The collection of Jewish mystical writings known as the Kabbalah tells an enchanting story about the creation. When God returned to heaven after creating, he celebrated by throwing radiant sparks of light into the air, showering the earth. These sparks embedded themselves in every rock and tree and in every human heart. The observant Jew sees these sparks of holiness through the eyes of faith. She releases them by uttering blessings, thereby returning them to God. It is said that the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, would ask each Jew he met "How are you?" in order to hear him say, "Well, thank God!" The very mention of God's name frees the sparks of holiness trapped in that place.
These sparks of holiness are, to me, a lovely way to think about Ignatius’s core conviction that God is to be found in all things. At the end of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius writes “I will consider how God dwells in creatures; in the elements giving them existence; in the plants giving them life; in the animals giving them sensation; in human beings giving them intelligence; and finally, how in this way he dwells also in myself, giving me life, sensation, and intelligence.” He imagines God as Light as well; his blessings and graces descending endlessly on us “as the rays come down from the sun.”
And the idea returning these sparks to God as we live our everyday lives? Well, what is that but the sentiment of Ignatius’s Suscipe: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and all my will—all that I have and possess. You, Lord, have given all that to me. I now give it back to you, O Lord.”
There are differences, of course. The Kabbalah imagines these sparks of holiness trapped in impure matter, needing to be released. The Christian holds that the world God made is “good,” partaking of the goodness of its creator, especially men and women, made in God’s image and likeness. One version of the Kabbalah creation story imagines creation as a Great Receding. In the beginning, there was only God in his pure essence—the Ein Sof, the infinite, the boundless, pure Light. God had to contract to make space for the new creation, and the sparks of holiness are the fragments of the Divine he left behind. The Christian story goes in the other direction. It’s a Great Arrival: God coming to heal and save his creation in the Person of Christ. It’s more than a spark. The Easter Vigil service celebrates Christ as Light itself. “What is it that shines straight into me and strikes through my heart without wounding it?” cried Saint Augustine in his Confessions. “Wisdom, wisdom is exactly what it is that shines through, tearing apart the fog that covers me again.”
The Jewish Kabbalah is not an esoteric mystical teaching; it’s an attempt to devise a practical everyday faith. Every connection with the world, every interaction with another person, is an invitation to see God and join God in his work. Finding and releasing sparks of holiness imbedded in this world is the basis for the Jewish emphasis on tikkun olam—“repairing the world.”
This is the Ignatian idea too. Ignatius says that we work alongside Christ, who “acts in the manner of one who is laboring.” We are the fixers, the engineers, the reformers, the craftspeople, the helpers, the inventors, the tinkerers. Our job is to repair a broken world where evil too often overshadows the good, and where too many people lack what they need to live in dignity.
Interestingly, Rebbe Levi Yitzhak, one of the great teachers of Hasidim, made it a point to say that Jews could release sparks of holiness even in times of trouble and distress. The sparks are found everywhere, he said, even in dark places. It’s a point made by the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins: “To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dung fork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, gives him glory too.”