Jesuit Spirituality
RS 370 L / CAS 440 F
What do we mean by “Spirituality”?
“Spirituality” means the way in which individuals or groups apply their beliefs about God and/or the human
condition in their actual daily lives, in order to guide their choices and to provide them with a sense of meaning and peace. The manner in which individuals or groups do this is shaped by a wide variety of factors,
including one’s religious beliefs, personality type, life experiences, and the influences of family and culture. -Fr. Bart Geger, SJ
[B]y spirituality I mean a way of living. . . . Christian spirituality, as I understand it, means primarily the
attempt to give an orientation to the whole of one’s daily living under the influence of the Spirit of Christ and
the gospel. –David Lonsdale, Eyes to See, Ears to Hear, Loyola University Press, 1990, p. 2.
The term spirituality refers to the Spirit at work in persons 1) within a culture, 2) in relation to a tradition, 3)
in memory of Jesus Christ, 4) in the light of contemporary events, hopes, sufferings, and promises, 5) in
efforts to combine elements of action and contemplation, 6) with respect to charism and community, 7) as
expressed and authenticated in praxis. –Michael Downey, “Jean Vanier: Recovering the Heart,” Spirit-uality
Today 38 (Winter 1986), pp. 339-340.
Spirituality is a lived experience, the effort to apply relevant elements in the deposit of Christian faith to the
guidance of men and women toward their spiritual growth, the progressive development of their persons
which flowers into a proportionately increased insight and joy in the beatific vision. –George Ganss, SJ,
Ignatius of Loyola: Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, New York, Paulist Press, 1991, p. 61.
Christian spirituality, then, is personal participation in the mystery of Christ begun in faith, sealed by baptism
into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, nourished by the sharing of the Lord’s Supper, which the
community celebrated regularly in memory of Him who was truly present wherever his followers gathered,
and was expressed by a simple life of universal love that bore witness to life in the Spirit and attracted others
to faith. –Sandra Schneiders, “Scripture and Spirituality,” in Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth
Century, ed. Bernard McGinn et al., New York, Crossroad Press, 1985, p. 2.
A friend once described spirituality to me as ‘theology on two feet’. In other words, spirituality (at least in the
Christian context) is a useful term to describe how, individually and collectively, we personally appropriate the
traditional beliefs about God, humanity, and the world, and express them in terms of our basic attitudes, lifestyle, and activity. On a personal level, spirituality is how we stand before God in the context of our everyday
lives. For Christians, this involves two complimentary dimensions: our tradition and our experience of the
culture and the world in which we live, by which we are influenced, and to which we respond. The question
of how these two dimensions relate to each other is a complex one. –Philip Sheldrake, Images of Holiness:
Explorations in Contemporary Spirituality, Notre Dame, Ave Maria Press, 1988, p. 2.
Christian spirituality is the daily, communal, lived expression of one’s ultimate beliefs, characterized by openness to the self-transcending love of God, self, neighbor, and world through Jesus Christ and in the power of
the Holy Spirit. –Elizabeth Dreyer, s.v. “Christian Spirituality,” The Harper/Collins Encyclopedia of
Catholicism, ed. Richard McBrien, San Francisco, Harper/Collins, 1995.