Lightworks Journey
An Ignatian Spiritual Experience of finding God in all things
An invitation
Fr. Joseph Allen Tetlow, S.J. has been a professor of theology at St. Louis University and associate editor of the Catholic weekly America.
He was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola in New Orleans, founding executive secretary of the U.S. Jesuit Conference in Washington, D.C., and President of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. As Director of Tertianship (the final period of Jesuit formation) he also acted as spiritual director to the clergy of the Austin Diocese.
At the present, Father Tetlow is the director of Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House in Lake Dallas, TX, after serving 8 years in Rome directing 250 Jesuit retreat house and also serving as the head of the Secretariat for Ignatin Spirituality.
Father Tetlow is the author of Lightworks.
Lightworks can be obtained from the Institute of Jesuit Sources - http://www.jesuitsources.com.
By Joseph A. Tetlow, S.J.
Rome, Feast of St Peter and St Paul, 2001
How wonderfully the Holy Spirit of Light works all around the world! That Spirit has been filling the prayer outlined in these pages with peace and power for followers of Christ who speak many languages. The Spirit is blessing many groups of parishioners who pray through these weeks, and is giving translators and guides insight into "the signs of the times," so that they can translate the exercises for their own cultures and situations. The Word of God is a seed planted by God that grows in us whether we are asleep or awake. But like any seed, that Word thrives and brings forth fruit best when the ground has been prepared for it, and when good cultivation accompanies its growth.
There is an image for these Lightworks. In Baptism, you accepted the Word of God, the Revelation of the Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit poured out onto you. You are mature now as human persons. Has the seed grown and spread roots into the whole of your life and self? What fruit is it bringing forth? What have you been doing to cultivate the growth of the Word in your own life? As cultures spread globally, as modernity is transmuted into post-modernity by Information Technology and the movements of peoples, you do well to prepare and cultivate the ground of faith in your self. You will do that with the exercises of Lightworks.
They bring light, to begin with. They will remind you that God creates you moment by moment, always your Omnipotent Creator. They will help you rejoice with gratitude that everything that you have and are is a gift from God. They will help you praise God who works busily "wanting no one to perish, but all to be saved through Jesus Christ" (2 Pt 3:9). These prayers will throw strong and penetrating light onto what seem to be absurdities in modern life, making them glow with meaning. They are doing that for people in many cultures, even some filled with tensions and ambiguities in Eastern Europe. As you go through the stages of Lightworks, moreover, you will find that the prayer throws light even on the dark places in your lifeworld and in your own self. You will not find it easy to look hard at your own limitations and failures - no one finds it easy anywhere on earth. These exercises, consequently, will ask you to do some work. You will read and ponder. You will put in time thinking hard about where your life has gone and what you have done, about where you have come and what you might do now. This is work, and you may find it sometimes hard work. But remember always that you are, as St Paul wrote in greeting the Ephesians, in the company "of the saints who are faithful to Christ Jesus," who find ways to do this work in homes of a single room, in noisy offices, in ancient cathedrals, and many unlikely places.
These exercises are called Lightworks, then, because they are filled with light and they ask you to work. They are so called for another reason: Master Ignatius suggested that, before entering into the full Spiritual Exercises, it might be useful to do some ejercicios leves, a Spanish expression that can be literally translated as light works. So keep in mind that these exercises may lead you to go on and make the full Spiritual Exercises in order to choose what to do with the rest of your life, how to live it, and how to embrace the "ongoing metanoia and change of heart" that the bishops of Vatican II said we must all live.
Lightworks, however, will help you find the full rich meaning of living into Christ. As St Paul said, "you have heard the message of the truth and the good news of your salvation and have believed it." You are stamped with the "seal of the Holy Spirit of the Promise." Praying through these weeks, you will discover sharply and deeply what that means to you in your unique, unrepeatable life. "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who has called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light, " the Apostle Peter wrote (1 Pt 2,9). "Once you were not a people at all, and now you are the People of God." It will be, after all, light work to find lasting joy in the grace of your life and your self.