What is Jesuit Spirituality?

"He bore His wrath for me" — Did He? · Did the Devil Retain His Power? No · What is Jesuit Spirituality?

It obviously does not involve claiming God poured His wrath on Jesus.

I was just looking up an email from the Jew-Gone-Christian Dr. Michael Brown or his ministry Charisma House.

He outlines a problem:

For many, revival is something they want to experience, but don’t know what to do with it after a first emotional encounter.

A hope:

However, as God’s people, we CAN sustain the flames of revival to share the gospel with all of creation!

If I am right that the Catholic Church is God's REAL people, this should be even more true about Catholics.

And he gives a detailed solution:

In Dr. Michael Brown’s Seize The Moment, you’ll learn how to spread and sustain revival throughout your community by partnering with the Holy Spirit. You will be challenged to:

• make Jesus and the cross central
• reach the lost
• never downplay the importance of holiness
• steer clear of doctrinal weirdness
• keep the main thing the main thing
• and so much more

OK, some will quibble with me for indirectly promoting a book by a (technical) Protestant. Here is the deal. He is so perfectly resuming Catholicism in this outline (cannot guarantee the same is to be said for the book, though).

Let's take each part separately, and find out how that matches Jesuit spirituality. Well, except perhaps the first one or two.

spread and sustain revival throughout your community

To St. Ignatius of Loyola, sustaining his personal revival after Manresa involved getting, not indeed the whole parish, but at least a few devout women friends of his profit from it.

However, once he had a bit more meat on his bones, after studies in Paris and ordination to priesthood, he actually was more into spreading it to all Catholics. At personnalised degrees, though.

by partnering with the Holy Spirit

How about "submitting" rather than "partnering"?

But, yes, he did.

He lived from the inspirations of grace (and had a good technique on how to distinguish these from the subtle temptations of the devil).

He lived from the sacraments, which is how the Holy Spirit is given to members of the Church.

make Jesus and the cross central

Have you seen the Jesuit logo?

In the middle, you have IHS = IHSOYS = Jesus.

Above it, you have the Cross.

Below it, three nails used at the Crucifixion (one for each hand, one for both feet together).

Around all, to underline how central it is, rays like sunrays emanating from what's inside. On this painting of St. Michael throwing the Devil down to Hell, the sunrays are lacking, but the rest of the Jesuit logo is on the shield of St. Michael:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuiten#/media/Datei:Castiglione-H%C3%B6llensturz.jpg

Höllensturz – Gemälde des jesuitischen Chinamissionars Giuseppe Castiglione, 18. Jahrhundert
Giuseppe Castiglione - Der ursprünglich hochladende Benutzer war Dr. Meierhofer in der Wikipedia auf Deutsch, transferred to Commons by User:Ireas using CommonsHelper.
Gemeinfrei

reach the lost

Harlots in Rome? Sinful couples who can be saved by a marriage which the laws make difficult? Protestants? Hurons?

Sounds like St. Ignatius was perfectly on line with this part.

• St. Ignatius started a home for repenting prostitutes in Rome, under the protection of St. Mary Magdalene;
• when a couple not looked kindly on by parents risks a continued love affair without marriage, because the law of the land in France did not recognise the Council of Trent, in Place Royale, by Corneille, it's a Jesuit priest who, illegally according to France, but legally according to the Church, marries them;
• The priests in England were not just serving Catholics, but also trying to convert Protestants;
• St. Jean de Brébeuf

never downplay the importance of holiness

If you held up Luther, Calvin, St. Ignatius and St. Francis of Sales in a blind test to Michael Brown, I'm pretty sure he would clearly prefer the two Catholic saints.

The problem is, Michael Brown cannot be so unsavvy about authors and doctrines as to make a real blind test possible.

steer clear of doctrinal weirdness

While St. Ignatius of Loyola's criteria would differ highly from those of Michael Brown, as to decide what is doctrinal normality and what is doctrinal weirdness, this was to a very high degree a priority for him and for his order.

My Catholic Life! : Chapter Ten: Rules for Thinking with the Church
https://mycatholic.life/books/ignatius/part-one-background-of-saint-ignatius-and-lessons-from-the-spiritual-exercises/chapter-ten-rules-for-thinking-with-the-church/

keep the main thing the main thing

Jesuits were so willing to adapt when it came to subordinate things, they even got called out for syncretism in the question of Chinese Rites.

and so much more

For which I will give only one item, but an important one.

What did St. Ignatius of Loyola inherit from Devotio Moderna?

Well, part of it is to make everyday objects and situations remind one of God and of one's duties to God. The five vowels of Latin have their spiritual meanings (E "is crying - in Latin flet - for your sins" or U may have been feeling the pains of Jesus along with him, decades since I read that book). Those precise techniques are perhaps not the most used by Jesuits or Ignatian Exercises, but the idea is the same, telling Jesus : "All kinds of everything remind me of Thee" ...

I just called Michael Brown a "technical" Protestant, but isn't he an actual one? In Ecclesiology and in Sacramentology, alas, yes. But not in the items outlined in the above quote, or I wouldn't have quoted it. Now, when it comes to Ecclesiology and Sacramentology, usually, Holiness Churches, being usually Baptist, are further away from Catholicism than for instance Anglicans. But when it comes to personal holiness, it's actually Catholics who are in the middle, between Anglicans who claim you can be the beloved child of God while living a systematically sinful life, and between Michael Brown who wants every congregant to be on fire for Jesus 24 by 24. In Catholicism, being between both is a matter of recognising different levels, on the line of Matthew 13:8, if someone brings forth hundredfold fruit, he's obviously "good ground" but so is he who brings forth only thirtyfold.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Octave of the Immaculate Conception
15.XII.2023