesuits

Mystical spiritual practices have interested me for over 10 years.  The Jesuits have been my subject for a few months.  Here are some of my notes below.

Who would like this post?  

• Those looking for a purely Christian based meditation techniques completely void of Eastern religious traditions.
• If you are an Intuitive type and know things for sure, but often cannot explain how you are absolutely certain about some things.  
• Devout Catholics with an intellectual interest.  The Jesuits are the Catholic intellectuals.
• If you are into any sort of Meditation practice, and you are exploring some of the more proven Christian meditative traditions that have stood the test of time.

Founding Fathers of the Jesuits

Ignatius of Loyola

He was a Basque from the Northern parts of Spain, in the Pyrenees mountains on the border of France.  He was a soldier before becoming a priest.  Many of his Spiritual Exercises were adaptations of Garcia de Cisneros spiritual exercises, which, in turn were based upon "Brothers of the Common Life," apparently a work of devotion of the time emphasizing simplicity.

Greatest contribution to civilization and the church is the Spiritual Exercises.

Francis Xavier

He was a Basque, like Ignatius was.  He was an Evangelist throughout Asia, and especially in India.  He is considered one of the greatest missionaries.  He met Ignatius and Peter Faber during his studies at the University of Paris.

Peter Faber

He was a Frenchman, formally, Pierre LeFevre.  Perhaps his major contribution was his approach to people.  He did not engage in disputes or arguments, but was was looking for a conversion from the heart in dealing with people.

General Notes on the Order

• The order was founded on September 27, 1540
• The main focuses of the Order:
• Education
• Intellectual Research
• Cultural Pursuits
• The Order's Motto
• Shortened: Ad maiorem Dei gloriam
• Full Form:  Ad maiorem Dei gloriam inque hominum salutem
• For the greater glory of God, and for the salvation of humanity
• Symbol contains IHS, apparently a transliteration of the Greek form of the first three letters of the word Jesus.  Strange thing, since I think the Greek transliteration is "Iesous."  Perhaps there is some historical explanation on transliterations.
• The most famous modern philosopher who was a Jesuit was Pierre Teihard de Chardin.    
• Strange naming of the order
• They call themselves the "Society of Jesus," and all written names of Jesuits I have noticed have the title "SJ" appended to the end of their names.
• This strikes me personally as strange.  At the origins of the Order, there was some debate as to the presumptuousness of this name for an order.  It is like, you never name your child "Jesus."  Or like the names of some of the American style churches like "Christian Church," or "The Church," the presumptuousness is just a bit odd, and you wonder what type of person could possibly make such as suggestion or proposal.  

Spiritual Exercises

This is the meat of the Jesuit approach to life.  The exercises are also encouraged for lay persons, and not just for priests.  So, anyone can do them.  Many organizations have used these techniques outside of the Jesuits and outside of the Catholic Church, apparently.

The ideal program is a 28-30 day retreat in a quiet peaceful environment.  However, there are variation on the theme for lay persons with busy schedules, and can be done over a period of a few months or two years.

Some major themes of the retreat:

• Usually done under the guidance of a Spiritual Director
• Discern the will of God in one's life
• Personal commitment to follow Jesus, no matter what the cost
• Major Aims: 
• Development of Discernment
• Development of making choices and decisions separate from inordinate attachment
• Discernment is a mystical path and moves toward mystical union with God.
• A repeated theme: Finding God in All things
• Doing the Examen:
• 10-15 minutes
• Asking for help from God
• Gratitude reflection
• Pray with 1-2 strong interior movements (emotions, intuitions, feelings) focus
• Rejoice and ask forgiveness

Resources

These are the ones I have personally found.  They are listed in order of priority for the reader of general interest.

The Ignatian Adventure, by Kevin O'Brien

A good resource if you intend on doing some or all of the exercises.  I downloaded a copy to Kindle and I am reading it to supplement my current stack of books on meditative techniques.

Reimagining the Ignatian Examen: Fresh Ways to Pray from Your Day, by Mark Thibodeaux

I browsed quickly through this book and it appears to be a straight-forward practical application focusing on the Examen part of the Spiritual Exercises.

Ignatian Spirituality, by Loyola Press

This website has tons of resources, articles, links, and documents related to the Spiritual Exercises.

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Human Sacrifice

Advisory: This post is not for the squeamish!

Human Sacrifice

When you change your story, you change your life.  –Freddy Martini

This is a meditation on religion and how it relates to human sacrifice.

The Enemy

If you have normal levels of testosterone, you have wanted to kill someone.  Perhaps some time ago, or perhaps yesterday.  In fact, society has a desire to kill someone.  We all want a scapegoat.  Human nature is designed for warfare.  Factions develop naturally.  When there is peace, this means that the other side has been exterminated, and factions have not risen yet because not enough time has passed.  After one faction exterminates another group, there is a temporary calm and peace after the shock of violence, killing, and sacrifice of the victim. 

Rene Girard has spent a lifetime developing this line of inquiry. 

Factions

We see it every day.  Political factions develop.  Initially, the disagreements are benevolent.  Then they become increasingly bitter, and then eventually turn violent.  Both sides see the other as the cause of their misery, and if they could just kill off the bad guys, all would be well in the world.  Or, so they think. 

Repeating the Story Forever and Ever

The French Revolutionaries thought that killing the King and the nobility would solve all their problems.  The King, you know, was the root of all their misery and those evil nobles took all the money, and the church controlled everyone because they wanted power, and all that.  So, they killed off the nobility, they had their Reign of Terror, chopping off the heads of perhaps 30, 000 people, we are told.  But, of course, we know the rest of the story.  After this, a strongman took over France and increased the violence to a point where France would not recover for over 50 years.  Yes, and then there was the Franco-Prussian War, The Great War, and then the War against Hitler, then the Cold War, then the War on Terror, etc.  History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. 

Emergence of a Tribe

Some argue from an evolutionary perspective that the creation of factions in human nature is the emergence of a separate tribe.  Since we can only know and deal with about 150 people, beyond this point, factions will develop, and eventually war, and then the survivors, if any, will form two new tribes. 

Placing the Blame

Everyone has problems.  We all face death, and we have to struggle to achieve the things we want.  The easy way out – everyone wants to have an easy life, right? – is to blame our problems on someone else.  It is just too easy.  We screw up, we sin, we fail, and we get frustrated with this state of affairs.  It becomes easy to say, “This bad dude is causing all kinds of trouble!  We need to stop him!”  Thus, it all begins.  One faction organizes to fight off the bad guy, whom they have identified as the cause of all their troubles.  Small skirmishes begin.  People begin to kill others.  The bitterness rises as the body count stacks up.  Eventually everyone is so enraged with the enemy who has killed so many of their family and tribesmen, that there is no hope in reconciliation – there is only extermination as the answer since they cannot live with the enemy.  Thus, the drama continues until absolute victory of one side or another.  Then the victors are calm again – for some time.  The violence has shocked them in to a state of numbness. 

The First Solution

Men began the ritual sacrifice of humans to alleviate this pattern of human nature.  If the tribe gathers around the campfire, sings and dances, and emerges into a fury and trance.  Then the young virgin appears.  The men bind the virgin in ropes –they tie her hands and feet.  They place her in the middle of the tribe.  She begs for her life, but the tribe is in a frenzy of sound and dance.  They scream in ecstasy.  The priest places the virgin on the altar.  He raises his sharp knife above her chest.  He holds still for a while as the tribe focuses on the knife and the victim on the altar.  Everyone is beginning to experience the horror and screams of violence at sacrificing such an innocent victim.  The blade comes down, pierces her heart.  She screams and blood flows.  Women and children moan, wail, and weep at the horror of the sacrificial killing.  The family of the virgin is in shock.  The music becomes louder to drown out the pain of the horrific event.  Everyone begins to shout louder and louder in frenzy around the fire.  Many faint.  Some vomit.  After 3 hours, everyone is tired.  They settle down in shock, horror, and numbness from the horrible sacrifice and the frenzy of music dancing and shouting.  

The horror placates their lust for violence for perhaps one year or six months until the next ritual human sacrifice.

The Second Solution

Abraham and his buddies sacrificed the finest animals they could find.  A burnt offering was the ritual cooking of a beast.  The violence of stabbing a beast to death on an altar perhaps alleviated some of the extremes of human sacrifice.  The scapegoat took on all of our sins for one year, until another sacrifice was required.

One can imagine that hunters are already accustomed to the agony of an animal being killed.  One wonders what great leap the offering of the animal would provide for improvements in religions – perhaps the women and children were now exposed to such violence in ritual fashion?  Perhaps the men who did not hunt and kill needed to be reminded too.  Apparently it provided some reprieve for the lust for violence instead of finding some enemy to kill or sacrifice.  One imagines that it would take a lot more killing of animals to equal the horror or one human sacrifice. 

The Christian Solution

The next evolution in providing for a ritual for man to receive forgiveness and grace for sin, and to replace a human scapegoat with something non-human was the sacrifice of God himself for all the sins of Man. 

The Church evolved to the point where bloody images of Christ were everywhere to see.  The full horror of human sacrifice of Christ was encapsulated in the entire liturgy of the Church.  Confession of Sins, Absolution of Sins from the priest, the ritual dedication of the pieces of flesh and blood from the human sacrifice above the altar in a recreation of the Crucifixion, the absolute horror of consumption of human sacrifice with Holy Communion “Take this all of you and eat it – this is my body to be given up for you” – all this met a deep need in humanity for the forgiveness and absolution of sin in addition to human sacrifice for such sins.  If one thinks deeply about the meaning of this ritual and the horrible and magnificent words, “This is the Blood of the New and Everlasting Covenant!” 

The ultimate form of human sacrifice: the sacrifice of God himself on the bloody altar.  Not only this, but the story does not end in the death of god as the sacrifice for sins, and the death of a god as a scapegoat.  The death of God happens, and then God comes back to life in the Resurrection.  One can imagine why Christianity was a scandal to the pagan world.  Christianity basically claimed that the solution to the sinfulness of man was the sacrifice and killing of God himself, and the death was not really death, because he came back to life!  It is kind of a New Story that says, “We have found a happy ending!”  Everyone “knew” that there is no happy ending, but Christianity made this bold and scandalous claim. 

Of course modern Christianity perhaps no longer scares the crap out of us as it was intended to do, along with the happy ending.  Protestantism in particular has lost the complete sensation of ritual with the classic liturgy with art, incense, sound, and imagery to recreate as much as possible the sensation of a ritual human sacrifice.  Some of the traditional churches have retained some of the sensuous intent like the Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, the Lutherans, and the Anglicans. 

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It seems that for Christianity to work, it has to be scandalous and shocking.  It has to recreate the horror of human sacrifice with the liturgy.  It is not just a matter of “doctrine” or “belief” in a list of crap someone wrote on a Catechism pamphlet.  It must recall the reason the God of the universe had himself killed on a bloody altar.  People must perceive the horror of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a human sacrifice.  People must understand why the “Happy Ending” of the Resurrection is so scandalous and insane to a normal understanding of human nature.

Then, the Phoenix may rise from the ashes, and we can remember what we have forgotten.

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Freddy Martini