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St. Ignatius Of Loyola And The Spiritual Exercises

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When we think about the most known spiritualities within the Christian tradition, it is common to hear the Company of Jesus, or Jesuits, as one of relevance, and which a lot people are acquainted with. People would even easily recognize St. Ignatius of Loyola, its founder, and his most important work, the Spiritual Exercises. However, when we are asked to mention Christianity’s most notable mystics, names like St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross or St. Gertrude the Great come to light, but St. Ignatius is seldom considered. In fact, it just takes a simple internet search to notice that his name does not make it in many lists of church mystics.
This work proposes to present St Ignatius of Loyola’s mystical nature, and how his mysticism was the foundation of Ignatian Spirituality and its importance for The Spiritual Exercises.
The term mysticism is a term that has had different connotations throughout history. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the term Mysticism comes from the Greek word that means “to conceal”, therefore in early Christianity it was used to refer to “hidden” allegorical interpretations of Scripture, for example to refer to the mystery of Jesus in the Eucharist. Later, the term began to denote, mystical theology, including direct experiences of the divine. This led philosophers to focus then, on the aspect of “mystical experiences”.
But what is a mystical experience? Once again, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, defines “mystical experience” as: “A (purportedly) super sense-perceptual or sub sense-perceptual experience granting acquaintance of realities or states of affairs that are of a kind not accessible by way of sense perception, somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection.” Others define it simply as an experience of the divine. On the other hand, St. John of the Cross describes the mystical experience, when the soul is brought into a mystical state. He says, “. . . when once the soul is brought into this other state, it acts not at all with its faculties, . . . Then God communicates Himself to it passively, even as to one who has his eyes open, so that light is communicated to him passively, without his doing more than keep them open. And this

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