April 2006 Christian Spirituality By George A Lane SJ

JESUIT PRAYER SECOND GENERATION Continue from ...... What was initiated by Father Borgia in this matter of a legislated amount of daily prayer was maintained by Father Mecurian and was solidly confirmed and entrenched by Father Aquaviva who was general from 1581 to 1615. How can we interpret this development in the matter of prayer? It sems to be a normal and legitimate instance of institutionalization, a result of the effort to organize and stabilize a religious way of life. There can be no real objection to this. But a definite difficulty arise when one particular form of the development becomes "consecrated" so to speak, institutionalized, and irreversible for subsequent generations. Times and cultures change, and what may have been a suitable embodiment of the Ignatian ideal in Francis Borgia's time (though this is open to question too), may not be at all suitable in another culture centuries later, and may not be suitable in our own time. The development from Ignatius to Aquaviva is something like the development from apostolic Christianity of the first century to the established Catholicism of the fourth and fifth. What happened was a routinization of religious life. The greatest danger here is not the change, but that a particular form of change should become inflexible and irreversible. Some regularization of religious spirit will be inevitable in a large religious community, but it should be constantly adaptable and adapted to various times and circumstances. And then perhaps Ignatius' original working principle concerning prayer would still be the best of all - prayer as a style of life, a seeking to find God in all things, with formal prayer as a means of disposing the individual to do God's will, the time to be determined by mature charity under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual father. On the evidence presented we can speak of a real distinction between Ignatian prayer and Jesuit prayer. But as we read the history of the past and question the legislation of another age, we must still discern and determine how best to adapt the spirit and ideal of a founder to the circumstances of our own time.

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