Prayerful Reminiscence

 

 

Charles J. Jackson, S.J.

 

God graces us with many gifts, but too often we fail to appreciate and even ignore one of God’s greatest gifts: the gift of our own life.  Several years ago, my spiritual director, probably sparked by my frequent references to experiences in my past that had been particularly significant in forming me, suggested that I write my spiritual autobiography.  I may have nodded politely at her suggestion, but I quickly brushed it aside as unimportant.  But her suggestion had sparked something in me, something I simply couldn’t ignore.  Within the year, I sat down and began to reflect and write my spiritual autobiography.

 

I decided to start with the origins of my Jesuit vocation, specifically with something that happened to me on a wonderful October afternoon in 1957.  I was then 15 years of age, a sophomore at St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco, and was on my way home from school.  Before I began to seriously reflect on that experience, I thought I knew what had happened that afternoon.  But the more deeply I delved into it the more I came to understand about it.  I realized that it had been a far richer experience than I had ever imagined.  But more importantly, as I get further and further into my reflection and writing, it gradually dawned on me that God had been not only present in every facet of my life, but surprisingly engaged in it as well, and I was thus able to identify numerous moments, not only of God’s action in my life, but of God’s call.  God’s call, I was surprised to discover, ran through my entire life.

 

The reason why we are often unaware of God’s call, or even of God’s action in our lives, is that we live our lives forward, but we only understand them backward.  It is only by prayerfully looking back on the events of our lives that we come to understand them and the significance of all the twists and turns, false starts and dead-ends, and surprises and disappointments that comprise our lives.  Of course, this is what the examination of consciousness is all about: it is a prayerful walking with God back through our day to discover those moments in which God was particularly present and to what God was calling us.  But this is what writing one’s spiritual autobiography is all about as well, although one does it on a considerably larger scale: it is a prayerful walking with God back through our entire life to discover those moments in which God was particularly present and to what God was calling us.

 

In one of his poems, American poet Wendell Berry gives beautiful expression to this.  He envisions our lives as a traveler’s journey toward a brilliant sun, a sun which blinds us.  It is only when we look back at our lives, he observes, that we understand them.  Then, graced by this newfound understanding, we are able to turn back toward that brilliant sun and continue our journey.  I believe that his poem offers a fitting conclusion to these reflections:

 

We travelers, walking to the sun,

can’t see ahead, but looking back

the very light that blinded us

shows us the way we came,

along which blessings now appear,

risen as if from sightlessness to sight,

and we, by blessing brightly lit,

keep going toward that blessed light

that yet to us is dark.