Four Reasons Ignatian Spirituality Matters Today
So who is this guy named Ignatius and what is the craze about him here at The Grace Lab? Good questions.
Before we unpack the work and legacy of this man named Ignatius of Loyola, let’s take a step back and recall what the purpose of The Grace Lab is. The Grace Lab is a space to find God’s grace in our days, to intentionally order our days with rhythms and rituals that draw us back into grace; the Grace Lab exists to practically empower and equip individuals and communities to order our days around the awareness that there is a God longing to encounter us with God’s grace. If there’s a scripture that illustrates the heart of the Grace Lab, it’s Jacob’s awestruck confession in Genesis 28:16, after God met him in a dream. Jacob, unexpecting the Lord to find him, proclaims in awe, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.” Jacob’s proclamation is a relatable confession of human life: God is with him — with us — and we often have no idea (“…and I did not know it). And it’s also a sacred invitation (“Surely the Lord is in this place…). God is in this day, in this place, in this moment – might we know it.
Enter Ignatius. Ignatius matters immensely in Christian tradition, but he especially matters for the work we do here at The Grace Lab, because his spirituality was grounded in helping Christians know that God meets them in their days – not just at church, not just in Bible Study, not just in prayer, but when we’re stuck in traffic, when we’re sleep-deprived and trying to be faithful to our calls in life, when we’re joyful, when we’re apathetic, when we’re suffering – God is in it all, Ignatius taught. This was the heart of Ignatius’ message. It was a message that struck me as a seminary student to the extent that four years later, I am leading retreats based on his spirituality.
So what exactly did he teach, and why does it matter? Let’s unpack this in four steps.
1. Finding God in All Things
This first point is a recap of everything I just said: Ignatius, and the Jesuit tradition that he formed, was famous for arguing that God can be found in all things. The traditional bifurcation – whether conscious or not – that we make between the sacred and the secular dissolves from the perspective of Ignatian spirituality. What this means in plain language: God cares about all of you. God cares about all aspects of your life, and God longs to meet you in each aspect. Every arena of our existence is enveloped in the grace of God, and this is great news for us. At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is an invitation – for, if God’s presence can be found in all things, in all days, in all activities, then by virtue of this truth, I am in all things, in all days, in all my activities, invited to encounter this God. God is in all things.
2. Contemplatives in Action
This spills over into number two. If all of my activities are inherently sacred, or at least have the potential to be so, then I am invited to approach all of my activities with a contemplative awareness. In the Christian spiritual tradition, we have monasteries, nunneries, and religious orders, which are often termed as belonging to the Contemplative Tradition. If you don’t belong to one of these orders, many would say, you belong to the Active Tradition. The Jesuits break the rules here and formed a new category, and they invite us all to join: what if we are all contemplatives in our own activities of our days? What if we are contemplatives in action; what if our activities of our day are done contemplatively? You can see the connection between point one and two.
3. Incarnational Spirituality
The third point I’m naming here might just be my favorite feature of the spirituality that Ignatius taught: it was incarnational. Here’s what he means. The Christian tradition believes that Jesus Christ lived on this earth in a real human body, living a real life, experiencing real things; the Incarnation was Christ wearing real skin, doing real human stuff. So what does this mean for us? It means that the sacred is found in the real stuff. It means that God is found in the real stuff. You can see how this, again, is an extension of point one and two – that God is found in all things – but Ignatius draws us to the Incarnation as sure proof that God meets us in the real things of our life, evidenced by the fact that God embodied real life. God gets it.
Okay, so you might be convinced by now that Ignatian spirituality matters, at least a little — but how do we wrap this all together and let it impact our days? How do we implement these powerful invitations of God’s constant presence in our lives? Ignatius has an answer. You may have heard of the prayer practice called the Examen. It was taught by Ignatius and it was intended to help us live into these three prior truths: that God is found in all things, inviting us to be contemplatives in action, on the grounds that the Incarnation was God existing in the real stuff. So how do we find God in the real stuff, and live contemplatively in our actions, and find God in everything? You practice the Examen.
4. The Ignatian Examen
The Examen is a brief prayerful review of your day, to backtrack and recall the ways that God’s grace met you, but you may have not realized in the moment. When I was younger, my family went to the beach every year and I was always struck by people who walked miles on the sand with metal detectors, sifting beneath the surface of the sand to find traces of gold (maybe? …to be honest I’m not entirely sure what they were sifting for) that weren’t immediately visible from the surface. The Examen, I like to tell people, is a Grace Detector of sorts. It’s a way of recalling our days prayerfully to sift for the graces beneath the surface. If you want more guidance on praying the Examen, check out our Daily Rituals Worksheet bundle, with guided Examen prompts for your days. The Examen is one of Ignatius’ greatest, and simplest, contributions to the Christian tradition, and it’s entirely adaptable. At its core is an invitation to slow down and review our days with God in mind: where did God meet me? Where might God long to meet me? Before we finish here, I want to share one of my favorite quotes about the Examen from a well-known Jesuit, Father James Martin. He famously says at his retreats, “I know what you’re going to tell me. You’re going to tell me you already lived through your day, so why do I have to recall it prayerfully? Yesterday was just hours ago! I remember it well!” To this he says, “Just you wait.”
And, if you ask me, he couldn’t be more right. Just you wait. Just you wait for the graces you’ll uncover when you slow down and sift for the ways God is meeting you. Just you wait.
There’s Ignatius for you in 1200 words. I hope I have you convinced by now, or at the very least, a little interested about this guy and what he’s gifted the Christian tradition — and our lives. He was insistent that our days were rich in God’s grace and that it was up to us be more mindful of this grace. To find rhythms and rituals and routines to encounter this grace more readily and to experiment with, modify, and adapt our practices as times change to receive this grace regularly: sort of like in a lab. Sort of like, say, a Grace Lab.
