Ignatius selected to be with Jesus
on the cross
Today I was returning from a conference on Ignatian Spirituality in St. Louis. At the St. Louis airport security checkpoint the lady said I was ‘selected’. Ordinarily I would feel honored to be ‘selected’ but at an airport security it did not seem like too good a thing. I asked the security lady what it meant and she said she did not know why I was selected but to just take a seat on the side and that I would be called. When another security person did call me, she was upset that I did not have my stuff in boxes ready to go through the scanner. So I got my stuff ready to go through the scanner and asked another security person why I was “selected.’ He said that he did not know, and that maybe I had just smiled the wrong way or something like that. He told me not to touch my stuff while or after it went through the scanner. Then another security person told me to take a seat next to a table in the back. She then proceeded to take everything out of my bag and run some kind of round white paper over my stuff. She than called a male security person over to pat me down. He asked if I wanted to have it done in a private room. I said no. After he was done the security lady was still concerned over something she did not take out of my duffel bag. She called over a supervisor to take a peek at it in the bag and asked him about it. He took a peek, and then walked away from the table shaking his head with a ‘no’. She then said I could repack my stuff and go past the security checkpoint. Before doing so I took a peek in the bag to see what had concerned her. It was a pin on a hat in the bag that read: “Free Palestine.” Obviously that was not the reason I was selected in the first place, but I thought it was interesting that the pin concerned her. This experience of being selected fit right in with the theme of the conference, which was the third week of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, meditations on the passion of Jesus.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, after his conversion and surrendering his sword and way of life, started on a long pilgrimage to be a follower of Jesus. During this pilgrimage he found himself jailed twice and kicked out of the Holy Land, all by the church. However, he persisted in what he perceived as God’s will for him. When he was about to enter Rome to seek the Church’s permission to form a religious order he had a vision where God placed him, as he had desired and prayed for, with Jesus on the cross. This icon of Ignatius sharing in the fire of the heart of Jesus on the cross was commissioned especially for the conference. Ignatius’s prayer to be selected to be with Jesus on the cross was answered. My being selected by airport security was insignificant in relationship to this selection.
The catalog company I ordered seeds from for the garden is called [http://www.johnnyseeds.com/default.aspx?source=ov_johnnys_seed&OVRAW=Johnny’s%20Seeds&OVKEY=johnnys%20seed&OVMTC=standard&OVADID=723259522&OVKWID=3677895022 | Johnny’s Selected Seeds.]]. Selected Seeds die in the garden and rise as plants. What is the connection about being ‘selected’ and suffering something insignificant as being singled out at airport security, or as ordinary as a seed being planted and growing, or as extraordinary as being selected to be with Jesus on the cross?
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