Imagine being quite charismatic, and ambitious, interested only in using people and things to get your own way in a world that is turbulent and filled with conflicting values. You don’t even know or admit these things to yourself. Then something dreadful happens to you, you fall sick, and ignored by the world you sought to conquer for yourself. In those dark times you try to figure out what to do next, what would give you life. You withdraw into yourself and discover a strange thing. When you consider things of the world it gives you a passing pleasure but when you consider things of God you find that the pleasure lasts longer and is deeper. When you consider neither you find yourself tossed around, confused and moody.
You come slowly to a private understanding to try to follow what gives a lasting joy. You risk your life to that path. It is a hard and cruel path, sometimes filled with enormous consolations, and at other times just the opposite. But you persevere and discover your life is shaped by the way you respond to a goodness you call God and the powers of that good which touch you to your depths and calls you beyond yourself to a greater sense of delight in living. But you become also aware of another force on that path which you have appropriated and is woven deep in your psyche. It is destructive of human life.
You discover that what you call God gives you experiences that allow you to see the patterns of disorder in your life, but also so loves you even at the times you are selfish. You discover being selfish destroys only yourself and all you hold dear.
You commit yourself to the path of life and discover always being called beyond yourself to form ever deeper relationships with all of creation and with the creator. You discover a life and the adventure of spiritual intimacy. You find, and lose, yourself falling in love in ways that surprise and delight you. It shapes the way you see, and know, yourself, others and to God. You live your life as one who desires to transform the world into a community of love.
This has been the experience of St. Ignatius Loyola. Ignatian spirituality carries us on that same path.
You might also wish to visit:
- Sacred Space: We invite you to make a 'Sacred Space' in your day, and spend ten minutes, praying here and now, as you sit at your computer, with the help of on-screen guidance and scripture chosen specially every day.
- Pray as You Go – daily prayer for your MP3 player or cell phone.
- Ignatian spirituality is a way to pray, an approach to making decisions, a point of view about God, and a practical guide to everyday life.
- Xavier University in Cincinnati has online resources in Ignatian Spirituality.