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imagination + holy week

April 6, 2009

Posted in: spiritual practices

We are encouraging you to take a moment, each day of Holy Week, and enter the scene with Christ.  Below is a short excerpt from our Metanoia book and insights from “Inner Compass” by Margaret Silf that describes the Contemplative Practice of “Imaginative Meditation.”

Ignatius teaches us how to open ourselves up to intimacy with God through Gospel-based meditation, through which we can, in our prayer, become participants in the life and ministry of Jesus and discover its reality for us where we are here and now.” 

1. ASK God to reveal himself to you; express your desire to experience Him

2. READ the passage several times until it is familiar and you feel at home with it

3. IMAGINE that you are an active participant in the scene.  What role do you find yourself taking in the scene

– for example, are you one of the disciples, a bystander, or the person being healed? Listen inwardly to what God is showing you through your role in the scene. Talk with the characters in the scene, especially with Jesus.

There are always two rules:

* never moralize or judge yourself  

* always respond from your heart and not from your head…our purpose in prayer is not to defend or condemn

ourselves or to come up with any kind of analysis or sermon, but simply to respond, from our inmost depths, to what God is sharing with us of himself.

If you find it difficult to enter into the scene…don’t worry about getting the facts right. You may well find that the scene doesn’t take place in first century Palestine but in rush hour traffic.