To be fully prepared to find one's place in a rapidly changing global society, experience in the world, including the local community, is an integral part of Ignatian pedagogy. As the former Superior General, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, stated, “Solidarity is learned through 'contact' rather than through 'concepts'...When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change…..All American universities, ours [Jesuit] included, are under tremendous pressure to opt entirely for success in this sense [acquiring professional and technical skills]. But what our students want - and deserve - includes but transcends this ‘worldly success’ based on marketable skills. The real measure of our Jesuit universities lies in who our students become.” Service experiences challenge people to use their talents and abilities to make this a better world, to become “agents of change” and become people of competence and compassion.

Service learning offices and officers at Jesuit universities
from the Service Learning Office at LMU

Commitment to Justice in Higher Education

The Ignatian Solidarity Network

The Institute for Transnational Justice at Marquette University

The Jesuit Center for Faith and Justice of the Irish Jesuit Province

The Jesuit Refugee Service

Jesuit Volunteer Corps

Catholic religious order of men founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and a small group of his multinational "friends in the Lord," fellow students from the University of Paris. They saw their mission as one of being available to go anywhere and do anything to "help souls," especially where the need was greatest (e.g., where a certain people or a certain kind of work were neglected).

Today, numbering about 20,000 priests and brothers, they are spread out in almost every country of the world ("more branch offices," said Pedro Arrupe, "than Coca-Cola")-declining in numbers markedly in Europe and North America, but growing in India, Africa, Latin America and the Far East.

The abbreviation "S.J." after a person's name means that he is a member of the Society of Jesus.

Any of a variety of methods or activities for opening oneself to God's spirit and allowing one's whole being, not just the mind, to be affected. The methods-some of them more "active" and others more "passive"-might include vocal prayer (e.g., the Lord's Prayer), meditation or contemplation, journaling or other kind of writing, reading of scripture or other great works of verbal art, drawing, painting or molding with clay, looking at works of visual art, playing or listening to music, working or walking in the midst of nature. All of these activities have the same goal in mind-discontinuing one's usual productive activities and thus allowing God to "speak," listening to what God may be "saying" through the medium employed.

An organized series of spiritual exercises put together by Ignatius of Loyola out of his own personal spiritual experience and that of others to whom he listened. They invite the "retreatant" or "exercitant" to "meditate" on central aspects of Christian faith (e.g., creation, sin and forgiveness, calling and ministry) and especially to "contemplate" (i.e. imaginatively enter into) the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Ignatius set all of this down in the book of the Spiritual Exercises as a handbook to help the guide who coaches a person engaged in "making the Exercises" After listening to that person and getting a sense for where he/she is, the guide selects from material and methods in the book of the Exercises and offers them in a way adapted to that unique individual. The goal of all this is the attainment of a kind of spiritual freedom, the power to act-not out of social pressure or personal compulsion and fear-but out of the promptings of God's spirit in the deepest, truest core of one's being-to act ultimately out of love.

As originally designed, the "full" Spiritual Exercises would occupy a person for four weeks full-time, but Ignatius realized that some people could not (today most people cannot) disengage from work and home obligations for that long a time, and so it is possible to make the "full" Exercises part-time over a period of six to nine or 10 months-the "Spiritual Exercises in Daily Life." In that case, the "exercitant," without withdrawing from home or work, devotes about an hour a day to prayer (but this, like nearly everything in the Exercises, is adaptable) and sees a guide every week or two to process what has been happening in prayer and in the rest of his/her life.

Most of the time people make not the "full" Spiritual Exercises but a retreat in the Ignatian spirit that might last anywhere from a weekend to a week. Such a retreat usually includes either a daily individual conversation with a guide or several daily presentations to a group, as preparation for prayer/spiritual exercises.

Ignatius had composed and revised his little book over a period of 25 or more years before it was finally published in 1548. Subsequent editions and translations-according to a plausible estimate-numbered some 4,500 in 1948 or about one a month over four centuries, the total number of copies printed being around 4.5 million. It is largely on his Exercises-with their implications for teaching and learning in a holistic way-that Ignatius' reputation as a major figure in the history of Western education rests.

Collaborative Ministries at Creighton
an online version of the Spirit Exercises

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola
translation by Elder Mullan, SJ

What are the Spiritual Exercises?

People are often helped to integrate their faith and their life by talking on a regular basis (e.g., monthly) with someone they can trust. This person acts as a guide (sometimes also called a spiritual friend, companion or director) for the journey, helping them to find the presence and call of God in the people and circumstances of their everyday lives.

The assumption is that God is already present there, and that another person, a guide, can help them to notice God's presence and also to find words for talking about that presence, because they are not used to doing so. The guide is often a specially trained listener skilled in discernment and therefore able to help them sort out the various voices within and around them. While he/she may suggest various kinds of spiritual exercises/ways of praying, the focus is much broader than that; it is upon the whole of a person's life experience as the place to meet God.

The spiritual is often defined as that which is "non-material," but this definition runs into problems when applied to human beings, who are traditionally considered "body-spirits," both bodily and spiritual. In some modern philosophies and psychologies, however, the spiritual dimension of the human is denied or disregarded. And many aspects of our contemporary American culture (e.g., the hurried sense of time and need to produce, produce) make it difficult to pay attention to this dimension.

Fundamentally, the spiritual dimension of human beings can be recognized in the orientation of our minds and hearts toward ever more than we have already reached (the never-satisfied human mind and the never-satisfied human heart). We are drawn inevitably toward the "Absolute" or the "Fullness of Being" [see "God"]. Consequently, there are depths to our being that we can only just begin to fathom.

If every human being has this spiritual dimension and hunger, then even in a culture like ours, everyone will have-at least at times-some awareness of it, even if that awareness is not explicit and not put into words. When people talk of a "spirituality," however, they usually mean, not the spirituality that human beings have by nature, but rather a set of attitudes and practices (spiritual exercises) that are designed to foster a greater consciousness of this spiritual dimension and (in the case of those who can affirm belief in God) a more explicit seeking of its object-the Divine or God.

Ignatian spirituality with its Spiritual Exercises is one such path among many within Christianity, to say nothing of the spiritualities within other religious traditions, or those more or less outside a religious tradition. ("Peoples' spiritual lives [today] have not died; they are simply taking place outside the church [Jesuit General Congregation 34, "Our Mission and Culture"].)

Spirituality in Higher Education: A National Survey of Students Search for Meaning and Purpose
Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles

Ignatian Spirituality in Music

Ignatian Spirituality from the College of Holy Cross

Ignatian Spirituality from Jesuit Media Initiatives in England

Ignatian Spirituality from Loyola Press

Superior General is the title given to the world leader of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit order. There have been 30 since the formation of the order, beginning with Ignatius of Loyola in 1541. Superiors general are elected for life by Jesuit delegates from around the world, gathered together in a general congregation. The current leader, elected in January 2008 during GC 35, is Adolfo Nicolás (1936-    ), a Spaniard who had spent most of his Jesuit life in Japan and the Far East.

Go forth and set the world on fire.
Ignatius Loyola, SJ - 1st Superior General

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in a love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
Pedro Arrupe, SJ - 28th Superior General

Solidarity is learned through contact rather than through concepts. When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change.
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ - 29th Superior General

And then [living in a world as different as the Far East] has taught me to smile at the difficulties, at human imperfection, the human reality.  In Spain I was a little intolerant, thinking in terms of order, of commands, because I thought of religion as fidelity to religious practices, and in Japan I learned that true religiosity is more profound that one must go to the heart of things, to the depths of our humanity, whether we are speaking of God or we are speaking of ourselves and of human life.
Adolfo Nicolás, SJ - 30th Superior General

Superiors General (from Ignatius Loyola to Adolfo Nicolás )

At the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education conference in October 2006, 12 presidents agreed to launch the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. Since then, a number of Jesuit university presidents have signed the Commitment, including Michael J. Graham SJ who stated, "As a Catholic, Jesuit University, it is Xavier's responsibility to undertake issues which have an impact not only on our campus, but on all of today's society". See how the universities are fulfilling their pledge: College of the Holy Cross, Fairfield University, Loyola Marymount University, Santa Clara University, Seattle University and Xavier University.

Image Right: A universal symbol for environmental awareness

The Sustainability issue of EXPLORE
Produced by The Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education at Santa Clara University

Video clips of addresses on climate change from Dr. Jame Schaefer and Archbishop Celestino Migliore

Other initiatives can be found at the following Jesuit universities:

Boston College
Creighton University
Fordham University
Georgetown University
Gonzaga University
Le Moyne College
Loyola University - Chicago
Marquette University
Regis University
University of Detroit Mercy
University of Scranton