Jun 29 2023 29 mins 11
Contemplation to Attain the Love of God, pt. 1 – The Heart of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola with Fr. Anthony Wieck S.J.
Fr. Anthony Wieck and Kris McGregor continue this series centered around the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. In part one of our conversation, Fr. Wieck discusses contemplation to attain the love of God.
An excerpt from the conversation:
“So the mission comes, I first need to enter into a relationship which is initiated by God. And from that, I discover my identity and then I am sent out. So it’s being drawn, allowing myself to be drawn in to the heart of Christ. And there there’s a purification that goes on for me. There’s a restoration in me. There’s a receiving the gracious of God, knowing myself as his beloved child, and now leaning into the mission and spreading that joy, spreading that new life, the life of Christ that overwhelms me, that amazes me, that strikes me.
St. Paul did exactly that, he allowed himself to be drawn into the loving heart of Christ, filled with that love of God, he began to spread it. But it wasn’t that project for him, you know, a project to spread the gospel, a project that he kind of calculated how things would be. And so he was a very efficient apostle. No, he was an efficacious apostle because he knew first and foremost, he was called to be conformed to Christ. So he does speak about all the sufferings and the beatings and the imprisonments and the shipwrecks and things that he underwent for God’s sake, the experiencing that the life of Christ and the death of self, more and more life of Christ as he died to himself. So that’s meant to be our experience too, but it’s being drawn into the experience of Jesus. Our faith is intimately relational, and hence we discover identity and then our mission forth to draw others into that same experience of relationality. And profound being drawn in, cleansed, strengthened, made whole.
That’s why it’s so important that we can take a look at this great gift of the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius, because it really can help the average person can. Because if it’s truly this gift, this great grace from God, it’s meant to help build up the church as a whole, isn’t it?”
Fr. Anthony Wieck is a Jesuit priest of the Central & Southern province. Sixth of nine children, raised on a farm in Oregon, Fr. Anthony began religious life in 1994, spending his first five years of formation in Rome, Italy, studying at the Casa Balthasar and the Gregorian. The former was under the watchful patronage of Pope Benedict XVI (then-Card. Joseph Ratzinger). Fr. Anthony currently acts as retreat master at the White House Jesuit Retreat in St. Louis, Missouri. He also offers spiritual direction at the St. Louis diocesan seminary for 25 future priests there.
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