• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Add to this roster the millions of lay men and women who have come into contact with Ignatian spirituality through schools, parishes, or retreat houses—husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, single men and women, from all walks of life, from around the world—who have found a way to peace and joy, and you begin to glimpse the remarkable vibrancy of this ancient but living tradition.

In short, Ignatian spirituality has worked for people from an astonishing variety of times, places, and backgrounds. And it’s worked for me. It helped to move me from feeling trapped in life to feeling free.

This book is an introduction to the way of St. Ignatius Loyola, at least as I’ve learned it in my twenty-one years as a Jesuit. It’s not meant to be overly scholarly or academic. Instead, it’s a friendly introduction for the general reader. It’s not meant to be exhaustive either. You can’t summarize almost five centuries of spirituality in a few pages, and each of these chapters could easily spawn four or five books. So I won’t be touching on every single aspect, for example, of the Spiritual Exercises or the Constitutions—only those areas that I think would be of greatest interest, and use, to the average reader.

But Ignatian spirituality is so capacious that even an introduction will touch upon a broad spectrum of topics: making good choices, finding meaningful work, being a good friend, living simply, wondering about suffering, deepening your prayer, striving to be a better person, and learning to love.

The way of Ignatius means there is nothing in our lives that is not part of our spiritual lives. To use David’s homey image, all those “boxes” that you might be tempted to keep closed—marital difficulties, problems at work, a serious illness, a ruptured relationship, financial worries—can be brought out of the dark box and opened up to the light of God.

We’ll look at how to find God in everything and everything in God. And we’ll try to do so with a sense of humor, an essential element in the spiritual life. There’s no need to be deadly serious about religion or spirituality, because joy, humor, and laughter are gifts from God. So don’t be surprised by occasional humor, especially at my expense. (Don’t be surprised by the occasional Jesuit joke, too.)

And we’ll also look at some clear and simple ways to incorporate Ignatian spirituality into your own daily life. Spirituality should not be complex, and so I’ll offer simple practices and real-life examples.

Another final but important aside: you don’t have to be Catholic, Christian, religious, or even spiritual to benefit from some of the insights of St. Ignatius Loyola. When I’ve described for nonbelievers the Ignatian techniques for making a good decision, for instance, they are invariably delighted by the results. And when I’ve told atheists why we try to live simply, they appreciate the wisdom of Ignatius.

But it would be crazy to deny that for Ignatius “being spiritual” and “being religious” wasn’t the most important thing in the world. It would be equally crazy to separate God or Jesus from Ignatian spirituality. It would render Ignatius’s writings absurd. God was at the center of Ignatius’s life. The Jesuit founder would have some pointed things to say—most likely in a very long letter—about someone who tried to separate his practices from his love of God.

But Ignatius knew that God meets people where they are. We’re all at different points on our paths to God. And on different paths, too. Ignatius himself traversed a circuitous route, and he recognized that God’s activity cannot be limited to people who consider themselves “religious.” So Ignatian spirituality naturally embraces everyone from the devout believer to the tentative seeker. To use one of Ignatius’s favorite expressions, his path is “a way of proceeding” along the way to God.

So I’ll do my best to make Ignatian spirituality understandable, useful, and usable for everybody, no matter where you are in life, but I’ll also be clear about the centrality of God in the