St. Ignatius came from a family of minor nobility in Spain’s northern Basque region. One thing to know about Ignatius is that he was far from saintly during much of his young adult life. He was vain, with dreams of personal honor and fame. He gambled and was not above sword fighting. As some have noted, he might have been the only saint with a notarized police record: for taking part in a nighttime brawl.
All that began to change one day in the spring of 1521. Ignatius was 30 years old at the time, an officer in the Spanish army. Leading his fellow soldiers into a battle against the French that they were sure to lose, he was struck by a cannonball in the leg. During a difficult recovery (he limped for the rest of his life), the young man asked for books about chivalry — his favorite reading. There weren’t any at the family castle where he convalesced. He had to settle for a book about the life of Christ and biographies of the saints — which he found unexpectedly riveting.
St. Ignatius had always dreamed of imitating heroic deeds, but now, the heroes had names like Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena. Ignatius also noticed something strange happening to him. God, he realized, was working within him — prompting, guiding, inviting. As he traveled far and wide, he realized too that God was similarly at work in the lives of all people, in the everyday events of the world.
These experiences would prove to be the beginnings of Ignatian spirituality — and Jesuit ministry. While in Paris, Ignatius gathered around him some friends or "companions," as they became known. Together they made religious vows in 1534 and came to call themselves the Compañia de Jesús — the Society of Jesus. Six years later, the order was granted official approval by the pope.
The early Jesuits fanned out to the metropolises of Europe and beyond. They did so with instructions from Ignatius, their leader in Rome, to “seek the greater glory of God” and the good of all humanity. They devoted themselves to the care of souls, to helping people discern God’s presence in their lives.
Anything Extraordinary
One other thing to know about the Jesuit founder is that he was a different kind of saint. As the noted Jesuit historian Fr. John W. O’Malley, S.J. has observed, "Ignatius redefined the traditional basis of saintliness," which usually involved a degree of unworldliness.
In contrast, O'Malley refers to Ignatius as a "worldly saint." He made sure his men were spending most of their time not in pulpits and confessionals, but in relatively secular spaces such as classrooms — teaching less directly about the Bible and Church doctrine than about literature and the ancient classics. He sent letters to his missionaries asking that they write back not just about their ministries, but also about the local customs, the plants and wild life — "anything that seems extraordinary."
Most of all, Ignatius Loyola wanted his Jesuits and everyone to go out and "find God in all things." He died in 1556 — on July 31, his feast day in the Catholic Church.
What is Ignatian Spirituality?
The heart of the Jesuit ethos is Ignatian Spirituality – the way of Christian growth developed by St Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. At the heart of this spirituality are the Spiritual Exercises in which Ignatius makes available to others what he discovered in his own journey with God. By sharing these Exercises, Ignatius attracted others to join together as companions of one another, as ‘friends in the Lord’.us to overcome any preoccupation with self and to give our energies to serve others.
The Exercises offer a school of prayer and a means of finding that most precious gift, freedom, through recognition of the fact that God loves us, wherever we are and whatever we have done. Such prayer enables us to overcome any preoccupation with self and to give our energies to serve others.
Today, an integral part of the ministry of the Jesuits is in opening up Ignatian Spirituality to everyone. The Centers of Ignatian Spirituality offer people from all backgrounds the opportunity to experience the Spiritual Exercises, while outreach teams from these centers conduct retreats in rural and remote dioceses across the country. This spirituality is also an important aspect of our schools, spritual and other institutions.
During the 1530s, St. Ignatius Loyola began writing about the emotions that took hold of him — feelings of gratitude and anguish, consolation and sadness — while encountering the scriptures. Those meditations eventually became the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, first published in 1548.
The Spiritual Exercises is a compilation of meditations, prayers, and other contemplative practices. It is not like other classics in Western spirituality that are typically read from beginning to end. It is more like a handbook, especially for use by spiritual directors who accompany and guide people through this dynamic process of reflection. And while the Spiritual Exercises is a book, it is also a series of exercises developed by a man who believed that stretching oneself spiritually is as important as an athlete's cond
itioning routine.
The object is to help people develop their attentiveness, their openness, and their responsiveness to God. In other words, the exercises embody the characteristic themes of Ignatian spirituality. They are organized into four sections or "weeks." These are steps along the path of spiritual freedom and collaboration with God’s activity in the world.
Here is one helpful summary of those stages, offered by Ignatian Spirituality.com, a service of Loyola Press in Chicago.
First Week
The first week of the Exercises is a time of reflection on our lives in light of God’s boundless love for us. We see that our response to God’s love has been hindered by patterns of sin. We face these sins knowing that God wants to free us of everything that gets in the way of our loving response to him. The first week ends with a meditation on Christ’s call to follow him.
Second Week
The meditations and prayers of the second week teach us how to follow Christ as his disciples. We reflect on Scripture passages: Christ's birth and baptism, his sermon on the mount, his ministry of healing and teaching, his raising Lazarus from the dead. We are brought to decisions to change our lives to do Christ’s work in the world and to love him more intimately.
Third Week
We meditate on Christ’s Last Supper, passion, and death. We see his suffering and the gift of the Eucharist as the ultimate expression of God’s love.
Fourth Week
We meditate on Jesus’ resurrection and his apparitions to his disciples. We walk with the risen Christ and set out to love and serve him in concrete ways in our lives in the world.
Jesuits do the exercises in literally four weeks, during what is known as the 30-day retreat or simply "The Long Retreat." And they do so typically at a retreat house with a spiritual director. But with the growing interest in Ignatian spirituality, many people are practicing the Exercises in other ways. One popular version is known as the "Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life," which someone can do while continuing his or her daily responsibilities. This approach (which Ignatius spelled out in his manual) often involves an hour each day of prayer and reflection for several months, with regular guidance from a spiritual director.
Part of his Spiritual Exercises is the five-step reflection, the Examen, designed to help people discern God's activity during specific moments of their lives. Ignatius believed the Examen was so important that even if Jesuits neglected all other forms of prayer, they should never miss a day without spending a few minutes praying the Examen.
Imaginative Prayer
Among other forms of prayer, the Spiritual Exercises presents an imaginative way of placing yourself within the biblical stories.
"We see the fishermen hauling in their nets on the Sea of Galilee, hear the smack of waves against the boat’s hull, feel the sunshine on our skins, smell seaweed and brine, taste the water we scoop up in our palm," Santa Clara University literature professor Ron Hansen has explained. "With all five senses wholly engaged, we become part of the scene and can be as shocked and happy as Peter was when he recognized that it was the risen Christ who was roasting a fish on a charcoal fire on the shore and plunged into the sea to wade to him."
All of these techniques are geared to nurturing the habits of spiritual discernment — among those who are ready to see God at work "in all things."
