Ignatian spirituality as ecclesial spirituality
A notable feature of contemporary spirituality is the distinction often made between spirituality and religion, between Jesus and the Church, between personal faith and institutional religion. At the same time, a major resource in contemporary spiritual direction is the spirituality of St Ignatius Loyola, who was very much a man of the Church, who submitted himself, along with his draft text of the Spiritual Exercises, to Church authority, and who included “Rules for Thinking and Feeling with the Church” (Sentire Cum Ecclesia) within the Exercises.
The paper explores this apparent disjunction. It sets out to test
the hypothesis that the Exercises are irreducibly ecclesial – that they
cannot be reduced to an instrument for personal spiritual growth if this
is taken to mean a spiritual life independent of the Church’s life. It
proceeds by a detailed textual analysis of the Exercises noting the
place of the Church and of ecclesial elements throughout the Exercises.
In particular, it examines four aspects of the text: its reliance on a
range of doctrinal presuppositions; explicit references to the Church
and ecclesial practices; the centrality of such references at key
moments of the Exercises, especially in the Election; and the place of
the “Rules for Thinking with the Church” within the Exercises. The paper
concludes that spiritual direction based on the Ignatian Exercises
needs to be seen as offering both a grounding in Christ and, as an
integral part of such grounding, formation for fuller integration into
the Church community.
Robin Koning SJ, lectures in systematic theology at Jesuit
Theological College in the United Faculty of Theology in the Melbourne
College of Divinity, is a spiritual director, and is National Ecclesial
Assistant for the Christian Life Community.
|
