Ignatius begins the Spiritual Exercises proper with a famous statement: ‘Humanity is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save its soul. And the other things on the face of the earth are created for humanity, that they may help it in pursuing the end for which it is created.’ (Exx 23.2-3) It follows that we have to deal with these creatures ‘rightly’: to use them as much as they help us attain our end, and to rid ourselves of them in so far as they hinder us. Commentators ancient and modern have been struck by the plainness of this statement: it does not mention Jesus Christ; it seems oddly cerebral. It might well help explain why people have often thought Ignatian spirituality irredeemably prosy, functional, even manipulative.‘Sometimes’, we read in an early Directory, ‘from just the consideration of the Foundation alone a whole soul is amended and reformed as it recollects itself and sticks at speculation on its end’. That comment can be read as confirming the critics’ worst suspicions; it can also be taken as a pointer towards something richer hidden in Ignatius’ text. The articles in this issue of The Way draw on various resources to expand our understanding of God’s creative presence.
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