Ignatian* spirituality* is summed up in this phrase. It invites a person to search for and find God in every circumstance of life, not just in explicitly religious situations or activities such as prayer in church (e.g., the Mass) or in private. It implies that God is present everywhere and, though invisible, can be “found” in any and all of the creatures which God has made.They reveal at least a little of what their Maker is like–often by arousing wonder in those who are able to look with the “eyes of faith.” After a long day of work, Ignatius* used to open the French windows in his room, step out onto a little balcony, look up at the stars, and be carried out of himself into the greatness of God.How does one grow in this ability to find God everywhere? Howard Gray draws the following paradigm from what Ignatius* wrote about spiritual development in the Jesuit* Constitutions: (1) practice attentiveness to what is really there. “Let that person or that poem or that social injustice or that scientific experiment become (for you) as genuinely itself as it can be.” (2) Then reverence what you see and hear and feel; appreciate it in its uniqueness. “Before you judge or assess or respond, give yourself time to esteem and accept what is there in the other.” (3) If you learn to be attentive and reverent, “then you will find devotion, the singularly moving way in which God works in that situation, revealing goodness and fragility, beauty and truth, pain and anguish, wisdom and ingenuity.”
