Every Place A Grace

By: Lyn Enriquez

AVILA

I was touched and moved by Teresa de Jesus' Solo Dios Basta. What could have caused such an intense and generous response from her?

Fr. Noel Vasquez' homily invited the peregrinos to pray for the grace to know God's will for each of us - and for us to be able to not only know it, but to obey it. There are times when I may be "too certain" that what I am doing is what God wants me to do, more so when those works are "good works". Times like these, I may forget to ask God if those desires indeed come from Him, or do they come from me only?

LOYOLA

God was waiting for Inigo between the pages of the two books he read while recovering from the leg wound he suffered in Pamplona - the Imitation of Christ and a book on the Lives of the Saints.

Where was God waiting ever so patiently for me - and where is He still waiting for me to get to the point where I, like Inigo, can surrender myself totally into God's hands.

So how do I get to the point where I am so caught up in God's love, where I am so enamoured with Christ that nothing else matters, nothing buy His love and grace. Then, with Teresa and Inigo, I can also pray:

Nada te turbe
Nada te esparte
todo se pasa
Dios no se muda la paciencia
todo la alcanza
quien a Dios tiene
nada le falta
solo Dios basta.

JAVIER

As we paused to pray before the Laughing Christ in the chapel in the Javier castle, I wondered what could have happened in that tiny chapel that made Francisco choose to leave everything behind, not knowing what lay ahead and certain that he will never return to his family again. What made him say "send me" to Ignacio when there was a need to send someone to the Indies. What made Francisco pray "Pagkabighani"?

I remember reading somewhere Ignacio checking the clothes of his friend Francisco as he was about to leave Rome, asking if he was warm enough. Sending his friend, the friend he loves, must have caused a thousand deaths in Ignacio.

Avila, Loyola, Javier - in each of these places, God touched a soul so intensely it was never the same for all three again - Teresa de Jesus, Ignacio de Loyola and Francisco Javier.

I begged God my Lord for the grace to be able to eventually say with Teresa "solo Dios basta", with Ignacio "I surrender myself totally to God" and with Francisco "send me".

MANRESA

My spirit needs to catch up with me. The past days since May 02 have been too fast, too full, too rich - I need to stop and let my spirit catch up with me.Salamat San Ignacio for bringing me back to Manresa.

On Day 2 of our retreat, feelings of negativity and aridity slowly surfaced making me lose my taste for prayer. Instead of denying them, I decided to confront them and again, found myself face to face with my old issues, my ghosts, my demons which wouldn't leave me even here in Manresa, especially here in Manresa.

It was the evil spirit taunting me, chanting "it is no use, you will never make it, you may think you can, but eventually, you will fail again. How can you even entertain such thoughts when you are not able to do it even while here at Manresa,what more when you are back in the world?" Whatever I do, no matter how intensely I desire it nor how hard I try to fight it, I will not be able to accept a life "na walang langit".

On the other hand, while I was being hounded by the evil spirit in not doing anything about my un-freedoms because I will only fail, I was also sustained by my faith that Ignacio knows what I am going through because he went through so much himself in this very place where he spent eleven months struggling with himself and his own demons - surely, he will help me fight my own demons.