Reflection by Sr. Alicia Torres
“Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matt 19:14) A little known fact about the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola is that he spent the final years of his life among children–teaching them about the Lord Jesus. I can’t help but smile as I consider this, for truly the entire movement of the Exercises is at the service of spiritual childhood: utter dependence upon the goodness of the Father, after the pattern of the Son, through the movements of the Holy Spirit. Nearly 500 years later, I’d like to offer my reflections and share the graces received while making the Spiritual Exercises with Kindergarteners through 8th graders during the 2020-2021 school year.
The Principle and Foundation
I have a distinct memory of one of our last days exploring the Principle and Foundation. … To keep from getting distracted, I have to learn how to receive everything from God with open hands. When my hands are open, I am not holding on to things to own them, but holding them with love and gratitude because they are a gift from God and they belong to Him. I had prayerfully penned this as part of the adaptation of the P&F I’d prepared for the children. They were remarkably recollected as they were drawing the gifts God had given them on the worksheet that showed open hands and a large heart, which I’d drawn for them. I saw one little girl drawing different, nondescript objects in her open hands. “Tell me about your drawing–what have you drawn?” I said softly to Joy. “The world,” she responded firmly. I replied, “The world? Does God give you the world?” “Yes, the whole world,” she said, as if that was quite natural. I was deeply moved with love for that child and felt a communion with her in the Lord I can’t quite explain. Somehow her disposition made what I knew in my head sink into a new depth of my heart–God literally has given us the whole world …
Week One
“How could they turn their back on God when He’d given them everything?” one of the seventh grader girls wrote in her journal after we meditated on the Fall. “They had it so good, they had everything! I don’t understand how they could do that.” There was a sincerity to Grace’s nearly page length reflection which not only revealed the confusion sin caused her personally, but her own awareness that she, too, had turned away. That grace was starting to grow in her–to be open to the question, “What am I doing for God … what ought I to do for Him?” Somehow, by honestly acknowledging the sin of the angels and the sin of Adam and Eve … she was not so afraid to examine her own heart and notice her own turning away. She had a renewed hope as a few days later we meditated at the foot of the Cross and asked those questions … and sincerely sought what she ought to do for Jesus. “He wants a deeper relationship with me … I need to open my heart to Him,” she wrote.
Call of the King
Throughout the Exercises, we took time to pray as St. Ignatius recommends–with our imaginations. It is very special to sit among children and lead a meditation: when they are recollected, the presence of the Lord is impossible to miss. “Yes, Jesus, I will fight. I will fight with you and for you,” were among the captions of the artwork our third and fourth graders drew after we considered Jesus’ invitation. Large castles, enemy armies, swords and King Jesus were depicted in so many creative ways. Yet, each child was moved to want to be a part of Jesus’ army, no matter the cost. It made reality so much more simple for me. “Anything you want Jesus, I want it to” is what the children were really saying. And they said it with a resolute spirit. It helped me reconsider my own call, my own vocation and what it could mean to live totally for Jesus … if I really drank it to the dregs.
The Second Week
“Jesus puts the light into the star,” she explained as I gazed in awe at her picture. We just prayed with the Nativity story, and I invited the children to draw what they saw in their hearts as we had prayed. Emmy drew Mary and Joseph on either side of the manger with a very happy baby Jesus in the middle. Above the scene was a large star, with a ray of light connecting the star to the Child. When I asked her about that ray of light, she firmly expressed Jesus was the source, not the star: “He is our Light.”
The Third Week
“Helen sat next to me and sighed heavily. She started telling me all the things they had done to Jesus, and how sad she was, they’d killed Jesus. Then she just sighed again and sat there, quietly,” our gym teacher reported, deeply moved by little Helen’s compassion. The Passion Narrative had moved the small children in a unique way. They painstakingly included small details in their artwork, like Jesus sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane or the little hooks on the end of the cords the soldiers whipped Him with. They didn’t just draw what they were experiencing in prayer, but carried it in their hearts into the rest of the school day.
The Fourth Week
“Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” With Jesus, there is always a second chance. The mercy of Jesus displayed in the post-Resurrection accounts was especially powerful for the older children. Jesus kept coming back, kept opening His hands to his friends … the invitation remained: Follow me. “I just love Jesus SO MUCH,” Vicky wrote. Often the older girls would spend their journal time drawing large hearts and flowers to express what life after the Resurrection was like: something beautiful, something new.
The Contemplatio
Another grace of the Exercises was how real it made the Eucharist for the youngest children–they truly came to believe the Eucharist is Jesus. During the final mediation we pondered the question “What should I offer back to God for all He has given to me, for all He has done for me?” The children took it very seriously. Discussing her drawing, Maria explained “I drew my heart, the Eucharist and the water.” “Why did you draw water?” I asked. “The water is to wash away His blood (Jesus’) so that we can drink His blood.” She just looked at me, with no further words. Her classmate Annie, explaining her picture, shared “I am giving God my body and my spirit. My eyes are crossed out because I am offering my life to God. I want to die for Him.” It felt surreal as I listened to these first graders, who had gained a profound heart-knowledge of what it means to offer, and to be offered. They were already living Eucharistic lives.
Making the Spiritual Exercises with children has left a deep mark on my heart and taught me something so simple and yet so profound: to be a child means to be loved, to be free … and to be unfettered in sharing that love and freedom with the whole world as we rest confidently in the good company of Jesus and all our friends.
Originally published in: Lanteri Center for Ignatian Spirituality Fall 2022 Newsletter