What Ignatius’ insight could tell us today

Discovering personal and community vocations

July 31st is the feast day of St Ignatius of Loyola, a Catholic Saint who founded the order called Jesuits, and his experiences with God and other human beings have given rise to Ignatian Spirituality. It is very difficult to summarize any spirituality in a few words; a few lines below capture some of the dynamics of Ignatian Spirituality for me.

Finding God in all things.

Doing everything for the greater glory of God.

A God who continuously labours in the entire creation.

It is a spirituality of activity. Where is God laboring during the current times? What should we do for the greater glory of God and for the good of the entire creation? I feel there is an invitation to make two discoveries which are very much complementary.

1. Discovering Personal Vocation: Herbie Alphonso SJ has a beautiful book titled Discovering your personal vocation, and he describes one of the principal focus of the month-long silent Ignatian Spiritual Exercises is to discover one’s own personal vocation. I had an opportunity to interact with a young Italian guy last week in Taizé. He left engineering and discovered his love for nature. He is now studying agriculture and later wanted to study designing garden architecture. Why this is significant? Though he doesn’t use the word personal vocation, he said that all these changes combine many aspects of his life and I feel he has a discovery of his personal vocation. When he describes the journey, I really sense a spark in his eyes.

It is a work utilizing his talents and capabilities; it is connected to creating, beauty, and awesomeness; for him, it is bringing him closer to God. Our own personal vocations are something each one of us should discover, which may be my own unique way of connecting God, myself, others, and the creation and this is truly my uniqueness and my way to joy and meaning.

2. Discovering Community-vocation: One of the learnings for many from the current pandemic was that we are not isolated individuals, but part of many different communities. Communities do have their own beautiful vocation and discernment of that vocation is not an easy task, but very essential. When many communities or groups decide to adopt more environment-friendly, people-friendly practices it is a move in the right direction. When they give importance to the happiness of citizens or care of refugees/migrants over excessive development, it is a movement in the right direction. Authentic personal-vocation can never be in conflict with community-vocation though there can be tensions and challenges.

When Personal vocation involves the creation and discovery of the person called ‘I’, we are invited also to create communities of love and peace and to discover the vocations of those communities. The entire dynamics of discovering these two vocations can be also put in very general terms as

Movement from individualism to individuality and uniqueness

Movement from Uniformity to Unity and harmony in groups/communities

Movement from ego to joy and care