Personal Experiences Guiding
the Spiritual Exercises

 
  by Julian Elizaldé, S.J.

• • •
 

I. Christ's Choice Vineyard: The Vietnamese Community 1
II. The Retreat Silence 4
III. The Spiritual Exercises School of Prayer 5
IV. Christian Morality, Sin and Conversion. The First Week 13
V. Finding in Christ the Way, the Truth and the Life 17
VI. Christ's Spirit Makes Us More Human, Willing to Serve 20
VII. The Contemplation of the Third Week 22
VIII. The Fourth Week 22


• • •
 

I. Christ's Choice Vineyard: The Vietnamese Community

There are great possibilities and urgent needs among Vietnamese Catholics. What are these needs? How urgent are they? Could it be that find­ing them out and trying to answer them tomorrow will be too late? We can easily give in to complacency, looking at our communities superficially and ‑ seeing no obvious conflicts ‑ come to believe that there are no inner turmoil. Seeing our churches crowded we can think that their faith is strong, looking at our families coming to church in packed cars we may think they enjoy togetherness and harmony at home, watching our young physically present in the community, we can conclude that they believe and that their charming smiles reflect true joy and inner peace.

In the following observations I don't want to focus on the extreme cases of excellency or degradation among our youth. It wouldn't be fair or helpful to brand youth in general because of the misdemeanours of a handful or let some exceptional leader actively involved in most of the pastoral activities represent the majority of the youth conspicuously absent from them. I wish to focus my attention on the majority of the Vietnamese and try to discover the tendencies, qualities and needs present in most of them. I'll put the emphasis on the most urgent needs, which affect great numbers of young Vietnamese.

By the way, it is possible that the extreme cases of misbehaviour may be acute cases of conflicts and maladjustments often present but kept, more or less successfully, under control in many Vietnamese homes. In this case a better understanding of the needs and conflicts of the community will help us find the roots and remedies of serious misbehaviour in some of its members.

If we want to discover the needs and the potential of the Vietnamese community it is also important not to approach it with premeditated programmes suited to our personal talents, likings and experiences. These are the projects for which we may feel that we are better prepared. If we approach the community with a premeditated project we will look for those needs or aspirations which fit our projects, regardless of their urgency. We might remain deaf to the vital needs of the majority around us. Even if we can succeed in our personal projects, the greater service of God and the welfare of our brothers and sisters prompts us to be sensitive to their more urgent needs, being ready to elaborate projects which will serve them better, although these new endeavors might not suit our preferences or specialization.

We may find in this openness to the more urgent needs of the community one aspect of the "preferential love for the poor" to which the Church and the Society compel us, following the footsteps of Jesus. This is the love for the lost sheep, which moves us to leave the ninety‑nine at home to venture in the quest for the lost one. This apostolic availability demands deep detachment from ourselves, putting our hopes in God's grace more than in our own talents, and is motivated by the love for our brothers and sisters rather than by the natural desire to work in projects we like.

Furthermore, we need God's light to see in depth and discover behind the apparent vitality of our communities the loneliness and emptiness of young hearts, the lack of communication in families, the discouragement and fatigue of our leaders, the faith crises compounded by false images of God, misunderstandings about Divine Providence and lack of personal religious experience. We have to look at the community through Jesus' eyes and love. Then we will see a vineyard ready to be harvested, threatened by imminent storms. We have to open our hearts to Jesus' love and zeal and find out, before it is too late, what serious problems we have in our communities.

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