Ignatian Spirituality #2

Part II: “16 Things for which I am Grateful to St. Ignatius” by Dennis Hamm, SJ

Here is the second bite-sized installment from Dennis’ text for his homily on the feast of Ignatius:

3. Thank you, Ignatius, for providing a positive approach to evil in the world.

Rather than operate out of anger or fear and scapegoating other people as sources of evil, Ignatius challenges us to face up to our own sinfulness and identify with those who are suffering evil, and then to help by participating in the teaching and healing ministries of Jesus. Rather than urging flight from the world, he taught us to face the world lovingly and to discern what in our culture to affirm, and what in our culture to resist.

4. Thank you, Ignatius, for loving creation along with its Creator.

Someone actually wrote in a book that Ignatius had a redemption theology but neglected creation theology! That writer must never have made the Spiritual Exercises—or he quit before the final contemplation, which teaches us to see all creation as reflecting and mediating the nature and love of the Creator.

5. Thank you, Ignatius, for taking seriously lay spirituality and lay ministry.

Ignatius wrote the Spiritual. Exercises before he studied for the priesthood. And his first “retreatants”—his college buddies—were lay persons.  The inquisition considered him a “person of interest” because he was doing ministry as, well, “an undocumented worker.”