The spiritual exercises of St Ignatius have been used for centuries as a way of ?discernment of spirits?. As a Jesuit novice, The Tablet?s executive editor was looking forward to using these techniques on his crucial thirty-day retreat. He did not expect to spend most of it in desolation. Here he describes the agony and its surprising fruits.

?Afterwards you?ll be different, you know?, a friend who had done it warned me before my 30-day retreat on the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. I believed him: who doubts the Jesuits? centuries-old secret weapon, their portable desert peopled with angels and demons?

As a Jesuit novice I knew all about the seventeenth-century gentlemen who had sunk into a month?s silence with the living God, then surrendered their wealth and status to follow Christ in poverty, chastity and obedience. I was halfway through that process: I had thrown in a lectureship at a university, my house and friends, the world and its works; now, six months into the novitiate, it was time for 30 days in silence at the Jesuits? mammoth retreat centre of St Beuno?s in north Wales. I had been working with the poor and studying the Jesuit Constitutions, and had come fresh from Northern Ireland, which had been stiff with sectarian tension. Afterwards there would be the pilgrimages, the work in hospices and prisons, and finally the perpetual vows. But this was the fulcrum, the burning heart of it all.

Even the sheer-fronted castellated monstrosity that was to be my (luxurious) home for the next month up to Easter made my breast quiver with excitement. The hills were still crispy with fading snow. From the Rock Chapel I saw a field that seemed to be possessed of its own internal energy: a whirl of snow, running sheep, and spinning seagulls. I gazed at it for an hour, struck by this God-filled moment intended, I felt, just for me. The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins ? St Beuno?s most famous inhabitant ? and the music from the film The Mission thrummed in my head.

The 30 days were to be divided into four unequal weeks: two weeks of ten days, and two of five. Each day would consist of five hour-long prayer periods contemplating Scripture, one of which was at night, plus two ?examens? (standing back from the prayer periods and taking note of the movements of the spirit), midday Mass and a half-hour?s evening exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. For these last two, and for meals, we five novices joined the 50-odd other retreatants ? priests, religious and lay people from all corners of the globe who were on a three-month spiritual refreshment course at St Beuno?s. There was, of course, no radio and television or newspapers, and books were also discouraged, in order to enable energies to focus on prayer. The month was to be spent in silence, relieved only by an hourly meeting each day, individually, with our spiritual director ? in our case Paddy, our wise, loving novice master. It was in these meetings that the interior movements in prayer would be shared and examined. Almost anything ? feelings, thoughts, insights, memories ? were relevant to the task of ?discernment?, for we are God?s listening stations; the task was to discover which of these pointed to sin, and which to salvation.

The brilliance of Ignatius? scheme lies in the store of techniques ? ?annotations? ? he developed while dipping in and out of his own craters of the spirit. He learned that normally, in ?consolation?, prayer flows easily, but there would be times, in ?desolation?, when it was very hard to sense the presence of God, and it was easy to become distracted. This was because there were two spirits working within us: the gentle, drawing impulse of God, and the empty illusions of the bad spirit.

To counter the latter sometimes required discipline and will or even a little macho who-will-blink-first brinkmanship. Hence, for example, Annotation 13, with which I became overly familiar that month. ?It should be noted?, says Ignatius there, ?that whereas in time of consolation it is easy and undemanding to remain in contemplation for the full hour, in time of desolation it is very difficult to last out. Consequently, in order to go against desolation and overcome temptations, the exercitant must always stay on a little more than the full hour, so that one gets used to standing up to the adversary, but even to overthrowing him.?

What I had not reckoned with when I started was that for most of that month I would be plunged into rock-solid, unremitting desolation. It does not happen often, and it is not ? anyone planning on a Jesuit retreat will be relieved to know ? the norm. It is devastating, a radical purgation. It is also of God.

* * *

As I hunkered down into the first week of silence, old resentments and angers soon surfaced. But I felt the security of God?s presence inviting me to go deeper. Old sins snarled, then vanished into the waves of his love. There was healing, and there were battles with mistrust, and long walks pondering the curious, unique tapestry of my life, how it gets stitched and patched by all sorts of unlikely people and circumstances. At night the candle flickered in the dark window and I saw how Adam and Eve?s first experiments with fashion were a metaphor for the armour we each put on early in life: how we learn that the world is alien and hostile, and how we set our jaw against it; and how in God?s love we learn all over again how to trust ? ?a broken, contrite heart you will not spurn? ? and can begin to surrender those early strategies. But desolation loomed constantly, and I could spend whole hours distracted and bitter. Instead of waiting for daybreak, I kept lurching for the light switch. ?All is gift?, Paddy kept telling me, but I didn?t begin to grasp that until the third period of day four. That was when my heart broke.

Maybe because St Beuno?s was surrounded by sheep ? it helps, the Bible being so pastoral, that while we padded between chapels, lambs outside were being messily born ? I was moved by the story of Nathan and David in 2 Samuel 12. I saw how David had acted thoughtlessly, pitilessly, trusting more in power than compassion, and suddenly saw myself that way. Overcome with remorse, I prayed in front of an icon to know God?s love. Within minutes I had this sudden sense of being held ? grasped, more like ? and then a voice deep inside me commanding me to look. Look! I looked; look at what? Look! Don?t look away! So I peered ahead, waiting. Suddenly there were ?images? of God ? as racing clouds, as a lamb led to slaughter, as a thundering mountain, as a kingfisher flashing blue ? and then what I can only describe as a cracking of the heart. Literally. Crraaaaaak. It hurt badly, but not unbearably, a dull pain in the heart so intense I could only stare ahead in total absorption. I was afraid, but I was sure this was it, the real thing, the bush burning me up. I stayed like that, immobile, staring forth, seized by awe and love; then the pain subsided, and the tears gushed, and I felt a magnificent release, a certainty beyond knowledge that this was God. Above all, I was humbled, awash with gratefulness. Love, peace, life itself ? it was all of God, and all his gift. We are nothing, but he visits us, raises us up, and then we are demi-gods just as the psalmist says.

It lasted all day. The other retreatants, against whom, during Mass and quite without cause on their part, I had mentally projected some of my suppurating inner resentments, now became angels. It wasn?t done on a retreat, but I could have kissed them or brought them flowers. (?Now I realise why I felt threatened by them?, I confessed to my journal. ?They look vulnerable.?) The next day I told Paddy in a great exultant rush, but a director cannot validate such an experience. ?It is a central tenet of Ignatius? spiritual understanding?, he gently told me, smiling, ?that God communicates directly to the human soul?. The memory of this encounter stayed with me even in the dried-up weeks which were to follow. Having met God, you don?t stop believing in him after he is no longer there.

The end of the first week was a rollercoaster of vivid prayer sessions, and I filled my journal with meditations on everything under the sun. Imaginative contemplations ? when you enter into a gospel story as one of the characters ? threw up astonishing revelations. I was the prodigal son locked in shame on the road back home, Zachariah struck dumb by an angel, the Gerasene demoniac who talked like Al Pacino. I was ecstatic with Mary and Elizabeth, and knee-deep in the Jordan when John laughingly told Jesus he should queue for baptism with everyone else. In between these prayer periods I wandered around St Beuno?s through fields of fresh-born lambs blinking in the sun while crows circled overhead, and fed apples to a lonely horse. Just before it all went dead, the world had come brilliantly alive, and my questions and judgements lay scattered like deflated balloons.

* * *

Week Two is all about commitment. In the famous meditation on the two standards, you learn which is Christ?s call and which are the summons of the false masters. You get invited to help bring to birth a new world, to stand against all that dehumanises us, to draw others to him. It is the week when Jesuit novices say yes, this is really what I want. It is the week when I plunged into desolation.

In desolation ? from the Latin, a state of groundlessness ? you feel sad and distracted and overwhelmed by doubts and fears and a sense of failure. Suddenly everything, including God, seemed a fiction. My journal became peppered with negatives: ?tired?, ?distracted?, ?bitter?. ?Some consolations, but a big downward spiral after lunch.? ?Feel strong pull of despair.?

When I complained to Paddy that prayer did not seem cut out for ordinary mortals, he told me that, on the contrary, there were more people in the world who pray than who know how to read and write. It was a good point: I was crammed with education, the ?riches? of the rich young man. The real problem was letting go and just ?being? ? a deep challenge to one who has lived through his gifts. I tried ?acting against? these impulses, but the strength to stare out my adversary was slipping away. The liturgies, which after my heart-cracking experience had become so wonderful, now irritated me (?patronising homily?, I commented in my journal) and people lingering to pray afterwards began to strike me as hypocrisy. I fell asleep during prayers, then tossed and turned at night. There were times I became so furious that I left the chapel to stomp around the fields, bleating back at the sheep.

?Day 16?, I wrote, ?disastrous birthday.? I had been asked to look at my attachments and was not pleased. ?ATTACHMENTS?!?? I wrote, ?YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!? The overwhelming sense I had was of having given everything up for nothing in return, and here I was being asked what I still had not given up. ?Rock-solid desolation?, I added succinctly. ?Feels raw, lonely and impossible.? Then, later: ?a wave of sadness because I had entered the Society of Jesus with generosity of heart, and that?s all gone now?.

I went to the library, picked up Graham Greene?s A Burned-Out Case but couldn?t get past the Dante epitaph: Io non mori, e non rimasi vivo ? ?I did not die, yet nothing of me remained alive?.

But Paddy returned me to the idea that all is gift. Those things you resent giving up, he told me, were never yours in the first place; all was God?s gift. And he explained again that the purpose of the Exercises was to allow me to move to the heart, to where intelligence, attributes, skills, learning ? all these count for nothing, and indeed, to the extent they are resorted to, become an obstacle. God?s love cannot be earned, bargained for, deserved, but can only be freely accepted.

And so, as the long days trudged on, I grasped the paradox at the core of this desolation: you can only know God through simplicity of heart, yet I could not, by my own means, attain such simplicity: ?poverty of spirit that can be attained by means of my attributes?, I wrote, ?would be a contradiction?. But this realisation brought no comfort at the time. ?My intellectual grasp of this paradox is faultless?, I went on, ?but what use is it to me? What use, at the moment, is anything I have?? I had exhausted all the means and methods known to me for ever attaining anything, and I knew that God cannot be ?attained?. There was nowhere to go; my powerless was total. What was left was radical. ?I can only hope?, I wrote, ?that at some point God will break through this exhausted self-incarceration and show me that all is gift ? a concept I cannot grasp with the heart?.

Paddy was now urging me to treat myself with supreme gentleness, but it was too late. Having beaten myself into a corner, I was in a kind of catatonia. ?Everything today a great effort, including writing this, and all meaningless. Crying for no reason. Prayer pointless.?

Worried, Paddy tossed me the keys to his Ford Fiesta and some money and told me to drive around north Wales. I numbly took the car to the Horseshoe Pass, and stopped for a beer. A couple in the pub tried to make conversation. ?You just passing through, then?? he asked. I pondered for a moment if I should tell them I was a Jesuit novice on a 30-day silent retreat who had been sent out by his spiritual director because he was in some sort of clinical depression. But I thought better of it. ?Yeah?, I told them. ?Just passing through.?

Through life, I thought grimly; floating like a particle through a universe that?s cooling down. We are nothing, nada.

When I got back I pondered Pascal. ?A man who starts looking for God has already found him.? I took comfort from the possibility that the spiritual journey is full of such death experiences: we must be abandoned by God in order to know him all over again, only this time deeper.

* * *

While the other novices moved into Week Three (the contemplation of Christ?s passion), Paddy took me off the formal Exercises, and let me gently recover strength. It was a relief to sit in prayer expecting nothing and wanting nothing; when I got nothing, I was past protesting. As to being a Jesuit, the very idea had faded into oblivion: just having a beating heart seemed an achievement. There were moments I thought that consolation had returned, but I would fall back suddenly, feeling even more of a failure. ?What?s happening to me?? I asked Paddy in desperation. ?Am I possessed?? He looked at me with great love. This was a purgation, he said, a radical kind of desolation, and while it was hell for me, ?it?s nonetheless a brilliant retreat?. At some obscure level I knew it too.

I began to feel mildly alive again, and even ? gingerly, suspiciously (was God, after this, entirely to be trusted?) ? to stay more than just a few minutes in the chapel. But most importantly I began writing, little fictional meditations which ? seeing as there was not much prayer experience to talk about in our morning meetings ? I read to my long-suffering director. He told me that as I was reading them the light came back into my eyes, and he encouraged me to do more. While writing, for the first time I began to experience brief ?consolations without previous cause?, fleeting flashes in the midst of the dark. These were the first sign of where I eventually figured God was calling me.

Astonished by my unlikely breakdown, I read books on the Enneagram, the nine-point personality-type system developed, partly, by American Jesuits and often used on retreats. I knew I was an Eight; now I read, fascinated, that Eights flee, above all, powerlessness and vulnerability, and that there was no greater torture for them than to be isolated and severed from possibilities of external action. Possessed by energy and will, Eights act on the world to conquer it; they seldom face their powerlessness, I read, except in prison or on retreat, when the anger they direct at the world gets turned on themselves. The impact of this, one author noted, ?can be devastating?.

I also discovered, with a smile, that one of the biblical archetypes of the Eight is David, and the suggested passage none other than 2 Samuel 12.

While my fellow novices in Week Four revelled in the Resurrection, I stayed firmly parked in the tomb. I would be a wreck for some weeks after the retreat, overcome with sobs every time I thought of the word ?powerless?. But it did not stop me being amazed at what they had been through, and to share their joy at the transforming power of their own journeys. There was a new freedom in us all, but we had gone different routes. In dealing with this obdurate creature, God in his mercy had chosen to knock me flat. Reconnected with the self-beyond-ego, I was now overcome by a deep exhaustion. But like those lambs, I began gingerly to take some steps.

I was still called, but I would not be a Jesuit: life had to start over again even while the dream of the kingdom would remain vivid. But somehow I no longer had to drive it all forward; now, more than ever, I was in God?s hands. All around St Beuno?s the lambs were getting unsteadily to their feet; the Creator was drawing out his creation, as the warm weather draws petals out of buds. What was being born was also in pain: buds break and we, his creatures, land in this world in a pool of muck and blood.

I was deeply grateful for an essential lesson that could not have been learned any other way: that my energies, for so long directed at self-preservation and achievement, could not win me God, or, which is the same, love. I had learned that, indeed, all is God?s gift, and over time even my heart would begin to grasp that too. It?s true: I was no longer the same.

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