Weekend Repetitions
March 12, 2011The weekends will be dedicated to repetitions– going back to your prayers in order to allow a particular grace from that prayer to deepen. The purpose of repetitions can be made clear with two examples: one from the life of St. Ignatius, one from contemporary life.
In his Autobiography, St. Ignatius recalled how when he was having his experiences in the caves of Manresa that would later become the Exercises, God treated him “just as a schoolmaster treats a child whom he is teaching.” By his own admission, in those days Ignatius was not always the quickest learner when it came to the spiritual life. Ignatius had his own ideas of how to follow God’s will, and the Lord patiently instructed him otherwise. Eventually, Ignatius recognized the truth of that old adage repetitio mater studiorum (“repetition is the mother of studies”), and saw how it applied equally to the classroom and the chapel. In the classroom, we rarely ever understand a lesson by giving the textbook just one look. Often, we’ll need to go back a few times to see what is being said, and a few more times to see how it fits in with everything else that we’ve learned. So too in prayer: often, we’ll need to go back a few times to understand what is going on in a prayer period, and a few more times to see how the grace of the prayer fits in to our own lives.
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in Weekend Repetition