Ignatian Spirituality
Finding God in All Things
Ignatian spirituality"*is a spirituality for busy people with hectic lives, who cultivate the spiritual disciplines of reflecting on their days and noticing where God was present — and where God is leading..."
"Wherever we find goodness, truth, and beauty, God is there."
"We should strive to pay attention to the goodness in the world around us and to recognize the face of God in those things. The goal is to become more aware of the love of God in our lives so that we deepen our friendship with Jesus."
"The basic tenets of Ignatian spirituality come from St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), who wrote down notes about his prayer and the internal changes he noticed as he began to develop his own friendship with Jesus. Those notes became The Spiritual Exercises, which have been “made” (Jesuits typically say they “make the Exercises”), discussed, taught, and written about for five centuries."
*https://jesuitseastois.org/what-is-ignatian-spirituality
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything
- attributed to Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ (1907-1991)
It is about Falling in Love with Who Loves You
A Way of Being and Acting in the World
A Vision of Life, Work, and Love
The principles in Ignatian Spirituality are rooted in the great truths in Scripture and the 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 that God, who is Love loving, is 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 and created out of that love, and are loved at each and every moment.
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God invites us to co-labor to build a kingdom of love through the grace and gifts given to each one of us, uniquely in our time and place, to do that work.
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We respond in gratitude with a love for actionable service.
All is Gift
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. A way of coming to know God who is actively at work in 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, guiding us in becoming a contemplative in action.
A Spirituality of the Heart
What do we do, out of love
A Reflective Spirituality
Noticing and always discerning
All for the Greater Glory of God
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
A Life of Discernment
Contemplative in Action
A Person for Others
Ignatian Spirituality is:
Quotes from Making Choices in Christ: The Foundations of Ignatian Spirituality by Joseph Tetlow, SJ (p2-3 ).
“Ignatian spirituality… is one of the more recent in the church. The spirituality took the great traditions of the interior life in the cloistered world and brought them to bear on everyday life in the home and on the street.”
“This spirituality was meant to empower a dynamic service of God out in the marketplace… (It) offers to those of us who live busy lives a way to God. It helps one find our own appropriate way in mental prayer and in an active life in the world and in the church.”
“It offers a way to discern what God wishes us to do, both with the whole of our lives as we focus down on a personal vocation and in the many concrete decisions (through discernment) we have to make every day.”
“The purpose of this spirituality is to help us find how we are to work along with God to bring the reign of Christ to human life in good order to the natural world to the everyday world as it is now…We are not trying to create an orderly life apart from the joys and sorrows of the everyday world as those spiritualities were a withdrawal from the world… (we are in) the world from which we come, in which we live, and to which we are called to bring justice, peace, and love now, in this place of ours and in our time.”
“Ignatian spirituality is not only a worldly spirituality but also a radically lay spirituality. It rose from the experience of a layman (St. Ignatius) and was developed for the sake of those who were busily engaged in everyday life…. All he knew at the beginning was that he had a preemptory call to find Christ in the world and thereby live a holy life…Gradually he discovered that certain materials and kinds of prayer helped him in specific ways to sort through the effects of sin in his life and discover honestly what God’s love demanded that he do next."