The first day of the retreat is mainly devoted to what St. Ignatius calls “The Principle and Foundation.”
Christ bids us act like “a wise man that built his house upon a rock,—and it fell not because it was founded on a rock” (St. Matth. vii, 24). The truth now considered is the rock on which the whole structure of our spirituality is to be built. Bartoli, in his life of St. Ignatius, narrates that a learned Doctor of the University of Paris, Martin Olave, used to say that one single hour spent in meditating on this foundation had taught him more than long years of theological studies. Such too has been the experience of many others. Father Everard Mercurian spoke of this foundation as alone sufficient to effect the most astonishing changes in a soul, by uprooting all its earthly affections and directing its desires to God alone.
THE FIRST MEDITATION
On the End of Man
The first part of the Foundation is: “Man was created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.”
To begin any of our meditations well, St. Ignatius bids us stand, for the space of a Pater Noster, one or two paces from the place at which we are to meditate, and with our mind raised on high, consider how God looks down upon us, and then adore Him with an act of reverence and self-humiliation.
Then follows the Preparatory Prayer, which is also the same for all the meditations. It is to ask our Lord for grace that all the acts of our memory, our understanding and our will may throughout the meditation tend directly to the service and praise of the Divine Majesty.
1st Prelude. Imagine your Blessed Saviour appears before you, looking lovingly on you and saying: “My son, I am now going to teach you the first truth in the spiritual life.”
2nd Prelude. Beg that you may understand this truth as the Saints have understood it.
POINT I. Consider the words, “Man was created.”
1. “Man.” What is man? Compared to God, man is a mere nothing, like a little gnat flitting in the sunshine; yet among material things man is a masterpiece, endowed with the most wonderful powers and potentialities. Man is like a musical instrument, from which the Divine Spirit can draw the most exquisite harmony, as He has done from millions of saintly souls. But if not responsive to His touch, it gives out harsh and false sounds, marring the harmony of God’s world. A man may live like an Angel, or like a demon or like a brute animal.