This chapter delves into the concept of a preceding cause of consolation in the discernment of spirits. It explains how focusing on a spiritual object leads to spiritual consolation and emphasizes the importance of actively engaging one's understanding and will to establish this link.
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Episode 5 – The Second Rule – The Second Week Rules for the Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide to a Greater Discernment of Spirits with Fr. Timothy Gallagher
Fr. Gallagher continues to break open the Second Rule by using examples of different types of Spiritual Consolation. He also delves into the proper understanding of “preceding cause.”
Second Rule
The second: it is of God our Lord alone to give consolation to the soul without preceding cause; because it is proper to the Creator to enter, go out, to move it interiorly, drawing it totally in love of his divine majesty. I say without cause, without any previous sentiment or knowledge of some object, through which such a consolation comes, by means of its acts of understanding and will. (330)
Through a series of compelling conference talks, Fr. Gallagher carefully breaks open St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Second Week Rules for Greater Discernment. This set of 8 “rules” (or guidelines) helps us to discern whether a seemingly good, noble, holy idea or feeling, often understood as a “spiritual consolation,” could be a working of the enemy intending to lead us astray. He shows how all of us can learn to listen to and follow God’s gentle leading in our daily lives.
