In this article, I will describe and analyze the use of Scripture and imagination in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, paying attention to the role, benefits, dangers and safeguards regarding the use of imagination in prayer. Then I will comment upon the impact of Ignatian exercises as a component of spiritual formation.
Briefly, I will explore the role of pilgrimage in Ignatius’s life. Ignatius refers to himself as “the pilgrim” throughout his autobiography.[1]Ignatius made a physical pilgrimage to Jerusalem which was cut short, and years later, commenced a second trip with a group of fellow pilgrims. John Olin elaborates,
They awaited a ship to the East, but none sailed…Late that year they set out for Rome and …put themselves at the disposition of Pope Paul III. The pope, it appears, urged them to give up any thought of a Jerusalem apostolate and remain in Italy serving the church there.[2]
While Ignatius and his friends never made it to the Holy Land, reportedly Pope Paul III told them, “Italy is a good and true Jerusalem.”[3]Rome, then, became the substitute destination of Ignatius’s pilgrimage, where he established the Society of Jesus.
In Ignatius’s Exercises, the Spiritual Director encourages the participant to behold, with the mind’s eye, the object of contemplation. Ignatius writes, “the composition will be to see with the sight of the imagination the corporeal place where the thing is found which I want to contemplate.”[4]I propose that these contemplations are a form of mental pilgrimage.
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[1]John C. Olin, ed., The Autobiography of St. Ignatius Loyola, trans. Joseph F. O’Callaghan (New York, 1974), cited by John C. Olin, “The Idea of Pilgrimage in the Experience of Ignatius Loyola,” Church History48 (1979): 387–397, 387.
[2]Olin, “Pilgrimage,” Church History 392.
[3]Javier Osuna, S. J., Friends in the Lord, trans. Nicholas King, S. J. (London, 1974), cited by Olin, “Pilgrimage,” Church History 392.
[4]Elder Mullan, The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola (Pickerington, OH: Beloved Publishing, 2015), 18.
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