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Ignatian Spirituality

Our Greatest Gift

Overview

Ignatian spirituality attracts people who are searching for greater meaning and faith because it is grounded in the conviction that God is active in our world. It is a religious outlook on life that sees God immersed deeply in all creation and all human endeavors.

As the great Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “God is not remote from us. He is at the point of my pen, my pick, my paintbrush, my needle—and my heart and my thoughts.”

The spiritual path laid out by Ignatius is a way of discerning God’s presence in our everyday lives. Ignatian spirituality is not merely an inward journey, much less a self-absorbed one. It aims to bring people more deeply into the world—with gratitude, passion, and humility—not away from it.

Often described as Ignatius’s greatest gift to the world, the Spiritual Exercises unfold a dynamic process of prayer, meditation and self-awareness. The object is to help us develop our attentiveness, openness and responsiveness to God.

Ignatius called on the Jesuits to be “contemplatives in action.” Today, Jesuits and their lay collaborators work with people in many walks of life, such as education and business. They help nurture “men and women for others.”

St. Ignatius of Loyola

Iñigo López de Loyola, who later took the name Ignatius, was a Spanish courtier and aristocrat who found his true calling after suffering nearly fatal wounds on a battlefield. He gathered a small group of companions and established the Society of Jesus in 1539, united in a method of prayer patterned on his own experience of conversion.

Iñigo the Soldier

Trained in the worldly manner at the court of King Ferdinand, Iñigo dreamed of the glories of knighthood and wore his sword and breastplate with a proud arrogance. He was far from saintly during much of his young adult life leading the life of a privileged courtier.

During a quixotic attempt to defend the border fortress of Pamplona against the superior French artillery in 1521, Iñigo’s right leg was shattered by a cannon ball. His French captors, impressed by his courage, carried him on a litter across the mountains to his family home at Loyola. Doctors there broke and reset his leg, without much hope of saving his life. But he survived the trauma and began a long convalescence during which he was bedridden.

Movements of the Heart

Iñigo wiled away the hours reading the few books his family was privileged to have. He asked for books about chivalry but had to settle for biographies of the saints. In the course of his convalescence, he had a series of experiences God’s loving presence that completely changed his life.

During his daydreams, he thought of great feats and winning the approval of the people at court. Then, he would daydream about doing great things for God. Finally, he began asking himself, “What is the result of those daydreams?” The latter left him feeling at peace and contented, but dreams of earthly victories left him disquieted and uneasy.

He changed from a person who sought the vanities of the world to a person who sought to serve someone who was beyond any earthly king, the Lord Jesus Christ.

During a quixotic attempt to defend the border fortress of Pamplona against the superior French artillery in 1521, Iñigo’s right leg was shattered by a cannon ball. His French captors, impressed by his courage, carried him on a litter across the mountains to his family home at Loyola. Doctors there broke and reset his leg, without much hope of saving his life. But he survived the trauma and began a long convalescence during which he was bedridden.

Iñigo the Pilgrim

During his daydreams, he thought of great feats and winning the approval of the people at court. Then, he would daydream about doing great things for God. Finally, he began asking himself, “What is the result of those daydreams?” The latter left him feeling at peace and contented, but dreams of earthly victories left him disquieted and uneasy.

He changed from a person who sought the vanities of the world to a person who sought to serve someone who was beyond any earthly king, the Lord Jesus Christ.

During a quixotic attempt to defend the border fortress of Pamplona against the superior French artillery in 1521, Iñigo’s right leg was shattered by a cannon ball. His French captors, impressed by his courage, carried him on a litter across the mountains to his family home at Loyola. Doctors there broke and reset his leg, without much hope of saving his life. But he survived the trauma and began a long convalescence during which he was bedridden.

At Manresa

Iñigo stayed at a hostel in Manresa for almost a year. It was a time of intense prayer and self-examination, of struggling against the sinfulness of his earlier life at court. His conversations with others and his notes about his own experiences of conversion formed the foundation for what would eventually be known as the Spiritual Exercises.

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.

He made a solemn vigil at the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat and left his fine clothing and sword there, putting on instead the rough cloth of a pilgrim. When he left the monastery, he made what he assumed would be a brief stop at Manresa, a small industrial town in the valley below the mountain.

The Spiritual Exercises

The spiritual path laid out by Ignatius is a way of discerning God’s presence in our everyday lives and acting upon it. The Jesuits have a training manual for this search. It is the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, composed by the saint before he was even a priest.

The Spiritual Exercises is not like other classics in Western spirituality that are typically read from beginning to end. It is a compilation of meditations, prayers, and other contemplative practices. More like a handbook, it is a series of exercises developed by a man who believed that stretching oneself spiritually is as important as an athlete’s conditioning routine.

The point of the Exercises is freedom: how do I become free in accord with my talents and limitations? How do I become free enough to respond to the grace of God?

Jesuits and Ignatian retreat and spiritual directors today guide people through this dynamic process of reflection in retreat houses, parishes and other settings.

Interested in experiencing the Exercises? Contact one of our Retreat and Spirituality Ministries.

Related Items of Interest

The Spiritual Exercises attract and invite Christians to walk with Christ and cultivate a contemplative spirituality.
Young adults respond to the call to encounter Jesus’ heart wounded out of love for them.

By Rachel Amiri The Instituto de Formación Ignaciana de Puerto Rico (IFI) is a lay Catholic organization that exemplifies the Society of Jesus’ Universal Apostolic