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WHAT MAKES IGNATIAN SPIRITUALITY DISTINCTIVE?
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Way, Subscribers may download the whole of this issue here . You will need your subscriber number; if you have requested an electronic subscription a reminder of this number will already have been e-mailed to you. Otherwise please e-mail us to obtain your number. Contents Brian O'Leary Many traditions of spiritual direction are practised today, within and outside the Christian faith. What are the specific characteristics of the Ignatian tradition, and what is the relationship between ongoing Ignatian spiritual direction and the ministry of the Spiritual Exercises? Brendan Byrne The colloquies of the Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises and the Beatitudes in Mark's and Luke's Gospels share a parallel concern both with 'poverty of spirit' and with material poverty. But what is 'poverty of spirit', and how does its use by Ignatius relate to the gospel beatitudes? Philip Endean What does it mean to choose, with Ignatius, 'poverty with Christ poor'? How are we to make sense of the desire for poverty and make of it a testimony to God's self-gift to the world? Download this article in
Word format by clicking here Emmanuel da Silva e Araújo Two prominent heresies in the early Church, Docetism and Nestorianism, denied the fully human and incarnate character of Jesus Christ. It is vitally important today that we acknowledge the incarnation of our own faith, in our experience of the Spiritual Exercises and in every aspect of our lives. Francisco J. Ruiz Pérez The text of the Spiritual Exercises is always to be supplemented by the director, who applies it to the situation of the particular exercitant. This application needs to be carefully nuanced, especially in dealing with difficult areas such as sin. Here suggestions are offered for how this might best be done in the context of the First Week. Eduardo López Azpitarte Some aspects of the Spiritual Exercises are at odds not merely with a contemporary outlook, but with the content of Revelation itself, as it is currently understood. Applying this principle to the meditations of the First Week makes it possible to single out those elements which can be most fruitfully applied today. Nathan Stone The nature and focus of an Ignatian retreat has varied a good deal over time. This article explores what the Spiritual Exercises have meant to Jesuits and others at different times in their history, and how they relate to the modern preoccupation with the self. Timothy M. Gallagher The Second Week Rules for discernment are applied to a wide variety of situations, but when is it truly appropriate to use them? Ignatius specifies the kind of person who should use the Rules and the precise circumstances when they should be applied, but how far can they also be used by analogy in other situations? Paul Legavre The Spiritual Exercises help us to come to God through Christ, and this process, the growth of a relationship with God, is also a source of great joy. Dermot Mansfield We are called to discernment throughout our lives. Central to a life of discernment is our image of Christ and our ability to hear and distinguish his personal call to each of us. How do we remain open to that call and to all that it implies? Eteinne Grieu The Ignatian characteristics and values that may be drawn from the Spiritual Exercises offer a distinctive and valuable contribution to the preaching of the gospel, and through it to the future of today's Churches. Alan Kolp In the Ignatian tradition we are familiar with the process of discernment. But for Quakers discerning what God desires for us, the way that is opening up for us, occurs through the clearness process--which has much in common with discernment, although there are also some significant differences. Franz Meures Those working with the Spiritual Exercises today are likely to spend considerable time looking back over their own life-stories. Is this procedure true to what Ignatius had in mind? A close analysis of the position of biography in the text of the Exercises concludes that there is a place for it; nevertheless, it should be treated with caution. Andrew Walker The relationship between sexuality and spirituality has been problematic throughout the history of the Church. How can we incorporate this inalienable part of human experience into what we learn from making the Spiritual Exercises and into what we become as a result? Peter Hans Kolvenbach Making the Spiritual Exercises is something wholly different from simply reading the text that Ignatius wrote. In practice the Exercises are a collaboration between four authors: Ignatius, the ones giving and receiving the Exercises, and the will of God. Antonio Guillén The senses have an important role to play alonside the emotions and the understanding in the feeling and perceptiveness that are crucial to the process of the Spiritual Exercises and to making an election. Gill K. Goulding At the time of St Ignatius' spiritual formation at Manresa, he had an mystical experience of revelation as he rested by the river Cardoner. This experience of being taught by God influenced him for the rest of his life, and left its mark on the Spiritual Exercises, which were written at this time. Book Reviews on a Companion to the Jesuitson translations of Ignatius' letters on the New Catholic Feminism on spirituality and the charismatic tradition on the problem of evil on the Church today on a new French study of Pierre Favre on a new translation of Isaac of Stella on Dominican contributions to social ethics on John Henry Newman From the Foreword The subtitle of The Way is ‘a review of Christian spirituality published by the British Jesuits’. The Jesuits find their roots in the spirituality of their founder, Ignatius of Loyola. As is well known, this spirituality underwent a large-scale rediscovery in the 1960s and 1970s, and The Way, founded in 1961, played a role in that rediscovery. Yet the journal has never confined itself to any individual spiritual outlook. It has always reflected a variety of what Ignatius called ‘pathways to God’. This double issue is unusual, then, in concentrating on the specifically Ignatian pathway. It invites the reader to consider the question of what marks out one spirituality from another, and in particular how this one is to be differentiated from its neighbours. On a personal note, I am delighted that this is the theme of the first issue of the journal for which I take responsibility as editor. A decade ago I wrote an article for The Way entitled ‘Has Christ Been Parcelled Out?’ It touched on this same topic, which remains an important one. Historically, spiritualities often grew up in relative isolation, each having as its guarantor a particular religious order (Benedictine, Franciscan), Christian denomination (Quaker, Baptist), or social concern (feminism, liberation). But a side-effect of the explosion of interest in questions of ‘Mind, Body, Spirit’ in the last decade or so has been to bring these different amalgams of understanding and practice into much closer association. Quaker silence meets Ignatian imagination, Benedictine lectio divina provides an impetus to the struggle for political liberation, feminists ask themselves what Francis (and Clare) might have to say to them. And those who are seeking to know God better feel no need at all to confine themselves to any single outlook. Does it make any sense, then, to try to preserve a sense of a particular and distinctive spirituality? Indeed, after all the cross-fertilisation that has recently taken place, is it even possible to do so? The articles in this issue make a cumulative case for answering both questions affirmatively.Paul Nicholson SJ
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