Ignatius begins the Spiritual Exercises proper with a famous statement: ‘Humanity is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save its soul. And the other things on the face of the earth are created for humanity, that they may help it in pursuing the end for which it is created.’ (Exx 23.2-3) It follows that we have to deal with these creatures ‘rightly’: to use them as much as they help us attain our end, and to rid ourselves of them in so far as they hinder us. Commentators ancient and modern have been struck by the plainness of this statement: it does not mention Jesus Christ; it seems oddly cerebral. It might well help explain why people have often thought Ignatian spirituality irredeemably prosy, functional, even manipulative.‘Sometimes’, we read in an early Directory, ‘from just the consideration of the Foundation alone a whole soul is amended and reformed as it recollects itself and sticks at speculation on its end’. That comment can be read as confirming the critics’ worst suspicions; it can also be taken as a pointer towards something richer hidden in Ignatius’ text. The articles in this issue of The Way draw on various resources to expand our understanding of God’s creative presence.
Trileigh Tucker, ‘Ecology and the Spiritual Exercises’, 7–18
Creation awareness can greatly enhance the experience of the Spiritual Exercises, and similarly the Exercises offer to the ecological community some much needed spiritual wisdom. Trileigh Tucker shows how this can be so.
John English, ‘Dialoguing with the Dance of Creation’, 19–30
Astronomy, ecology and trinitarian theology can all enrich our sense of creation. Here, one of the most distinguished modern writers on the Spiritual Exercises explores how these new insights complement Ignatius' Principle and Foundation.
Antony Campbell, ‘Ignatius Loyola and God’s Unconditional Love’, 31–42
An exploration of the idea of God's love in the Spiritual Exercises, and the questions it raises.Why is Ignatius' language initially so dry? How can a transcendent being LOVE us? Can we love a God when faith in God's very existence is difficult? What of sin and evil?
Jerónimo Nadal, ‘Exercises for Heretics, Infidels and Sinners’, 43–50
A striking, even if not fully developed, example example of creation theology from Ignatius’ lifetime, exploring even then how the Exercises might nourish people thought to be outside the Church.
Peter Feldmeier, ‘Spirituality in Adulthood: Development and Fruition’, 51–64
An exploration of how old age can be serene, fruitful, and life-giving, drawing both on traditional spiritual resources and on Erikson's developmental psychology.
Gerald M. Fagin, ‘The Spiritual Exercises and a Spirituality for the Later Years’, 67–79
We make the Spiritual Exercises in different ways at different stages of our lives. Later in life our experience of the Exercises reflects quite specifically the changes we have gone through, and the call to generosity and surrender takes on new forms.
Vilma Seelaus, ‘Crisis and Transformation: Turning Over the Compost Heap’, 81–96
The changes that take place in a compost heap are a powerful image of how God works in our lives, as witnessed by a historical figure like Teresa, or in the contemporary call to global transformation.
David Coghlan, ‘Seeking God in All Things: Ignatian Spirituality as Action Research’, 97–108
How the Ignatian ideal of 'contemplation in action' converges strikingly with new methods of learning and research being developed in the social sciences.
Margaret Barker, ‘The Second Person’, 109–128
It is often thought that Christianity transformed a Judaism that believed strictly in one God only. Recent research suggests a more complex picture. Jesus and the early Christians were drawing on ideas of God as Father with a Second God who was his Son that go back to the Temple rituals before the Exile.