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Remembering St. Ignatius

August 02, 2010 By: jjok Category: Ignatian Spirituality, John's Posts 1 Comment →

Saturday was the feast of St. Ignatius. I have been thinking about his legacy quite a bit these last few days.  So much of what we call Ignatian spirituality has been reduced to sound bits — “finding God in all things,” “magis,” “cura personalis.”  These are fine, as far as they go, but they do tend, I think, to deflect our attention away from the man’s actual achievement, and, in so deflecting, to insulate us from the core insight of the Ignatian way.

The Church at the beginning of the 16th century was not pretty.  Ignatius was born in 1491, one year before Columbus sailed to America.  In 1517 Martin Luther published his 95 theses and launched the Protestant Reformation.  The Society of Jesus was founded, officially, in 1540, five years before the beginning of the Council of Trent. Ignatius died in 1556, seven years before the end of that Council.

These are not just random dates strewn here and there. The arrival of Columbus marked the end of a way of life for the indigenous peoples of America.  In much of their suffering the Church was complicit. The Reformation is more aptly described as a schism that ruptured the fabric of a 1200-year old experiment in Christian civilization.  It also introduced centuries of religious violence into Christian Europe, laying the foundation for the current post-Christian reality of that place. The Council of Trent, while innovative and creative in some ways, rigidified Catholicism for 400 years, until the relative softening of Vatican II.  So, Ignatius was born in complicated times.

The spirituality that he forged through the teaching of the exercises and the practice of discernment was not a Borders-style self-help manual to make us feel good about ourselves and our relationships, and God.  Rather, it was a way to navigate the complexities of a world that seemed to be in the process of becoming unhinged.  Ignatius asked how should I respond to God in the face of these new realities, and God’s answer was “do something new.” Build schools. Travel to newly discovered parts of the world. Try to do no harm, and hopefully do some good. The response of Ignatius and his followers was not always perfect, but it was certainly original, and it was certainly timely.

I wonder how to recover this part of Ignatius’ legacy.  Like him, we live in a world that seems in the process of becoming unhinged.  In this reality the slogans ring hollow. Can we really “find God in all things” when “all things” means massive suffering in the developing world, melting icecaps, oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, corrupt politicians, pedophile priests, do I really need to go on?

Finding God in these things does not mean pretending that they are good. Finding God in these hard things means finding out what God wants us to do and doing it.  So, in this season of Ignatius’ feast, I invite all of us inspired by his witness to pray for a good discernment and to get busy.


Photo: “Letter from St. Ignatius of Loyola I” by “Nick in exsillio” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Losing Weight in the Dominican Republic

June 13, 2010 By: jjok Category: Ignatian Spirituality, John's Posts Comments Off

I have just returned from ten days in the Dominican Republic. I was there with several colleagues and nine students working on a documentary portraying the work of Pedro Alamonte, a Catholic deacon who works with the poor in the city of Santiago. More specifically, he serves in a slum of that city known as Cien Fuegos. The slum is built right next to the main dump of the city, and the people who live there suffer from all of the aliments, both social and physical, that are typical of urban poverty around the world. For more about the project, please visit the course website at http://backpack.creighton.edu.

The trip offered little down time, but in the free time I did have I reflected a lot on what it is that continues to draw me to places like this. (This was my fourth trip to the DR.) Much of the time I was physically uncomfortable. Daytime temperatures in the DR reach the upper 90s. The humid air at times feels almost liquid. Few buildings are air-conditioned. Mosquitos and other biting insects enjoy feasting on my northern blood. We spent two nights in a rural community — a “campo” in local parlance – and my bed was in a rough-hewn building sandwiched between the grazing cows and a flock of chickens: neither of these worry too much about waking sleeping gringos.

But I knew it would be like this before I went, so the appeal of being there was stronger than the certainty of hardship. I could cite the remarkable beauty of this lush and mountainous country or the allure of the Atlantic ocean and the Caribbean sea that surround the island like a blue blanket. I could also cite the deep generosity of the people, especially those who live in the “campos” and share so willingly what little they have. These things do indeed appeal and attract. Yet, going to this place also does something for my perspective on the world that I need, and, I think, that God wants me to have.

I don’t know why it is so difficult for those of us who live in the midst of plenty to be satisfied with our lives and with what we have. At home, when I am busy and working hard, I slip so easily into a space of ingratitude and worse, rapacious craving. I don’t have this. I don’t have that. I need more money. I need more time. I need more recognition. Whatever. There is something about life among affluence that, paradoxically, produces desolation. Coming face to face with the poor in their need is like being slapped awake from a stupor of forgetfulness. Each time I encounter it I feel challenged anew not to forget.

As I sit writing this in my American palace (my 2200 sq. foot house on 10 acres north of Omaha) I am thinking of the family that took care of me in the campo and welcomed me to their 500 sq. foot house — one of the big ones. I am also thinking that after each trip I seem to weigh a little less than when I left. I did lose five pounds, but that’s not the kind of weight loss I mean.

Photo: “The Campo” by “jjoiv” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

The Gulf of Mexico, Dirty Oil, and Chickens

May 10, 2010 By: jjok Category: Ignatian Spirituality, John's Posts 4 Comments →


For the past few weeks I’ve watched in horror as oil spews uncontrollably into the Gulf of Mexico. This “spill” as it is euphemistically called is really an environmental disaster of the worst kind. As such, it is another example of a civilization run amok. Pondering the thick black crude irrupting from the deep, I am reminded of the the Balrog in the Lord of the Rings. In Tolkien’s masterpiece, the Dwarfs dug too deeply in the Mines of Moria and released a power that consumed and destroyed them. One can almost hear the Dwarf leaders chanting over the dim protests of those who might have objected, “dig baby dig” until it was too late. Our civilization seems to be approaching the limits of its hubris.

I have been talking for years about getting chickens, another page in my evolving eco-living playbook. This impulse reflects a variety of influences but most recently it comes from my deepening attraction to bioregionalism, especially of the variety espoused by Wendell Berry and his many disciples. Berry diagnoses the American problem as displacement from place. We are wandering rootless. We have no communities. We don’t know the places we inhabit. We have no sense of connection to the land. For Berry, this rootlessness is the one of the major causes of our environmental problems. Our disconnection from the physical world makes it more likely that we will feel nothing while we destroy it. We might not even notice the destruction. Berry recommends a counter-cultural response. Stay where you are, learn the genius of the places you inhabit, use less, raise some of your own food, become downwardly mobile. In his old age Berry gives speeches all over the country. Increasingly his audiences are comprised of young people who know intuitively that all is not well and who want another option.

My Chicken coop is almost done, and I will soon be the proud custodian of six hens. Maybe next year I’ll raise some chickens for meat, but I wanted to start small. The coop was underway before the oil started leaking in the Gulf, but in the wake of the disaster, my effort at animal husbandry has taken on a new urgency: it is one more tiny effort to push the Balrog back into the abyss. It is another small adjustment in the way I live that may contribute to a cascade of cultural change.

My bioregional response to the perversion of big oil may not seem very Ignatian, at least not on the surface. Yet for me, the tug toward this alternative way of living is nothing other than a good discernment. I experience this pull toward more sustainable living with as much visceral desire as I am repelled by culture of destruction symbolized by BP. Surely God does not will the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico, but just as surely God wills that we who are horrified by the destruction act. We need to change. We need to change now. Get some chickens and help me push.

Photo: “No_Balrogs” by “PDXdj” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Christ is Risen!

April 05, 2010 By: jjok Category: Ignatian Spirituality, John's Posts Comments Off


Although I am a Catholic Christian with an Ignatian disposition, I have a special place in my heart for the Eastern Church. As a freshman in college I traveled to Russia for a month and was transfixed by the onion domes and ancient icons of the Orthodox churches we visited. Upon returning, my interest in eastern Christianity continued. I read and was challenged by the work of Catherine Doherty, a social justice activist with eastern leanings. I also devoured the work of Dostoyevsky, especially The Brother’s Karamazov, a novel that remains on my short list of favorites. In graduate school I studied patristic theology and gravitated toward the Greek east. My dissertation was on Cyril of Alexandria, an ancient Christian author decidedly in the eastern tradition.

Of the many things I love about the east, perhaps the most salient is their perspective on Easter and the Resurrection. While Catholics (and all western Christians) tend to think about the redemptive work of Christ as the repair of a moral breach between humans and God, the east tends to think of it as the repair of a physical breach. More specifically, following Paul in the letter to the Romans 9-11, western Christians tend to think that Jesus saves us by justifying us to God so that the egregiousness of our sin is no longer a cause for alienation with God. Jesus bridges the gap between our sinfulness and God’s holiness. While there is much that is important in this tradition, it is sometimes hard to makes sense of the resurrection.

In the east, on the other hand, the saving work of Chris has always been understood more as a deliverance from bodily decay. The inspiration is also from Paul, especially 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8:20-21. In both of these places Paul states that bodily decay — literally rotting and decomposing — is the physical consequence of the the fall. So in the eastern tradition, when Christ dies he descends to the underworld, breaks down the doors of death and liberates all prior and future generations from decay. Easter resurrection is Christ’s triumphant conquering of death and decay. These traditions are not unknown in the West, they just are not as heavily emphasized. I think they should be. Easter ultimately is more than an announcement of the repair of a moral breach with God. Easter is about God’s definitive “no” to the power of death. Easter affirms our deepest hopes for material resurrection into a restored and renewed creation.*

In an effort to cultivate this eastern sense of Easter in my household, for 25 years I have used the traditional Greek greeting for the pascha on Easter Sunday. Instead of “Happy Easter,” in my house we say “Christos Anesti” (Christ is risen) to which one responds “alethos anesti” (he is risen indeed). On Easter morning I always blare the paschal chant from the Russian Orthodox choir at Zagorsk, in which they sing the greeting in Old Church Slavonic. My kids have internalized this. In fact my oldest daughter now is living in Alaska for awhile said even now living away from home she thinks about the singing Russians on Easter morning. I’m going to send her the mp3 file.

So let’s start and Ignatian trend. Instead of uttering the profoundly understated “Happy Easter”, let’s say instead, “Christ is Risen.” And, when we hear it, let’s respond with a hearty “He is Risen indeed.”

* For those who with to explore this further, these themes have recently been beautifully described by N.T. Wright in his book Surprised by Hope.

Photo: “Christ is Risen” by “SF Brit” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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