The Ignatian Year:
Building on the Past to Shape the Future
By Amy Korpi
Since the start of the Ignatian Year in May 2021, the Society of Jesus and the global Ignatian family have been celebrating the life and vision of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. We have reflected with gratitude, recognized the rich traditions developed over the past 500 years, and begun living out the theme, “to see all things new in Christ.” Ignatius lived during a time of tremendous change. Innovation and discovery flourished—especially via contemporaries like Copernicus, Magellan, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Cervantes, and more.
Medieval feudalism was yielding to the rise of nations. Geographical horizons were expanding. Modern science was emerging. And the invention of the printing press was making the Bible accessible to ordinary people.
Ignatius was an active participant in this wave of societal transformation. He took advantage of new technology by installing a printing press at the Roman College to keep textbooks affordable. The first book ever printed in India was actually a catechism by Francis Xavier. Ignatius looked beyond the traditional boundaries of Europe, sending his companions to the frontiers to serve where the needs were greatest, and he emphasized serving people who were marginalized by the elite of the times.
The person we now know as St. Ignatius was always seeking the magis—the more— to discover God’s will, and then he would work to make a difference in the world.
He developed a framework for a personalized spirituality—notably the Spiritual Exercises—for everyday life and everyday people. This vision of spirituality extended to the companions who joined his order— they needed not meditate, pray, or chant as a group like monastic orders of the time, as Ignatius knew they would be on the move. This alone was a significant innovation.
Yet new Jesuits were prepared extensively beyond the Spiritual Exercises to ensure they were well-equipped for the independent action that would be required of them, as adaptable and mobile servants of God, the Church, and its people. It had taken Ignatius years of trial and error to find his own “way of proceeding,” so he developed a plan for how he believed a Jesuit should be “formed” through a sequential series of studies, contemplations, developmental experiments, and more. This vision of rules and procedures became the Constitutions, a “manual” that governs the Society and illuminates the Ignatian way.
“At its heart, Jesuit formation is about a way of being in the world. A way of being that takes a lifetime to realize and to live out,” Fr. Raymond Guiao, SJ, president of Saint Ignatius High School in Cleveland, has said. “Yes, there is training in critical thinking, leadership skills, and pastoral practice. But becoming a Jesuit is a much bigger project than acquiring important training. It is about being formed. With time and testing, he is formed to be utterly available to serve the mission of the Society, wherever the need is greatest, and however the glory of God may be advanced.”
Certainly, there have been many changes since the time of Ignatius. Mobility and communication alone are leaps and bounds beyond what Ignatius could have imagined. Traveling to an apostolate in another country takes hours or, at most, a few days. Communication to and from superiors has become instantaneous in most cases. There has been an evolution in outreach to people on the margins, vigorous actions against injustice, and an embrace of other religious traditions.
Throughout all this time, however, the essence of formation has remained constant. Jesuits continue to undergo the same rigorous, extensive process of being formed for their ministry. Yet, in the spirit of Ignatius, Jesuits are always looking for the magis—for what might be adjusted to serve current needs even better.
The Ignatian Year—with its theme of conversion that allows us “to see all things new in Christ”—is a time for such a reexamination. This year, Fr. Arturo Sosa, SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, has been meeting with Jesuits in formation (including the Midwest Jesuit Fr. Michael
Rossmann) to discuss their hopes, questions, and more in a program called “Jesuit Futures.”
Looking Forward
A key topic in this program is how Jesuits will continue to focus on and attend to the Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs) of the Society of Jesus. The UAPs are reference points meant to guide the life and work of the Jesuits. They are designed to emphasize the following:
To Show the Pathway to God through the Spiritual Exercises and Discernment
To Walk with the Excluded
To Journey with Youth Toward a Hope-filled Future
To Care for Our Common Home
As stated by Fr. Sosa, the Ignatian Year has been an ideal time to deepen our understanding of the UAPs, as they remind us of the daily opportunity to live a transforming experience. As with the Ignatian Year, they are a call to allow the Lord to reveal to us a new interior and apostolic enthusiasm, a new life, and new ways of following Christ.
While the UAPs guide the life and work of all in the Society and the Ignatian family, the Jesuit Futures program looked specifically at what they mean for the lives and missions of Jesuits in formation.
One of the topics noted was how those in formation today are much more diverse than in past years. Father Sosa, himself from Venezuela, pointed out that the formation process and the Society in general are richer thanks to the involvement of many different cultures. And there is much wider territory and more ways to live out the UAPs with Jesuits coming from, and going to, so many regions of the world.
“But the formation process is similar [to the one Ignatius described] because it works!” he said. “Our faces are different, but we are in the same body and have the same mission, even while we use our context, learn from others, teach others, [and] . . . form a new reality that is an intercultural and intergenerational body . . . following the same Lord.”
Father Sosa also emphasized that formation is especially important to the first UAP. “We have to be trained,” he said. “And the most important training is to live the Spiritual Exercises . . . It is not a kind of knowledge, not a problem of having an academic degree.” Instead, he explained, the Exercises are more than a one-time experience in the novitiate. They are meant to be lived continually and integrated into interactions with others.
And that leads to a natural understanding, said Fr. Sosa, that “We cannot be isolated from what is happening in the world.” Events and circumstances such as the pandemic, wars in Europe and other parts of the world, and other crises must be integrated into living out the UAPs, which are grounded in reality.
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Photo: Steve Donisch