Febuary 2006 Christian Spirituality By George A Lane SJ

JESUIT PRAYER SECOND GENERATION Continue from ...... These were essential elements of the Constitution and Ignatius would never consider changing any one of them in the least. He said explicitly that it was "his opinion from which no one would ever move him that for those who are studying, one hour of prayer was sufficient, it being supposed they are practicing mortification and self denial." When Jerome Nadal visited the Spanish provinces (1553-54) and yielded to their request for one and a half hours of daily prayer, Ignatius was angered and according to Nadal's own account "thereafter he did not make great use of my services. With these notions from the Ignatian Constitutions in mind, we can now consider the changes that occurred in the Society's practice of prayer and the factors which brought them about. We have seen that Ignatius stood on the side of freedom and flexibility. The prayer life was to be determined under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual director. Prayer must be shaped to meet personal needs and abilities. Now this sort of attitude is not peculiar to Ignatius; it is true of many great founders of religious communities. But pressures soon arise as institutions expand which tend to programme performance in order to secure and insure certain ideals of the organization. This is just what happened with Jesuit prayer in the second generation. Internal pressures soon arose. Spanish and Portuguese superiors feared a tepidity was creeping into the Society in matters of humility and obedience and they wanted regulations set up regarding prayer. To bolster the humility, obedience, and loss of spirit especially in the younger men, these superiors attempted to solve the difficulty by prescribing a certain amount of time for formal prayer. This was consonant, of course, with the contemplative context in which they were living. Reform movements also have a way of programming things in order to insure their objectives. For example, Francis Borgia, the third general of the Society of Jesus, lived in the Spanish community of Gandia under Andreas Ovieto. In this particular house the fathers and scholastics were accustomed to spend three hourse a day in prayer and meditation. The wonder is that when Borgia became general he only introduced one hour of prescribed meditation and not more! The rapid numerical increase of members in the Society was another factor which tended to dilute the original fervour and spirit and seemed to call for some sort of remedial action. The non-Jesuit contemplative tradition, especially in Spain, created another pressure for an increased amount of obligatory prayer for all. Ignatius withstood this environmental pressure; his followers apparently could not. All of these pressures for a prescribed amount of obligatory prayer came to bear on the early Society. Jesuits in northern Eurpoe, France, Holland, and Germany resisted any change in the Constitutions. Those in southern Eurpoe, the majority, chiefly from Spain and Italy, argued for a change.

- To Be Continued - © Copyright Shalom 2006. All rights reserved.