Retreat Section

THE SOCIETY OF JESUS AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

(i) The Spiritual Exercises -

Reverend Alban Goodier S.J.

Archbishop of Hierapolis

With a definite ideal and goal in view, and laying aside every other,

Ignatius set himself to forge a means by which he might bring men to see as

he saw, and to give themselves to this greatest of all great adventures,

even as he had done himself. 

Long before the idea of the Society of Jesus

was so much as proposed to any- one, he had drawn up his "Spiritual

Exercises" and put them into practice. In these Spiritual Exercises, whose

title has become permanently fixed to his name, he reveals that attitude

to- wards the spiritual life which may be said to be peculiarly his own, if

indeed there is anything in St. Ignatius which is peculiarly his own. He

will teach men to see as he sees, but that he may do so he must first

unteach them; the hindrance for most men is not lack of understanding, but

a blindness and short-sightedness which limits the horizon, shutting off

the greater goal beyond by the lesser things around them. This must first

be corrected; a man must first be lifted out of his surroundings. He must

be taught to get outside himself, to look upon himself as a thing apart; to

set his life in the perspective of the greater whole, not in that of his

own advantage or concern, so putting a new value on himself and on all that

his life contains. Thus he defines the object of the Exercises. They are

"to conquer oneself and regulate one's life, and to avoid coming to a

determination through any inordinate affection"; or, as he puts it in

another place, they are "any method of preparing and disposing the soul to

free itself from all inordinate affections, and after it has freed itself

from them, to seek and find the will of God concerning the ordering of life

for the salvation of one's soul."

Freedom to act, truth of vision and of action; in these two phrases are

contained the essence of the spiritual life according to the mind of St.

Ignatius. The first implies self-conquest; the freedom of a man from

himself, and the bonds that bind him from within, keeping him from being

and doing that which in his heart he knows to be best. Of ourselves, it is

true, we can do nothing; we can only live and grow by the growing of the

life of God within us. But, with His grace, we can prepare ourselves. We

can do what lies in our sphere, and He will do the rest; we can put away

ourselves that He may be allowed to enter. So far as I yield to myself, so

far for myself I live; and so far, therefore, God cannot come in. This is

the first condition on our part of growth in the spiritual life, and by

constant repetition he reminds us that the effort for freedom from oneself

must never cease.

Thus, before a man begins to go through the Exercises he is asked "to enter

upon them with a large heart and with liberality towards his Creator and

Lord, offering all his desires and liberty to Him, in order that His Divine

Majesty may make use of his person, and of all he possesses, according to

His most holy will." Scarcely has he begun than his first conclusion is:

"It is therefore necessary that we should make ourselves independent of all

created things." When he speaks of the beginning of sin in the world, the

evil of it lies in the heart of those who were "not willing to help

themselves by means of their liberty in the work of paying reverence and

obedience to their Creator and Lord." When he becomes more positive, and

begins to build upon the ground that has been cleared, those who wish "to

signalize themselves in every kind of service of their Eternal King and

Universal Lord," will do so expressly, "by acting against their own

sensuality, and their carnal and worldly love." Aim at the highest freedom;

evil is slavery, the unwillingness to use one's freedom; the greatest

freedom is freedom from oneself, one's own bondage to the meannesses of

life. This is chivalry, not military discipline; it is service looked on as

a glory, not as a burden to be borne; the man who fails to rise to it, in

the mind of St. Ignatius, is not a sinner, he is an "unworthy knight," a

phrase which at once reveals to us the nature of the man.

"The Eternal King and Universal Lord." The foundations laid as we have just

seen, he seems then to make the limit of man's self-surrender the gauge of

all else; a man is worth precisely what he is willing to give in the

service and no more. To stimulate this surrender, to test its value, he

puts Jesus Christ before "His friends and servants," exhorting them not

merely to poverty, but to a "desire" of it; not to endure, but "to a desire

of reproaches and contempt." The ideal is the service of the King; there is

no better service than imitation, following, resemblance; the true knight

will be as like to his Prince as possible. Hence that ideal is described in

these terms:

"The better to imitate Christ, and to become actually more like Him, I

desire and choose rather poverty with Christ poor, than riches; contempt

with Christ contemned, than honors; and I desire to be esteemed as useless

and foolish for Christ's sake, who was first held to be such, than to be

counted wise and prudent in this world."

The prospect is clear; it may give one pause; but precisely on that account

it is a test of the worth of a man's devotion to the cause. So sure is he

of his ground, and so confident in man's ultimate victory if he will try,

that should human nature flinch he encourages it by saying:

"It will help much . . . to ask in our prayer, even though it be against

the flesh, that Our Lord should choose us to actual poverty, protesting

that we desire, petition, and ask for it, provided it be to the service and

praise of His Divine Goodness."

Then, having given the ideal, having given the encouragement, he closes

with the summary warning:

"Wherefore let each be convinced that he will make progress in all

spiritual matters in proportion as he shall have divested himself of his

own self-love, his own will, and self-interest."

Other things may be of service, and in their way may serve as signs--

prayer, penance, mortification, zeal for souls and the rest. But to him

they are mainly external; the only sure sign of real greatness is the

extent to which a man is willing to surrender himself, all he has and all

he is.

Having clearly laid down the method for the making of a "Worthy Knight"

in the service of the "Universal Lord," the second care of the Saint is that

there shall be no self-deception, no substitution of sham for truth, not

even of convention for reality. He has known in his lifetime how much of

this there is, precisely among the knighthood of the world; when on his

sickbed after Pampeluna he had his leg broken that it might be set again,

men admired his bravery, but he himself knew that his motive was pride. In

his new knighthood this self-deception must not be; the man as far as

possible must ring true, above all within his own soul. A favorite word

with St. Ignatius is "internal." It occurs in most unexpected places; and

when we ask ourselves what he means by it we can find no better synonym

than "real," "genuine." At the outset he warns the aspirant to great things

that "it is not abundance of knowledge that satisfies the soul, but to feel

and relish it internally." He bids the sinner pray for "an interior

knowledge of his sins" that he may be shamed into repentance; as a

deterrent from future relapse he would have him acquire "an interior sense

of the pains which the lost suffer" in hell. Should a man "desire to have

an interior sorrow for his sins," one way to gain it is by doing penance.

When he puts up Jesus as the model before him, he bids him pray again and

again for "an interior knowledge of Our Lord," not one only of books and

commentaries; when he speaks of the Passion he asks for "tears and interior

pain, for the great pain that Christ has suffered for me." Lastly, as

though to make quite sure that his knight has not been self-deceived in the

making, and to leave him no loophole of escape, he gives a whole meditation

on three types of men, two of whom are not wholly genuine while the third

spares himself in nothing.

The man, then, utterly genuine and sincere, who is prepared to spare

himself in nothing for "the service of God and the universal good," this is

the perfect man as St. Ignatius understands perfection; on that foundation

he proceeds to build. And like a knight of the days of chivalry, he builds

with one material, love. Constantly he repeats the word "desire"; and what

is desire but the crying out of love, as St. Leo said long before him? "To

pray for that which I desire"; so he opens every meditation. He assumes

every time that it is there. He who has no desire, he says, may be sent

away with just a clean conscience; he is not the kind of man of whom much

can be made. But, on the other hand, with one who has desires, with one who

is keen and generous, let the giver of the Exercises be careful not to

interfere too much. "It is better and more fitting that its Creator and

Lord Himself communicate with such a soul, inflaming it to love and praise

Him, and disposing it for that way of life by which it will best serve Him

in the future."

Already from the beginning this weapon of love has been at work. When he

brings the soul to think of its own evil-doing, he assumes that "desire,"

through love, will overflow "in great and intense grief and tears for my

sins"; the soul will "wonder with intense affection" that it has not long

since been destroyed. When he comes to speak of hell, his motive is, not

fear for its own sake, but lest "through my faults I forget the love of the

Eternal Lord." All the time that he excites contrition and amendment he

dwells upon thanksgiving, that one has not been lost, that one has had a

Redeemer such as Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, that one still has time

in which to make all things new; and thanksgiving, as he teaches us

elsewhere, is the sure stepping-stone to love.

But when he has passed this stage his love is more daring. "That which I

desire" becomes a fixed thing, and never again changes. To know his Leader,

Jesus Christ, to love Jesus Christ, to follow Jesus Christ, to become like to

 Jesus Christ, in spirit and even in detail, this is the St. Ignatius we

have already seen, unconsciously revealing himself as he draws an ideal for

others. In this spirit he meditates, "in order to follow and imitate better

Our Lord"; in this spirit he prays- "The colloquy is made properly by

speaking as one friend speaks to another, or as a servant to his master; at

one time asking for some favor, at another blaming oneself for some evil

committed, now informing him of one's affairs, and seeking counsel in

them." When he comes to the crib at Bethlehem he is "tending Our Lady and

St. Joseph and the Infant Jesus in their necessities, as though I were

present there"; St. Bonaventure could not be more simple. When he sets

before himself his Master as a Leader, it is "in a lowly place, in aspect

fair and winning." When he bids a man decide on his state of life: "The

first rule is that the love, which urges and causes me to seek such or such

a thing, descend from on high, from the love of God; so that he who chooses

feel first in himself that the love which he has more or less for the thing

he chooses, is solely for the sake of his Creator and Lord."

Thus from the love of desire St. Ignatius has risen to the love of

friendship. And as love is measured by the capacity of its power to suffer,

as the love of desire is more intense according to the hunger of the

longing, so the love of friendship is gauged by the greatness of its

compassion. When a friend is in sorrow, his friend sorrows with him; and

the closer the friendship the deeper will that sorrow be. So is it in this

case. No sooner has Ignatius established, and brought to the degree of

devoted service the love of friendship between the man and Jesus Christ,

than he tests it by sorrow. Jesus Christ is not only my Leader. He has

suffered; He is my friend; then the sight of His suffering will make me

suffer, too. "To feel sorrow, affliction, and confusion, because for my

sins Our Lord is going to His Passion." "To begin with great effort to

strive to grieve, and bewail, and lament"; "to consider that He suffers all

these things for my sins, and what I ought to do and to suffer for Him";

"sorrow with Christ who is full of sorrow, anguish with Christ in anguish,

tears and interior (i.e. as we have seen, real, genuine,) pain for the

great pain that Christ has suffered for me"; "sorrow, pain and anguish

recalling frequently to mind the troubles, labors and sorrows of Christ Our

Lord, which He has endured from the moment He was born up to the

mystery of the Passion on which I am now engaged"; "the solitude of Our

Lady in such great grief and affliction of spirit";--thus by constant repetition

does he bring home to the mind of his disciple the real thing that love of

friendship means. And during all the time he proposes nothing else.

Then he makes another step. Great as is the love of friendship, there is a

greater love still, and he will not stop till he has opened the way to it.

It is the love of union; when the lover is lost in the beloved, so that the

joys and sorrows of the one, his successes and failures, his very being,

absorb altogether the whole soul of the other. This is the full

consummation of a man, the whole burnt-offering of himself on the fire of

love; and this consummation Ignatius held out as the final height to which

he would draw his disciples. "To be intensely affected and to rejoice in

the exceeding great joy and gladness of Christ Our Lord"; "to be affected

and to rejoice in the exceeding great joy and gladness of Christ Our Lord";

in this he bids a man to reap the fruits of love, and realize the joy of

living. Such a joy, sinking down into the very marrow of his bones, makes

him prepared for anything. Nothing now can separate him from the love of

God, which he has in Christ Jesus Our Lord.

Last of all, as if he would enforce the truth that the one all-absorbing

motive power of his life is love, and absolutely nothing else, he concludes

with an "Exercise" for its acquisition. But first he makes two statements.

"Love," he says, "is an affair of deeds rather than of words." He still has

his eye on the tendency of human nature to deceive itself, to think that it

loves because it can use love's phrases, to think it forgives because it

merely says it. And secondly, "Love consists in mutual interchange on

either side . . . in giving, communicating, sharing . . . so that the one

share all with the other," and vice versa. Given these axioms then he

proves his point. What has God not given to me? What more would He not

give if He could? "Himself so far as He is able." God the Giver; God living in

me, "making me His temple, to the likeness and image of His Divine

Majesty"; God as it were in creation working for me, laboring for me; God

from whom "all good things and all good gifts descend . . . as the rays

descend from the sun, as waters from the spring"; this is the God who loves

me, who wants me, who is my friend, who asks me for my love in return.

Then what can I give Him? Can there be any limit? All my liberty, all that I am,

all that I possess; whatever He may ask He shall have; nothing shall be too great

or too small to give for the greater glory of my God.

This is the secret of the Society of Jesus as St. Ignatius understands and

interprets it; in this way he would lead his followers to see the goal of

life as he sees it, and to bend themselves to its attainment. Has man

discovered anything more inspiring? Has any other ideal produced more

striking results, even in the way of human life? We do not wonder that St.

Francis Xavier, to take but one example, fashioned as he was in this mold,

with no rules to guide him and no constitutions to keep before him his

master's ideal, could call the Society of Jesus "nothing more than a

Society of love," and under that inspiration alone could bring himself,

apparently with such ease, to accomplish all that he accomplished.

[ Jesuit treasury - collected and edited by Hedwig Lewis SJ ] 

ii) The Society of Jesus and Prayer

The account just given of the Book of the Spiritual Exercises should make

it immediately clear that it is anything but a book on prayer. It is a

course of training, in which prayer must take its part, and as such it is

proposed and used; but to measure its author's mind or the mind of the

Society of Jesus on prayer merely by what the book contains is to

misunderstand St. Ignatius and his "school" altogether. St. Ignatius never

wrote a book on prayer. With regard to his own prayer he was always

reticent; with regard to the experiences of others, there was no subject

about which he spoke with greater caution. We must remember that in his

time the air was full of mysticism, true and false, and especially in his

native country; while it was preparing the way for saints like Theresa and

John of the Cross, it was also producing its Clarissa Magdalena and others.

Clarissa deceived bishops, theologians, and all around her for close on

forty years; and we have already seen how keenly the saint dreaded sham of

any kind, but, far above all, sham love and sham devotion.

Still we are not without means of learning what he really held concerning

prayer; we have at least five sources, of which the Book of the Exercises

is only one. 

We learn more from the Constitutions, from his spiritual

leaders, from the few notes on his own prayer that have survived, from the

teaching of those who lived with him, and knew him well. From all these we

discover much; especially of that great liberty of soul which in all things

else was so characteristic of the man, and which could look on the practice

of prayer in no other light. In matter of fact prayer to him was at the

root of everything. By means of prayer he solved his own problems, in it he

sought his consolation and strength; so great an attraction had it for him

that he had to use violence to himself to keep himself away when duty

called.

So was it in regard to others. As we have seen it was by means of prayer,

and meditation, and contemplation that he sought to develop in the man he

formed, the three essentials, self-conquest, interior sincerity, love. When

he had completed his formation, and the fully-trained man was sent out to

do his work, it was assumed that the spirit of prayer would be so alive in

him that he would need no further instruction. When he speaks of such as

these in his Constitutions he simply says that "he assumes for certain that

they will be spiritual men, and that they will have made such progress in

the way of Christ Our Lord that they may run along it"; hence that "in what

concerns prayer and meditation . . . no rule need be prescribed to them

except what discretion and charity may prescribe to each."

But even with those who are not yet fully formed, in other words with every

soul that strives after perfection, the saint is wonderfully free. He

insists, it is true, on mortification; without it he makes little of

prayer. He insists on obedience to one who has knowledge of spiritual

things and has the right guide; from the experience of his own soul, and

from the experience of controlling others, he has learnt too much to allow

a beginner too easily to follow his own bent. But after that is liberty;

the liberty of the children of God. Life to him was prayer, and every thing

in life was to be turned into prayer; this attitude of mind was the first

thing he looked for when he turned his young candidates into the channel of

everyday affairs. Thus we read, in a letter of his secretary, Polanco,

answering enquiries on behalf of his master:

"Students cannot give themselves to long meditations. But they can practice

seeking the presence of God in all things, in conversation, walking, sight,

taste, hearing, understanding, in everything they do. And this method of

prayer, which finds God in everything, is easier than that which compels us

to rise to more abstract ideas concerning Him, when we strain to make them

present to us. This excellent exercise, i£ we are careful to make it with

due preparation, will win for us from our Lord visitations of deep moment;

even though our time of prayer be not long."

Again to another:

"Our Father prefers that we should strive to rise to God in all things

rather than give to prayer overmuch time in succession. . . .Let members of

the Society, if they are able, find no less devotion in a work of charity

or obedience than in prayer or meditation, seeing that everything they do

is done for the love and service of God Our Lord."

In a further letter he sums up all in a sentence:

"If everything is directed towards God, everything is prayer."

So much for the place of prayer in life, as St. Ignatius understood it. As

for its kind, he is no less open-minded. When speaking of the training of

others, he has special words of warning against any effort to lead all

souls by the same way or method. There is no more dangerous mistake.

Even in the Exercises he warns the priest against undue interference with the

intercourse of the soul with God; elsewhere his teaching is of the same

kind. Let every soul find out for itself what is best for it. Let it submit

these experiences to its guide. If they are good, and free from delusion,

let it continue in them. This is well expressed by a Jesuit spiritual

writer, Gagliardi, than whom none more accurately represents the earliest

tradition of his order. Thus he writes:

"Our special method of prayer is to be bound by no fixed rule; a fixed rule

may be well enough for the training of beginners. Each one must discover

for himself what suits him best. If need be let him make alterations,

lessen or increase his prayer, pass from vocal prayer to mental," and so

on.

In confirmation of this, there is the well-known passage, taken from the

letters of St. Francis Borgia. He had been specially trained by St.

Ignatius.

"Give free admittance to all thoughts of God; open wide to them every door

of your soul," the latter had written to him. Given as he was himself to

contemplation, able to spend long hours in prayer without interruption,

inclined to lengthen prayer for others rather than decrease it,

nevertheless, when he in turn became General of the Order, he wrote thus to

a Provincial:

"I hear it said that your Reverence imposes on your subjects the duty of

always making acts of love in their prayer, and wishes to lead them all by

this one way. I praise your Reverence's zeal and good desires, and

certainly the method you encourage is the best and highest form of

spiritual exercise. Nevertheless, I warn you, my dear Father, that not all

souls are suited to it. Not all understand it or can reach it. Our Lord has

given us a guide, the Exercises of the Society. Therefore some continue to

follow this method, others adopt other forms of prayer: alius quidam sic,

alius vero sic; and since all are good, they must be left alone. The

movements of the Holy Spirit are many and different; different also are the

talents and understandings of men."

Lastly, we may quote the statement of Acquaviva, the General of the Order

who, more than any other, may be considered the official spokesman of the

matured Society. He writes:

"Religious who frequently practice meditation, and who, by long experience,

have acquired facility in prayer, have no need that there should be

assigned to them either fixed matter on which to meditate, or any special

method.

The Spirit of the Lord moves on its course with very loose reins

(laxissimis habenis). To enlighten souls, and to draw them closely to it,

it has methods without number. Hence, let us not confine it within any

boundary, let us keep it to no fixed groove. Let us bear in mind the holy

and wise counsel of Fr. Nadal of happy memory: 'It is for us to follow our

Divine Instructor, not to go before him.'"

At the same time, Acquaviva lets us plainly see what an important place he

considers prayer to hold in the life and work of the Society of Jesus. With

it as with every other religious Order it is a first essential; if the

Society has been relieved from the chanting of the daily office, it has by

no means been relieved of the practice of daily prayer. If, he writes,

there is one thing more certain than another

"It is that true and perfect contemplation is more powerful and efficacious

than any other method of prayer to break the pride of man and to extirpate

it, to rouse the indolent to obey their superiors and the lukewarm to labor

with greater zeal for the salvation of souls."

This last remark brings us back to what has already been said. However far

St. Ignatius may encourage his disciples to advance in prayer, even to the

farthest heights of mysticism, nevertheless prayer to him, like all things

else, is a means and not an end. Jesuits are not contemplatives. Many

writers on the spiritual life have risen up among them; many have written

specifically on prayer; probably the largest volume that has ever been

elaborated upon it is by one of them, Alvarez de Paz. St. Francis Borgia,

even when loaded with the burden of the Generalship, could find time, and

could set an example to his subjects, of long hours of prayer, sometimes as

much as ten hours a day. Nevertheless even he had a practical end in view.

If he could be so absorbed in contemplation, he could at the same time

deserve the reputation of being the one who, more than any other, extended

the foreign missions of the Order. So it is with the rest. They are

familiar with the purgative, the illuminative, the contemplative ways.

Saints of prayer may seek their counsel, witness St. Theresa, St. Francis

de Sales, St. Margaret Mary. But always they have in mind the further end,

the perfection and use of the instrument for the greater glory of God and

the greater good of men. If in any way the prayer of the Society of Jesus

differs from any other, it is simply in this, subordination of its practice

to what it conceives to be the greater end in view Says Gagliardi:

"Our prayer is essentially an active prayer, practical, applied to the

acquisition of virtue. In a certain sense it is Martha more than Mary; or

rather it is contemplation made efficacious, that through it a man may grow

in spiritual strength. It is active in so far as it stimulates a man to

acquire virtues, not only by asking for them but by encouraging him to

their practice."

St. Ignatius himself gives the spirit of this interpretation in his

constantly repeated phrase, "ut aliquem fructum capiam," "that I may reap

some fruit"; and in proof of the fact that the same has persisted through

all the Society's history, we may quote one of the most modern writers on

prayer, de Maumigny. This writer does not hesitate to ally himself with St.

Theresa, St. John of the Cross, Louis of Granada, and others. He is bold in

inculcating the principle that every soul must pray, under the guidance of

the Holy Spirit, according to the method which it finds most suited to its

nature. There is no degree of contemplation of union which he does not

know, and towards which, given due safeguards, he is not ready to guide the

soul of prayer. Still he comes back to the same standard and measure; that

prayer as understood by the Society of Jesus is that which renders the man

of prayer a more perfect instrument in the hands of God, and according to

this end he would have it regulated both in quantity and in degree.

[ Jesuit treasury - collected and edited by Hedwig Lewis SJ ]