In “The Principle and Foundation” at the beginning of his Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius teaches that all creatures exist in order to lead all human beings to arrive at our supernatural life of glory. This perception not only grounds a characteristically Ignatian optimism, but it also indicates the basis for a certain Jesuit intransigence. That is, in the concrete or existential order, creatures either do help, or they do not. In other words, Ignatian realism admits of no medial position between helping and hindering, except perhaps in the classroom.

Speaking then of “all other things on the face of the earth,” Ignatius makes his sobering illation: “Hence, man is to make use of them in as far as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid himself of them in as far as they prove a hinderance to him.” Indeed, the compound sentence embodies the double task that Ignatius assigns to all human acts: personal salvation and the greater glory of God.

Moreover, during the progress of the Spiritual Exercises, the director is able to concretize three motives more and more concisely. As the exercitant deepens within himself the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, what von Balthasar calls, “the form of God in the world” today, he conforms himself ever more consciously to the divine will. Next, he finds in the example of Christ a complete witness to the action of God in human affairs. Finally, in contemplating the love of the Most Blessed Trinity, he unites himself with the radical source of all goodness. Depending, therefore, on the level of one’s development, the Exercises disclose three principal motives underlying authentic Christian behavior: personal salvation, the example of Christ, and the love of God. This divine pedagogy enables the disciple to recognize himself, however obliquely, as the language of God.

During the first week of the Exercises, the motives for action may strike one as really minimalist: do good, commit virtue, avoid sin. However, unless we recognize these as commandments and not as counsels, we are in danger of losing our souls and our very selves as well (Mt 16:25, Lk 21:19). That is, the exercitant must let God be God and appropriate the will of God through what St Paul calls “the obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5, 16:26). If it takes all of our energies and attention just to obey the commandments of God, then Ignatius advises “the first method of prayer,” which reflects systematically on the ten commandments, the seven capital sins, the three powers of the soul, and the five senses. Motivated largely by an eschatological imperative, this first stage puts the exercitant under judgement. Only when he can acknowledge his own radical sinfulness - in thought, word, act, and omission - can the retreatant recognize the divine mercy and the need for personal freedom.

In several places, Ignatius notes that interior mortification is considerably more difficult than external penances, and more fruitful. Still, he is willing to recognize that human acts, motivated by faith and animated by a reverential fear, produce very elementary results that ensure a measure of personal holiness. Indeed, for many people not all of them “anonymous Christians” this represents their personal best before God and the world. Their frail efforts, however, never quite bridge the gap between faith and world. Caught up in their own pursuits and narrowed by the concerns of “flesh and blood” (Mt 16:17), they never perceive the living God as the heart of this world.

If freedom from personal sin presents an adequate rationale for human behavior, it certainly does not satisfy Ignatius and his companions. Instead, they look to the imitation of Christ: “to know him more intimately, to love him more ardently, to follow him more closely.” As the design of God, Christ the King discloses God’s gracious plan for us (DS 3004) and reveals himself as the embodiment of all creation (Eph 1:10). Because the following of Christ translates the wisdom of God in space and time, in history and culture, it assures us of those kerygmatic sources associated with Christian dignity, reminding us that we are indeed “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart.” Moreover, an awareness of the whole Christ leads to both ecclesia and communio, making us really Emmanuel (Mt 1:23). In short, it is precisely in the Church that we appropriate the form of Christ.

Ever since Gaudium et spes (7 December 1965), the Church has described the Christian vocation as one of transforming the saeculum. The laity especially are charged with the responsibility “to permeate and perfect the order of temporal affairs with the spirit of the gospel: (c.225, 2). Pope John Paul II has reiterated this challenge in his Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici (30 January 1989). So the Christian strategy seeks to impose a christological form on otherwise neutral or intractable elements in order to “redeem the time” (Eph 5:16). This means that individual Christians must be so united to the Lord as to continue the radical involvement that we discern in the meditation on the incarnation. The Christian too, as an instrumentum conjunctum, works immanently to relate the world and its structures to the energy of the resurrection. Inevitably, a sinful world resists this kind of orientation, which means that the faithful follower not only confronts the cross daily (Lk 9:23) but also lives with “the mark of the nails” (Jn 20:25). This engagement with the world, then, encounters the same kind of opposition that beset the Lord. But despite the interminable wrestle with principalities and powers, the disciple already has the assurance of victory (1 Jn 5:14), for he remains united to the source, the norm and measure of all human behavior. By cooperating with the risen Lord, the individual believer becomes the hands and the heart, the feet and the eyes of the Lord. Accordingly, each in his or her own way extends the kingdom, making the saeculum worthy of the Lord himself. For all believers, then, the Christ becomes the appropriate figura that contains and shapes christic action.

Yet, we can perceive still another, a more profound level in Ignatius’s spirituality to motivate human action. In the “Contemplation for Obtaining Divine Love,” Ignatius presents us with an image of the Most Blessed Trinity. Here, we see God conducting himself “as one who labors.” Ignatius clearly sees the Godhead as constantly working, tirelessly sustaining, and always striving to realize the original plan of creation. Consequently, Ignatius would have us collaborate with the energies of the triune God. So the form of God, which commences with baptism, concludes with the vision of God. At the very least, it comprises a global view. Perhaps we can locate here the origin of the Ignatian magis (cf Jn 5:17). Father Pedro Arrupe, for example, was fond of quoting Ignatius’s insight, “the more universal the good, the more divine it is.” Fervently animated by the love of God, the true follower enters into the world’s structures and plants therein the seed that we recognize as the word of God (Mk 4:14). Indeed, the new evangelization recommended by Pope John Paul II seems to presuppose and require this kind of cosmic perspective. This appreciation in turn prompts a reflection on “the divine milieu.”

If the encounter with the world and its structures appears impossibly vast and complex, the encounter with God remains supremely personal. As von Balthasar points out, to the extent that we are chosen, we become persons. The Ignatian maieutic persuades us that Almighty God calls each one of us by name. This means that he not only chooses us, but he personalizes us as well. This perception remains consonant with the teaching of Vatican II which declares the human person as “the only creature on earth which God wills for itself (GS 24). The more personal our relations with the Blessed Trinity become, the more central the divine milieu in our lives. Speaking of that center, Teilhard de Chardin observes that it manifests “the absolute and final power to unite.” Herein, I submit, we find a contemporary focus for our current energies. What makes it worthy of our attention may well derive from an awareness that it belongs equally to God.

These reflections on the radicals of Christian behavior will seem perfectly apparent to those familiar with the Spiritual Exercises. Although they begin with a concern for personal salvation, the rhythm moves next to a personal encounter with Christ. Sometime during the Fourth Week, one which celebrates the mystery of the risen Lord, the Exercises disclose the trinitarian cadence that unifies and explains this faith-event. In many ways, these three radicals correspond to the three levels which Father Bernard Lonergan has distinguished: common sense, theory, and interiority. For the director, however, the challenge lies in effecting a shift from the essential understanding to the existential deed.

St Ignatius learned very well from his Dominican masters at the University of Paris. At the rue S. Jacques, not too far from his college Sainte-Barbe, he studied with Mathieu Ory, Jehan Benoît, and Thomas Laurent “for priesthood and not for grades.” Following the tradition of the convent, his teachers took him systematically through St Thomas’s Summa theologiae and not the more traditional Commentary on the Sentences. This discipline enabled Ignatius to understand the fruits of his own prayer life and experience. Neither an intellectual not an academician himself, Ignatius nevertheless respected the discipline of the classroom to the extent that in his Constitutions [464] he prescribes St Thomas and the Summa as one of the principal texts to be expounded in theology. In presenting this tract on the virtues, Father Romanus Cessario exemplifies that fidelity to the Dominican charism which the conciliar fathers praised and encouraged. To paraphrase Father Lonergan, his method illustrates the via analytica; the more impatient (or prompt) Ignatius prefers the via synthetica. At any rate, I am very privileged to share in this complementary discourse, for it reveals the current catholica in action. Perhaps Ignatius says it best when he gives us his “first rule” for getting things done: “so to trust in God as if the complete success of the undertaking depended on yourself and not at all on God, but so to arrange the matter as if everything depended on God and not at all on yourself.” For all of its wit, the paradox attempts to coalesce the selflessness of man within the selflessness of God. For the sake of the kingdom.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!

Feast of St Thomas Aquinas
28 January 1993

Rev. John P McIntyre, SJ
Faculty of Canon Law
Saint Paul University
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada