Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

The power of imagination

One of the little acts of genius of the Knights of Columbus is to present new members with a rosary and to urge them to carry it with them at all times, saying a decade or two whenever the opportunity arises. It's an act of genius because the rosary is a prayer of the imagination and the imagination is the key to transforming the person.

This is too little appreciated today. We justify pornography, mindless TV and violent video games as each person's private business that doesn't affect anyone else. We live in the illusion that "garbage in, garbage out" is a maxim that only applies to computers.

But as Lent nears, we ought to pay close attention to the role of imagination in making us who we are. The last two commandments prohibit various forms of "coveting" as morally wrong. If one uses one's idle moments to pine for the neighbour's wife or possessions, it makes us less than fully human. Our imagination becomes controlled by lust, anger, paranoia and greed. Even if we never act out those fantasies, we stray from God.

That is why what we put into our imaginations is so crucial. It's far better to relax by reading the lives of the saints than by watching a TV drama soaked with sex and violence. We ought to use our imaginations to lift us up rather than to drag us down.

St. Ignatius of Loyola should be the patron of the imagination. Here was a soldier far from God who, when convalescing after having his leg nearly blown off by a cannonball, underwent a massive conversion by reading the Bible and the lives of the saints. His imagination became charged with a different sort of glory than that of the warrior.

Ignatius' most famous prayer, recounted in this week's WCR by John Connelly, begins, "Take Lord, receive my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire will." He saw that action is rooted in memory or imagination. Ignatius sought to bring about conversion in his followers by having them undergo 40 days of spiritual "exercises" or meditations.

Which brings us back to the rosary - a simple form of meditation on the mysteries of the Incarnation and our redemption. To pray the rosary is to see the redemption through the eyes of Mary, a person so imbued with the Holy Spirit that she was even conceived without sin.

It is no accident that devotion to Mary has been the most fertile source of doctrinal development over the centuries. The Gospel's portrayal of Mary is sparse but richly evocative. The angel's declaration, for example, that Mary is "full of grace" is the source not only of doctrine but also of meditation on human possibility. So too are Mary's words, "My soul magnifies the Lord" and her stunning declaration that God "has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly."

Such is the content for meditation, content that has been a perennial source for renewal of the Church and the conversion of people's lives. Lent is a special time for conversion. And while true conversion always reveals itself in action, it is rooted in imagination. A determined act of the will to follow Christ by one whose imagination remains captive to the unredeemed images of secular society will not take root.

If we want to change our actions, we need to change our imagination. We need to purge it of its unholy desires and fears. But it can't be purged unless purer images are injected to replace that which is being driven out. This is a discipline. But it is a discipline that can bear great fruit in our own efforts to be one with God.

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