Inner life

The first reading is a wonderful prayer St. Paul offers for us--and invites us to pray. It helped me recognize, with its reference to the "inner self," that I have been mighty superficial in that regard. I was also helped to this recognition by the fact that I am currently reading a wonderful book on Ignatian spirituality, sent to me by my friend at Loyola Press(eternally grateful, you know; keep 'em coming!). The book is a collection of essays, for the most part: extraordinarily well written pieces that I had not come across before. I'm grateful to the editor for putting them together in one volume!
Reading through, a few pages at a time, I was reminded that the essence of Ignatian spirituality--finding God in all things--is a fruit of mindfulness, and one of the things Ignatius invites us to be "mindful" of are the inner "movements" that flit through our heart as the day goes on. I had gotten to be much more focused on outward things--so distracted in looking for these that I lost the awareness that God, who lives in the "interior castle" of my being, is communicating from that throne all the time. His comuniques take a form that would seem to be just a mood or a reaction; it takes discernment to recognize which really are moods and which are messages! So that book is really coming to me at a good moment.
Ignatius' message and insight could do so much for us today--it is so easy to be drawn, led, "directed" by our immediate feelings, our untested values. Ignatius gives us a way to "test all things" and make the choice for the good.