Counsels of the Holy Spirit: A Reading of St Ignatius's Letters

By Patrick Goujon

Many books have already been written on spiritual counselling, especially in the Ignatian tradition. But very few consider how Ignatius gave spiritual advice in his letters, directed to various and specific situations. If God really leads us in our spiritual journey, as Ignatius believed, what is the role of the spiritual adviser? What part is played by the numerous rules given in the Spiritual Exercises? The letters show that Ignatius really wanted to give scope to his correspondents and to their awareness of the work of the Holy Spirit within them. Ignatius deployed a “Pedagogy of Consolation” in which his correspondents were trained to exercise their own spiritual agency by discovering God’s abundant gifts. It was clear to Ignatius that a counselling relationship was first grounded in God’s freedom but also in the freedom of the person who asks for assistance. In six chapters, Patrick C. Goujon focuses on eight letters.  He offers a careful reading which emphasizes what makes giving spiritual help possible in a conversation. We are shown how Ignatius deals with decision-making and with obstacles in the spiritual life.  He is also revealed giving encouragement and correction and advising about how to offer these to others. His aim is to help people grow in freedom which, in turn, permits them to live according to God’s will. Through his letters, we are allowed to enter not only Ignatius’s study, the famous camerata in Rome, but also into his heart.       

“This volume is an excellent introduction to the letters of Ignatius of Loyola (…) making it an important scholarly contribution not only for those interested in Ignatian spirituality, but also for those interested in the history of spirituality more broadly”, Mark Rotsaert, ARSI

• Language: English
• Publisher: Messenger Publications
• Release date: Apr 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781788123211

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Today there are at least three reasons that justify an interest in the letters of Ignatius of Loyola. The first is undoubtedly the least immediate: the reader is invited to appreciate the manner in which Ignatius, that ‘master of words’, as Peter-Hans Kolvenbach called him, ¹ was accustomed to speak. Jesuits are called to be preachers and conversationalists. Curiously enough, although Ignatius left many written words behind him, he is not thought of as a spiritual author, a writer, unlike many later Jesuits who gave birth to an abundant spiritual literature. For Ignatius the word is a means for bringing help to others. He addresses himself to someone who needs help. To write is a way of helping. In Ignatius’s case, writing can do three things: console, give advice and exhort.

The second is indicated in the words of the great French Dictionnaire de Spiritualité: ‘There can be no doubt that Ignatian spirituality gave a fresh impulse to the development of spiritual direction. By personal gift and divine vocation, Ignatius was predestined, one might say, to be a spiritual director.’² The practice of spiritual direction, or spiritual accompaniment, as people prefer to call it nowadays, is indeed closely linked to the Jesuits. As the same work further states: ‘The reputation of the Society of Jesus developed largely thanks to the spiritual directors involved in the preaching of the Exercises and in the schools. The influence of one or more of the fathers, often the Superior, based in the houses of Jesuit students, spread out to the most diverse spheres.’ Thanks to the colleges and residences the practice of spiritual direction became institutionalised, especially as it was combined, if not confused, with the practice of confession. Spiritual direction was one element in a much wider enterprise: modern Catholicism seeks to Christianise society, in particular the organisation of ways of life and the duties that are linked to them. The function of spiritual direction consists, one might assume, in the control of one’s personal life and the lives of others, in the introduction of morality into society, in advance in perfection and in growth in self-knowledge. To some extent all that may be true, but all of these aims seem at a great distance from what Ignatius himself can be seen to be doing. ‘Help of souls’ is how he would have defined its function, or even, as mentioned above, consolation, advice and exhortation. What, then, was Ignatius actually doing when he entered into conversation with others?

There is a third reason why we might be interested in the letters of Ignatius of Loyola. As noted above, they can provide answers to the previous questions – how words can be used, and how we can establish relationships and better understand the process of spiritual direction, which must be a major aspect of Ignatian spirituality and of the mission of the Society. Above all, the letters of Ignatius put at our disposal a wonderful key to rereading the entire corpus of Ignatian writings. Moreover, they help us to see his work as a whole, which is not limited to what he wrote but covers his way of living, the practice of being a Christian who wishes to serve in the mission of Christ. The great merit of the letters is that they allow us to glimpse Ignatius’s ‘way of proceeding’. For the Society of Jesus we have the Constitutions, and for the Spiritual Exercises there are the rules and a plan of spiritual pedagogy. As for the letters, though a long way from actual conversation, are they not a sort of conversation pared down to its highest form? While speaking with the absent correspondent, Ignatius is constantly calling on God, whose action is called upon by the letter.

Nevertheless, we have to be cautious: Ignatius’s letters run to over six thousand in number, but must not be thought of as all we need to know about what he was doing. They require a task of interpretation that requires knowledge not only of the Constitutions and the Exercises, but of texts that themselves have an uncertain status, the Spiritual Diary and the Autobiography. These writings cannot be lumped together willy-nilly. Both the Exercises and the Constitutions aim to open vistas on possible lines of action or set limits by providing rules to be followed in future choices. The letters point to decisions made by Ignatius or suggested by him to others, but they hint – by stressing the contingency of adopted solutions – at the depth with which Ignatius approached any situation and at the need he saw to leave open a path to free choice. In his letters Ignatius is doing all he can to facilitate the discovery of God’s action.

After this account of three motives for reading the letters – to discover the use of words, the practice of accompaniment, and an appreciation of what Ignatius was striving to do – we can turn to the main problem: What is it that Ignatius does when he gives advice? This allows us to make a selection from the huge mass of letters. Many of these deal with administration, the government of Jesuit provinces, or with missionary proposals and political matters in which the Society became involved as it spread. Many others are short notes or comments. Dominique Bertrand’s study provides a full account of the whole correspondence.³ For our part, we are trying to examine the way in which Ignatius replies to questions about the spiritual life raised by those who think of him as a maître (either before or after the foundation of the Society of Jesus), or as the superior general (and thus endowed with a special authority).

We have made the choice of a few letters, and the reader may be surprised at how restricted it is. However, our aim is to suggest a way of reading and the disclosure of a pattern of working. This choice has led to another decision: to restrict ourselves to what Ignatius himself wrote and not to recreate the correspondence with letters from the recipients. Given the work of the Spanish editors of the Monumenta in the early twentieth century it might have been possible to do this, although this is only likely in the case of some of the first companions.⁴ Had we chosen to study the letters between Ignatius and his contemporaries, the approach would have required a wide historical apparatus.⁵ While we would encourage readers to read more of the letters, these are easily available in several anthologies. Our selection may provide some insight into the spirituality of Ignatius by discovering what lay at the heart of his desire to ‘help souls’. Admittedly this means that our view is limited, concentrating too much on his voice alone. However, this may enable us to capture something of his style.

This book, far from being a summary or a synthesis, is intended rather as an introduction, a sort of initial exploration. Many historical details are left to one side and theological problems will hardly be mentioned. Nor is it our intention to establish a method of accompaniment that could be transposed to the present time. I am convinced that it is possible to point out a way of looking without trying to convert this into a norm. Such an approach does raise a key question with regard to Ignatian spirituality: what is the role of rules? Why does Ignatius supply so many rules? There are those for discernment and for ways of living. Why does he give these if his purpose, as often stated by many, is to introduce a person to an exercise of freedom, a freedom that he claims is granted by God to the human person? If there is a spiritual pedagogy at work, there has to be a teacher or master; the question then concerns his or her authority, the nature of the relationship established between the one who asks for advice and the one who gives it. It will be necessary to examine what sort of advice is given, how it is formulated, and what obligation it imposes. The words that Ignatius uses hide a persuasive force and an authority; we have to ask how they take into account the freedom of the one who asks for advice.

The spiritual hypothesis we will suggest is that the authority of the giver of the advice is linked to the freedom of the one asking through what Ignatius has to teach about consolation. Thanks to that, the person asking can discover the way to be followed with the help of a kindly adviser whose experience is recognised. We need to consider, therefore, both what items of advice are given, and also the way in which Ignatius thinks they should be given and accepted. In other words, we will try to examine the attention Ignatius gives to what he is doing when giving some spiritual counselling in person or in writing. Clearly the situation is different when the person receiving a letter lacks the support of the counsellor’s presence and the position that each would then occupy. However, a window is opened on what was one of Ignatius’s main activities as he devoted himself to writing letters.

This work is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 is occupied with those letters of Ignatius that deal with the areas of missionary activity that he was establishing for the Society; thus it will become clear how the Spiritual Exercises are a part of spiritual conversations in general, but have specific features that make them different. Chapter 2 will examine the different literary forms used to give help – exhortations, words of advice, sermons. Chapter 3 asks why rules have to be given in order to act freely, while Chapter 4 looks at how a word of advice can bring joy to someone who is prudent. In Chapter 5 a sketch of a pedagogy of consolation emerges, thanks to which attention to self is identified with the search for God. Finally, Chapter 6 establishes how Ignatius thought of his letter-writing, as a way to advise and exhort, to open a space for the consolation in which God’s action can be discovered.

CHAPTER 1

Helping Others: The Role of Conversations and of the Spiritual Exercises

Nowadays anyone who is being trained to accompany others as a spiritual director is usually advised to begin with some experience as a giver of the Spiritual Exercises. However, although it seems obvious that both are connected, Ignatius was careful to distinguish the two activities, even if (as he indicated in the Constitutions of the Society) he considered them to have a single common aim: to help the ‘neighbour’. Over the course of time, an abundant literature grew up codifying both activities. It began in the seventeenth century but was greatly revitalised in the 1950s after the encounter with social sciences and a return to the text of the Exercises themselves. For Ignatius, however, it was conversation that was so attractive as a help to others, and when he came to dictate his reminiscences, he insisted on this aspect.

1. New areas for the unique mission of the word

There are some useful observations in the Seventh Part of the Constitutions: the Exercises are an offshoot of the conversations that bring people towards good works:

They will likewise endeavour to benefit individual persons in spiritual conversations, giving counsel and exhorting to good works, and in giving the Spiritual Exercises. (648)⁶

Thus, the Spiritual Exercises are defined as a way of helping people, which accords with the overall title given to the Seventh Part of the Constitutions. The quotation comes in a chapter in which Ignatius runs through the areas where help can be given with the use of two methods: preaching the Word of God and holy conversations. He outlines the missionary programme of the Society of Jesus in four short paragraphs, in which he distinguishes two uses of speech – one public (645–47), in sermons, and the other private (648–49), ‘in spiritual conversations’ – which bring together counsel and advice, as in the Spiritual Exercises.

Nevertheless, it is by one single instrument that people are to be helped: the word. This ranges from the public area, the world of preaching, to the private, where conversation takes place. Indeed, Ignatius notes how preaching, both in sermons and in catechesis, may occur not only in the churches that belong to the Society but also in other churches, and occasionally in town squares.

In the church the word of God should be constantly proposed to the people by means of sermons, lectures and the teaching of Christian doctrine, by those whom the superior approves and designates for this work, and at the times and in the manner which he judges to be most conducive to the greater divine glory and edification of souls. (645)⁷

Since on occasion it could happen in some places that it is inexpedient to employ these means, or a part of them, this constitution obliges only when the superior judges that they ought to be used. It indicates, however, the Society’s intent in the places where it takes up residence, namely, to employ these three means of proposing God’s word, or two of them, or whichever one seems more suitable. (646)⁸

The same may also be done outside the Society’s church, in other churches, squares, or places of the region, when the one in charge judges it expedient for God’s greater glory. (646)⁹

By moving from a religious space to the public square Ignatius overcomes an obstacle. From the time of Innocent III, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, sermons and