Ignatian Spirituality
Jesuit Spirituality
Finding God in all things,
Listening with a discerning heart,
Choosing to live for the greater glory of God
Spirituality is
hard to define. It has to do with the "style"
or the "spirit" of our life - with the way
in which we live out our faith
in God:
our way of being religious.
Richard McBrien
has written:
To be "spiritual" means to know
and to live according to the knowledge, that there is more to life than
meets the eye. To be "spiritual" means, beyond that, to
know and to live according to the knowledge, that God is present to us in
grace as the principal of personal, interpersonal, social and even cosmic
transformation. To be "open to the Spirit" is to accept explicitly who we
are and who we are called always to become, and to direct our lives
accordingly.
Each of the great religious families in the
Church, like the Benedictines,
Franciscans
and Dominicans, has a distinctive way of following the
Risen Christ and responding to the
Holy Spirit.
Jesuit Spirituality
Jesuit Spirituality
is Ignatian; that is, it
seeks to incorporate the insights and methods of
prayer discovered by the founder of the
Society of Jesus, Saint Ignatius of
Loyola. Ignatius learned how important it is to look
for God in the
stuff
of his everyday experience; he learned that God
was shaping and forming him to be a companion of
Jesus. Through his long personal conversion, he discovered a
method that others could follow to arrive at such self-knowledge. This method of
prayer
and reflection is contained in his
Spiritual Exercises.
Following the example of Saint Ignatius,
Jesuit spirituality centers on the imitation of
Jesus… focusing on those priorities which constitute
Christ's mind,
heart,
values,
priorities and
loves. What are those values,
priorities
and loves? Ignatius
would encourage us to consider what Jesus
said and did. At the foundation of Jesus’
life
was prayer, a continuous search
for how best to live as an authentic human being before a
loving
God. Jesus preached
forgiveness of sins,
healed the sick
and possessed, and
gave
hope to the
poor, to those socially and
economically outcast.
Jesus spoke of
joy,
peace,
justice
and love;
He
summoned men and women from all classes of society to continue to follow
His way to God and His
commitment to helping
people become whole and
holy.
The Society of Jesus
attempts to incorporate these same gospel values into all
its works. Jesuits stress the need to take time
to reflect and to
pray, in order to find out how
God wants us to serve in our
ministries. This active commitment to seeking
God's leadership is called
discernment. As Jesuits, the overriding
characteristic we see in Jesus
is loving obedience, an
open-hearted desire to find and pursue what God
wants other men and women to be forgiven, to be free, to utilize all their
talents and opportunities in ways which build up this world as a place where
faith,
justice,
peace
and love can flourish. This
kind of spirituality is
incarnational. It views the world as a place where
Christ
walked, talked and embraced people. It
views the world, therefore, as a place of grace,
a place of being able to give life to others.
At the same time, Ignatian
Spirituality
is realistic. The world Christ
faced was also a world of cruelty,
injustice and the abuse
of power and authority. Consequently,
Jesuit spirituality affirms our
human potential
but also is dedicated to the ongoing, day-in-day-out
struggle
between good and
evil. No one
apostolic work exhausts how good
can be done; therefore, Jesuits
do all kinds of work. The Jesuit norm is: to find where
God will best be served and where people will best be helped.
 Saint Ignatius and the Spiritual Exercises
Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits,
underwent a significant spiritual experience
during the time stretching from his convalescence after his injury
at the battle of Pamplona, up to
his months of prayer in the cave at Manresa
on the other side of Spain. During these months, Ignatius
noticed how God led him to pay attention to
the diverse "voices" inside of him - to
the movements of consolation and desolation in his heart
and spirit. Furthermore, he gradually
learned to discern the sources of these desires, thoughts and
movements of the heart and spirit: which of them came
from God and which of
them drew him away from God - and, perhaps most importantly, which of them
he should act upon. Throughout this time, Ignatius learned how important
it is to look for God in the stuff of his everyday experience; he learned that God was shaping and forming him to be a companion
of Jesus. The fruit
of these months of prayer and reflection is contained in his Spiritual Exercises. If there is any genius to the
Society of Jesus, it lies in this
little treatise on prayer written over 450 years ago. The method of prayer
outlined in that book helps each Jesuit to follow Jesus
and seek God's will in any circumstances,
from the most mundane day of teaching, administrating or writing to a particularly trying
experience of walking with people experiencing grave
suffering or social injustice.
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