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WISDOM LANGUAGE
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7. Who are the carriers of this
Spirituality?
We come finally to the question of who could carry this
spirituality forward. Who are the ones who have this power to
transform? I think it is anyone who is open to reality and to
the Spirit of God. Anyone who is alert to the process of
discernment could be a carrier of this wisdom. Persons in the
Ignatian tradition are able to do this because they are trained
to discern and go deep down to the truth. This is the meaning of
“going to the roots”. It is not restricted to going back
50 years or 450 years, but back to Christ, and the sages of Asia
and Europe and Israel, and finally back to the heart of God.
When we go to the roots in this manner, then we get the freedom
which allows us to go to the frontiers without fear. At the
frontiers, we will encounter good people, people like the doctor
I spoke about in the homily yesterday. He was a person with a
‘Jubilee heart’, a person full of compassion. Religion and
Compassion are closely linked. When we forget compassion we
forget God, because God is a God of compassion. Why are the poor
so important? Because they bring out the compassion in us. They
bring out our ability to respond and this indicates how deep we
really are. The present Pope has great appeal because he is
calling people to be compassionate.
Ignatian spirituality seeks to accompany people from the heart.
One of the questions that came up yesterday in the meeting with
EAs was how to train Jesuits for accompaniment. We need to train
Jesuits not to be leaders of the community, but to accompany the
community from the heart. The mind is necessary of course,
otherwise the heart could run wild, but the mind is only a help.
The driving force must come from the spirit and we must have
this sensitivity to the spirit. In the Ignatian view, what
matters is reality, the people and what God wants from these
people. And our question will always be a humble one – how can
we help? How can we accompany? How can we discern? Our language
about God must always be humble, because we know so little about
God. God is the mystery of mysteries. I finish by saying that
Ignatian spirituality and Ignatian laity are extremely relevant
at the present moment since they give a response to a real need.
The challenge would be to make CLC more part of the life of the
Church so that more people can discover this way of life. This
is a challenge that you can discuss as a group. I believe that
Ignatian spirituality can help us at this particular moment in
the life of the Church to go deep into the life of the spirit
and find out how God works in our reality. Thank you very much.
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