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Listening to the Music of the Spirit: The Art of Discernment

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Since Vatican II Catholics, guided more by the Spirit than law, have had special need for discernment. Fortunately, as Lonsdale points out, they have also moved from devotional piety to the Scripture and personal prayer that provide tools for discernment. Lonsdale sketches the global, social, cultural, ecclesial, historical and religious contexts of personal and group discernment, and analyzes sensitively and thoroughly its many and various elements and techniques, its intellectual and affective dimensions, the roles of consolation, desolation, and desires, and the obstacles to any form of discernment. He is deeply rooted in and draws heavily upon the spirituality of Ignatius Loyola, and writes with wisdom, clarity, and literary grace. One useful addition to the text, however, would be a treatment of an element of discernment found in Ignatius's Spiritual Journal and in the First Deliberation of Ignatius and his followers that persuaded them to form a religious order: the options should be considered separately (even on alternate days), and in group discernment the group should seek in unison first the reasons for one choice then later the reasons for the other. This technique maximizes individual openness to the force of each argument and objection, and minimizes conflict. Two insights in his last chapter are especially good: that Jesuit spirituality may be rooted in the individuality of the desert spirituality explained by John Cassian, and that Ignatian discernment unites the intellectual, institutional Catholic tradition with the affective, personal Protestant tradition. Some books you hand on to friends, libraries or charities; this one is a keeper.