Today we continue Peregrino Ignatian Pathways PIP.

Number nine, Rule 17 and 18.

This is the discernment of spirits from the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola,

the Sushipay Prayer of St. Ignatius.

Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. All I have and call my own, you have given

all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours. Do with it what you will. Give me only your

love and your grace. That is enough for me. Rule number 17 reads, if a cause precedes both the good angel and the evil spirit

can give consolation to a soul, but for a quite different purpose. The good angel consoles for the

progress of the soul that it may advance and rise to what is more perfect. The evil spirit consoles

for purposes that are the contrary,

and that afterwards he might draw the soul to his own perverse intentions and wickedness.

Okay, this is Father David Nix for the first time today in my commentary on Rule number 17.

Remember we are on the second week of rules.

And remember what we learned

last time that God alone can give instantaneous consolation, that is, joy and peace to the soul.

Why? Because God alone has full rights to the soul. The devil has none. We heard last time

from St. Ignatius, God alone can give consolation to the soul without any

previous cause. It belongs solely to the Creator to come into a soul, to leave it, to act upon it,

to draw it wholly to the love of His divine majesty. I said without previous cause, that is,

without any preceding perception or knowledge of any subject,

by which a soul might be led to such a consolation through its own acts of intellect and will.

Okay, but today St. Ignatius is talking more about how angels and demons, who don't have direct

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