Reflections On Ignatian Spirituality: Contemplative-in-Action

Let me wax a lit­tle spir­i­tual here and share some­thing I wrote years ago when I was a Jesuit. This might sound bor­ing and reli­gious for oth­ers, so let me warn you ahead of time. This is just a snip­pet from a reflec­tion paper I made. If you want to add to it, or if you have your own reflec­tion, please feel free to add in the com­ments sec­tion below.

“The man/woman of the Spir­i­tual Exer­cises is by voca­tion a man/woman called to be a “contemplative-in-action”.

Ignatius urges those who fol­low his spir­i­tu­al­ity that there is a need for for­mal per­sonal prayer–this means hav­ing a prayer time, set­ting aside some time each day in order to pray. This is so that famil­iar­ity with God is fos­tered. Need for per­sonal prayer is exhorted in both the Spir­i­tual Exer­cises and the Con­sti­tu­tions of the Soci­ety of Jesus.

Inti­macy with Christ forges a union of prayer life with apos­tolic activ­ity. The two blends into one undi­vided whole, so that prayer strength­ens and guides our action while action in turn urges the per­son to pray. We pray as we work (we pray BY work­ing) and are invited to for­mal prayer in order to bring mean­ing to our work and so that we do not for­get the real rea­son of our labor: ad majorem Dei glo­riam (for the greater glory of God).

The union of con­tem­pla­tion and activ­ity in Igna­t­ian Spir­i­tu­al­ity is very impor­tant. With­out this union, action becomes mere labor and drudgery with no mean­ing. And con­tem­pla­tion becomes “mere” prayer and accu­mu­la­tion of knowl­edge that is lip-service and even pharisaic.

Inte­gra­tion hap­pens when the indi­vid­ual do not just pray but becomes pray-er: an indi­vid­ual whose very life is his prayer to God; whose work, min­istry, apos­to­late is not sep­a­rate from his prayer life and whose very life is lived ad majorem Dei gloriam.

In Igna­t­ian Spir­i­tu­al­ity, con­tem­pla­tion is prayer; but more deeply, it is a whole atti­tude of dis­cern­ment, of what one author would call “a long lov­ing look at the real”. It is an atti­tude of look­ing at real­ity in a sen­si­tive man­ner in order to see God’s hand work­ing in the ordi­nary and the spe­cial. Con­tem­pla­tion infuses our work with mean­ing and direc­tion. Because we pray, we are able to find God in everything–in every word, in every deed, and in all events that hap­pen to us. When we take a long lov­ing look at the real, we see hope amidst suf­fer­ing, light amidst dark­ness, life amidst death.

In the end, we see God lov­ing us and hold­ing us in the palm of His hands.