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A simple summary of Ignatian Discernment

Ignatius wrote that the Exercises: “have as their purpose the conquest of self and the regulation of one’s life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment.” [1] See prior shows on a fuller discussion of Ignatius of Loyola his life and work.

 It includes spiritual reading and daily meditations for the liturgical year. Efficient and easy-to-use, Practical Meditations is not encumbered by long-winded or overly sentimental verbiage. Rather, these meditations are refreshing, sincere, powerful, and brief. Written with the betterment of souls in mind, each meditation is comprised of points and considerations on the Life of Christ, with constructive applications to daily life. Learn to live life in closer union with God by taking small but consistent steps each day to deepen your faith.

Each meditation is structured around a specific theme or aspect of the life of Jesus and includes biblical references and reflections on how these teachings can be applied in the modern world. The book is suitable for anyone seeking to deepen their spiritual practice and gain a deeper understanding of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

[1] https://jesuit.ie/who-are-the-jesuits/prayer-and-spirituality/spiritual-exercises/  accessed August 13, 2024

[2] https://angeluspress.org/products/practical-meditations  accessed August 13, 2024

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Unsure of the notes, check video before and after

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Modernism briefly summarized, see prior shows for a fuller discussion, is an attack on the fundamentals of the faith, atheistic in nature, denies possibility of divine revelation and objective truth, contempt for virtue and beauty. Man is the ultimate creature in the universe, inevitable leads to self-worship, a rejection of self-restraint, embracing of moral relativism, loss of authentic reason.

Satan capable of mimicry, high level counterfeit, fools many people. JPII Denver Freed do what one ought. Ought and want sound similar. Many substituted to do want, libertine, licentiousness. Suffer gravely from heresy.

Prayer books written maximum social capital before watered down, reenter mind heart and soul lived Christianity without the infection. Go back to early documents.

Globalism, a derivative of Modernism, has nothing to do with religion or the protection of religion. Globalism is at the root of the policy emanating from various institutions around the world (i.e. Vatican & China, suggested 2B/yr to Rome Cardinal Zen, Steve Mosher, muted/silent response to opening closing ceremonies in Paris Olympics Summer 2024). Practical Meditations is an antidote to these forces.

A Practical Meditation is an antidote to these serious ills. It is rooted in authentic faith, practical virtue, love of supernatural- God.

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How do mothers teach?  Short and sweet. Some hold these rules gave to Ignatius. Fitting gesture exact thing a mother tell her child. Succinct and packed into each word. Comes from a master of spiritual life. Archangel, message Mother of God, profound interior life, asks how can this be I do not know man? More to do with discernment of spirit. How this comes about without loss of perpetual virginity. Virgin and mother. Succinct fiat discerned better God’s will for her life.

Pope wept at their beauty. Profoundly perfect. Help form interior life in each individual. Repetition is the mother of learning.

Three-Fold Paradigm

Ignatian retreat profoundly changing. Changes how look at the world. True Devotion to Mary foundational books.

[1] Gallagher 113 John of the Cross

[2] Gallagher 3

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Accompany someone who have lived a life well lived. Angels surround the bed of the dying, we would be in awe at the value of the soul. Be motivated I have great value and the Lord wants for us is eternal joy.

Joy is not pleasure, not hedonism, all encompassing

Fr. Gaitley Consoling the Heart of Jesus

The dead person is not gone, more profound relationship with the dead, outside of time, don’t see things as we do. Pray for the expiation, beatific vision, only desire is to help us through charity. Will the good for us that we be with God forever. Increase of faith, hope, charity inspired to do better. Expansiveness of love.

XIV Exhortation Importance of preparing for death while a live & instructing someone to make Catholic decisions for oneself.

NB preparing for death gives one a virtuous happy life now and a more peaceful death. As [Proverbs shows walking with the Lord provides health, wealth, and righteousness.]

Resources

Dominican Friar Explains “The Art of Dying” September 18, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-T8DE50Voo&t=3s   accessed July 10, 2024

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1858 Creation Confraternity of Christian Mothers, same time frame. Women in Church gravely concerned about children and husbands.

Christians tale between legs, people bearing brunt of chaos is mothers, children, and families

Noble woman in France, Rio, husband & children caught up in socialist atheist ideas

Rapidly approved by Vatican, daily prayer created, number of ways to gain indulgence

Obtain graces to fight against a material heresy. Expanded rapidly, in USA within USA.

Many of Confraternities in Europe have gone defunct. Largest in USA

Prayer Book, written in France, accumulating beautiful language of prayer against onslaught against women & children

Percy Shelly radical, down on marriage, easy divorce, material problems.

Don’t want discomfort, want radical solution. Rise in sinfulness innocent suffer the most.

New website https://www.christianmothers.org

Mother Love prayer book https://www.christianmothers.org/mother-love

175 yr anniversary of Confraternity

Band together with other Catholic Mothers, grace available to achieve that end

Indulgenced prayer, Holy Mass, spiritual director

Specifics commit to say short litany of saints who are patrons

how to join based out of Pittsburg PA

Parish affiliation, monthly meeting, Mass, dues based on intent

Not another women’s group, contemplative mother’s movement within the heart of the Church

Not fundraising, bake sales, altar cloths rather formation of the mothers, and Christian education of husbands & children

Older women keeping movement alive, more traditionally minded parishes rediscovering our patrimony with younger mother

Grandmothers & mothers married together for an active Faith in children & husband

Zellie Martin attended some of the early meetings

Intercessory prayer current and past members incredible help

10K praying for the members plus deceased

Mother Love (brand new compilation of prior book) formal prayer book common to Practical Meditations

These prayers, profoundly beautiful

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Timothy M. Gallagher was ordained to the priesthood in 1979 as a member of the Congregation of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary.

In 1983, he obtained his doctorate from The Pontifical Gregorian University, and became a spiritual director and retreat leader.

He has taught at St. John’s Seminary, Brighton, and Our Lady of Grace Seminary Residence, Boston, both in Massachusetts.

In 2015, Father Gallagher accepted the St. Ignatius Chair for Spiritual Formation at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver.  He has written over twenty books on spiritual themes, published articles in Catholic periodicals, appears frequently on Catholic television, and records many podcasts, radio interviews, series on YouTube, and virtual events used throughout the English-speaking Catholic world. https://www.frtimothygallagher.org

Catholic Podcasts dedicated to those on the spiritual journey. https://www.discerninghearts.com/catholic-podcasts/fr-timothy-gallagher-discernment-of-spirits/

Many people led astray inappropriate spirituality. Easy to go astray. Divine Will in our life and interactions of principalities and powers wage a battle over each soul. Angels’ superior intellect. Appeal to our guardian angel and not be easily swayed by the world.

The second conviction is that since these rules are born of experience, they are best explained by constant references to experience[2] (realistic epistemology one of our Guide posts, sound reasoning, Aristotelian)

Ignatius composed these rules for those who guide others in the Spiritual Exercises, a time of prayer and of seeking God’s will. He presumes that these guides will know the rules well and will explain them to the retreatants.[3]

Rules studied over 30 day of time, constant immersion, intense directed approach engage with things Christological.

Eastern mysticism tends to speak of void, nothingness. Christian mysticism relationship with someone. Rules know ourselves so we can purge hindrance with this relationship, motivate strengths directed towards the end.

Not wordy packed with meaning. Rules given to Ignatius from our Lady, completely written from Blessed Mother how to avoid difficulties and open to a life of grace.

[1] Gallagher xv

[2] Gallagher 4

[3] Gallagher 5

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The Art of Dying

Ignatian Spiritual Discernment

Get Married

Prepare for Eternal Live

True Devotion to Mary

Weidenkopf & Shreck Revolutions & Modernism[2]

Secular:

The Enlightenment philosophy from Descartes 1641 (I think there I am) had flowered into

Kant Critique of Pure Reason (we can’t know anything, and if we know is something it is very little) 1781 see prior shows for a fuller discussion

Darwinism 1859

Karl Marx rejection of the Church 1867

Battle of Waterloo Napoleon 1815

Ecclesial

50 yrs prior the suppression of the Jesuit order by Pope Pius VII 1814

Immaculate Conception 1854

Lourdes 1858

Syllabus of Errors 1864 (leads to St. Pius X Modernism synthesis of all heresies)

Terrible seeds during Revolutionary period in France, and throughout Europe bears noxious fruit.

Holy people somehow break through. Good will come from this somehow.

1858 Creation Confraternity of Christian Mothers, same time frame. Women in Church

[1] Practical Meditations For Every Day of the Year (Angelus Press: Saint Marys, KS 2022)

[2] Steve Weidenkopf & Alan Schreck, Epic: A Journey Through Church History (Ascension Press: West Chester, PA 2009) cf 181 and chart

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Deacon, medical doctor recommended this book.

X Thesis Statement It acknowledges the deeply spiritual dimensions of the dying process, sketches the spiritual battlefield we find along the way, and helps us interiorize the truths that will keep us safe as we seek to persevere through our final passion here on earth.[1]

XI Outline The Art of Dying 6 Chapters[2]

Compendium, grace, Church anticipates the needs of her children. We can see how we are prepared by our Lord.

XII Selected quotes

Sloth, Jeremiah people of Judah point to the pagans we aren’t that bad. Gaze should be to the Lord.

Rectitude of intention. Ordered life, things make sense. grace builds on grace. Capable of a radical introspection. Socrates unexamined life not worth living. People don’t want to believe there is a battle for their soul.

Guardian angel two ways dearest friend strongest advocate and severe accuser. All I have done come to light. Do examination at night. Live an examined and ordered life. Approach death with greater joy and peace.

Confession, a preparation for our particular judgment each time. General examination of confession, plenary indulgences, examined life.

Illumination of conscience, please God, closer to God’s will happier my life will be.

Faith, hope, charity, act of faith, hope charity, indulgenced prayers. Church provide for her children a way to grow stronger. Live well, die well, make aa opportunity to learn these prayers and recite them daily, guardian, consecrations to our Blessed Mother. These prayers are the wind under our wings.

[1] Brother Columba Thomas OP, MD, The Art of Dying: A new annotated translation (NCBC: Philadelphia 2021) vii

[2] Brother Columba 4

[3] Bro Columba 12

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The classic source is the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Even today these rules, written 450 years ago, are the Church’s canonical locus on discernment. What Augustine has done for the problem of evil, or St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross for the phenomenology of prayer, St. Ignatius, by the grace of God, has done for the art of discernment.[2]

Capable of weight of 450 years of thought, stood test of time. It is accessible to the everyday person. Fr. Gallagher allows to see how discernment looks like in individuals.  Profound but not challenging, like St. Therese Little Way. Engage the text very accessible.

Ignatius of Loyola (l. 1491-1556) was a Basque soldier who became a Catholic priest and theologian after a mystical experience convinced him he was called to the service of Christ. He founded the Society of Jesus(Jesuits) to defend the Church and spread its message and was one of the leading figures of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

In his youth, he was significantly influenced by chivalric literature and became a courtier and soldier, serving in the army until 1521, when he was severely wounded at the Battle of Pamplona. While convalescing at his father’s house, he read books on the life of Jesus Christ and the acts of the saints and became convinced he was called to serve God.

[So far Ignatius had shown none but the ordinary virtues of the Spanish officer. His dangers and sufferings has doubtless done much to purge his soul, but there was no idea yet of remodelling his life on any higher ideals. Then, in order to divert the weary hours of convalescence, he asked for the romances of chivalry, his favourite reading, but there were none in the castle, and instead they brought him the lives of Christ and of the saints, and he read them in the same quasi-competitive spirit with which he read the achievements of knights and warriors. “Suppose I were to rival this saint in fasting, that one in endurance, that other in pilgrimages.” He would then wander off into thoughts of chivalry, and service to fair ladies, especially to one of high rank, whose name is unknown. Then all of a sudden, he became conscious that the after-effect of these dreams was to make him dry and dissatisfied, while the ideas of falling into rank among the saints braced and strengthened him, and left him full of joy and peace.

…

One night as he lay awake, pondering these new lights, “he saw clearly”, so says his autobiography, “the image of Our Lady with the Holy Child Jesus”, at whose sight for a notable time he felt a reassuring sweetness, which eventually left him with such a loathing of his past sins, and especially for those of the flesh, that every unclean imagination seemed blotted out from his soul, and never again was there the least consent to any carnal thought. His conversion was now complete. ][3]

After his recovery, he renounced his former life and dedicated himself to poverty and Christian service.

He devoted himself to study, prayer, and fasting, traveled to Jerusalem, and returned to study theology formally in Spain and France. At the University of Paris, he met six friends who would form the core of what would become the Jesuit order, which was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540. The Jesuit motto “Go, Set the World on Fire,” coined by Loyola, was (and still is) the central directive in defending the tenets of the Catholic Church and spreading its message of universal salvation.[4]

No books in his father’s home Ignatius liked. His father had foresight to have prudence to keep a home that brings true joy. Father saw flirtation with inappropriate literature. St Therese said her sister never let any literature come to her that would hinder her vocation. Keep books that elevate the mind.

[1] Timothy M. Gallagher, O.M.V., The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living (Crossroad :New York 2005)

[2] Thomas Green SJ, Weeds Among the Wheat: Discernment Where Prayer and Action Meet (Ave Maria Press: 1984) 14

[3] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/saints/ignatius-of-loyola-612  accessed Feb 23, 2024

[4] https://www.worldhistory.org/image/16015/saint-ignatius-of-loyola/  accessed Feb 23, 2024

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