The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [3]
How can I live a simple life?
How can I be a good friend?
How can I face suffering?
How can I be happy?
How can I find God?
How do I pray?
How do I love?
All these things are proper to Ignatian spirituality because all these things are proper to the human person.
After “finding God in all things,” the second answer you would probably get from those five hypothetical Jesuits is that Ignatian spirituality is about being a contemplative in action.
That idea resonates with many people today. How would you like a more contemplative life, or simply a more peaceful one? Wouldn’t you like to disconnect from the distractions of—take your pick—cell phones, faxes, e-mail, instant messaging, iPods, iPhones, and BlackBerrys for just a little quiet? Even if you enjoy all those cool gadgets, don’t you ever wish for some downtime?
Well, one insight of Ignatian spirituality is that while peace and quiet are essential to nourish our spiritual lives, most of us aren’t going to quit our jobs and join a monastery to spend our days in constant prayer. And, by the way, even monks work hard. (Some of them even have e-mail now!)
So while Ignatius counseled his Jesuits always to carve out time for prayer, they were expected to lead active lives. “The road is our home,” said Jerónimo Nadal, one of the early companions of Ignatius. But they were to be active people who adopted a contemplative, or meditative, stance toward the world. To be “contemplatives in action.”
Most of us lead busy lives with little time for prayer and meditation. But by being aware of the world around us—in the midst of our activity—we can allow a contemplative stance to inform our actions. Instead of seeing the spiritual life as one that can exist only if it is enclosed by the walls of a monastery, Ignatius asks you to see the world as your monastery.
The third way of understanding the way of Ignatius is as an incarnational spirituality.
Christian theology holds that God became human, or “incarnate,” in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. (The word incarnation comes from the Latin root carn, for “flesh.”) More broadly, an incarnational spirituality means believing that God can be found in the everyday events of our lives. God is not just out there. God is right here, too. If you’re looking for God, look around. To this end, one of the best definitions of prayer is from Walter Burghardt, a twentieth-century Jesuit theologian, who called it a “long, loving look at the real.” Incarnational spirituality is about the real.
Ultimately, we cannot know God completely, at least in this life. St. Augustine, the fourth-century theologian, said that if you can comprehend it, then “it” cannot be God, because God is incomprehensible. But that doesn’t mean we can’t begin to know God. So while Ignatian spirituality recognizes the transcendence, or otherness, of God, it is also incarnational, recognizing the immanence, or nearness, of God in our own lives.
Finally, Ignatian spirituality is about freedom and detachment.
Ignatius was acutely aware of what kept him, and others, from leading a life of freedom and joy. Much of his classic text, The Spiritual Exercises, which was written between 1522 and 1548, was geared toward helping people find the freedom to make good decisions. Its original title was Spiritual Exercises to Overcome Oneself, and to Order One’s Life, Without Reaching a Decision Through Some Disordered Affection. Most Jesuits just call it the Spiritual Exercises or simply the Exercises.
Buried within that clunky title are some important ideas. One comes at the end: “disordered affections” is his way of describing whatever keeps us from being free. When Ignatius says that we should be “detached,” he’s talking about not being tied down by unimportant things.
Here’s a quick example. What happens if your overriding concern in life is making money? Well, in that case you might not be as open to spending time with people who won’t advance your career. You might be less likely to take time off. You might even begin to see other people only as tools—or worse,