What Is Spirituality?
Spirituality can be defined as the expression of one's beliefs and values in action.
(Thoughts, words, and actions align; head, heart, and hands align.)
What Is Ignatian Spirituality?*
Ignatian spirituality is a way of proceeding in encountering and experiencing the world with deep gratitude for everyone and everything as a gift from God. It is a way of coming to know God, who is actively at work creating, Self-giving, and communicating personally to each person, moment by moment, as His beloved: God who is Self-revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and who guides us, as the Holy Spirit, in becoming contemplatives in action
Spirituality Is a Way of Being and Acting in the World
"The world is charged with the grandeur of God." (Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ, "God's Grandeur")
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A Vision of Life, Work, and Love
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A Pilgrimage
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A Spirituality of the Heart: What do we do out of love, rather than out of reason?
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A Reflective Spirituality: Noticing and always discerning
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Gratitude: All is gift
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All for the Greater Glory of God: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (AMDG)
Key Ignatian Themes
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God Calls, We Respond
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Finding God in All Things
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Contemplative in Action
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A Life of Discernment
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A Person for Others
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Cura Personalis
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Magis
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Ignatian Principles
The principles of Ignatian spirituality are found in the great truths of Scripture and Tradition.
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God, our Creator, is the ultimate Truth and Way and the source of all beauty and goodness.
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This spirituality emphasizes God, who is Love, loving and constantly at work in creation and in us.
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As a result of God's action, we come to recognize that we were dreamt into being, created out of that love, and are loved at each and every moment.
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God, Self-revealed in Jesus Christ, invites us to co-labor with Him to build a kingdom of love through the grace and gifts given to each of us uniquely, in our time and place, to do that work.
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We respond in gratitude, with love put into action in service.
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A Practical Spirituality for Every Day and for Everyone
Ignatian spirituality is a practical spirituality: practical meaning that one's personal holiness affects one's lifeworld. Something has to happen, for we are called to act intentionally out of love, becoming a "person for others" and a "contemplative in action" through a "disciplined asceticism of love," helping to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.
The Ignatian way is a way of prayer in action: using our gifts and talents intentionally, giving the greater (magis) in serving others, and by doing so giving glory to God. This spirituality is a pathway to a more profound prayer life, to good decision-making guided by keen discernment, and to an active life of service in finding God in all things. With God's grace, one grows in passion and humility toward becoming "a contemplative in action."
"The glory of God is a person fully alive." (St. Irenaeus)
The Central Theme: Living Consciously and Intentionally
The central theme of Ignatian spirituality is discovering and responding to God's ongoing call and action, revealed through and encountered in all of creation: people, events, and nature. It is a realization that all we are and have is gift, leading us to respond with awe, wonder, and gratitude, and with an expanding love for our Creator, ourselves, and others, serving and becoming persons for others.
*This content has been paraphrased from Handing on the Fire: Making Spiritual Direction Ignatian by Joseph Tetlow, SJ.
St. Ignatius' Spirituality
Ignatius' spirituality grew out of the unique and personal relationship he experienced with God. His conversion journey began while he was recovering from a severe injury, a battlefield wound, and continued throughout his life. During his initial conversion, Ignatius began to keep notes on the interior changes he experienced in recovery (thoughts, feelings, emotions, intentions), which he called movements or spirits.
As time passed, Ignatius guided many others, long before he became a priest and founded the Society of Jesus. His notes were eventually developed into a guide called The Spiritual Exercises. Through this process of encountering the mysteries of Scripture, those he guided came to a personal experience of the fullness of God, each in their own unique experience of finding God in all things.
In the Contemplation to Attain Love, St. Ignatius of Loyola presents God as a giver of gifts, who showers us endlessly with blessings and gifts, like the sun bathing the earth with its light and warmth (Spiritual Exercises [230–237]). This is a God who dwells in all things, who labors actively and creatively to renew all of creation, whose presence can be "felt" (a felt sense) in our everyday experience, and whose action can be seen in our encounters throughout the day. St. Ignatius' Catholic faith was rooted in gratitude, the natural and loving response to the Creator of all gifts.
The Focus of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola
To serve others, with Christ at the center:
to know Christ more clearly,
to love Christ more dearly,
and to follow Christ more nearly,
day by day.
(Prayer of St. Richard of Chichester)
In the Exercises, Ignatius has the retreatant ask for an interior knowledge of our Lord, that they may love Him more and follow Him more closely (Spiritual Exercises [104]).
The Ignatian prayer methods in the Spiritual Exercises are designed to engage one's whole self (thoughts, memories, understandings, affections, senses, and will; body/brain/mind/soul) so as to help one notice God's presence, action, and gifts every day and, most of all, to grow in awareness of how and when God speaks to them, and to listen.
This organized set of meditations is adapted to the individual, so that one may respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, acting out of love rather than out of the chaos and distortion of inordinate attachments, and so experience freedom in following and imitating Christ in one's own context and uniqueness.
More Resources
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David L. Fleming, SJ, Draw Me into Your Friendship: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading of the Spiritual Exercises