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Spiritual Ministries
Spirituality Centers:
Retreat Centers:
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"One way of serving God's mystery of salvation is through dialogue, a spiritual conversation of equal partners, that opens human beings to the core of their identity. In such a dialogue, we come into contact with the activity of God in the lives of other men and women, and deepen our sense of this divine action...."
--GC34, Decree 4: Our Mission and Cutlure, #17. |
One of the gifts of the Society of Jesus to the Church and the world in general has been its spirituality, based on Ignatius' own religious experiences, his methodical efforts to interpret his ardent desire to be of help, to be of service, to the messianic mission of Christ, and worked out especially in his Spiritual Exercises, and through the early experience of the Order under his leadership and during his composition of the Constitutions.
This spirituality, like every Catholic spirituality, is about achieving an ever-deeper union with God. But in the Ignatian tradition, this union is enacted as a sacred mission in the world, for the sake of others.
 For Ignatius, God can be found in an object, in a person, in an event, in everything. In this way Ignatius helped to invent a mysticism of worldly action in the early modern age. This action in the world, beginning in conversations about life's meaning, or the heart's true desire, and coming to include sacramental ministry, the intellectual life, school administration, medicine, psychotherapy, visual arts, fiction writing, university teaching, theater, community organizing, scientific research, poetry, teaching, and music. In the Ignatian vision of the world, friends, poems, sunsets, citystreets, and shared meals do not compete with God for our attention, concern, or affection, because in Christ they become the media of our loving God and being loved by God.
Throughout our province, Jesuits and lay colleagues teach and share Ignatian Spirituality in myriad ways. In imitation of their Founder, Jesuits engage in conversations. These sometimes might be described as "a ministry of conversation." These conversations will sometimes turn to spiritual matters. In Ignatius' own practice, this is really his paradigm for the whole "Apostolate" of the Society, that great enterprise he and so many following him, undertook and undertake for Christ.
But these conversations must be true conversations. They cannot be means to an end outside themselves nor merely schemes to recruit avid conformists. Jesuits, in their different contexts, should be engaging other people in serious talk. They should be in the forefront of the development of a more adequate vocabulary in which one might talk about "spirituality" today. Just as their primary ministry in the classic period was a multiform ministry of the Word, so today Jesuits must pay attention to the quality of the conversations in which we find ourselves.
Those who engage in retreats, spiritual direction, special programs in spirituality, and small group study, all draw from and contribute to a contemporary "spiritual theology," i.e., a contemporary theological account of the "ascetical and mystical" dimensions of Catholicism. Jesuits have a special responsibility in the Church to assure the highest standards of excellence and scholarship are maintained in this ongoing theological conversation.
Every Jesuit university, high school, and parish tries to offer people many opportunities to pray together, to participate in vibrant, well prepared and well celebrated liturgies, to seek spiritual instruction, guidance, and renewal, to learn different forms of prayer and meditation, to make retreats, and to be introduced to spiritual writers, who speak with particular acuity to their own needs.
Other specifically "spiritual ministries" focus solely on the provision of spiritual ministry and of intellectual formation, spiritual formation, and pastoral formation for spiritual ministries in the American Catholic community today.
 Each year, in places like Portland and Seattle/Tacoma (Puget Sound SEEL), Missoula, Montana and Tri-Cities, Washington, over one hundred people participate in the Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life (SEEL) Program. With the weekly guidance of a spiritual director they pray through the four stages of the Exercises, deepening their relationship with God and their involvement in the story and the gospel of Jesus. Within this context, all these people are invited to search their hearts and ask themselves these questions: How should I live? and What should I do? for Christ?
The Ignatian Spirituality Center in Seattle works to make Ignatian Spirituality available through retreats, spiritual direction, and workshops. Retreat centers in Anchorage (Holy Spirit Center) and on the Oregon coast (Nestucca Sanctuary) offer people warm, inviting places to come to stay for a time, to experience silence, as well as hospitality, conversation, and prayer.
Over the past few years, new programs in Ignatian spirituality have been developed with and for Native American, Latino, and Vietnamese American communities in the Northwest and more broadly.
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