Contrasting the Jesuits with the older, more stable religious orders, Jerónimo Nadal, one of the early companions of St Ignatius, coined the phrase that forms the title for this edition of The Way: ‘The world is our house.’ No one joining this upstart congregation should expect to stay in one place, or even simply to move around within his homeland. Ignatius wanted men to go wherever the need was greatest, ‘even to the Indies’, and who would move on when a still greater need appeared elsewhere. Since the sixteenth century, many societies and cultures have become much more mobile and fluid, and today it is not only Jesuits who live in expectation of perhaps frequent moves.
Oscar Momanyi, ‘Finding God in South Sudan and the United States of America’, 7–26
Jerónimo Nadal, an early member of the Society of Jesus, said of the Jesuits ‘the world is our house’. Still today, many Jesuits travel between cultures, looking to Ignatian spirituality for tools to help them adjust and adapt. Oscar Momanyi compares insights gleaned from his experience of two very different cultures, those of South Sudan and of the United States of America.
Magdalena Randal, ‘Spirit Painting’, 27–31
It is said that as church attendance has waned in recent decades, for many people art has filled the space formerly occupied by religion, that space where the most important matters in life can be contemplated. Yet art and religion are themselves closely involved, and Magdalena Randal here describes her own experience of encountering God’s Spirit through paintings.
Helen Orchard, ‘Reaching Equipoise: The Relationship between Indifference and Discernment in the Spiritual Exercises’, 33–44
According to Helen Orchard the word indifference can conjure up ‘connotations of cool disengagement or even boredom’. Yet, as used in St Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, it implies rather a prerequisite for that passionate search for God’s will which is the
Brian Purfield, ‘Return to Galilee’, 45–51
After the discovery of the empty tomb, the disciples were told only that they must go to Galilee. Brian Purfield believes that this is an instruction relevant to Christians today, because they are in the same place as the disciples: ‘after the resurrection but before the return, entrusted with a message that is wonderful, but the import of which we do not quite understand.’
Iona Reid-Dalglish, ‘The Risen Christ the Consoler’, 51–56
In the second of our Easter-related articles shared from the British Jesuits’ online journal, Thinking Faith, Iona Reid-Dalglish considers the ways in which the risen Christ can be met in the midst of everyday living. For her, it is this encounter alone that enables contemporary Christians to continue to live lives of discipleship.
Patrick Goujon, ‘A Pedagogy of Consolation’, 57–71
In recent decades, the spirituality of St Ignatius of Loyola has found rather different expressions in English-, Spanish- and French-speaking milieu. In a translation from his recent book Les conseils de l‘Ésprit. Lire les lettres d’Ignace de Loyola, Patrick Goujon explores the kind of advice Ignatius gave to those seeking to make decisions through a close reading of one of his letters.
Teresa White, ‘Walking’, 73–83
Walking has become, over the last few years, the physical exercise of choice, at least for those who avoid anything more vigorous. It has also been, as Teresa White demonstrates here, a spiritual practice for centuries, in forms as diverse as treading the contemplative path of a labyrinth to joining the crowds on a long-distance pilgrimage.
Nancy Enright, ‘Hopkins, Nature and Laudato si’’, 85–92
Nancy Enright’s article introduces a new strand of Way articles, Our Common Home, for writing that explores the Christian duty to care for our environment. She offers a reading of the nature poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins in the light of Pope Francis’s ecological encyclical of 2015, Laudato si’.
Kirsty Clarke, ‘Words and Silence: On Reading Revelations of Divine Love and The Cloud of Unknowing’, 93–109
Mainstream Christianity, both ancient and modern, has consistently privileged the word over its binary opposite, silence.’ From this starting-point Kirsty Clarke considers two contrasting spiritual classics, the Revelations of Divine Love of Julian of No