In our quest for hearing the voice of God in our everyday life, I think it is worthwhile at this point to take a look at the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Thus far we have looked at two majors obstacles to the life of prayer: our fear of spiritual greatness and our fear of silence, two things which deeply affected the life of this great saint. The reason I think it is important that we look at his life is because he is the one that developed the rules for the discernment of spirits. These rules are what I am basing the rest of my articles on and it is important that the reader understand that the rules were born and developed out of lived human experiences. By simply paying attention to his thoughts, feelings and desires Ignatius developed a series of guidelines that helps the human soul discern the voice of God clearly in his or her day to day activities.

St. Ignatius was a soldier in the Spanish army and man of immense passion who lived for worldly glory. He was arrogant and loved the secular allure of honor and pleasure as he dreamed often of winning not only battles but the prettiest girl as well. He was a good soldier and a strong leader. However, in one battle he was hit by a canon ball and his leg was shattered. This led to a painful recovery in a hospital run by a group of religious sisters.

To give the reader an idea of the type of man Ignatius was, there was a moment when he realized that because the bone had been poorly set and healed wrong that he would have small deformity on his leg and would walk with a limp for the rest of life. He immediately told the doctors to break the bone again and reset it correctly. They did this but were forced to use a saw to cut off the deformed part of the bone. To manifest his intensity on and off the battlefield he refused any type of anesthetic during all of his operations.

During his recovery from the second surgery he became bored after months with nothing to do but think about his own thoughts. He was passionately fond of reading worldly books of fiction and tales of knight-errantry. When he felt he was getting better, he asked for some of these books to pass the time. But no book of that sort could be found in the house; instead they gave him a life of Christ and a collection of the lives of saints written in Spanish.

While reading the life of Christ our Lord or the lives of the saints, he would reflect and reason with himself: “What if I should do what Saint Francis or Saint Dominic did?” In this way he let his mind dwell on many holy thoughts; they lasted a while until other things took their place. Then those vain and worldly images which he was so fond of of would come into his mind and remain a long time. This sequence of thoughts persisted for a long time.

But there was a difference. When Ignatius reflected on worldly thoughts, he felt intense pleasure; but when he gave them up out of weariness, he felt dry and depressed. Yet when he thought of living the rigorous sort of life he knew the saints had lived, he not only experienced pleasure when he actually thought about it, but even after he dismissed these thoughts, he still experienced great joy. Yet he did not pay attention to this, nor did he appreciate it until one day, in a moment of insight, he began to marvel at the difference. Then he understood his experience; thoughts of one kind left him sad, the others full of joy. This was the first time he applied a process of reasoning to his religious experience. Later on, when he began to formulate his spiritual exercises, he used this experience as an illustration to explain the doctrine he taught his disciples on the discernment of spirits. (From "The Life of St. Ignatius")