Bagging Ignatius

November 17th, 2005

Classic Texts on Ignatian Spirituality

 

 

 

 

The Contribution of Hugo Rahner, S.J.

 

 

Who Was Hugo Rahner?  Historian and theologian, he was born in Pfullendorf, Germany, May 3, 1900 and died in Munich on December 21st, 1968. He entered the Society of Jesus novitiate of the North German Province in 1919, three years before his younger brother Karl. Hugo Rahner received his doctorate at the university if Innsbruck, Austria, receiving doctorates in philosophy and theology. From 1935 he taught at Innsbruck, specializing in early Church history and patrology, but writing a wide variety of topics especially Ignatian history and spirituality. In this latter category the most significant of his works are: The Spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola [1949; Eng. tr. 1953], Ignatius the Theologian [1964; Eng. tr. 1968]; as editor and commentator of Letters to Women by Ignatius Loyola [1965; Eng. tr.1960] and with the photographer Leonard von Matt produced St. Ignatius of Loyola: A Pictorial Biography [1956].

 

What Is Our Focus This Afternoon? We are going to look at three themes that emerge from Hugo Rahner’s studies: that Ignatius was a theologian, that Ignatius was a man of the Church, and that Ignatius was a guide towards integrated humanism. In looking through the contemporary historical vision of John O’Malley, we discerned the importance that Ignatius and his early companions placed on God as a helping God. This “take” of God as a Helping God, in turn, informed Ignatius’ own sense of his mission, “to help people.” From this personal inspiration developed the companionship that led to the Society of Jesus. For O’Malley what Jesuits did became their “way of proceeding”; and from this “way of proceeding, their distinctive spirituality. In Joseph de Guibert’s The Spirituality of the Jesuits, a classic of the early modern period, Ignatian spirituality was seen as mysticism. However, for de Guibert this mysticism was not the traditional removal into intense solitude or one characterized by rapture or nuptial union. Rather it was a mysticism of service in union with the engagement of Jesus with the world but inspired by the Holy Spirit who inspired and animated and directed all that Jesus did. For de Guibert the imitation of Jesus for Ignatius was union in service and in service a union with God, a discovery of God in all things.

 

This afternoon we are going to look at yet another approach to Ignatian spirituality, one that emphasizes the union of Ignatius within the community of the Church. The bond of union is not organizational but, again, mystic. For Hugo Rahner mysticism was founded on the labor of the Holy Spirit both within the Church itself and within the personal and social experiences of Ignatius. Using a quotation from Jerome Nadal, Rahner synopsizes his study this way:

 

“This peaceful elevation of soul, this union with the supreme power and light, was something with which our Father Ignatius was very familiar. So much so, indeed, that his insights and decisions flowed from an uninterrupted contact with the power from above, and all other modes of understanding seemed to him to take second place. Should, however, this mode of cognition be absent, then it would be necessary to take refuge in the natural mode. And what is more, even if that higher mode should be given in abundance, it must always be in harmony with holy scriptures, the virtues, right reason, and edification—in short with the Church” [Archivum Romanum SJ., Opp.NN.30, fol 131. f—Jerome Nadal].

 

Rahner himself then comments as follows:

 

“These classic words sum up the essentials of our present study. ‘Church’ embraces all visible things from scripture to reason; ‘Spirit’ is the immediate interior contact of the soul with the power ‘from above.’[1] Mysticism and reason, Spirit and Church belong together, but always in such a way that the Spirit, however abundantly it may pour forth, will allow itself to be confined within the measure of the visible” [“The Spirit and the Church” in Ignatius the Theologian, p. 217].

 

For Rahner Ignatian spirituality is a harmony of tensions. The dynamic of harmony [what makes harmony work the way it should, i.e. by unifying] is not organization or tactics or strategy [=human craft] but the Spirit Herself. The tensions are the richness of reality in context, in the flesh as it were, that will always be in a kind of swing of opposites [a dialectic], e.g., man and woman, freedom and authority, union and diversity, contemplation and action, etc.

 

Thus Ignatian humanism is the tension between the celebration of the human and the limitation of the human or the tension between the gift of God in human truth, goodness and beauty and the beyond of God in God’s innermost being.   The letters Ignatius wrote to women were pastorally caring yet distant and formal, both about their lives but their lives as seen within the work of the Spirit. The theology of Ignatius was that of being in the middle between the mystery of God and the limited reality of the world. Ignatian spirituality is, then, a Spirit mediating spirituality.


[1] De arriba is a vital word in the theology of St. Ignatius; cf. Exx. 237, where it is most clearly defined as an ‘immediate’ imparting of grace, completely free of all human admixture. Likewise Exx. 184 and 338. Cf. also MI I, p. 339, in one of Ignatius’ letters to [ Francis] Borgia: ‘en todo de arriba, descendiendo de su divina bondad.’