Dear Loyola Community,
This year’s Loyola Week theme, cura personalis, has implications beyond ourselves and beyond Loyola.
For St. Ignatius, the reality of Jesus is inescapable and transformative. Ignatius is converted when in the Jesus of scripture he encounters the living Lord who became incarnate, died, rose again, and now reigns in glory.
Former Jesuit Superior General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J. describes how, for Ignatius, this encounter results in a conversion to action. Ignatius realizes that faith in this living Jesus “cannot be separated from serving him in the concreteness of daily life.”
This service necessarily includes following Jesus on the road to the cross. In contemplating the cross, Ignatius learned, according to Fr. Kolvenbach, that “the Son of God truly and freely chose to go down to the last place, going against the impulse that drives every one of us to go up higher and to put distance between ourselves and the marginalized and rejected, the stranger, and the poor of every kind.”
As somebody who writes and teaches about ethics, I know how easy it is to translate the concrete call to follow Jesus into ethical abstractions. Surely rather than asking me to actually surrender something or engage with the suffering of a broken world, all Jesus does is vaguely urge me towards being nicer, giving up a little bit more, or making my comfortable life marginally less comfortable.
In encountering Jesus through St. Ignatius’ eyes, I see how easily I excuse myself and how often I turn inwards, away from others, in apathy or fear. In Ignatius’ conversion, I hear Jesus’ call to convert again and turn outward to others in love. A tall order indeed, but one made possible by God’s grace, which is a fitting way to conclude because, for St. Ignatius, all is gift, all is grace.
Elisabeth Rain Kincaid, Ph.D., J.D.
Legendre-Soulé Chair of Business Ethics
