Ignatian Spirituality

“Three vectors forming an intimate unity: studies and natural intermediate steps for the apostolate; human relationships and friends as a form of the apostolate; spirituality and the apostolate. All of this is the legacy left to us by Ignatius, the pilgrim, during his stay of two years in Barcelona, a stay that had been prepared by a shorter one that lasted only three weeks. For that reason, it seems that this legacy is a call to be thankful to God for how he molded the Ignatian charism in this city, and a testimony for us who are called to live it in a society that is very different 500 years afterwards. The work that we are presenting is a modest aid to assimilating the Ignatian legacy: to become more aware of the significance for Iñigo the pilgrim of his stay in the city and so to extend it into our lives.” (From the Prologue by Josep Mª. Rambla, SJ)

We live in societies that simultaneously spread us thin and overexert us. Byung Chul Han argues that our societies allow us to be hyper-connected and, at the same time, put pressure on us to be highly productive. Dispersion precipitates superficial relationships, and overexertion leads to unhealthy and damaging relationships. In this booklet we present meditation as a spiritual practice that helps us to focus on the present, lessening dispersion and enabling more profound relationships, reducing overexertion and engendering healthier relationships.

Pedro Arrupe made possible the centrality of the faith-justice option in the Society of Jesus and he led us, by the hand of his own charism and his wisdom, to encounter what is most central in Ignatian spirituality. This Guides, in addition to paying homage and expressing gratitude to the person and his legacy, goes through his principal discourses and writings with the desire to illuminate and help the Christians of today.

This publication is about conversation, about its conditions of possibility in a world where distraction and dispersion have impoverished it to limits we could not even suspect. And the framework or tradition from which the author speaks to us is that of Ignatian spirituality, a spirituality whose central place is precisely in conversation. As the author says: “The first requirement for spiritual conversation is to listen. To listen deep down, to acknowledge the other and his presence, to show compassion and not just walk on by. And then ask. There is no interest in the other without good questions; there are no good questions without spiritual interest in the other. Talking and helping go together, they are inseparable”.

In this booklet you will find two contemporary views on Ignatius and his spirituality, both views founded on the conviction that every authentic and profound spirituality impels us to be always encountering God in the world. In opting for a spirituality that keeps our eyes wide open and our feet on the ground, Mariola and Javier offer us the gift of considering the figure of Ignatius Loyola and contemplating the good news of Jesus of Nazareth from his perspective. In so doing, they throw a little more light on the path ahead of us. (From the prologue by Pau Vidal)

Praying with the senses is a practice proposed by Saint Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises. The benefit of knowing, developing, and practicing this way of praying is evident from many centuries of Christian spiritual tradition. A great many authors have studied in depth the use of the senses in prayer, and they have discovered how the spiritual senses can be used in coordination with the bodily senses.

The title of the present booklet “I alone, what can I be?” is a key expression which appears in number 58 of the Spiritual Exercises text. The “I alone” does not refer to a physical solitude (I’m on my own) or a psychological one (I feel alone), but instead to a vital choice:  “by and with my own strength,” “without needing God for anything.”  A presumption characterised by covetousness and pride which ends up turning into the root of sin (personal and structural) and its characteristic turmoil.  Precisely by means of the exercises in this first week, the text attempts to help the exercitant detect the lie hidden in such arrogance: alone, without God, nothing can and nothing is, because human beings have been created/loved precisely so as to live their relationship to God in all things.

Christianity, which is the following of Christ, consists of an entire life which is converted into a true sacrifice. This is not reduced to acts which are properly “religious”, like prayer or the sacraments, but rather the entire existence of the Christian should be converted into a form of living for God. Secularity, understood as the human and mundane condition of our life, is the substance of living as a Christian. In order to become conscious of it, two Ignatian contemplations (that of the hidden life of Jesus and that of the Contemplation to Obtain Love) can help us. By examining the years of the ordinary life of Jesus, we contemplate a simply human way of living with openness to the Father in the midst of other people. In the Contemplation to Obtain Love, we possess a mystagogy to live the opaqueness of the human and mundane with all of the mystical richness of the humanity of Christ. What this Pamphlet proposes is to live these two meditations unified as one.

The text we have before us is an adaptation of the thirty-day course of Spiritual Exercises that Jesuit theologian Fernando Manresa gave years ago in Bolivia, by way of personalized spiritual accompaniment. As homage to his former teacher and friend, Carles Marcet has adapted the immense amount of material so that it fits into the reduced space of a booklet, thus converting it into an eight-day course of Spiritual Exercises. Our hope is that it will help both exercitants and directors to enter into a personal encounter with the God who is “always greater.”

We find the phrase with which this publication is titled in St. Paul when he says, “But when in the fullness of time God sent His Son” (Gal 4:4), or “He has allowed us to know the mystery of his will, according to his goodness, which He had proposed in Himself, to bring together all things in Christ in the dispensation of the fullness of time.” (Eph 1:9-10). Beginning with this expression, the author of this article directly formulates this question: could Paul have written this today? Or even more clearly: can we understand it? Although it does not appear so, the answer affects the core of our life.