On this Sunday, the feast of Saint Ignatius Loyola, I write this from beautiful Villa Marquette, the Chicago-Detroit Province’s villa in northern Michigan. It is a tranquil setting, on a lake, where Jesuits have come for generations to commemorate the feast of the Order’s founder and to take time from their busy apostolic lives to recreate with one another.
Ignatian spirituality, perhaps too easily, lends itself to buzzwords that people pick adopt. An “MFO” is shorthand for “Man for Others.” AMDG, the acronym for Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, easily becomes a good luck charm rather than a ratification that the work that has been completed has actually been done to give God greater honor and glory.
As I have grown in the Society of Jesus, I have come again and again to the great insight contained in the “Principle and Foundation” of the Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius begins by stating that every human life has a purpose, an end, “The human person is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord and, by doing so, to save his soul.” He then goes on to say that the created order – all of creation – is here to help us in achieving this goal. The created order isn’t bad or evil; rather, it is here to help us be who we are called upon and invited to be. I have been blogging for almost seven years. I struggle often with what kind of blog I run: should it be more academic, more spiritual, more pastoral, more….? I have opted, consequently, to treat my blog as an online journal giving any who are interested a sense of my own journey. If my struggles and joys, faith and observations are helpful to people, then I think that I am using the internet to help people.
The litmus, test, has been nothing more than trying to be in keeping with the “Principle and Foundation” – does my writing help people to be more loving, more thoughtful, more reverential, or even more amused, by faith or does it hinder people, breeding hatred, mistrust, and animosity? Does my writing and blogging help to build the community of God or does it tear it apart?
To be honest, I think that Saint Ignatius would be absolutely disgusted with the vitriol and hatred spewed by so many so-called Catholic bloggers. Just recently, I have been attacked by an "orthodox" Catholic who launched a barrage of absolutely scandalous attacks against me using multiple voices fake ID’s. I do not regret calling her out as a charlatan, especially because she tries to use Saint Ignatius and other Jesuits to advance her own self-righteous agenda while maliciously and satanically tearing at others. Other “Catholic” bloggers who seem only too glad to relish in the misfortune of others – poking fun at John Corapi – or labeling things as liberation theology and implying that they are heterodox are equally scandalous.
Louis Dupré, the eminent Catholic philosopher and theologian, offers this insight:
To avoid the problems of modern culture, believers tend to compartmentalize their worldview. Facing social, psychological, and scientific developments that they feel unable to integrate with their faith, they disconnect their unexamined religious beliefs from the rest of their convictions, as and island of truth isolated from the mainland of modern culture. (Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection, 32)
All of us, I think, can find in Saint Ignatius a model of the language of grace: he saw and experienced God’s created presence in all things, a God who holds and sustains all of creation as a musician hold and sustains a musical note. This insight should give us the courage to break out of our secure ghettos and to enter into the whole symphony of creation with a sense of wonder and awe at the power of God. Rather than thinking of the Catholic Church as the final bastion of sanctity (clearly it is not) against a wicked world, we should see it and its sacramental life as the privileged point from which we may go forth, rejoicing, to bring to all the good news of God’s saving activity in the world. Marked by this mission, we may see all of creation in its goodness and live our lives always for the Greater Honor and Glory of God.
Be assured of my prayers this day as we commemorate the Feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola!
4 comments:
Happy Feastday! Please keep blogging, just as you are, it's interesting and edifying and often funny. God bless you for another year of blogging and formation.
Thank you Ryan for sharing your Journey on your blog (which I have been following and enjoying for some time now), and a happy St.Ignatius Day!
Having grown up between and educated by Jesuits, your open Journal with its mix of both more serious academic as well as mundane observations on the world (and your path in it) as you see it around you unfold, often brings back memories of other sharp minded Jesuits I had the pleasure of growing up with.
As much as this St. Ignatius day is a day of celebration, it is as you clearly mention also a day of serious reflection, of discernment, but also of Humility. If one is to understand by the (Call to) Discernment, the faculty of the human mind to distinguish between good and evil - in order to act "with the Grace of God" ( or for the secular humanists among us , 'for the greater good of humanity'), then one cannot not be humbled by both the great positive force the Church and the mosaic of Individuals it is composed of have had and still do bring to this world, but also by the amount of progress the Church still needs to make in order to live by the Words it and its Members preaches.
As I started preparing our more secular St Ignatius celebrations in the kitchen at home (one of my sons is called Ignatius - name day celebration), I heard from an adjacent room a documentary on a French speaking Belgian tv channel on the what it refers to as guilt of the Church, for what some would call a systematic lack of discernment to protect the weakest in our society, our children ( http://www.rtbf.be/laune/revoir/detail_coupables-indulgences?uid=74578096668&idshedule=abaa63989d1c5c063fc22fc581d1dec2&catchupId=10-TCQAD827-000-PR-1&serieId= ).
Contrary to the situation in Europe, a lot of progress seems to have been made in the US on this issue. One of the (many) issues I will be praying to St. Ignatius for tonight is, besides healing the wounds of all victims of evil (both inside and outside the Church), that he blesses all those confronted with or could have a positive influence on this issue with greater Discernment - not in first instance for the good of the Church, but first and foremost for the greater good of past and future Humanity.
Keep up the good work ,
Giani
Happy Feast Day! Keep up the great work!
Happy feast day, Ryan! I wished this to fellow academics from other Jesuit universities today. (Loyola of Maryland and Holy Cross) We are attending a workshop on higher ed leadership.
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