Last year, I reproduced St. Ignatius’ Rules For Discernment (Dynamic Translation.) Today, I reproduce a literal translation for use with my new podcast series called Peregrino Ignatian Paths on the Rules of Discernment and Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. We will be using both translations, but primarily the following.
St. Ignatius writes: The soul is moved by diverse spirits, which it is important to discern, in order to follow the good and repel the bad. The following are some rules, of which the first are suited to souls less perfect and the others to those who are more so.
1. Let us suppose a soul that easily falls into mortal sin and goes from fall to fall: to plunge it deeper into crime and fill up the measure of iniquity, the infernal enemy ordinarily employs the charms of voluptuousness and all the baits of the senses, which he incessantly places before the eyes. On the contrary, to turn him from sin, the good spirit never ceases to prick his conscience with the sting of remorse and the counsels of reason.
2. But if this soul should set itself to use every effort in order to purify itself from its sins and to advance every day more and more in the service of God, the evil spirit, to stop and embarrass it, throws in its way every kind of scruple, disquiet, specious pretext, and subject of trouble and agitation. The good spirit, on the other hand, as soon as we begin to amend, encourages, fortifies, consoles, softens even to tears, enlightens the understanding, spreads peace in the heart, smoothes all difficulties and obstacles, so that every day more freely, more joyously and more rapidly, we advance in virtue by the practice of good works.
3. True spiritual consolation may be known by the following signs. A certain interior impulse raises the soul toward the Creator, makes it love Him with an ardent love and no longer permits it to love any creature but for Him; sometimes gentle tears cause this love, tears that flow from repentance of past faults or the sight of the sorrows of Jesus Christ or any other motive that enlightened religion inspires; finally, all that increases faith, hope, charity; all that fills the soul with holy joy, makes it more attached to meditation on heavenly things and more careful of salvation; all that leads it to find repose and peace in the Lord—all this is true and spiritual consolation.
4. On the contrary, all that darkens the soul, that troubles it, that inclines it to inferior and terrestrial objects, that disquiets and agitates it, that would lead it to despair of salvation, that weakens hope and banishes charity, that renders the soul sad, tepid, languid, distrustful even of the clemency of its Creator and its Redeemer—this is what may be called spiritual desolation. Desolation and consolation are two opposite terms; so the thoughts and affections arising from each are diametrically opposite.
5. During times of desolation, the bad spirit makes us feel his influence. By following his inspirations, we cannot arrive at any good or useful decision; we must, therefore, beware at such times of reconsidering or making any innovation whatsoever in what relates to our resolutions or choice of a state of life; but we must persevere in what we have decided on in the day or hour of consolation, and consequently under the influence of the good spirit.
6. And yet, without changing anything that was before laid down and defined, man, when a prey to desolation, would do well to employ means, or to multiply them, in order to dissipate it—such as prayer offered with more importunity, examination, awakening and arousing the conscience, some penance as a punishment for faults known or unknown.
7. Under the pressure of desolation the following are the thoughts that should sustain us: divine grace remains to us although it may have ceased to be sensible; although the first ardor of our charity is no longer felt, we still have all that is requisite for doing good and working out our salvation. What, then, does Our Lord expect of us? He would see whether, if furnished with the ordinary assistance of nature and grace, we can resist our enemy. Oh, without doubt we can!
8. The unquiet spirit, which agitates and torments us, has a direct antagonist and adversary in the spirit of patience. To preserve patience and calm will, then, be of wonderful assistance to us against it. Finally, we must call hope to our aid; and if we know how to employ the above means against desolation, we may say to ourselves, “Consolation will not be long in coming.”
9. Desolation most frequently arises from one of these three causes: (1) Perhaps we have deserved from want of diligence and fervor in our spiritual exercises to be deprived of Divine consolations. (2) Perhaps God is trying us, and He wishes to see what we are and how we employ ourselves for His service and glory, even though He does not bestow on us every day the rewards of His Spirit in gifts and sensible graces. (3) Or it is perhaps a lesson He is giving us: He wishes to prove to us by experience that to procure fervor of devotion, ardent love, abundant tears, or to preserve ourselves in these spiritual joys, is beyond our natural strength, and is a gratuitous gift of His Divine bounty. All this cannot be claimed by us as our right, unless we are possessed by a pride and self-love very dangerous to our salvation.
10. When consolation abounds in the heart, we must consider the conduct to be observed in time of trial; and to sustain the shock, we must provide in good time a supply of courage and vigorous resolution.
11. We must also humble ourselves, depreciate ourselves, foresee as much as possible how weak, how cowardly we shall be under the stroke of desolation if Divine grace does not quickly come to our aid; while the tempted man must, on the contrary, persuade himself that with the aid of God he is all powerful and that he will easily overcome all his enemies, provided he establishes his confidence on the Divine strength and is courageous.
12. Satan, with his weak but obstinate character, may be compared, when he attacks us, to a woman daring to contend with her husband. Let her husband oppose her firmly, she soon lays aside her warlike mood and quickly leaves the field to him; on the contrary, let her see in him any timidity or inclination to fly or give way, she becomes audacious, insolent, cruel as a fury. So when Satan sees the soldier of Jesus Christ, his heart imperturbable, his head erect, repulsing every attack without flinching, he immediately loses courage; but if he perceives him trembling at the first shock and ready to ask quarter, he immediately attacks him with a rage, a fury, a ferocity that is unexampled among wild beasts enraged against their prey: obstinate in his infernal malice, he only seeks and breathes our ruin.
13. We may also compare him in some of his artifices to a libertine seeking to lead astray a young girl, the child of good parents or the wife of an honest man. What he recommends to the object of his passion is, above all things, secrecy—secrecy as to his propositions, secrecy as to his interviews; if he does not obtain this secrecy, if the daughter does not observe it toward her parents, the wife toward the husband, all is lost for him; his projects are ruined. So the grand artifice of the great calumniator is to induce the soul he wishes to gain to keep secret his suggestions; and when they are discovered to a confessor or an enlightened director, his rage and torment are at their height, because his snare is discovered and his efforts rendered useless.
14. Finally, in his tactics our enemy imitates a general of an army besieging a citadel, who first studies the ground and the state of the fortifications, so as to concentrate his attack upon the weakest part. To make a like study, our enemy makes, as it were, the round of our soul: he examines that are the theological or moral virtues that serve as its ramparts or in which it is wanting, and against the point we have left without guard and defense he turns all his batteries and says, “It is here I will try the assault.”
15. The operation proper to God and His good angels is to shed on the soul on which they act true spiritual joy in banishing the sorrow and trouble that the devil has introduced into it. On the contrary, the latter, finding this joy in the soul, labors to destroy it by certain sophistries covered by a false appearance of truth.
16. The Creator alone can penetrate His creature, raise him, change him, enkindle in him the fire of His love. Hence, when nothing has been presented to the senses, the intellect, the will of a nature to cause joy, and yet the soul is consoled all at once without antecedent cause, then it is God that acts upon it.
17. When a natural cause of consolation has preceded, who has sent it? Perhaps our good angel, perhaps the bad. The purpose of the good would be to assist us to know and to do right; the bad to lead us to evil and to destroy us.
18. The bad spirit knows well how to transform himself into an angel of light. Aware of the pious desires of the soul, he will begin by seconding them, but soon he will begin to lead it to his own ends. Thus, at first he will feign to consent to your good and holy thoughts and even applaud them, but by degrees he will draw you into his hidden snares and entangle you in his dark meshes.
19. We must, therefore, submit our inspirations and thoughts to a strict and attentive examination. Their beginning, progress and end must all be carefully considered. Are all these good? It is, then, our good angel that inspired them. On the other hand, is there anything intrinsically bad, anything that leads us away from good, or that urges us to something below what we had chosen; anything that fatigues the soul, casts it into anguish and trouble, makes it lose the peace, the repose, the serenity that it enjoyed? If we discover on reflection that such is the case, it is an evident sign that the inspiration comes from the spirit of darkness and that it conceals some snare he is laying for us.
20. When we have discovered the infernal serpent; when, by the evil result to which his insinuations always tend, we have discovered his diabolical purpose, it is very useful to go over again in spirit the way by which the tempter led us, to take to pieces the plot he had so cleverly laid, to note by what specious pretexts he began to make us listen to him; how he succeeded by degrees in changing that pure taste, that spiritual sweetness, that perfect serenity that we enjoyed before; how he endeavored to instill his venom into the soul. This study of his odious maneuvers will render us more capable of escaping them for the future.
21. Both spirits seek to insinuate themselves into the souls of those who advance in the way of salvation; but they make use of very different means: the good angel comes with sweetness, peace, suavity, like a drop of water falling on a sponge; the bad angel rushes in rudely, violently, noisily, like rain in a storm beating on a rock. With those who, day by day, go farther from God, and plunge deeper into evil, the contrary happens. Moreover, a spirit enters the soul gently or harshly, according as the disposition of the soul is suitable to it or opposed to it. If it finds opposition and antipathy, it announces itself by a sudden shock that it is easy to remark; if it finds the soul tending the same way as itself, it enters quietly, as if into a dwelling belonging to it and open to it.
22. We have before stated that it is God who visits the soul when not any natural cause has led to the consolation with which it is suddenly filled. This sentiment, therefore, cannot be subject to illusion; yet we must distinguish with great care this first moment of happiness from those that immediately follow, although the soul still feels its ardor and the heavenly favors it has received; for in this second period it frequently happens, whether from habit, personal manner of judging and seeing, or inspiration of the good or evil spirit, that we conceive certain thoughts or form certain projects that, not coming immediately from God, require to be carefully examined before giving our consent to them or putting them into execution.
If you are doing my podcast series, I would encourage you to obtain the above rules as found in Manresa by Tan Publishers. (Either the paperback or Kindle will do.)