(bell tolling)
- Welcome to our Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart,
the spiritual heart of our Georgetown University community.
My name is Father Mark Bosco the vice president
for Mission and Ministry and on behalf of the University
and President DeGioia, I wish to thank you for joining
us for today's Dahlgren Chapel Sacred Lecture Series.
Today we're honored to have Father John O'Malley
of the Society of Jesus speak to us
about the new spirituality of the Saint Ignatius.
Father O'Malley is no stranger to our community
as he has served as university professor
in the theology department since his arrival in 2006.
As you might know the Dahlgren Sacred Lecture Series
was inaugurated in the fall of 2014
after the completion of the renovations
of this beautiful chapel as a way to celebrate the chapel
as a space for our ongoing engagement with matters
of faith and spiritual companionship.
The Sacred Lectures continue a long tradition
practiced by the early Jesuits.
Saint Ignatius and his companions offered lectures
outside the context of Mass and Liturgy
with the intent to inform and edify those
seeking to grow in faith, hope and love.
Their lectures often dealt with scripture,
but also engaged issues of the moral life,
prayer, the life of Jesus and the challenges
of every day life.
Meant to be accessible to a wider audience,
these lectures were a staple of early Jesuit pastoral
practice in our schools.
In that spirit and style then, we've adapted this tradition
to meet the needs of our current moment
seeking out distinguished speakers
engaged with a range of topics related to spirituality,
social justice and the Jesuit intellectual
and artistic tradition.
Our guests have included the Catholic novelist
Alice McDermott, Father David Hollenbach
from our own Berkley Center for Religion,
Peace & World Affairs, the famed Czech philosopher
Father Tomas Halík, Sister Simone Campbell
of the Network for Catholic Social Justice.
And as many of you are aware, our dear beloved friend,
Father Howard Gray, whose death this past spring
still brings so many of us such sorrow.
This afternoon we are grateful to have this opportunity
to welcome John O'Malley back to the Sacred Lecture.
Father O'Malley is a renown author, professor
and historian of early modern Europe
with special focus on the Catholic Church
during the Italian Renaissance.
Father O'Malley's attention turned to both
the study of religious culture of the Jesuits
and the historical impact of the recent councils
of the church, Trent, Vatican I and Vatican II.
His groundbreaking work on the Society of Jesus,
the First Jesuits, published in 1993 has been
translated into numerous languages
and is a formative text of Jesuit training today.
I think if you meet a Jesuit, they've all read
the First Jesuits as part of their training.
Indeed Father O'Malley has been instrumental
in nourishing what we might call the field
of Jesuit studies in academia.
Working as a friend and mentor, a colleague and an editor,
and really an inspiration for other academics
who now write and research on the cultural
and spiritual history of the Society.
Since Father O'Malley's arrival in Georgetown
some 13 years ago, he has published four major books.
Three of them with Harvard University Press.
I think he has go the page proofs for another book
on his desk now, amazing.
The winner of many national and international awards
for his scholarship, Father O'Malley is a wonderful
presence here on our campus.
Teaching, giving talks, and celebrating the Eucharist
for the Georgetown community.
John, we wanna thank you for honoring us
with your presence today and sharing these reflections.
And now ladies and gentlemen please help me join
in welcoming Father O'Malley to the pulpit.
(audience applauding)
- I hope you applaud as vigorously at the end
as you have at the beginning.
(audience laughing)
The new spirituality of Saint Ignatius.
I begin by reminding us of a basic fact,
Ignatius was a Christian.
That means that his spirituality is new
only in so far as any genuinely Christian
spirituality can be new.
The spirituality may have a new emphasis,
and open up new vistas not clear before.
But it is based on the old spirituality
of the New Testament which means that the spirituality
of Saint Ignatius draws its inspiration
from the rich tradition of the church.
Only in a qualified way therefore,
can it be called new or even the spirituality
of Saint Ignatius.
There can be no doubt, however, that Ignatius,
often in partnership with others,
created an ideal of the Christian life
that was unconventional for its age.
Even more important, he created an ideal
that for us today is still fresh and energizing.
An ideal that gives us focus amidst
the clutter and confusion
that swirl around us,
that gives us focus amidst the frustrations,
disappointments and sadness that often mark our lives.
It is a great gift.
And we are gathered in Dahlgren Chapel
this afternoon to give thanks for it,
and to deepen our appreciation of it.
I propose that we do so under three headings
corresponding to the three literary monuments
Ignatius left behind, the Spiritual Exercises,
the Jesuit Constitutions and his correspondence.
A review of these writings will reveal, I hope,
a least a few of the major components
of the spiritual legacy of Saint Ignatius
and inspire us to strive, with the help of God's grace
for an ever deeper appropriation of it.
The Spiritual Exercises.
The first thing that needs to be said about the Exercises
is that there was up to that time,
nothing like them in the whole history
of Christian spiritual literature.
Until the Exercises, the corpus of that literature
consisted in the lives and legends
of the saints, reports of mystic visions,
collections of spiritual aphorisms as in the imitation
of Christ and by the early 16th century,
a few books expounding theories of the spiritual life,
such as Erasmus's Handbook of the Christian Soldier.
There was no book that provided a practical program,
flexible yet systematic, for deepening one's
personal relationship with God.
No book that took a person by the hand
and said, if you want to lead a more meaningful
and love filled life, here's a program that might do that
by helping you get in touch with yourself
and in deeper touch with God.
That was the achievement of the Exercises
and that was brand new.
What is a classic?
It is a work with four qualities.
First, it creates a new genre
or raises an established genre to a new level.
The Exercises created a new genre.
Second, it embodies and is perfectly in touch
with the culture in which it was created.
The exercises in the Exercises were drawn from late
medieval practices of piety and reflected that piety.
Third, the work even so, speaks meaningfully
to subsequent cultures.
We today find the Exercises just as helpful
and meaningful as did the first generation.
Fourth, that means that the work is subject,
within certain limits, to new insights,
new adaptations, and new interpretations
all the while remaining faithful to the original text.
Our personal experience testifies to how well
the Exercises have been adapted to respond
to our situation today.
When we say therefore, that the Exercises are a classic,
we are not mouthing a platitude,
but giving it its just place in the history
of Christian literature.
Important though recognizing the originality
of the Exercises is, it is extrinsic to the book.
If we take a look inside, what do we find?
I think the word that best
answers the question is interiority.
The Exercises are about the quality of our soul.
They make clear for us that genuine religion
consists in more than upholding certain dogmas
and performing certain rituals
or even avoiding evil and doing good.
They make clear, therefore, that being genuinely religious,
that is being genuinely spiritual,
is about more than what is conveyed by the standard
definition of religion as creed, code and cult.
Religion, in its most genuine form,
is about relationships.
It is about a heartfelt relationship with God
and about concern for others that is more than dutiful.
It's a compassionate concern.
It is compassionate in that it feels with the other.
Which is the root meaning of the word compassion.
It adopts as its own the feelings of weakness, need
and vulnerability that afflict one's neighbor.
The Good Samaritan we recall, was moved with compassion.
But the exercises do more than merely
teach us that lesson.
They take us into our own souls so that the Lord,
the Good Shepherd Par Excellence can enter
and make our souls over in his own compassionate
image and likeness.
The makeover is a result of dialogue.
The Exercises abound in dialogue.
Virtually every Exercises ends with a dialogue
usually called a colloquy.
We speak to the Lord and listen to him.
We speak to the Virgin Mary and we listen to her.
We speak to the persons we encounter in meditation
on episodes in the life of Christ with Saint Joseph,
with the woman caught in adultery,
with the two thieves crucified with Jesus.
Indeed, we stand with the soldiers under the cross.
We are there when they crucified the Lord.
We are there when they pierced him in the side
and we are there when they laid him in the tomb.
Crucially important, we engage in dialogue
with the person who accompanies us in the exercises,
the person traditionally called the director.
The incorporation of a director into a process
that is the exercises is one of their novel
and most characteristic features.
Of course, seeking spiritual guidance from a wiser,
and more experienced person,
is older than Christianity itself.
But the exercises conferred upon that practice,
a newly integral role in the quest for self understanding
and in the quest to satisfy our desire for God.
Largely due to the exercises, spiritual direction
became a newly distinct ministry in the church.
Distinct from the kind of guidance generally offered
in the sacrament of penance.
It is distinguished from that guidance
because its central concern is to help us decode
what is going on inside us.
To help us understand and deal
with the movements of our soul,
our attractions and repulsions,
our sweet moods and our sour,
our exaltation and desolation,
our moments of serenity and our moments
of inner turmoil.
That is to say it is about the discernment of spirits.
Ignatius certainly did not invent such discernment.
It was discussed in spiritual books
at least since the early 15th century.
What Ignatius did that was new was clarify
discernment's process, describe more closely
how it operated and thereby show how it was the true mode
of Christian decision making.
It was a mode to make us more sensitive to the voice
of the Holy Spirit.
I find the tenderness of the exercises,
one of the most striking characteristics.
By tender, I mean the understanding and the compassion
the exercises manifest toward the spiritual condition
of persons undertaking them.
The first week, that program for a searching review
of one's life seems especially apt
for persons tiptoeing into a deeper interior life.
Of course we are all tiptoeing.
The weeks that follow assume the purification
of the first week and now propose the ideal
of a new life, more closely conformed
to the life, death and resurrection of Christ.
This is an ideal none of us can ever fully attain.
But the ideal in and of itself draws us out
of our obsessive self concern
and focuses us on God and on the good of others.
It draws us out of ourselves to make our lives
lived more fully out of love.
We are now ready therefore, for the final exercises
of the retreat.
The contemplation on obtaining the love of God.
In it, Saint Ignatius presents us with a series
of considerations, each of which opens for us
new vistas of how God tries to make his unconditional love
manifest and effective in our lives.
New vistas of how God tries to bathe us in love.
New vistas of how as the saints always say,
in the last analysis, all is love, all is grace.
In response with that reality all we can say
is the prayer Ignatius places on our lips.
Give me only thy love and thy grace,
these are enough for me.
The Constitutions.
Much much more could be said about the Exercises,
but we need to move along to the Constitutions.
As with the Exercises, the first thing to be said
about them is that there was nothing like them
in the annals or religious orders up to that time.
The correlative documents of those orders
were collections of regulations for life
in the community and for the other aspect
of the member's behavior.
The Jesuit Constitutions contain similar regulations.
In fact, they contain a great number of them.
But the Constitutions were the polar opposite
of a grocery list of rules and regulations.
Unlike similar documents the Constitutions
have a formal organization into 10 parts
that resulted in a coherent design
that reflects a coherent vision.
To put it simply, the Constitutions are a document
with beginning, middle and end.
They are also a document concerned with goals, ideals
and motivation rather than with the tales
of religious observance.
A simple comparison will suggest, I hope,
the newness of what Ignatius, assisted by his brilliant
secretary Juan Alfonso de Polanco achieved.
The Constitutions that Saint Teresa of Avila
drew up in 1567 for her nuns opened with the words
Matins are to be said before nine o'clock.
The Jesuit Constitutions begin:
Although what helps us most in achieving the goals
the Society sets before us is the law of charity and love
that the Holy Spirit imprints and engraves on our hearts,
constitutions are none the less necessary.
The Constitutions gave form and meaning to its stipulations
by encasing them in a spiritual framework.
The framework imbued the stipulations with the coherence
that resulted in a way of proceeding.
That resulted in a style, in a mode.
The resulting mode was complex.
But Jeronimo Nadal, Ignatius's roving agent in the field,
captured the essence of it with the triad
(speaking in foreign language).
(speaking in foreign language) with the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit.
(speaking in foreign language)
From the heart, sincerely and genuinely.
And (speaking in foreign language) for the good of others.
Therefore for the Jesuits,
how they did what they did was just as important
as what they did.
It comes as no surprise therefore,
that the Constitutions beautifully reveal
aspects of the spirituality of Saint Ignatius
is a mature years that are absent or only implicit
in the Exercises.
This means that there can be no adequate discussion
of Ignatian spirituality without taking them into account.
This means that although of course certain provisions
of the Constitutions apply specifically to Jesuits,
the spiritual message applies to all who seek
to deepen their spiritual lives.
Ignatian spirituality does not derive therefore,
exclusively from the Exercises.
It derives from the full corpus of Ignatius's legacy
to us which includes, therefore, the Constitutions.
As Howard Gray wrote many years ago,
the constitutions are an expression of spiritual wisdom.
They assume for instance that individual Jesuits
have different spiritual needs
and that what is helpful for a novice for instance,
can be an obstacle for more mature Jesuits.
One size does not fit all.
Believe it or not, this was brand new for such documents.
For that reason, among others, the Constitutions
are filled with escape clauses.
We should proceed thus, it says.
And then almost invariably qualifies it
with unless under the circumstances
something seems better.
(audience laughing)
As the British historian John Bossy said about Ignatius,
"Never in the history of religious life,
"has a superior more often told his subjects
"to forget what he said, and do what they think best."
(audience laughing)
The developmental principle determines the very structure
of the Constitutions, according to which,
the parts follow the Jesuit from entrance
into the Society through to commissioning
a mature Jesuit for ministry.
Consummate with that principle was the principle
that in the Society there were no bodily penances
that were imposed on members.
In consultation with one's spiritual director,
the Jesuit was to decide what might help him
in his spiritual life.
This might not seem like a big deal today,
but it was a big deal in the aesthetical tradition
up to that time.
Indeed, the received wisdom was that the greater
one punished one's body, the more secure
the path to sanctity.
The golden legend that lives of the saints
that Ignatius read on his sickbed in Loyola
when he was recovering from the wounds he received
in the Battle of Pamplona
and that helped lead to his conversion,
was filled with stories of the austerities of the saints.
Ignatius was inspired by those stories
and tried to imitate them,
but they did not work.
They did not lead him to sanctity
but to the brink of suicide.
He learned the lesson and applied it to others.
The Constitutions are unique among such documents
and religious orders in not imposing penitential practices.
But they also break new ground
by insisting that, quotation,
"While excessive concern for one's health
"is to be reprehended, a moderate care
"to preserve our health and strength is praiseworthy
"and should be had by all."
Just as novel, the saint expected every major Jesuit
community to have a house in the country, a villa.
A place where the members might go on a regular basis
for rest and relaxation.
No founder of religious order before,
ever made such a provision.
(audience laughing)
Thanks be to God.
(audience laughing)
The developmental principle reached a kind of climax
in part nine which deals with the superior general
of the Society.
Part nine begins by stipulating the qualities
desirable in the person elected to that office.
They are therefore, the qualities of the ideal Jesuit,
and I think we can say, the qualities
of an ideal Christian.
The general must be united with God in prayer,
be filled with love for all his subjects,
not be given to acting on impulse.
He must combine care for the common good with gentleness
in dealing with the foibles and follies of others.
These qualities are, of course, important.
But they are also what we might expect.
There is however, another that is not something
we might expect, it is something that is new, original
and unique in such documents.
That quality is magnanimity, greatness of soul.
I quote,
"Greatness of soul and courage
"are likewise highly necessary for him
"who must bear the weakness of many,
"but at the same time initiate great undertakings
"in the service of God our Lord.
"He must persevere in them with constancy when called for,
"even though contradictions might come
"from persons of high rank and power.
"He should be ready to receive death itself if necessary
"for the good of the Society in the service of Jesus Christ
"our God and Lord."
The passage is intriguing therefore
for being unique among such documents.
What most amazes me about it, is that it does not
derive from the Bible or other Christian texts,
but is a paraphrase of a passage from a work by Cicero,
the pagan Roman statesman.
It's taken Cicero's (speaking in foreign language),
a title usually translated: On Duties.
But the in terms of Cicero's message,
it should be translated: On Our Responsibility
for the Common Good.
Inserted as it is in the Constitutions,
it implicitly requires a superior general
and therefore you and me, to live our Christian lives
in service to the common good
and to do so unflinchingly no matter
what the challenges may be.
Could any message be more pertinent to the situation
we face in our church and in our political system today?
The passage from Cicero is a peculiar
in the Constitutions that betrays one
of its most important features that is not explicit,
but that subtly pervades the whole document.
If Ignatius, probably under Polanco's influence,
could quote a pagan in relationship
to a Christian enterprise, he must have had
an understanding of that pagan literature and culture
that were on some level compatible with Christian.
To put it in more general terms,
he must have believed that somehow nature
was compatible with grace,
that human culture was compatible
with Christian spirituality.
In still other terms, he must have had a more Thomistic
framework of interpretation
of the spiritual life than Augustinian.
All is grace, all is love.
Put in still other terms, he must have had a notably
world friendly spirituality.
Such a world friendliness was hardly new in Christianity,
but this was the first time it found expression
in the constitutions or rule of a religious order.
The world friendliness becomes more obvious
in Ignatius's correspondence.
But I think Nadal expressed it well
when he said to the members of the Society,
"The world is our house.
"The world is our home."
He meant in the first place, the Jesuits
were expected to go everywhere in the world.
But the expression bears a broader meaning
for Ignatian spirituality.
In summary, the Jesuit Constitutions broke new ground
in the rationalized structure of their organization;
in the psychological undergirding of their development
from part to part;
in their attention to motivation and general principles;
in their insistence in general and in particular
on flexible interpretation of their prescriptions.
And having an implicit but detectable
theological foundation and then conveying a sense
of overall purpose and direction.
They went somewhere.
They had beginning, middle and end.
The Correspondence.
Ignatius of Loyola had by far the largest correspondence
of any 16th century figure.
Larger than Luther's, larger than Calvin's,
larger than Henry VIII's, even larger than Erasmus.
Ignatius's correspondence of over 7,000 letters
fills 12 volumes in the (speaking in foreign language)
of which each volume
is five or 600 pages in length.
As with the spiritual exercises and the Constitutions,
the first thing to be said about Ignatius's correspondence
is that there's nothing quite like it
in the history of religious life in the church.
In terms of both quantity and content, it is new.
It evinces some of the same features as the Constitutions
such as trust and the good sense
and good intentions of Jesuits in the trenches
and trust in their ability to make good decisions.
His two best known letters to young Jesuits
studying at Coimbra, the letters
about their responsibilities
and the other to the whole Society about obedience,
repeat the same theme that bodily penances are not
what the spirituality of the society is all about.
They at the same time insist that the mortification
expected of a Jesuit lies in readiness to be sent
where he is told, to behave in ways appropriate
to the Society and willingly and graciously
to accept the decisions of his superiors
especially the superior general.
As we might expect from the correspondence of a busy man,
who at the last years of his life was in charge
of an international organization of some thousand members
working in every country in Western Europe,
and already in Brazil, India, Japan and elsewhere,
many of the letters deal with mundane matters
and have no more long term significance than an email
saying remember to pick up some milk on your way home.
(audience laughing)
Even on such pages, however, the expression
the good of souls almost inevitably appears.
That expression is indeed the like motif
of the entire corpus of those thousands of letters.
It is both the electric impulse that energizes them
and the great reason for the Society of Jesus existence
that renders them coherent among themselves.
One of the most surprising features of the letters,
after about 1550, is how many are to potential benefactors
begging for money.
Let's face it, the letters reveal Ignatius as a shrewd
and tireless fund raiser.
There's a new job description for the founder
of a religious order.
Ignatius's fund raising should give comfort
to perhaps some of you in the chapel this afternoon.
(audience laughing)
But it raises a question.
What was going on?
The answer is simple.
The Jesuits had begun to found and staff schools.
Schools then and now are in constant need of money.
And in the early years of the Society of Jesus,
the major task for raising that money fell to Ignatius.
No saint before him ever had to be what he was,
a one man advancement office.
(audience laughing)
But this raises the further question,
why did he so enthusiastically promote the schools?
The answer again is simple, because he saw in them
an institution that could benefit church and society
on a long range basis.
He accepted the premise that Renaissance humanists,
such as Erasmus, that true education was student centered.
That it's first concern was the wellbeing of the student.
Physical, intellectual, moral and especially spiritual.
Although Ignatius did not use the expression himself,
(speaking in foreign language) captures his conviction.
In his fund raising letters for the schools,
Ignatius promoted them on the grounds they would benefit
the town or city.
The expression recurs again and again
as a reason for the schools (speaking in foreign language).
They are for the good of the city.
Really?
That is a rather secular reason, is it not?
Well it is secular only if you draw an unbridgeable line
between secular and Christian culture,
but as we have seen in the Constitutions
Ignatius does not draw that line.
In any case, the schools gave Ignatian spirituality
a civic character that led to a broadening
of what we call Ignatian spirituality
by giving it a concern for this world as such.
A concern for what we used to call the temporal order.
This is new.
Although saints and religious orders have certainly
contributed to the common good of the temporal order,
no saint or no religious order up to that time,
did it in a systematic and programmatic way before.
It was new.
In 1550 Ignatius wrote that among other aims
the Society of Jesus was founded to pursue the common good.
That was new.
So what?
Here is the so what.
In the first place, knowing this aspect
of Ignatian spirituality gives those of us associated
with the university whose foundations are Jesuit,
a grounding and a sense of location.
Secondly, we see that Ignatian spirituality
has an in-built concern not only for one's relationship
with God, not only for the spiritual and physical
wellbeing of one's neighbor, which all Christian
spiritualties must have, but as well a broader dimension
that looks beyond individuals to the good
of society at large.
Any pope might have written the encyclical
(speaking in foreign language) on care for our common home.
But it was in fact, written by Pope Francis, a Jesuit pope.
Mention of Pope Francis brings us to the present.
Where is the new spirituality of Saint Ignatius today?
It is new again.
In the many centuries that have intervened
between Ignatius's day and our own,
it was never entirely lost, but it got compromised
in a number of ways, beginning even
while Ignatius was alive.
It had to enter a religious culture
that was not ready for it and that therefore shaped it
according to its own principles and presuppositions.
Ignatian spirituality got even more compromised
in the 19th century because the suppression
of the Society of Jesus in 1773,
broke the continuity of the tradition
and was difficult for the Jesuits at that time to recover.
However, towards the end of the 19th century,
a group of Spanish Jesuits began editing and publishing
all the documents produced by Ignatius and his companions.
This enterprise made it possible to recover
important but forgotten elements of the tradition.
Scholars in Europe, especially in France,
went to work.
By the middle of the last century so did scholars
in the United States, which soon became
the most important center, not only for expounding
the theory of Ignatian spirituality,
but also for updating it and giving it practical form.
Among the persons engaged in that project,
few were more important than Father Howard Gray
whom so many of us had the privilege of knowing
while he was here at Georgetown.
He gave several Sacred Lectures her in Dahlgren Chapel.
The most recent was just a few months ago.
I like to think that he is with us
in the chapel this afternoon.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
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