“It helps and profits in the spiritual life to abhor in its totality and not in part whatever the world loves and embraces, and to accept and desire with all possible energy whatever Christ our Lord has loved and embraced. Just as the men of the world, who follow the world, love and seek with such great diligence honors, fame, and esteem for a great name on earth, as the world teaches them, so those who proceed spiritually and truly follow Christ our Lord love and intensely desire everything opposite.”
Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) in “The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms” 101, as recounted in Lent and Easter: Wisdom from St. Ignatius of Loyola, comp. by James L. Connor (Liguori: Liguori Publications 2009) 64.
Letting go of the things of this world and embracing the things of Christ is precisely the function of fasting, prayer, and giving in Lent. Ignatius elsewhere calls Christ-followers to consider through meditation and contemplation what “inordinate attachments” or worldly affections must be cast aside in the journey of life (Spiritual Exercises 1; cf. 1 John 2:15).
In modern terms, Ignatius is calling each of us to think about what we desire with “all possible energy” and ask ourselves how that compares with Christ and the world? We do this so that nothing thwarts the expression of His love through each of us. What do you desire? In what do you invest time? On what do you spend money? Would onlookers say your actions look like the world or appear as Christ?
Ignatius concludes his Spiritual Exercises by stating that “love ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than words” (230). Let’s pray to that end: Father in heaven, we come to you in the name of Jesus asking You to graciously reveal to us our worldly affections by Your Holy Spirit, and help us replace them with the things that You love, so that our lives, in word and deed, make You known to the world. Amen.