What is Ignatian Spirituality? To answer this question, we need to begin with the life of Iñigo (later, Ignatius) of Loyola. This is because the spirituality which bears his name is essentially based on the human experience of God: his own first of all, then his growing realisation that the pattern of this experience was valid for all those who begin to take seriously their relationship with God. For the past four and a half centuries, this Ignatian heritage has fuelled the spiritual fire of not only the Jesuit order, but the many individuals and communities who have been inspired by its grace-filled spiritual and psychological insights.

To live by ‘the Ignatian way of proceeding’ is to ground one’s whole life in a Trinitarian perspective. This means regarding all who follow Christ, as ‘contemplatives in action’, companions of Jesus and one another, and daily attentive to the presence of God at work in our minds and hearts through the inner movement of the Spirit. Processes such as ‘the Ignatian method of discernment’, are ideally part of one’s ordinary conversation and inform all one’s activities. Ultimately, the Ignatian person is driven by the love of Christ to find God in all things and to seek above all else the greater glory of God.

Recommended readings from Ignatius’ own writings

• The Autobiography or Narrative of the Pilgrim

• The Spiritual Exercises

• The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus