St Ignatius's Wise Counsel For Retreat Givers Against Being "Pushy"

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ccording to the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, "choice" or "election" is found at the core of the Spiritual Exercises, much like the Holy of Holies where the exercitant is directed by God and not by the spiritual director to choose God's choice, i.e., ultimately to a self-abandonment to God. In my reading of a 2012 issue from the "Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits"—a quarterly monograph series—Fr Barton T Geger SJ wrote so interestingly on a topic entitled "The First First Companions: The Continuing Impact of the Men Who Left Ignatius. I would like to highlight one touchy issue included by Fr Geger as regards St Ignatius's pet peeve on being "pushy."

He had it all safeguarded in that small paragraph (165 words) of Annotation 15 in the Spiritual Exercises. He did not mince his words when it comes to giving his opinion about the relationship between the retreat giver—the one giving the Exercises, and the exercitant—the one making the Exercises. He would remind retreat givers about their fundamental duty to “get out of the way,” and even in one case, about being a “walking contradiction” (Frank Wallace, “Spiritual Direction,” in The Christian Ministry of Spiritual Direction, The Best of the Review, no. 3, edited by David Fleming [St Louis: Review for Religious, 1988], 88–89).

God's divine persuasion is paramount. The immediacy of the communication between God and the creature must at all cost be safeguarded. Spiritual guides who actively encourage or discourage exercitants most specially to a particular "posture" risk contradicting the spirit behind Annotation 15 and, worst, interrupting ipso facto the immediacy of the religious encounter.

It was so sacred for St Ignatius for the exercitants not only to know but to be satisfied that the elections they made were truly theirs, and not their spiritual guides’. In 1554 Dr Bartholomé de Torres (an early friend of the Society) defended Annotation 15 in just this manner.

[F]or the one giving the Exercises, it is indeed licit to persuade and counsel the one who makes the Exercises to enter religious life. Fr Ignatius does not deny this. He does not say that one who gives the Exercises acts wrongly in counseling one to enter religious life, but rather he says that one should not push him [impellere] into religious life. He wants to say that one should not force or compel aggressively [forçar e induzir con alguna violentia], but rather leave him in freedom. 

Source: Exercitia Spiritualia Sancti Ignatii de Loyola et eorum Directoria, 2 vols., vol. 19 of MHSI (Rome: IHSI, 1919), 1:657 (translation by Barton T Geger SJ, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits: First First Companions The Continuing Impact of the Men Who Left Ignatius, 2012). See also Dr Vergara’s explanation of annotation 15 (ibid., 672–73).

The following year, Ignatius made the same point to Fr Juan Vitoria. Quoting Vitoria, he said that for Fr Ignatius,

[the retreat giver should not urge an exercitant] to choose one or another state, unless the exercitant already feels himself inclined to a particular state and has told him this, then he may, after careful reflection (and supposing, as I have said, that he has permission) tell the exercitant what he thinks in the presence of the Lord, if he judges that saying it at that point might confirm the exercitant in his good resolve or help him to turn away from something that is less good and to place himself back in God’s hands to be guided by him. But, as I have said, he must constantly be on guard not to talk about anything which might suggest that he is trying to push him toward the Society. This would be against the rule of the Exercises [Annotation 15] and against the purity of the spirit of the Society, which does not want anyone to be moved to enter the Society otherwise than by free choice and at God’s will and prompting. . . . Moreover, with the exercitant having been moved at such a time by the advice or efforts of a mortal human, the door will always be open for the devil to tempt him by suggesting that had it not been for the influence of so-and-so’s advice, he would never have taken such a step, and that the idea came from a human being, and humans are nearly always wrong. And so the devil will always have this temptation at hand.

Source: Exercitia Spiritualia Sancti Ignatii de Loyola et eorum Directoria, 2 vols., vol. 19 of MHSI (Rome: IHSI, 1919), 2:95. See also Martin E Palmer, trans., “Directory Dictated to Father Juan Alonso de Vitoria,” in Giving the Spiritual Exercises: The Early Jesuit Manuscript Directories and the Official Directory of 1599 (St Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996), 18.

Fr Juan Alfonso de Polanco, St Ignatius's secretary, later wrote: “Although in the beginning Ignatius did not make it difficult to admit persons to the Society, later he began to clench his hand, and to say that, if there were one thing that made him want to live longer . . . it would be to make it more difficult to receive men into Society.”

Fr JM Manzano SJ