THE WAY a review of Christian spirituality published by the British Jesuits October 2017 Volume 56, Number 4 THE REFORMATION A Gift from God? THE WAY October 2017 Foreword 6–8 All Unawares: Evangelical Spirituality as a Preparation for 9–20 the Ignatian Encounter Beth Dickson Coming from an Evangelical background, Beth Dickson found that it was the idea of consolation that first struck her when she encountered Ignatian spirituality. Later on she discovered that her own evangelical spirituality had prepared her well to appreciate other Ignatian concepts and insights. She offers here an account of her path through these discoveries. Martin Luther’s Conversion Experience and the Mid-Life 21–32 Transition Robert Opala Many psychologists have found themselves fascinated by the figure of Martin Luther, and have been led to identify elements in his character and personality that may have prompted his involvement in initiating the Protestant Reformation. Robert Opala suggests that contemporary investigation of the transitions that occur in mid-life may cast fresh light on such questions. A Pilgrimage through Methodism and Ignatian Spirituality 33–44 Hugh Jenkins Contemporary Methodism recognises a ‘Wesleyan quadrilateral’ in the teachings of its founder, by which scripture, tradition, spiritual experience and reason together form the basis of authority. Hugh Jenkins, a South African Methodist, finds this a useful framework, leading him to a deeper understanding of discernment, as it is presented in Ignatian spirituality. Anglicans and Ignatius 45–50 Nicolas Stebbing On first encountering Jesuits, Nicolas Stebbing, an Anglican religious priest, wondered whether they would be ‘steely-eyed fanatics, full of counter-reformation zeal’. What he found instead drew him more deeply into ecumenism, and to becoming a giver of the Spiritual Exercises. He speaks of a journey confirmed by the election of Francis, the first Jesuit Pope. THE WAY October 2017 An Anglican Journey with Ignatius 51–56 Steffan Mathias Steffan Mathias is, like Nicolas Stebbing, a member of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection. He is in his final year of preparation for ordination and was recently directed through the Spiritual Exercises by Nicholas. Here he describes some of the effects of this process on his experience of feeling called to Anglican ministry. ‘Consideration’ in English Reformation Spirituality: Robert 57–71 Persons’s Book of Resolution and Christian Directorie (1582–1585) Victor Houliston Robert Persons is best known as the man who planned and implemented the first Jesuit mission to England, at the end of the sixteenth century. In his own day he was also famed as the author of a devotional manual, the Book of Resolution. This work had an influence on Catholics and Protestants alike, as Victor Houliston shows here. God’s ‘Plan B’: The Spiritual Exercises through the Eyes of a 73–81 Lutheran Jnis Vanags The Lutheran archbishop of Riga, J=nis Vanags, first discovered the Spiritual Exercises in a samizdat photocopy, purchased illegally in a forest near Riga during Soviet times. Even now, the name of Ignatius Loyola is suspect among some in his Church. His only answer is to recount his own experience, which leads him to reflect: ‘I was amazed at how Lutheran the Spiritual Exercises are’. St Nikodemos the Hagiorite and the Spirituality of the 83–95 Catholic Reformation Norman Russell Roman Catholics can tend to think of the Eastern Orthodox Church as having been relatively untouched by the upheaval of the Reformation. Yet, Norman Russell argues here, its effects were actually profound. He traces them in the life and work of an eighteenth-century Orthodox monk and theologian, St Nikodemos the Hagiorite. THE WAY October 2017 The Impact of Ignatian Spirituality on British Methodism 97–108 E. Adam Wells The widespread rediscovery of the Spiritual Exercises in their individually guided form coincided, in the early 1970s, with the birth of a retreat movement within the Methodist Church. This in turn led to Methodists recognising aspects of Ignatian spiritual direction in the ministry of John Wesley. Adam Wells here outlines some of this history in the British Methodist movement over the last forty years. Reformation as Spiritual Innovation 109–118 Alan Kolp The story of Martin Luther kick-starting the Reformation by nailing his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg is too archetypal to be easily rejected. Yet the reality was surely more complex. Now, five centuries later, it is becoming more possible to come to a sense of what the Spirt of God might have been doing through the upheaval of those years, a path Alan Kolp traces here. Ignatian-Inspired Spirituality in a Scandinavian Ecumenical 119–128 Setting Johannes Pedersen Most Christians identify with a particular denomination. Yet Ignatian spirituality seems to have the capacity to work across these divisions, and even influence those who think of themselves as entirely undenominational. Johannes Pedersen describes how he and his wife have established and run an ecumenical retreat house in Denmark. FOR AUTHORS The Way warmly invites readers to submit articles with a view to publication. They should normally be about 4,000 words long, and be in keeping with the journal’s aims. The Editor is always ready to discuss possible ideas. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are grateful to Paul Golightly for the photograph of St Antony’s Priory, and to Johannes and Heidi Pedersen for those of Ådalen Retræte. Thanks to Peter Brook SJ for additional illustrations. The scripture quotations herein are generally from the New Revised Standard Version Bible © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission. All rights reserved. THE WAY October 2017 ABBREVIATIONS Autobiography ‘Reminiscences (Autobiography)’, in Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, translated by Philip Endean and Joseph A. Munitiz (London: Penguin, 1996) Constitutions in The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996) Diary ‘The Spiritual Diary’, in Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, translated by Philip Endean and Joseph A. Munitiz (London: Penguin, 1996) Dir On Giving the Spiritual Exercises: The Early Manuscript Directories and the Official Directory of 1599, translated and edited by Martin E. Palmer (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996) Exx The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, translated by George E. Ganss (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992) Jesuit Life and Jesuit Life and Mission Today: The Decrees and Accompanying Documents of the 31st – 35th Mission Today General Congregations of the Society of Jesus (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2009) MHSJ Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu, 157 volumes (Madrid and Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1898– ) FOREWORD N RECENT MONTHS I have been in correspondence with a few members I of the Protestant Alliance, which publishes a journal entitled The Reformer. The correspondence began when I questioned some details of an article on the Jesuits in their pages. One courteous response explained that I was probably not among the intended audience for the piece, since the journal existed in part to ‘play an important role in reminding Protestants that the “Reformation” was an act of the Holy Spirit’. It is not surprising that the events of which we mark the five-hundredth anniversary this year are viewed in this way by Protestants. But how might Catholics now understand them? Can I recognise the Spirit of God acting in and through what happened in Reformation years, and has continued subsequently? The spread of the Spiritual Exercises over the last five decades, and of the Ignatian spirituality of which the Exercises are the foundation, has clearly not been confined to the Roman Catholic Church. Even without having to adopt the oft-repeated assertion of Gerry W. Hughes that the Exercises are a gift ‘for Catholics, for Protestants and for pagans’, it is undeniably true that denominations across the Christian spectrum have been touched by the work of Ignatius of Loyola. Nor has the influence all been one way. By coming into contact with different understandings of Christian life and worship, as with any good experience of inculturation, the practice of giving the Exercises has itself had to adapt and develop. This special issue of The Way does not set out, then, to contrast Loyola and Luther, or to praise the one and critique the other. It has, rather, invited a number of writers from across the Christian Churches to reflect upon their own experience of the Exercises, as those who have made the exercises themselves and those who direct others. Many of the articles reflect upon the contemporary situation in different parts of the world; some offer aspects of the historical context. Backgrounds range from Eastern Orthodoxy and high Anglicanism to the Plymouth Brethren, from Latvia to South Africa and Australia, and the time frame stretches from that of Luther himself through the eighteenth century to the present-day. The Way, 56/4 (October 2017), 6–8 Foreword 7 Our two Methodist contributors, Adam Wells and Hugh Jenkins, both find in Ignatius one who shares many aspects of a common outlook with John Wesley, such that a knowledge of the latter can shed light upon the work of the former. Beth Dickson, too, believes that the Evangelical spirituality in which she was brought up offered an excellent preparation for her own later discovery of the Exercises. An interesting pair of articles come from two members of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection, popularly known as the Mirfield Fathers. Nicholas Stebbing describes his own encounters with Ignatian spirituality, which began with a healthy suspicion of Jesuits! Now responsible for parts of the ordination training of younger members of the Community, he has recently led one such member, Stefan Matthias, through the experience of the Exercises, and Stefan here reflects upon the specifically Anglican expectations that he brought with him to that experience, and how these were taken up and transformed in the course of his retreat.