Every now and again, someone asks me how “to pray better.”  I know the feeling, because dark spirits are always lurking to suggest that I’m not much of a pray-er myself.

Well, we all need to remember a little metaphor that Master Ignatius created for Jeronimo Nadal. This Majorcan inherited a good fortune in his late 30s, after he’d been to university studies at Alcalà and Paris, where he knew some men who would begin the Company of Jesus.

Ignatius saw the man’s real worth, but Nadal himself suffered seriously from perfectionitis and the pathetic belief that he could make himself holy.

He had rejected Master Ignatius’ approaches in Paris, but the hope of moving up the clerical leader, he went to Rome for a rich position and the Holy Spirit finally got through his egotistical desire for mystical prayer and he joined the Jesuits and Master Ignatius told his metaphorical story and helped him see his, Nadal’s, favorite capital sin: Pride, followed by Covetousness.

Master Ignatius was his novice master but another man guided him through the month-long Spiritual Exercises, during which Jeronimo Nadal finally gave  up and opened his mind and heart to God whose Holy Spirit moved this perfectionist to join the Company of Jesus. For two years under Master Ignatius’ direction, he brooded and lamented and tried perfectionitis for a while but finally gave up.

So that story, which Master Ignatius told him to help him see his capital sins.  

“There was a great man who had two sons.  One of them, he sent to dangerous places to do some business negotiations and to help conduct a war against his enemies. The other, he kept home, by his side. Now: which one was the father most concerned abut?.“

Benedict, Francis, Dominic, Ignatius—these four men (along with a parallel list of women) shaped the Western world to learn introspection and the practice of deep virtues and then to learn how to be “men for others.” For Ignatius had the great advantage of the skill of introspection shown by Benedict, and the theological brilliance and developments of Dominicans and Franciscan scholars.

So, “to pray better?” There are principles, norms, and practices that we all adhere to, whether we have reflected on them or not—that is, whether we have found in Jesus’ words and actions a model of the principles, norms, and practices we now adhere to.

And the way we know that we have reflected on them is, in Ignatian terms, quite simple: We make the Examen daily, not to be perfectionists like Master Nadal, abut to keep from egotism and self-absorption and to do unto others as we would have them do to us, and that way to earn the fulfillment of what Jesus brought us:  Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy –for ever and ever. Amen.  

But wait. Nadal never escaped his basic Capital Sins, pride and covetousness, though he spent his Jesuit life serving generously—and struggling with pride and covetousness. Amen again. And alleluia!