The Dialectic of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola

The Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises of St.
Ignatius of Loyola
Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Downloaded from Brill.com01/16/2023 06:13:15PM
via free access
Jesuit Studies
Modernity through the Prism of Jesuit History
Editor
Robert A. Maryks (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)
Editorial Board
James Bernauer, S.J. (Boston College, emeritus)

Louis Caruana, S.J. (Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome)
Emanuele Colombo (DePaul University)
Paul Grendler (University of Toronto, emeritus)
Yasmin Haskell (University of Western Australia)
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia (Pennsylvania State University)
Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. (Loyola University Maryland)
Mia Mochizuki (Independent Scholar)
Sabina Pavone (Università degli Studi di Macerata)
Moshe Sluhovsky (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Jeffrey Chipps Smith (The University of Texas at Austin)
volume 35
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/js

via free access
The Dialectic of the
Spiritual Exercises
of St. Ignatius of Loyola
By Gaston Fessard, S.J.
Translated and Edited by
Oliva Blanchette
James Colbert
LEIDEN | BOSTON

via free access
Cover illustration: The Elogium sepulcrale to St. Ignatius, by an anonymous Jesuit, 1640.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fessard, Gaston, author. | Colbert, James G., 1938- translator,

editor. | Blanchette, Oliva, translator, editor.
Title: The dialectic of the Spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola /
by Gaston Fessard, S.J. ; translated and edited by Oliva Blanchette,
James Colbert.
Other titles: Dialectique des Exercices spirituels de S. Ignace de Loyola.
English
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2022] | Series: Jesuit studies,
2214-3289 ; volume 35 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022017798 (print) | LCCN 2022017799 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004209091 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004504738 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ignatius, of Loyola, Saint, 1491-1556. Exercitia
spiritualia. | Dialectical theology.
Classification: LCC BX2179.L8 F413 2022 (print) | LCC BX2179.L8 (ebook) |
DDC 253.5/3–dc23/eng/20220527
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022017798
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022017799
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 2214-3289
isbn 978-90-04-20909-1 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-50473-8 (e-book)
Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink,
Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be
addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

via free access
When this translation had been finished and submitted, Professor
Oliva Blanchette died suddenly. He knew the Spiritual Exercises at first
hand, had met Gaston Fessard, and was an experienced translator
of philosophical texts (Maurice Blondel was his specialty). Professor
Blanchette’s involvement was crucial to this project. In acknowledgement
of his friendship, collaboration, encouragement, and high standards,
I would like to dedicate this book to him.
James Colbert
July 2021

via free access
via free access
Contents
Thoughts on the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises xi

Oliva Blanchette and James Colbert
List of Figures xviii
Preface 1
Postscript to the Preface 16
Introduction 19
1 Division of the Exercises 24

1 How to Make the Four Weeks Coincide with the Three Ways? 25
2 Deduction of the Divisions of the Exercises 35
part 1
Before the Act of Freedom
2 Positing Non-being: Week One 45
3 Negation of the Positing of Non-being: Week Two 52

1 The Three Degrees of Humility 66
Part 2
Passage from the Before to the After
Introduction to Part 2 70
4 The Election 71
1 Preamble to the Election 71
2 Introduction concerning the Things about Which Election Must
Be Made 73
3 The Three Times of the Election 74
3.1 First Time 75
3.2 Second Time 77
3.3 Third Time 78

via free access
viii Contents
4 Two Ways of Making Election in the Third Time

(Numbers 178–188) 79
4.1 First Way (Numbers 178–183) 80
4.2 Second Way (Numbers 184–188) 84
5 For the Amendment and Reform of One’s Own Life and Condition
(Number 189) 90
Part 3
After the Act of Freedom
5 Exclusion of All Non-being: Third Week 115

1 The Growth of the Exclusion of Non-being 119
2 Passage from the Third to the Fourth Moment: Triduum Mortis 122
3 Application to the Act of Freedom 126
6 Positing of Being: Fourth Week 130

1 Application to the Act of Freedom 136
2 Growth of the Positing of the Being 137
3 The Disappearance of the Positing of Being: Ascension 149
Conclusion: The Contemplatio Ad Amorem Obtinendum 154

1 First Point 158
2 Second Point 159
3 Third Point 165
4 Fourth Point 169
5 Suscipe 170
Circularity of the Exercises and Circularity of Absolute Knowledge:

From Ignatius to Hegel through Hölderlin 174
Afterword 189
1 Essay on Constructing a Geometrical Scheme of the Exercises 201
1.1 Fundamental Images 201
1.2 Design of the Four Weeks 204
1.3 Design of the Contemplation ad Amorem 216
1.4 Ignatian Mysticism and Intellectualist Mysticisms 218

via free access
Contents ix
2 Division of the Exercises 226

3 Perspectives 233
Appendix: Rules for the Discernment of Spirits 245

1 Rules for the First Week (Numbers 313–327) 249
1.1 Rules 1 and 2: The Double Existential Situation of the Self
(Numbers 314 and 315) 249
1.2 Rules 2 and 3: Definition of Consolation and Desolation (Numbers
315 and 316) 251
1.3 Rules 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9: Tactic to Follow in Desolation 251
1.4 Rules 10 and 11: Tactic to Follow in Consolation 253
1.5 Rules 12, 13, and 14: The Devil’s Tactic (Numbers 325, 326,
and 327) 256
2 Rules for the Second Week (Numbers 328–336) 264
2.1 Rule 1: Specifications about Consolation (Number 329) 265
2.2 Rule 2: Consolation without Prior Cause (Number 330) 266
2.3 Rule 3: Consolation Caused by Spirits (Number 331) 271
2.4 Rule 4: False Consolation (Number 332) 272
2.5 Rule 5: Discernment of False Consolation (Number 333) 273
2.6 Rule 6: After the Discernment of False Consolation
(Number 334) 298
2.7 Rule 7: Contrary Modes of Action of the Spirits (Number 335) 301
2.8 Rule 8: The Time That Follows Consolation without Cause
(Number 336) 305
Further Study of the Ignatian Maxim 311

Haec sit prima agendorum regula: sic Deo fide, quasi rerum successus
omnis a te, nihil a Deo ponderet; ita tamen iis omnem operam admove,
quasi tu nihil, Deus omnia solus sit facturus 311
Section 1: Sources of the Traditional Maxim 313
Section 2: Structure of Maxim Number 2 322
2.1 Point of Departure of the Objections 322
2.2 Incoherent Propositions or Dialectical Propositions? 323
2.3 Formula B and the Kieckens Translation 326
2.4 Dialectical Structure and the Role of Quasi 328
2.5 Critique of Formula B: Role of Sic and Ita 332
2.6 Placement of the Imperative and Order of the Subordinate
Clause 334
2.7 Formula C and the Meaning of Subordinate Clauses 337
2.8 Formula A and the Proof by Negativity 339
2.9 Conclusion: The Traditional Maxim and the Exercises 341

via free access
x Contents
Section 3: The Objections against the Traditional Maxim 344

Section 4: The Secret of These Objections 350
Figures 369
Figures 1–10 370
Figures 14–19 371
Figures 20–29 372
Elogium Sepulcrale 373
Bibliography 375
Index of Names 383
Index of Terms 385

via free access
Thoughts on the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises
Oliva Blanchette and James Colbert
As their name indicates, the Exercises are something that are done rather
than learned. Yet, understanding something helps us act. Gaston Fessard, S.J.
(1897–1978) was a major public intellectual in France, but he is hardly known
in the United States. Over the decades, he returned to his reflections on the
Spiritual Exercises and developed his insights. Familiarity with the background
to his reflections may help understand his message, particularly for those less
familiar with the intellectual climate of his time or with Jesuit history. It would
be unrealistic to try to summarize the vast wealth of material carefully and
lovingly gathered over the centuries in the archives of the Society of Jesus. We
only aspire to transmit a sense that the wealth exists.
1 Ground Rules
The full four-week Exercises, as described by Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491–1556),

are taken twice during the formation of Jesuits: once at the very beginning of
the two years of novitiate, or ascetic training (e.g., September of one’s first year
for entrants in the summer), and a second time twelve or thirteen years later, in
a third year of ascetic training, after academic formation has been completed
and priests are ordained, before going out into the ministry.
Jesuits are not required to make the full four-week retreat again after that,
but they have to make a seven-day retreat every year on their own, in which
they usually do a shortened version of the four-week Spiritual Exercises regard-
ing decisions they have to make in their otherwise busy lives. They do the
retreat in a place of their choice. They might go to a retreat house or to some
other Jesuit center, for example at a school or college.
The ministry of some Jesuits is to give retreats to non-Jesuits. Whether or
not these retreats are Spiritual Exercises would depend on the Jesuit giving
this retreat. In the United States, retreat masters sometimes resort mostly to
preaching, with little or no attention to an election, or decisive choice of a
life path. Days or evenings of recollection might be seen as short versions of
nineteenth annotation retreats, depending on how they fit into a program, or
a nineteenth annotation form of the Exercises. Hence they can take a form
whose structure does not resemble what Fessard describes.

via free access
xii Thoughts on the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises
The key issue in all this is whether there is an election, a major choice, a
crossroads in the structure of a given instance of the Exercises. Ignatius him-
self had a nineteenth annotation on how the Exercises could be given as an
ongoing process without immersing oneself in silence and seclusion. Hence
the literature may refer to a nineteenth annotation way of giving the Exercises
to people engaged in their routine work. This allows for a great deal of flexibil-
ity, without Fessard’s focus on election.
2 Structural Conflict
One of the leading Thomists of the first half of the twentieth century, a Thomist
of the strict observance or more familiarly “hard Thomist,” was Réginald
Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (1877–1964). From 1909 to 1960, he was a professor at
what was then called the Angelicum in Rome. He held a chair in ascetical and
mystical theology, reputedly the first such chair anywhere. Fessard certainly
knew of Garrigou (all Catholic theologians and philosophers of the period did)
but cites him only on the technical Scholastic question of divine premotion.
In his time a widely read author of a range of theological, philosophical, and
spiritual books, perhaps Garrigou’s most widely read work is the bulky tome
Three Ages of the Interior Life. These are the purgative, the illuminative, and
the unitive ways. Besides Thomas Aquinas (1224/25–74), Garrigou’s other great
inspiration came from St. John of the Cross (1542–91). Garrigou taught that
the normal course of Christian spiritual development ought to culminate with
infused contemplation in the illuminative way. There is a growth in spiritual
development marked by conversions, somewhat as there is a growth in human
maturation often marked by crises. Hence, there can and should be three con-
versions that lead into each of the three stages. Here, Garrigou works within a
much broader tradition.
In this vein, one might mention the elegantly written An Introduction to
the Study of Ascetical and Mystical Theology.1 Its author is Archbishop Alban
Goodier, S.J. (1869–1939). Goodier’s book, based on lectures at Heythrop
College, makes no mention of the contrast between the three stages and the
four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises, although Goodier was also the author of
St. Ignatius Loyola and Prayer as Seen in the Book of Spiritual Exercises (London:
Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1940).
1 Translator’s copy, Milwaukee: Bruce, n.d.

via free access
Thoughts on the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises xiii
3 Biographical Sketch
Fessard never held a permanent academic position. Much of his work was in
journalism. His philosophical investigation was largely devoted to a modern
philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Fessard was also an
active participant in the intellectual and social life of his own country. Notably,
he directed polemics against both Nazism and Marxism. He was a close friend
of the prominent journalist and social theorist Raymond Aron (1905–83).
Fessard tells us2 that the idea of writing the Dialectique came to him in
June 1923 after reading the Jesuit Pierre Bouvier’s (1848–1925) Interprétation
authentique de la méditation fondamentale in June 1923.3
But puzzling over the relation between three ways and four weeks goes
much farther back to St. Pierre Favre (Peter Faber [1506–46]). Favre was the
roommate of St. Francis Xavier (1506–52) at the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris.
They were later joined by St. Ignatius himself, whom Favre tutored in Greek.
Favre was the first of the Jesuits to be ordained, and apparently was also puz-
zled by the relationship between the ways and the weeks.
Fessard tells us that he had become acquainted with Hegelian philoso-
phy by 1929, when he presented a translation he had done of the preface of
The Phenomenology of Spirit to Jean Wahl (1888–1974), who was to become a
renowned historian of existentialism. What fascinated Fessard at that point
was his perception of a parallel between Hegel’s scheme and that of Maurice
Blondel’s (1861–1949) Action.4
4 Hegel
A testimony of the difficulty of fully appreciating Fessard’s insights into Hegel

is the fact that his L’herméneutique hégelienne du Christianisme, originally pre-
pared for a congress marking the two-hundredth anniversary of Hegel’s death,
only became generally available when edited by Michel Sales (1939–2016) and
published in 1990, twelve years after Fessard’s death. It forms part of a larger
study, Hegel: Le Christianisme et l’histoire.
2 Gaston Fessard, La dialectique de les Exercices spirituels de saint Ignace de Loyola (Paris:
Aubier, Éditions Montaigne, 1956), 5.
3 Pierre Bouvier, Interprétation authentique de la méditation fondamentale dans les Exercises
spirituels de saint Ignace (Bourges: A. Tardy, 1922). There is an English version: Authentic
Interpretation of the Founder in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (West Baden, 1943),
which seems to have been published for internal use.
4 Fessard, La dialectique, 6.

via free access
xiv Thoughts on the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises
The following list gives us a sense of Fessard’s interest in Hegel and German
idealism:5
1934 article “Sur la mauvaise conscience: À propos du livre de M.W. Jankélévitch,”

Recherches de science religieuse (April 1934): 165–98.
1934 review of Vladimir Jankélévitch, L’odyssée de la conscience dans la dernière
philosophie de Schelling, Études (August 20, 1934): 411–412.
1942 review of Hegel, La phénoménologie de L’esprit, Construire 8 (1942):
279–300.
1943 review of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, La destination de l’homme, Fiches bibli-
ographiques 5 (November 1934).
1945 review of Hegel, Principes de philosophie du droit, Fiches bibliographiques
8 (April 1945).
1946 review of Henri Niel, De la médiation dans la philosophie de Hegel, Études
(September): 292–294.
1946 review of Hegel, Esthétique, Études (December): 421.
1947 article “Le matérialisme historique et la dialectique du maître et l’esclave,”
in Atti del congresso internationale di filosofia, ed. Enrico Castelli (Milan:
Castelllani, 1947), 57–78.
1947 article “Deux interprètes de la Phénomenologie de Hegel, J. Hyppolite et
A. Kojève,” Études (December 1947): 368–73.
1949 review of Hegel, Science de la logique, Études (December): 411–12.
1954 review of Hegel, Primières publications (M. Méry), Études (May 1954):
267–68.
1955 review of Paul Asveld, La pensée religieuse du jeune Hegel: Liberté et aliéna-
tion, Études (May 1955): 268–69.
1956 article “D’Ignace de Loyola à Hegel par Hölderlin: Circularité des
Exercices spirituels et circularité du savoir absolut,” Archiv für Rechts- &
Sozialphilosophie 42, no. 4 (1956): 541–54.
1959 review of Georges M.-M. Cottier, L’athéisme du jeune Marx et ses origines
hégéliennes, Études (December 1959): 411.
1961 article “Attitude ambivalente de Hegel en face de l’histoire,” Archives de
philosophie (April–June 1961): 207–41.
1961 article “Attitude ambivalente de Hegel en face de l’histoire,” Hegel-
Jahrbuch, 1:25–61.
1962 review of M. Heidegger, Approches de Hölderlin: Chemins qui ne mènent
nulle part; Le principe de raison, Études, (November 1962): 290.
5 Gaston Fessard, Hegel: Le Christianisme et l’histoire, unpublished texts presented by Michel

Sales (Paris: PUF, 1990), 300–7, in the Fessard bibliography.

via free access
Thoughts on the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises xv
1966 brief contribution to discussion at the colloquium in Rome on Hegel, Karl

Marx (1818–83), and Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55), criticizing the Hegelian
theory of the superiority of sign over symbol in Mythe et foi (Paris: Aubier,
1966), 408.
1967 article “Les relations familiales dans la Philosophie du droit de Hegel,”
Hegel-Jahrbuch, 1967: 34–63.
1969 article “La dialectique et son sens,” in La dialectique: Actes du XIV Congrès
des Sociétés de Philosophie de langue française, Paris: PUF, 1969: 272–76.
1974 article “Dialogue théologique avec Hegel,” Stuttgarter Hegel-Tage, 1970.
Vorträge und Coloquien des Internationalen Hegel-Jubiläums-Kongresses:
Hegel (1770–1970), 231–48.
1990 book Hegel: Le Christianisme et l’histoire, unpublished texts edited by
Michel Sales (Paris: PUF, 1990).
Fessard tells us that his first contact with Hegel occurred in 1926 at the begin-
ning of his theological studies.6 He composed a study of the Spiritual Exercises
in 1930–31, which he revisited at intervals over the following decades. He
attended Alexandre Kojève’s (1902–68) lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology
between 1935 and 1939. Not only did Kojève draw his attention to the master–
slave dialectic but Fessard began to see St. Paul’s teaching as describing a
pagan–Jew dialectic. The beginning of Fessard’s interest in geometrical repre-
sentations of human phenomena also goes back to this period, as he pondered
Hegel’s use of the symbolism of the circle.
Very early on,7 and under the impetus of Hegel, Fessard became puzzled
about the relationship between the four weeks and the three ways and how
to make them fit together. A diagram came to his aid. Two equal circles are
drawn on a vertical line. A third equal circle is drawn with its center at the
point where the two circles touch. Finally, a fourth circle, whose center coin-
cides with that of the third, encloses all three. In some way, the scheme com-
municates the unity of the three interior circles and the coincidence with the
three ways and four weeks.8 The symbolism lends itself to representing points
of choice in the horizontal direction of time. The point of the Exercises is the
choice of a state of life, and the original method is “discernment of spirits,” rec-
ognition of impulses—upward or downward tendencies in the vertical direc-
tion of higher and lower. The Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises contains a set
6 Fessard, Hegel: Le Christianisme et l’histoire, 27.

7 Fessard, Hegel: Le Christianisme et l’histoire, 32.
8 Fessard, Hegel: Le Christianisme et l’histoire, 33; the diagram is reproduced on 38.

via free access
xvi Thoughts on the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises
of such diagrams to convey the tensions, conflicts, and contradictory options

in spiritual progress.
The perception of a bond between St. Ignatius and Hegel is not simply a fancy
of Fessard. He points out that Hegel and his Tübingen roommates, Friedrich
Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) and Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), in
their rejection of the Lutheran Scholasticism of their time, parted company
over the sense of the term Kingdom of God.9 In their correspondence, they
discuss a Latin phrase that appears on Ignatius’s tomb: Non coerceri maximo,
contineri tamen a minimo, divinum est. [Not to be restricted by what is greatest
but to be contained in what is smallest is divine.] Hölderlin uses this phrase
as a kind of watchword in his novel Hyperion, and in it Fessard sees a kind of
dialectical movement. Fessard conveys a flavor of the young German divinity
students reaching out to St. Ignatius in their rebellion with a desiccated aca-
demic theology.
Except for professional philosophers, the imagination of the educated pub-
lic connects dialectic with materialism. But the dialectic moves on contradic-
tions, and contradiction is a relation between concepts, pace Friedrich Engels
(1820–95) and his Dialectic of Nature. Indeed, the relations of ownership are
not material in the same sense as those of location or size. Hence, a serious
Hegelian must think not that Karl Marx (1818–83) set the dialectic on its feet,
but that he misunderstood it, unless he is willing to say that Hegel misunder-
stood what he himself was doing.
5 The Maxim
John Ireland (1838–1918) was the third bishop and first archbishop of St. Paul
Minnesota. He was regarded by many Americans as the very model of a mod-
ern prelate and by some in the Vatican as at least close, if not guilty, to the
heresy of “Americanism.” Most educated American Catholics have heard varia-
tions on his saying: Pray as if everything depended on God; work as if everything
depended on you. This is a simplified aphorism of St. Ignatius. St. Ignatius’s
somewhat imperfect Spanish, with both traces of his native Basque and the
Latin in which he received his formal education, was translated into elegant
formal Latin for posterity. (Likewise, and perhaps unfortunately, also translated
into elegant Latin were communications from Xavier in similar Basque-tinged
Spanish and bad Portuguese.) That is to say, we do not have Ignatius’s own
words in many cases like this one, although Fessard is able to reconstruct the
9 See below, 176n5.

via free access
Thoughts on the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises xvii
situation in which the aphorism was born. In the first half of the twentieth
century, a controversy broke out about the genuineness and meaningfulness
of the traditional Latin formula simplified by Archbishop Ireland. That for-
mula is due to the Hungarian Jesuit Gábor Hevenesi (1656–1715). Studies by
Fathers C.A. Kneller, S.J. and Joseph de Lapparent, S.J. (1862–1953) in 1944,
1947, and 1948 had led the Jesuit superior general to lean toward de Lapparent’s
emendation of the aphorism. (One notes the poignancy of the fact that de
Lapparent was editing his journal of missions in Shanghai as China was pass-
ing into the control of Mao Zedong [1893–1976, in office 1943–76].) Fessard
brings his dialectical tools to bear on four variations of the maxim and argues
in favor of Hevenesi. Although the maxim is connected to the Fifth Rule for the
Second Week of the Exercises, Fessard’s complementary study can stand alone
as an example of his dialectical method and his command of vast Jesuit source
material.

via free access
Figures
All figures were originally published in Gaston Fessard, S.J., La dialectique des Exercices
Spirituels de Saint Ignace de Loyola, Paris: Aubier, 1956. Note that the largest part of the
images is placed at the end of the book, other images can be found at their reference.
1 La Bifurcation 370
2 La Balance (1) 370
3 La Balance (2) 370
4 Les quatre Semaines (1) 370
8 Contemplatio ad Amorem 370
9 Nature et Grâce 370
10 Les 3 Voies et les 4 Semaines 370
11 Schème général et Plan des Exercices 232
12 Figure 12 240
13 Judaïsme et Christianisme 242
14 Règle I 371
15 Règle II 371
16 Règles V à IX 371
17 Règles X et XI 371
18 Présent qui dure 371
19 Règles XII à XIV 371
20 Règle IIe: “Ingredi-Egredi” 372
21 Règle Vème: “Discursus cogitationum” 372
22 Règle Vème: Critère Intellectuel 372
23 Règle Vème: Trois Degrés d’Illusion 372
24 Règle Ve: Ier Moment. Position du Problème 372
25 Règle Ve: IIe Moment. Ruse de Satan 372
26 Règle Ve: IIIe Moment. Critère Affectif 372
27 Règle Ve: IVe Moment. Résultat du Critère 372
28 Règle Ve et Structure des Exercices 372
29 Règle VIIe 372
30 Sic Deo fide …; ita 363
31 Formule inversée—C 365
32 Elogium Sepulcrale 373

via free access
Preface
After finishing this essay, some readers will perhaps be tempted to label it an
existentialist interpretation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. If they
see only a passing infatuation due to the current enthusiasm for existential-
ism, where our epoch’s decadence is reflected and sated, they will doubtless
once more deplore the “conformism” and servility to fashion that supposedly
inspired us.
To head off this judgement immediately, if possible, let us state the origin of
the essay, the date of its composition, and add a few words to explain its pos-
sible interest and why we publish it today.
The first idea for this endeavor occurred to me after reading Fr. Bouvier’s
little book entitled Interpretation de la méditation fondamentale. Thanks to a
notebook used during my reading, I can fix the date as early June 1923. After
some criticisms directed toward a booklet where Ignatius’s text is explained by
a moralist much more than a philosopher, by someone careful not to confuse
“the moral, conditional, relative necessity of indifference” with the “necessity
of salvation or of duty,” I noted:
Work to do: in all the course of the Exercises, one would have to show both
the various degrees with which the human will can be satisfied and still
more the living logic that forces the retreatant always to search further.
St. Ignatius composed the Exercises for the choice of a state of life …
But it would be necessary to show also, by a theory of freedom, that each
of our acts is directed by all the principles of the Exercises as much as the
choice of a state of life. In doing so, we would explain that these prin-
ciples can be applied to all states, to all cases, and that they normally lead
to the highest perfection.
For the spiritual life, the Exercises are like the immense blossoming
of an act. To do the Exercises for the choice of a state of life: of course.
But it is still more true to re-make them for each of our acts. The stages
someone traverses during the Four Weeks are the different moments of
such acts.
Maine de Biran reflected the life of the spirit. The spiritual life is what
St. Ignatius reflected.
The last phrase alludes to a study I had just finished on The Method of Reflection
in Maine de Biran, where I had declared in conclusion: “More than anyone else’s
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004504738_002Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

via free access
2 Preface
thinking, it is true to say that Maine de Biran’s was developed as lived dialectic.
It is the immense development of an act of the spirit, all of whose details we
have been able to study at leisure and, so to speak, under a microscope” (128).
From that moment on, I had perceived the relation that exists between the
analysis of any act of freedom and the development of its different times, just
as the Four Weeks of the Exercises set them out.
But it is only in 1931, during the third year of novitiate that the Society
of Jesus assigns to its members who have finished their theological forma-
tion, that I had the leisure to develop further the idea conceived eight years
earlier and to put the result of those reflections into writing. By that time,
I had become somewhat acquainted with Hegelian philosophy, notably the
Phenomenology of Spirit, whose similarity of intention to Maurice Blondel’s
Action riveted me from the start.1 Of Heidegger, I knew only the title of his Sein
und Zeit. I knew just Kierkegaard’s name, which Jean Wahl had indicated to me
during a conversation in 1929, when I showed him a translation of the preface
to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Accordingly, if someone wants to find a relation
between the present essay and existentialism, it is by way of that work that he
would have to seek it.
Be that as it may, this first contact with Hegelian thought explains that see-
ing a “lived dialectic” in the Exercises, I was immediately struck by the fact that
the Ignatian dialectic is developed in four times and not in three as in Hegel’s.
Besides, since Ignatius’s Four Weeks also stand in opposition to the classic divi-
sion of spiritual life into purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways, I found an
indisputable point of departure there, within everyone’s grasp. But, as I put
my ideas to paper, the analysis of content took on more importance than this
question, completely formal in appearance, about which I was no longer wor-
ried, at least explicitly.
I did not have the time to put a number of notes into good order, which
would have explained the Foundation, the Contemplation ad Amorem, and
the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits. Nevertheless, as it stood, my work let
me see that I had raised many problems that went far beyond interpretation
of the Exercises. Without time to confront them, I limited myself to framing
what I had written between an introduction and a conclusion that limited its
scope. It seemed to me that I at least provided a certain element of an answer
to the question Henri Bremond had just raised during his controversies with
1 When I shared this impression with Maurice Blondel a few years before his death, he
declared: “This is exactly what my friend Victor Delbos pointed out to me. When he read my
thesis the first time, he told me: ‘You have redone the Phenomenology of Spirit.’”

via free access
Preface 3
the classical interpreters of the Exercises, and especially in his articles in Vie
spirituelle. Until the time when I might take up these pages again, which I con-
sidered a rough draft rather than an essay, I let my notes slumber and limited
myself to sharing them with some friends. At that point, the idea of publica-
tion never entered my mind inasmuch as it seemed to me that there would be
no readers likely to be at all interested in it. Priests and religious who practice
and comment on the Exercises are generally not very concerned with the “dia-
lectic” that can be found in them. The few Hegelians of the time cared even less
about St. Ignatius and his spirituality.
Since then, things have changed a great deal. On the one hand, the appear-
ance in print of Hegel’s unpublished works and studies on the development
of his philosophy in French or other languages have increasingly made evi-
dent the importance of lived experience, which serves as the basis of logi-
cal dialectic.2 On the other hand, the application of the “phenomenological
method” has brought back into the philosophical ambit religious concepts and
spiritual experiences, which a narrow rationalism and bloodless idealism had
previously scorned. Lastly, the diverse existentialisms have come to impose
their new orientation on the reflection, at the same time as the success about
which the Marxists prided themselves invited philosophers and theologians
to question themselves about the direction and scope of a “dialectic of his-
tory.” So much so, that nowadays no informed mind can doubt that the great
problem posed in our times is that of human historical existence. What is this
historical being that constitutes us? What is the sense of the history in which
we are engaged? How is truth possible for a being submerged in the perpetu-
ally moving relativity of events? Of what freedom does it find in them?
To claim that Iñigo of Loyola at Manresa was even slightly concerned with
these speculative questions that even today many philosophers and theolo-
gians do not perceive clearly would be a wager. Not for an instant do we dream
of maintaining that. However, is there not sufficient evidence, acknowledged
by all the historians, that the Exercises came clearly from the experience that
Iñigo solved the problem of his freedom in history for himself? And who
does not know that this experience gave birth to the Society of Jesus and its
Constitutions and that the book where the experience was set down was the
beginning of all the influence exerted by the members of the order? The influ-
ence is certainly judged quite diversely, exalted by some, scorned by others,
2 Jean Wahl, Malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel (1929), preface, writes:
“There is a kind of mystical intuition and affective warmth at the origin of this [Hegel’s]
doctrine, which presents itself as a chain of concepts.”

via free access
4 Preface
but it is undeniable. This is so true that René Füllöp-Miller, after recalling the
Protestant scholar Henrich Boehmer’s phrase declaring that the Exercises are
nothing less than “the crucial book of humanity,” adds his own opinion:
Indeed, no other work exists in Catholic literature whose historical bear-

ing could be compared to that of this little book … The ideas proclaimed
by the erstwhile Spanish courtier Ignatius stirred up a powerful transfor-
mation in the Catholic world. Even going beyond its borders, they have
determined in great measure by their direct influence or indirectly by
the violent opposition they stirred up, the development of our European
civilization, of religion as well as philosophy, of education and of art.3
Let us set aside the historical influence of the Jesuits and the personality of
Ignatius, which Füllöp-Miller dares to compare to that of Lenin.4 The fact
remains that this secret of such a personality is enclosed in the Exercises, and
that its influence was spread by the book, where not only Jesuits but many
others under their direction have found the means to resolve, each person on
his own, the problem of their freedom in history. With that, how can we doubt
that from this practical set of rules—not at all the summary of a “dogma but,”
as Lenin says of Marxism, “a guide to action”—a theoretical teaching can be
derived, involving not only the spiritual life of the Christian but properly spec-
ulative problems that the philosopher encounters today?
The pages of this essay were written with the idea of answering this ques-
tion affirmatively or at least of preparing the ingredients for the answer. We
believe that what we have written will have full value only for those who read it
in function of contemporary problems to which we have alluded. Granted, the
explicit solution of the problem of historical existence is not found explicitly
3 Heinrich Boehmer, Les jésuites et le secret de leur puissance, translated by Guideau (Paris:
Plon, 1933), 18 and 33.
4 By reason, he says, “of this sagacity that made them discover those resources and tenden-
cies of human nature that remain immutable throughout time” and of the irresistible and
omnipotent dynamism enclosed in their thinking. Lenin and Ignatius knew that the secret
of all historical successful human action consists in transforming theory into living prac-
tice, in making imagination, practical common sense, and energetic willpower collaborate …
(Füllop-Miller, Les jésuites, 37).—It would be still better to say that, if the interaction (the cir-
cle) of theory and practice that characterizes Marx and Lenin’s materialism, the same kind of
interaction between prayer and action is a particular characteristic of Ignatian spirituality.—
“Fr. Jerónimo Nadal, one of Ignatius’s first disciples, writes, ‘We must know that the spirit
weakens in work. Therefore, it is necessary to return to prayer often and to carry out a circular
movement that goes from prayer to action and from action to prayer.’” Quoted by Raymond
Hostie, “Le circle de l’oraison et de l’action,” Christus 6 (1955): 206.

via free access
Preface 5
on any of the pages, and we might wish that the relationship to the problem of
historical existence were more clearly elucidated or more sharply set out. But
the interest awakened by the few copies of these pages circulated in manu-
script allows us to think that this relation already appears clearly. To make it
stand out, it is sufficient to observe that our interpretation of the Exercises can
be considered as defining this problem exactly both in form and in content.
It defines the form, if the Four Weeks are really structured in two opposing
moments according Before and After, to the point of depicting in this way the
spatial and temporal projection of an act of freedom. It defines its content,
since the act is aligned, on the one hand, with the world’s origin, and on the
other, with the summit toward which Christ directs himself in his ascension.
This content is analyzed in the gradual unfolding of Christian dogma, whose
principal truths the act of freedom interprets by the place it assigns to them in
its systematic form.
It will be asked by what right we make St. Ignatius bear the weight of such
speculation whose very premises remained doubtlessly alien to him. And
especially, by interpreting thus the dogmatic content of the Exercises, don’t
we risk reducing their value to the measure of simple moral transformations?
Whereas, for Ignatius, as for all Christians besides, religious truths are first of
all transcendent mysteries in relation to all spiritual advances, whose model
and ideal they are.
This last point is undisputed and should not cause difficulty. For, we do not
offer this essay as a dogmatic treatise. No more, furthermore, than did Ignatius,
welcoming his retreatant, intend to put him through a course in apologetics or
theology. Rather, Ignatius takes the retreatant as he is, whether a well-informed
or ignorant Christian, firm or vacillating in his faith. Ignatius only presupposes
that the retreatant possesses some good will along with a rudimentary knowl-
edge of religion. Ignatius wants to teach the retreatant “to order his life” in the
light of those elementary truths “without letting himself be determined by any
disordered affection.” Furthermore, Ignatius abstains from any theoretical dis-
cussion. But having first extricated all the conditions that govern the union of
theory and practice, one by one and for his personal account, he guides the one
he is directing step by step in order to make him pose them for himself so that
the person may achieve this same unity in himself and for himself. In other
words, the Exercises are a method that teaches the retreatant to make his own
the truths he already knows, but whose relation to his concrete life, he has not
yet perceived. However, in the measure that the unity of theory and practice
is achieved in this way and above all at its end, it appears that the result of the

via free access
6 Preface
method is not merely practical (the change of life, its more Christian “ordina-
tion”), but also theoretical (the sense of religious truths is revealed to freedom in
function of its historical engagement). All those who have made the Exercises,
above all if they have lasted for thirty days with a view to an election involving
their whole existence, are unanimous in describing the benefit as the attain-
ment of a completely new consciousness of religion.5
This is easily explained. Beforehand, Christian dogmas were too often
speculative truths for retreatants, objects of an intellectual assent, to be sure,
but all the more superficial in proportion as the retreatant perceived them as
transcendent mysteries or distant historical facts. The retreatant only reached
these dogmas through an imaginative and social formulation. Whereas, in the
first place, the Exercises taught the retreatant “to feel” some as very close facts,
even present, and others as truths revealed especially for him, and then to use
the variations of this felt relationship in order to find in it the resolution of his
most intimate conflicts, the decision that changes the old man in him into a
new man and effectively accomplishes his union to the Incarnate Word, living,
dying, and rising from the dead. We might state this as follows: to the being-
in-itself of religious truth, which at first is almost the only thing perceived by
the retreatant, is little by little added as a new dimension of being-for-self. So
much so that his consciousness recognizes through the movement by which
the Exercises set out Christian truth the very movement by which his own free-
dom is engendered in relation to divine freedom. And it is all the better in
that it realizes in itself the appropriateness, the synchronization of these two
movements.
The retreatant’s conscience, we say, recognizes this adequation. To be more
precise, lives it and feels this adequation but does not reflect on it. By con-
trast, our interpretation of the Exercises strives to reflect it precisely by show-
ing the sense of the dogmatic truths in function of the genesis of freedom that
is accomplished in the course of the Four Weeks. Following the example of
Ignatius himself, our interpretation avoids all purely theoretical discussion
and seeks to bring out the joints and articulations of this freedom and show
5 Among a plethora of testimonies that can be found in books devoted to the Exercises, we
quote a few words taken from Fr. Alexandre Brou, S.J., Les Exercises spirituels de saint Ignace
de Loyola, 212: “Something I have always admired [Fr. Jerónimo Nadal used to say] is that
persons of outstanding doctrine, excellent theologians, who had begun by scorning our
Exercises, even attacking them, who furthermore ignored nothing in them, were so moved,
so changed, that they went away saying with conviction: ‘We are finally theologians; after so
much study, so much reading, so many books and discussions, we understand what was still
missing.’”—And there is this comment from a Parisian laborer, 229: “I learned more about
religion in my three days of retreat than in all my life.”

via free access
Preface 7
how such a structure can only be understood by the act of the election and
through the moments in which it is accomplished.
To be sure, such a reflection also presents a theoretical aspect just as the
spirituality of the Exercises has a particular perspective on the common theol-
ogy. But the “theory” our reflection implies is quite different from the theory
with which the contemporary speculative theologian is concerned and is satis-
fied. In Ignatius’s little book, the speculative theologian sees only a manual of
ascetic and moral pedagogy. It will not occur to him to ask the book for even
an indication to resolve the problems of his “science.” Moreover, if someone is
tempted to do that, the speculative theologian will frequently reproach him
for undervaluing the virtues of reason, for neglecting dogmatic questions, and
for appearing in the last analysis to attribute only pragmatic value to the faith’s
consent. Let us not discuss these reproaches, and likewise let us not question
the legitimacy of the attitude that inspires them. But let us emphasize that the
“theory” sketched in these pages is based on a completely different and, we
believe, no less legitimate point of view. Precisely because the theory limits
itself to accounting for Christian “existence,” it cannot abstract from practice,
from the becoming where this “existence” is engendered. Likewise, it does not
deny the classical distinction of ascetics and of dogma. Rather, it supposes the
distinction. But instead of stopping there, the theory tries to go beyond it and
believes there is no better guide for this enterprise than the pedagogy of the
saints.6 No more than this pedagogy does the theory claim to establish or sup-
ply a content of dogmatic truths and still less (is it necessary to say this?) to
dispute any of them. But also, like that pedagogy, the theory does not despair
6 In his article, “Theologie et sainteté” (Dieu vivant 12 [October 1948]: 15–32), Hans Urs Von
Balthasar has shown, not without reason, nor without exaggeration, this: at the origins and
during the whole patristic age, these two terms were not separated, as dogma, exegesis,
ascetics, and mysticism developed in harmony, whereas today, on the other hand, dogmatic
theologians propose to resolve their speculative problems, as do exegetes their historical
problems, without explicit reference to the pedagogy (or as Henri Bremond says, the “meta-
physics”) of the saints. Of course, this differentiation is a normal consequence of the organic
growth of knowledge and of lectio divina itself and can be considered as progress. However,
like every phenomenon of this kind, it has its dangers in the very measure in which a distinc-
tion that is legitimate in principle always runs the risk of being changed in fact into more or
less radical separation. Then, for clerics in general and saints in particular, “the study of phi-
losophy and theology becomes a continual exercise of penance” (23), and two worlds become
separated, that of spiritual persons or “saints isolated from living dogmatics,” and that of
“theologians isolated from living sanctity.” This dualism has “immensely impoverished the
living strength of the actual church and the credibility of its eternal message” (25). Granted,
recent years have witnessed a welcome attempt to remedy this state of affairs at the pastoral,
liturgical, or catechetical level. But to judge by the most recent textbooks of dogmatics there
is still a great deal of room for improvement in this realm.

via free access
8 Preface
of clarifying further the meaning of dogmatic truths and of better bringing out
their value for life.
Let us try to bring further precision to all this with an example.
With regard to the eucharist, we show that the action performed by Christ’s
Hoc est corpus meum corresponds to the decision of the young man who, feel-
ing the Lord’s call, decides to answer it and determines the orientation of a
whole life by saying also, “This form of religious life is my body.” This interpre-
tation is suggested by the place the meditation on the Last Supper occupies
in the Exercises: at the beginning of the Third Week and consequently at the
moment when the retreatant has just offered God the fruit of his election and
begins to be changed by it, being engaged in the passion that will lead him
to live by Christ’s resurrected life. Will we conclude that transubstantiation
should be nothing for us but a moral transformation achieved in the soul? That
would be to misunderstand the whole process set out here, because it would
be to suppose that a dogmatic truth’s being-for-itself could precede its being-
in-itself and ultimately subsist without it. This hypothesis can be satisfactory
in a more or less liberal and existential Protestantism,7 but it is as foreign to our
reflection as it is in the Ignatian perspective. We simply intend to shed light on
this well-known truth: the meaning of Christ’s oblation at the Last Supper is
only grasped and accomplished fully by the Christian in the measure in which
his own freedom adds its concrete decision to the divine freedom, which is to
say, makes his own Christ’s sentiments in offering himself to the Father for the
redemption of the world … Besides, if such an affirmation is the common good
of all spirituality, it is because it follows directly from the double antithetical
expression by which Jesus himself defines the relation of freedom with truth,
insofar as truth is not only in itself or abstractly, but becomes for us, concretely
“manifested”:
For, every one that acts badly hates the light, and does not come to the
light, so that his works do not add up. But he that does the truth comes
to the light, so that his works are made manifest, because they have been
wrought in God (Omnis enim qui male agit, odit lucem, et non venit ad
lucem, ut non arguantur opera ejus. Qui autem facit veritatem venit ad
lucem, ut manifestentur opera ejus, quia in Deo facta sunt).
John 3:20–21
7 As Rudolf Bultmann’s theology seems to present itself at present, after the discussions about
Kerygma und Mythos.

via free access
Preface 9
It follows that the same consequence is applicable to all dogmas. Certainly,

incarnation, redemption, and resurrection, like the eucharist, are still tran-
scendent mysteries in relation to the spiritual transformations that they rep-
resent for us and determine in us. But it is not evident that the very meaning of
this transcendence, which is both God’s condescension and the means of our
ascent toward him, can appear to us only in the measure in which, not content
with socially and intellectually adhering to a dogmatic formula, we also realize
hic et nunc and by a concrete decision of our freedom, the very movement of
the Spirit, signified by these formulas. This amounts to uniting ourselves prac-
tically to Christ in his mysteries and to making ourselves their contemporary,
and to making them our own.
Consequently, in the measure in which our essay manages to bring out the
meaning of dogmatic truths in relation to the different moments that frame
the election, the Exercises’ center, it does not at all risk belittling their content
or diminishing them to the scale of a simple moral transformation. If this is the
case, how could an interpretation in which the Exercises are taken as the key to
dogma be completely alien to the thinking and plan of Ignatius? For in the last
analysis, Ignatius proposed nothing else than to teach us to unite intimately
religious truth with practical life. Concerning the method that leads to this
unity, he did not reflect as a philosopher. That is quite evident. But why, in try-
ing to highlight the presuppositions of his pedagogy and to tie them together
systematically, would we be unfaithful to him? Christ also was content to have
a human-divine life and to teach the “way” that leads to the “truth,” without
formulating the theses that theologians now labor to establish and organize
into systems. Also, between the Gospel and a treatise on the eucharist or actual
grace, for example, there is some distance. Still, no theologian would want to
admit that their content is foreign to the spirit of Christ.
With all due respects and, to be sure, with all the risks of imperfection
that a new and individual enterprise entails, we do not think we have done
anything else with regard to Ignatius and his Exercises than what theologians
have always done with regard to Christ and the Gospel. If one or another of
our comments is deemed an aberration and can be replaced by a better one
more in keeping with the Ignatian spirit, we will gladly agree. But we need
not see in this the condemnation of an essay that we offer for this purpose. Its
substance seems justified to us, at the very least negatively, by the ineffective-
ness of the classical commentaries. Certainly, these pile up perfectly correct
observations about Ignatius’s psychology and logic, but, as Henri Bremond has
shown, they fail to bring out “the deep order, quite logical and practical,” of

via free access
10 Preface
which Fr. de Ponlevoy speaks, in other terms, the dialectic of the Exercises.8
If, however, our essay throws some light on this particular point and thereby
explains better than heretofore the “dynamism” and the destiny of this “pro-
phetic” book, whose power seems far from spent, this reveals that the essay is
far from alien to Ignatius’s deep intuition.
No doubt, it will be easier to argue that this interpretation of the Exercises

may serve as the basis to resolve the problems implicit in coming to the con-
sciousness of our historical existence. However, we believe that anyone even
slightly familiar with the way these problems have arisen will immediately
discover an analogy in them, at the very least curious, with the form of reflec-
tion that our essay uncovers in the text of the Exercises. For example, if we
8 This term “dialectic” is intended to emphasize the essentially intellectual and eminently syn-
thetic character of the act by which Ignatius, through the struggle of “spirits,” discerns and at
the same time grasps the connection of all things and all truths, both natural and revealed, in
Christ and in the church, with the majesty of the Holy Trinity. Ignatius’s recent historians and
commentators (for example, Fr. Leturia in “Génesis de los Ejercicios,” Archivum historicum
Societatis Iesu 10 (1941): especially 25ff., and Fr. Hugo Rahner, S.J., in Saint Ignace et la genèse
des Exercises (French translation by Guy de Vaux, preface by Henri de Lubac, S.J. [Apostolat
de la Prière, 1948; Desclée de Brouwer, 1992]), without using the term, characterize Ignatius’s
originality in the same way and trace its source back to the well-known vision bestowed
upon him in Manresa on the bank of the Cardoner River. This originality did not escape
Ignatius’s contemporaries either. Among many other testimonies, there is Nadal’s text that
we take from Hugo Rahner (Saint Ignace, 123): “When questioned about the Institute, he was
accustomed to relate its cause to the sublime illumination God had bestowed upon him at
Manresa, as if he had received everything from the Lord in a kind of spirit of architectonic
wisdom.” Moreover, it suffices to read in A Pilgrim’s Journey how Ignatius himself describes
the vision to perceive how greatly it corresponds exactly both to the spirit of architectonic
wisdom of which Nadal speaks and to the synthetic, intellectual act that we call “dialectical.”
We reproduce it here underlining some expressions:
“As he sat there the eyes of his understanding were opened and though he saw no vision he
understood and perceived many things numerous spiritual things as well as matters touching
on faith and science, and this was with an elucidation so bright that all these things seemed
new to him. It is not possible to explain the particular points he understood, there, though
they were many, but only that he received a great light in the understanding; in a way that
when he gathers all the helps he received from God, and all the things that he learned during all
his life until the age of more than sixty-two, and he collects them in one sum, it does not seem
to him that it adds up to what he received in this circumstance alone. (And that happened
so as to leave him with such a light in the understanding that it seemed to him that he was a
different man and had a different mind than what he had formerly.)”
A Pilgrim’s Journey, the Autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola, introduction, translation, and
commentary by Joseph N. Tylenda, S.J. (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989), section 30,
pp. 38–39. [Translator: the last sentence, in parenthesis, does not appear in Tylenda but is
from section 39, p. 71 in the French version, of Récit du Pèlerin, trans. Eugène Thibaut, (Paris:
Desclée de Brouwer, 1956).]

via free access
Preface 11
consider the Philosophical Fragments, the little book in which Kierkegaard

explains more clearly and forcefully than anywhere else the reasons for his
opposition to Hegelian rationalism. From the start, he shows that the Socratic
guide, capable of being a midwife to his students but not of engendering truth
in them, dissolves the instant, reducing it to being “only an accident, something
without importance, an occasion” and at the same time to reduce himself to
“not being more.”9 For, if the disciple learning a truth only remembers it, it
follows that he possessed it already, and it matters little whether Socrates or
Prodicus, or a maidservant discloses it to him. Under what conditions, on the
contrary, will “the instant in time” retain its decisive importance? Under the
condition, Kierkegaard says, that the student simultaneously receives the truth
and the condition of the truth, which supposes that he is “defined as outside
the truth (not going to it as a proselyte but going away from it) or as untruth.”10
The disciple will then be able to remember that he is non-truth and is so by
his own fault. This remembering will no longer dissolve his temporal point of
departure in the eternal, since this instant when the disciple is made non-truth
is completely the contrary of eternity and rather the beginning of time rather
than its re-absorption. “But what shall we call this state of being non-truth and
being it through one’s own fault?” concludes Kierkegaard. “Let us call it sin.”11
How can we not see that, under an abstract form, Kierkegaard’s reflection
effectuates a movement identical to what Ignatius requires his retreatant to
do concretely. To teach the retreatant the decisive importance of his instanta-
neous freedom with regard to eternity, Ignatius involves him in the exercises
of the First Week that will make him become conscious of being the non-
truth and of being so through his own fault, and they will end the exercises
of Week One when he has obtained “contrition … for his sins.” Accordingly,
9 Johannes Climacus, Philosophical Fragments/Riens philosophiques, translated by Ferlov-

Gateau, 59.
10 Kierkegaard/Climacus, Philosophical Fragments/Riens philosophiques, 62–63. Let us note
that it is exactly in this way that, after Christ cures the man born blind, he defines the
Pharisees’ incredulity toward himself as sinful. And Jesus said, For judgment came I into
this world, that they which see not may see; and that they which see may become blind. Those
of the Pharisees which were with him heard these things, and said unto him, Are we also
blind? Jesus said unto them, If you were blind, you would have no sin: but now you say, We
see: your sin remains (John 9:39–41). The judgement for which Christ has come is strictly
the dialectical division (Ur-teil) and the discernment that he works in hearts. This his-
torical judgement achieves all its value, if we put it in relation to the substitution of the
pagans (chosen people in the church) for the Jews (chosen people of the Old Testament),
as St. Paul explains in the Letter to the Romans, especially chapter 11, especially in
verses 28–32.
11 Kierkegaard/Climacus, Philosophical Fragments/Riens philosophiques, 66.

via free access
12 Preface
the recognition of sin is the first moment of human freedom in history, the
first condition of his authentic existence, for the sixteenth-century Catholic
Spaniard just as for the nineteenth-century Danish Lutheran.
And the parallel could be pursued. Why would that be astonishing? In
Kierkegaard’s search for the conditions of the instant, he defines it as “passage
from non-being to being”12—terms we have used to characterize the whole
process of the Exercises. And because this instant is “the center around which
everything rotates,”13 it is only another name for the “paradox,” “the only recon-
ciliation precisely of contraries being the eternalization of history and the his-
toricizing of eternity”14—just as for Ignatius the instant of the election must be
a reconciliation human freedom and divine freedom.
It is not by chance that Kierkegaard ends with the definition of “contempora-
neousness” as the key to faith and to history taken together. Whereas, Ignatius,
after accumulating recommendations so that neither “zeal (Annotation 15),
nor the director’s precipitousness (Annotation 9), nor the directed person’s
curiosity (Annotation 11) prevent the soul from approaching his Creator and
Lord” (Annotation 20) and from becoming sensitive to his immediate opera-
tion (Annotation 15), multiplies, not only Additions but also preludes and col-
loquies around each prayer, so that the retreatant may make himself present to
himself and to God and may become the “active contemporary of” the mystery
he is contemplating.15
Kierkegaard defines himself as “poet of the religious.” Ignatius, in contrast,
might deserve to be called “technician of the religious.” Doesn’t the intuition
that Ignatius bases on a technique penetrate as far into the depth of human
existence as the reflection that “poetry” inspires in the other.
If this is so, perhaps we will be forgiven an affirmation that at first seems

extraordinarily paradoxical. These Philosophical Fragments and the Post-Script
that explains them can reveal the solution of problems in the dialectic of the
Exercises, which arise from the Hegelian dialectic that our epoch encounters at
every step. The explicit proof of this affirmation is not included here. It will be

15 Ignatius, Exercises, no. 114: “The first point is to see the persons; that is to see Our Lady and
Joseph and the maid, and after his birth, the Child Jesus, I making myself a poor creature
and a wretch of an unworthy slave, looking at them and serving them in their needs … as
if I found myself present …” (Videre Dominam nostram, et Joseph, et ancillam et Jesum infan-
tem, postquam natus fuerit, faciendo me pauperculum … contemplando illos et serviendo
illis … ac si paraesens addessem … Contemplatio de nativitate).

via free access
Preface 13
up to us to bring it in later on, if possible, and we do not ignore its difficulties.

For now, it matters little to us that these perspectives are deemed illusory. It is
enough for us to have opened them up in order to indicate the actual and more
speculative significance of a work apparently limited to the commentary of a
classic text of Catholic spirituality.
From this point of view, it goes without saying that our essay is subject to all
the criticisms that might apply to a purely philosophical work. However, if our
undertaking needs some justification, we will note that one of the latest and
most remarkable commentators on the Exercises also dared to base his philo-
sophical and theological speculation on the text of St. Ignatius. In Fr. Przywara’s
Theologie der Exerzitien,16 he takes the simplest terms of the Foundation as an
occasion to find there a conception of the human being, of the world, and of
God, where it is not difficult to recognize the traces of the most modern phe-
nomenology and existentialism. There is no question of making our few pages
equal to the German theologian’s three thick volumes. Nevertheless, si licet
parva componere magnis, we think we stayed closer to the letter and the deep
intention of St. Ignatius than he did by stressing more the dialectical bond that
the Four Weeks construct around the election.
Even more than the authority of this precedent, what decides us to publish
our essay accenting its speculative orientation is this experience, quite per-
sonal but very important in our view: since writing the essay, it has continually,
though we might say tacitly, oriented our reflection as was exercised on the
most varied topics, in appearance quite remote from Ignatian spirituality. To
a superficial glance, it may seem that most articles and even books that we
have published since Pax nostra (1936) were occasioned simply by the need to
respond to actuality in the most superficial sense of the word: the tension in
Europe up to 1939, the outbreak of war, occupation and resistance, liberation,
and the rise of communism and progressivism. It has been a short period but
unusually rich in major events, each of which could give rise to many anguish-
ing problems of conscience. One who sought to resolve them and to face them
in function of his faith found ample material for reflection there. Precisely by
that fact, it must also become obvious that in analyzing one’s situation in the
midst of these different events with some rigor and in dealing with the politi-
cal and religious themes that are intertwined in them, conscience could not
fail to encounter constantly the same fundamental problem: that of historical
16 Deus semper major, Theologie der Exerzitien, 3 vols. (Herder, 1939–40). See Fr. Lebreton’s
note about this work prepared by emphasizing that, according to the author himself, it is
“a systematic exposition of the great philosophical and theological themes that dominate
the Exercises” (Science religieuse, Works and Studies [1943]).

via free access
14 Preface
actuality and of the free decisions by which human reality is constituted both
social and individual.
It will not be, therefore, surprising to see us affirm that, although the major-
ity of our writings were provoked by day-to-day actuality, there is not one where
our reflection was not continuously guided by the analysis that this study of
the Exercises had suggested to us previously. There is no point in offering pre-
cise references for this here. Besides, those who have followed our books and
articles with any attention will have no trouble, after reading this essay, in per-
ceiving how greatly we have been inspired by it each time we encountered
the problem of freedom and of truth in history, as it is posed nowadays after
Hegel, Marx, and Kierkegaard. As for those who have read us even superficially,
let it suffice to indicate this juxtaposition: the dialectics of the pagan and the
Jew, the master and the slave, the man and the woman—fundamental themes
that our analysis of history uses constantly—are not only of the same sort in
our view, as the dialectic of the Before and the After of election, by which we
explain the structure of the Exercises, but also closely related in their content.
Of course, before publishing this already old essay, it would have been
preferable to have shed more light on the interweaving of these hidden rela-
tions. Our text would have run less of a risk of appearing as an enigma both to
philosophers completely unfamiliar with the Exercises and theologians who
seldom worry about modern problems. But life is short, as much as the least
reflection that tries to dig deeply is long. To tunnel through a mountain, is it
not good practice to attack it from both sides? The smallest opening, as soon
as it has perforated from side to side, informs about the nature of the terrain,
warns about obstacles, and guarantees that the great labor of digging under-
taken from both sides will not go astray but will meet exactly in the middle to
bring air and light there.
That is why, rather than sending this essay back to the workshop, we prefer
to publish it as it was written in 1931. It is a narrow passageway that marks out
the route from theology to philosophy through historical existence. Perhaps,
God willing, it will someday permit the establishment of a great highway of
communication. However dark and bumpy it is, may it assist those interested
in the Exercises as well as those concerned with the problems of the relations
of freedom and of truth with the actuality of history. It is clear to us that some
run the risk of being upset by a terminology and a way of thinking they are not
familiar with. To such persons and particularly to the theologians who might
fear that their traditional garments will be torn or sullied by the harshness of
this dig, we request only that they may please recall the famous presupposition

via free access
Preface 15
or praesupponendum, which St. Ignatius himself thought necessary to place at

the start of his little book:
Let it be presupposed that every good Christian should be more ready to

save his neighbor’s proposition than to condemn it. If he cannot save it,
let him inquire how it is meant; and if he understands it badly, let him
correct him with love. If that is not enough, let him seek all the suitable
means to bring him to understand it well, and save himself.

via free access
Postscript to the Preface
The preface you just read was written in 1947, when we had hopes of publish-
ing our 1931 essay unchanged. Today, the urging of friends has overcome the
obstacles that stood in the way of the project then and has gotten us to add a
number of pages and even several chapters. We must complete this preface by
saying a few words about the various additions.
Our first and easiest duty is to thank Fr. F. Roustang, the person really
responsible for this book’s publication. He not only encouraged us to complete
our original manuscript by suggesting a number of corrections and improve-
ments of details but he also made himself its first interpreter and commenta-
tor. After having had the opportunity to explain difficulties in a particularly
dense text to some friends, he was willing to communicate his clarifications
to us and to permit us to insert them in this book. The insertions are printed
in a smaller font than our original text, and they are not indented. We have no
doubt that these brief introductions, notes, or comments on our most difficult
passages will provide the help to the book’s eventual readers that they have
already given to those who took an interest in the 1931 manuscript.
Stimulated by this disinterested and intelligent assistance, we dared to take
up the various fragments that we composed in 1946–47 with a view to pub-
lication at that time. The two longest concern the election and the Rules for
Discernment of Spirits. The latter had been completely left out of our origi-
nal essay because of time constraints. For the same reason, we made only
brief indications about the second topic in a quasi-telegraphic style. Given
the importance of these two texts, first in the Exercises, but also in relation
to the interpretation we propose, it was natural that when we thought about
completing our work, we devoted a fairly long commentary to them. Taken up
again recently, the pages composed during 1946–47 became, on the one hand,
part 2 entitled Passage from the Before to the After: The Election, and on the
other, the appendix on Rules for the Discernment of Spirits for the First Week
and for the Second Week.
There remains a word to say on three additions: commentary on Contem-
plation to Obtain Love (Contemplatio ad Amorem Obtinendum), the long after-
word, which forms the conclusion of our book, and finally the complementary
Further Study on Maxim Number 2 of the Thesaurus spiritualis Societatis Jesu.
The closing pages of our first essay devoted only a few lines to the Con-
templation to Attain Love, but we kept two or three pages of notes about it in
rough draft. On re-reading them and returning to Ignatius’s text, we perceived
a correspondence that up until then had escaped us, and we think it is of the
highest interest. How to make the division into Four Weeks coincide with the

via free access
Postscript to the Preface 17
Three Ways? As we mentioned, this was the point of departure of our reflec-
tion on the Exercises. Now, this contemplation poses exactly the same prob-
lem: How do we make its four points fit into its threefold division, memory,
intelligence, will? It is difficult to peg this coincidence as pure chance. Our
initial question may well appear superficial and purely formal. Still, it concerns
the overall structure of the Exercises. And since it is found again in the contem-
plation that sums up and crowns the Exercises, there must be some more or
less hidden point of connection with the genius of Ignatius.
This is all the more so in that at the very beginning of his spiritual life,
Ignatius posed what is certainly a different question, but that also brings into
play the purely formal relation of four to three. We have the irrefutable evi-
dence in A Pilgrim’s Journey, that extraordinary autobiographical document
that Ignatius dictated to Fr. Luis Gonçalves da Câmara during the period from
1553 to 1555. Wanting to show how “during this period God was dealing with
him in the same way a school teacher deals with a child he is instructing,”
Ignatius arranges into five headings the most notable graces he received at the
time. Here is the beginning of the catalog:
First, he was greatly devoted to the Most Holy Trinity; also every day he
prayed to each of the three Persons. But as he prayed also to the Most
Holy Trinity, the thought came to him, why four prayers to the Trinity?
But this thought caused him little or no trouble, since it was of so little
importance.1
We readily believe that the question did not cause him anguish subsequently.
But is it equally evident that it was so unimportant to him earlier? If the ques-
tion had been so unimportant, it is hard to conceive that Ignatius would
have remembered it. And he felt the need to share the memory more than
thirty years later. Certainly, when he yields to the insistence of his disciples
and undertakes to tell Fr. Gonçalves “all that had happened in his soul up to
the present time,”2 he knows the value that those disciples give the narrative.
Nadal said to Gonçalves and must have repeated to Ignatius “that he could do
nothing better for the Society than this, and that this was to give the Society’s
true foundation.”3 Let us suppose that Ignatius, in his desire to respond to this
insistence, only mentioned the matter because of his concern for sincerity.
It remains that such a mention characterizes the form of the spirit that asked
1 Ignatius of Loyola, Pilgrim’s Journey, nos. 27–28, Tylenda, 35–36.

2 Ignatius of Loyola, Pilgrim’s Journey, preface by Gonçalves, no. 1, Tylenda, 2.
3 Ignatius of Loyola, Pilgrim’s Journey, preface by Gonçalves, no. 4, Tylenda, 5.

via free access
18 Postscript to the Preface
himself such a question and dealt with it enough to feel the need thirty years
later to evoke it, even as “of so little importance.”
However, such an evaluation is certainly, on the one hand, relevant to the
subsequent development of Ignatius’s spiritual life. The passage we quoted is
the prelude, as we said, to the enumeration of visions about the Trinity, the
creation of the world, the presence of Christ in the eucharist, Christ, the Virgin,
and finishes with the “sublime illumination” on the banks of the Cardoner
River. It is not surprising that in comparison with such graces, Ignatius deems
his question about the relation of four to three “of so little importance.” As if
any speculative problem could have the least interest for a soul like that of
Ignatius permeated by the divine! Yet such souls are rare in spite of everything.
And while waiting for the divine favors they are forbidden to anticipate though
not to hope for, it remains for them to dispose themselves as best they can by
using their reason to clarify the problems of their time in the light of the teach-
ings of dogma and of the lives of the saints of the church.
It is in this spirit that our postscript tries to use the understanding of the
Exercises acquired during the course of this essay in order to push a little
further the attempt to which the last pages of this preface alludes. The prob-
lem of the relation of four to three continues to be prominently placed, and
even under the aspect of a more formal way than before, since it comes to be
expressed by a simple geometrical design.
We hope that the utility of such a scheme will be more obvious after having
read the Further Study that we devote to the Ignatian maxim: Haec prima sit
agendorum regula: sic Deo fide, quasi rerum successus omnis a te, nihil a Deo
penderet; ita tamen iis operam omnem admove, quasi tu nihil, Deus omnia solus
sit facturus. In order to defend this traditional text against those who want to
reverse the contrasts, we analyze closely its dialectical structure and also that
of the variations that are proposed as substitutes for it. In the end, we conclude
that this maxim is in perfect agreement with the Exercises. We will show, and
we believe make evident, this perfect agreement thanks to our geometrical
scheme.
Let it be reassured that, if we have to pursue to the very end the thoughts
and reflections that the Exercises suggested to us, we in no way intend to attri-
bute them to Ignatius, especially in their imaginative form. If some find some
help in them for the solution to contemporary problems, our labor will be
well rewarded. As for more spiritual souls whom such speculation may annoy
rather than enlighten, let them imitate Ignatius and not be troubled by them,
as things “of little importance.”

via free access
Introduction
The destiny of this little book has been extraordinary.

At first a few sheets of paper upon which “a rough, ignorant soldier” writes
down his experiences as a convert. Then a kind of secret method by which
the pilgrim recruits some companions and trains them to pursue an uncertain
goal. Then an inexhaustible ferment in which the founder of an order finds
something to give life to each of the members he draws in, as well as each of
the rules he has enacted. Finally, nowadays, these Exercises are presented to
the universal church as the “wisest and the absolutely universal code of rules
capable of leading souls on the way of salvation and perfection.”1
Why such a destiny? By what privilege did such a singular experience obtain
such a universal significance?
Some have already responded by praising the profound psychology, the con-
summate prudence, and the marvelous natural and supernatural logic stored
up in these pages. We make no claim to discover hitherto unknown themes.
Rather, we simply would like to show in more precise fashion in what this
Ignatian prudence, this psychology, and this logic consist.
In Fr. Henri Bremond’s recent articles in Vie Spirituelle (April–May 1929 sup-
plement, I), he maintained a completely opposite thesis:
From the point of view of rational logic, the Exercises present only a fabri-
cated order. There is no geometrical linkage, no progression, nothing that
resembles those implacable grindings from which our reasoning reason,
once snared, can only extricate itself by surrendering … The book of the
Exercises has become the formidable enthymeme about which we are
told, only because all the dialecticians who have explained it for three
centuries have made it so, and because unknown to them, they have
hatched an author in their own image (84).
The pages that follow develop the same theme, not without some excess.
Nonetheless, Henri Bremond cannot help conceding that there is an order in
the Exercises:
Its dialectic, although powerful, is not ours … (St. Ignatius) has a great
taste for symmetry … and even for visual symmetry. Be assured that
1 Pope Pius XI, encyclical Mens nostra, 1929: “Sapientissimus atque omnino universalis nor-
marum codex ad animas in viam salutis ac perfectionis dirigendas.”

via free access
20 Introduction
nothing is left to chance in the composition of the book, that he has dis-
sected every word, but making reference in doing so to particular canons
and, I daresay, quite real ones, of which we are ignorant … (84–85).
And further on: “The retreat is a drama, whose sensational vicissitudes we

already know, if I may dare to express it thus: the drama of the divine call, the
drama of the election” (94).
Perhaps we would do right by these criticisms to discover those “completely

real particular canons” and to draw out this “powerful dialectic that is not ours,”
when indeed we do reason as pure logicians, but that is certainly our own once
we reflect on our lives and on the drama of our freedom. In any case, it would
also bolster the traditional thesis at its core and explain, at least in part, what
constitutes the absolute and universal value of the Ignatian experience.
To state at the outset the object of the present essay and the key of this dis-
covery, let us say that the Exercises are the fruit of a completely concrete reflec-
tion on the act of freedom and that their universal value comes from the fact
that they express dialectically the essential moments and elements—or the “sen-
sational contortions”—of the human and divine drama that is Freedom.
When Ignatius at Manresa was beginning to make notes on his experiences,

he did the same thing as his future pupil Descartes, writing the Discourse on
Method by his Dutch stove, although with a completely different goal. Descartes
limited his reflection to the intellectual side of life. As abstract as it may be,
the result gave birth to one of the most important tendencies of modern phi-
losophy, Cogito ergo sum. By posing the question about what I want, id quod
volo, and by looking for the rules that permit us to answer it, St. Ignatius also
found himself giving birth to modern asceticism and by the intermediary of
his order, he was becoming one of the creators of contemporary spirituality—
understanding this word “spirituality” in the broadest sense.
Let there be no mistake. By comparing him to Descartes, we do not dream of
making St. Ignatius a philosopher in spite of himself. But, although he does not
have a place in philosophy textbooks, perhaps it is allowed to apply philosophy
to the understanding of his book. And if this study should make a marvelous
reflective analysis appear under a universally praised handbook of asceticism,
an analysis that situates its author in the first rank of the founders and educa-
tors of the modern spirit, no one would have the right to complain. Neither
could the ascetic devoted to St. Ignatius could complain, since our work would
simply provide him with a new opportunity to give glory to God, who reveals to

via free access
Introduction 21
the humble and the ignorant what he hides from the prudent and the learned.
Nor should the philosopher complain, who does not care about asceticism,
since he could see in our work only an essay capable of explaining in a small
way the influence of Ignatius and his order upon the very formation of west-
ern thought.
It has been written: in the smallest fact there is the whole of thought. The
originality of modern philosophy can be defined as the reflective effort to
grasp itself, to explicate itself as a whole, starting from any fact, from any act,
or object of thought, an entire whole starting from any fact whatever, from any
act or object of thought whatever.
This is certainly a concrete effort, but that often ends in not only in empty-
ing itself of any material representation but also of any true spiritual reality.
Descartes was the first to make the experiment that, after his initial reflection,
Cogito ergo sum, there and then reduced him to a “thinking thing,” which was
really neither thing, nor thought: ergo sum res cogitans. This occurs inevita-
bly in all self-centered reflection. In its attempt to grasp itself, the reflection
suppresses itself. From concrete as it was in its origin, the reflection becomes
abstract; it fades away.
More prudent although no less resolute, concrete reflection is not satisfied
with a word or even a book, as if inert signs were capable of replacing its life.
If concrete reflection also employs words, it is because there is no other way
of communicating the individual experience … But these words have value for
it only insofar as they represent a sense and a direction, so much so that only
the one who advances in the direction that they indicate can also comprehend
their sense. They are signposts, but that we decipher only in the measure that
we advance toward the goal they designate. In other words, concrete reflection
comes to be defined as a path, a method. And that is precisely because the
Exercises are the fruit of such a reflection, it has been said a hundred times: not
a book to be read but to be put in practice.
In the least act of freedom there is the whole Spirit.
This is what Ignatius might have written on the title page of his Exercises, if
he had intended to do a work of philosophy. This is what we are going to try to
understand by analyzing his work of a saint.
We would give an elementary but fairly accurate notion of concrete reflec-

tion on the act of freedom by comparing it to movie photography. To study
the phenomena of collision or breakage, that are instantaneous for our senses,
a movie is used to fragment the apparently instantaneous movement and to

via free access
22 Introduction
seize its different phases. The scholar can then study one by one each of the
moments that comprise the total movement, recompose it more or less rapidly
in his mind’s eye and even imagine a way to intervene in its process.
Of itself, the act of freedom is an instantaneous flash, a present that cannot
be directly seized … But reflection thickens it and spreads it out into a before
and an indefinite after in such a way as to distinguish each of its components.
In this way it lets us study them separately and then recompose the fleeting
act in slow motion. And since the act of freedom is not an isolated flash in the
night, it is the whole of reality, especially the whole history of the individual
and of his race that must take its place in the framework of its representation
and must be illuminated by its fires as well as send back its own light on that
history.
If Ignatius’s reflection had been abstract like that of a pure philosopher,
it would have been satisfied with some developments in the manner of the
Foundation. Because the reflection is concrete, it is not afraid to take its own
bearings, so to speak, from the Act of divine freedom, so that when we seek to
seize the logical armature of the Exercises, we shall oscillate from a philosophy
of universal history, as St. Paul or St. Augustine conceived it, to a dialectic of
the free act, as a Fichte or a Hegel might have wished it.
On the one hand, there are the essential moments of divine history in the
world as they are stretched out in time …
On the other hand, there are the dialectical moments as they are engaged
in any human act whatsoever, even before the genesis of psychological time,
so to speak.
Between the two, Ignatius’s self, ego, searching for itself, learning in the ebb
and flow of sentiments that such a spectacle produces in it to find out what it
wills, and to will it purely, which is to say make itself pure impulse toward God
and pure reception of his grace, a freedom conquered and that possesses itself,
which is to say one that by Love is perfectly united to God.
At the end of this essay, if it keeps its promises, we should glimpse at least
in some measure the truth of what Ignatius who (according to several wit-
nesses) affirmed in regard to the visions at Manresa that were the source of
his Exercises: “I saw, felt, understood, all the mysteries of Christian faith,”2 as
he told Nadal one day. Laínez reports having heard Ignatius declare, “that one
day at Manresa, while he was ravished in God, he learned more things from
God in an hour than all the doctors of the world could have taught him.” Even
more, “that he was enlightened by God about the Christian mysteries to such a
2 Monumenta Ignatiana, 4, 1, 473; and Monumenta historiae Societatis Jesu, Fontes narrativi de
Sancto Ignatio, 2:123.

via free access
Introduction 23
degree that, even if all Scripture and all sacred books should disappear, thanks
to this light, he could still recognize the mysteries of faith and transmit them
to others.”3
These are testimonies that cannot be doubted. For we find their echo in
A Pilgrim’s Journey:
Many times he thought to himself, if there were no Scriptures to teach us

these matters of faith, he would still be ready to die for them on the basis
of what he had seen then.4
This is an extraordinary affirmation, if we keep in mind that the person who

made it, more than thirty years after he entertained this thought, became
in 1554 the founder of an Order that was the greatest enemy of Lutheran
subjectivism.
3 Monumenta historiae, 2:324.
4 Ignatius of Loyola, Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 29, 38.

via free access
Chapter 1
Division of the Exercises
The Spiritual Exercises are divided into four weeks. The Foundation opens
the series of exercises belonging to the First Week. Situated at the end of the
Second Week is the Election, the central point and pivot of the endeavor; there
is still a Third and a Fourth Week that the Cross of Christ exactly separates, and
the whole ends in the Contemplation to Gain Love, Contemplatio ad Amorem
Obtinendum. These are the main lines of the construct: a threshold, two parts
before the option, two parts after, a pinnacle.
This division into four weeks has always been associated with the classi-
cal scheme that distinguishes three ways in the ascent toward perfection: pur-
gative, illuminative, and unitive. The likeness is obvious, since the purpose
of the Exercises is to lead the soul to the highest degrees of the spiritual life.
St. Ignatius was the first to authenticate it in Annotation 10, by indicating that
the First Week corresponds to the purgative way and the second seek to the
illuminative. Unanimously, the Directories have pursued the comparison indi-
cated, and the definitive editions of 1591 and 1599 devote a whole chapter to it.
The commentators are also in unanimous agreement. It is certainly enough to
cite two of the most important: “The division of the Exercises into Four Weeks
is the same as that of the spiritual path into three ways or rather parts of the
way, purgative, illuminative and unitive.”1 Among the modern authorities,
Fr. J. Nonell heads a chapter: “St. Ignatius’s Method Coincides with that of the
Three Ways.”2
The likeness is evident but it poses some difficulties. To state the matter
quite simply: with which of the two ways, illuminative or unitive, is the Third
Week linked? It is evident that the “coincidence” of four components with
three requires that at some point two are identified with one. Directories and
commentators have acknowledged these difficulties. They have given different
answers and gone on their way without further worry. If we want to weigh in
on this difficulty and discuss the solutions that have been proposed, in order
to make their inadequacy clear, it is not in order to deny the soundness of the
traditional parallel, which, we repeat, is evident. Rather, it is so that the sense
of inadequacy that the parallel has in spite of everything, may be precisely
1 Ludovici Palmensis, Via spiritualis, Nonell translation (Barcelona, 1887), 1:chapter 14, 72.
2 Jaime Nonell, Études sur le texte des Exercises, Collection de la Bibiliothèque des Exercises,
chapter 2, nos. 73–74, 43.

via free access
Division of the Exercises 25
what introduces us to a perspective in which the Exercises’ extreme originality

will become clear.
1 How to Make the Four Weeks Coincide with the Three Ways?
We need to make a preliminary observation about Annotation 10. The treat-

ment of the integration of the four weeks and the three ways is very sparse in
the Master’s writings. It is certainly not the primary objective of the annota-
tion, and it comes in last place, as it were, incidentally. There Ignatius gives
advice to the directors of Exercises alone, to his disciples. Some of them like
Pierre Favre [Peter Faber] were already formed in the spiritual life and accus-
tomed to picture it according to the scheme of the three ways. Others like
Francis Xavier, who were still novices, would find only works reproducing the
traditional arrangement to develop what they received from Ignatius. The goal
of the incidental assimilation would be quite simply to place both groupings
on the road to a transposition to be carried out in order to make the results
of earlier spirituality serve within the new framework. Accordingly, Ignatius
certainly says they correspond but not that they coincide. Why else would
he refrain from carrying it out completely? If he had done so, he would have
resolved at one stroke the problem that detains us. But perhaps, having sensed
it, he could not or did not want to set it aside. That mattered very little to its
real influence. In any case Fr. de la Palma noticed the omission of the unitive
way. We will see how he explained it.
If the Directories have followed the assimilation begun by Ignatius without
any hesitation, they have not been able to completely avoid differences regard-
ing week three. One of the oldest directories, entitled Directorium Anonymum
BI by the editors of the Monumenta Ignatiana,3 connects it with the unitive
way, but declares that it only does so with some hesitation. After connecting
week four to the way of the perfect, it adds:
I think however, that the previous week (week three) also looks to this
part of progressing. Week Three is all about the passion of the Lord and
love, and all the virtues are increased, and Christ Our Redeemer on the
Cross is put forward as the living example of all virtues and all perfection,
(Puto autem ad hanc proficiendi4 partem spectare quoque praecedentem
3 Series secunda, Exercitia spiritualia Sancti Ignatii de Loyola et eorum directoria (Madrid, 1919).
4 Perficiendi rather than proficiendi would seem to agree better with the meaning required.

via free access
26 Chapter 1
hebdomadam tertiam, quae tota est de passione Domini et amore, et omnes

augentur virtutes et vivum ibi omnium virtutum et omnis perfectionis exem-
plar ponitur Christus Redemptor noster in Cruce—886.)
This opinion is not an isolated one, because Fr. Egidio González de Ávila, in his
notes on the different Directories takes care to indicate his agreement:
Attractive things have been handed down about the division of the Exer-
cises according to the triple purgative, illuminative, and unitive way, which
very much agree with what our Father Ignatius taught in the Annotations.
(Placent quidem illa quae de divisione Exercitiorum secundum triplicem
viam purgativam, illuminativam, et unitivam traduntur, quae consentanea
maxime sunt iis quae P.N. Ignatius in annotationibus docuit—902.)
On the other hand, a Directory that is also considered among the Antiqua, and
moreover attributed to this same Egidio González de Ávila, holds the opposite
opinion.
The First Week (corresponds) to the purgative way … The Second and
Third to the Illuminative, for they have the imitation of the life and doc-
trine of our Lord and the election of that same life, which is more pleas-
ing to God; all of which are greatly confirmed by the mysteries of the
passion; the Fourth Week, about the resurrection, [corresponds] … to
the unitive way. (In hebdomada [respondet] viae purgativae … secunda
et tertia illuminativae, etenim imitationem habet vitae et doctrinae Domini
Nostri, electionem ejusmodi vitae, quae Deo sit magis placitura; quae omnia
passionis mysteriis multum confirmantur; quarta de resurrectione … viae
unitivae—907–8.)
The Directory of 1591 and then that of 1599 also adopted this division without
any sign of hesitation.
Fr. de la Palma will attempt a middle path between these two contradictory
opinions. He devotes no less than two chapters to resolve what he declares is a
very justified doubt:
You will have wondered rightly whether the exercises of the Third or
Fourth Week or both together correspond to the unitive way. I have
undertaken to deal with this matter in the following chapters. ( Jure merito
dubitaveris utrum tertiae, an quartae hebdomadae, an utrique simul viae

via free access
unitivae exercitia respondeant. Quam equidem rem sequentibus capitibus

tractandam suscepi—476.)
Fortunately, he had earlier summed up his reasons in a few lines that must be
quoted:
Another thing worthy of being noted, which is stated in the same place, is
that the exercises of the First Week correspond to the purgative way, and
those of the Second to the illuminative way. Therefore, unquestionably,
at least the exercises of the Fourth Week must correspond to the uni-
tive way. The Third Week added by the Blessed Father to this triple way,
which deals with the consideration of the suffering Christ, is placed in
like manner between the illuminative and unitive way, so it corresponds
to both; to one as the end and to the other as the beginning; for it is the
maximum of progress in virtues and the beginning of perfect union with
God. From all these things it follows that the division into three ways, of
beginners, proficient, and perfect, is altogether the same as the division
into four weeks. (Alterum notatu dignum, illud est quod ibidem dicitur,
exercitia primae hebdomadae viae purgativae, secundae vero, respondere
illuminativae, abs dubio igitur unitivae respondeant oportet exercitia quar-
tae saltem hebdomadae. Tertia vero hebdomada, triplici huic viae a Beato
Patre apposita, quae de patientis Christi consideratione agit, quemadmo-
dum inter illuminativam et unitivam viam est posita, ita utrique respondet;
alteri quidem tanquam terminum, alteri vero tanquam initium; est enim
supremum profectus in virtutibus et initium perfectae cum Deo conjunctio-
nis. Ex quibus omnibus consequitur, eamdem omnio esse licet aliis nomi-
nbus significatum, divisionem in tres viae, incipientium, proficientium et
perfectorum, ac divisionem in quatuor hebdomadas—77.)
Thus, the division is absolutely the same. We just find that the boundary
between two sections is swollen and distended so that it becomes a part by
itself. Let us acknowledge that the geometry of the spiritual life has absolutely
peculiar laws. What are the motives to have changed the classical division of
ways into weeks? Above all, why was it never stated which part of the Exercises
corresponds to the unitive way? Here is the answer:
He named four weeks, which is the most ordinary way of speaking and
one easy to understand and puts forth nothing other than the time to
be spent in the course of the Exercises. (Quatuor hebdomadas nominavit,

via free access
28 Chapter 1
quae est usitatissima captuque facilis loquendi ratio nihilque alius prae se
fert quam tempus in Exercitiorum secessione impendendum—78.)
As for the omission of the unitive way:
I will answer that the Blessed Father in showing the way of perfection
always shunned those terms that were obstacles and misunderstood …
That great master of the spiritual way had the perspective, which is totally
true, that there is no advantage for those who begin to undergo the
Exercises in the knowledge of this kind of distinction into purgative and
illuminative way; indeed, they usually are overcome by a certain foolish
vainglory, are hindered, and undergo mental obscurity. Understanding
of these things pertains to the Instructor … Therefore, because of this,
the Exercises were divided into four weeks. (Respondebo, Beatum Patrem
in monstranda perfectionis via perpetuo ab iis vocibus abhorruisse, quae
deterrent, neque capiuntur … Persuasum videlicet magnus ille viae spiri-
tualis magister habebat, id quod verissimum est, eorum, qui exerceri
incipient, nihil interesse cognitionem hujusmodi distinctionum in viam
purgativam et illuminativam; imo vero solere inde inani quadam gloriola
efferri, impediri, mentis obscuritatem pati. Horum intelligentia Instructoris
est propria … hac igitur de causa in quatuor hebdomadas Exercitia partita
fuere—77–79.)
Thus, simple reasons of convenience led St. Ignatius to the division into Four
Weeks and the omission of the unitive way. It will be admitted that this does
not do much to explain the stretch from which the Third Week arises. This is
insufficient to account for the silence about the unitive way, since the Exercises
in general and Annotation 10 in particular are addressed to the one “who gives
the Exercises,” the one for whom “it is proper to possess intelligence of the
Exercises.”
We are not alone in deeming these replies inadequate. This is the least we can
conjecture, when we see Fr. Jaime Nonell, the translator of El Camino Espiritual
pose the same question as Fr. de la Palma and answer it with other consid-
erations without ever alluding to texts he had to know. In his Ars Ignatiana,
Fr. Nonell asks: “Where should we look for the rationale for the parts?” (Unde
vero partium ratio desumenda est?) He responds that it does not come from the
number of days, which St. Ignatius explicitly declares can be modified. Rather,
as Annotation 4 says, it comes from the subject matter and the fruit or end to

via free access
be obtained (ex parte materiae et ex parte fructus seu finis consequendi—28).

Yet, if Annotation 4 determines well the subject matter of the Fourth Week, it
only specifies the peculiar fruit of week one, limiting itself to a general formula
for the others: by seeking the things (or peculiar fruit) according to the subject
matter (quaerendo res seu fructum proprium juxta subjectam materiam). From
which Fr. Nonell concludes:
Since the subject matter is Christ the Lord, not under any perspective
whatever but insofar as he is to be imitated, the imitation of the living
Christ can be said to be the goal of week two; that of the dying Christ the
goal of week three; that of Christ Resurrected and ascending into heaven
that of week four. (Quum subjecta materia sit Christus Dominus, non tamen
quacumque ratione, sed quatenus imitandus; dici potest imitatio Christi
viventis quidem, esse finis hebdomadae secundae; morientis vero tertiae;
a mortuis denique suscitati atque in coelos ascendentis, quartae—29–30.)
There, Fr. Nonell acts as a faithful commentator, who makes an effort, in order
to account for the divisions of his text, not to fit some within the others, but
rather to make them emerge. His task will only be more difficult later, when
he will also have to explain the affirmation we already quoted: St. Ignatius’s
method coincides with the methods of the three ways. What is going to happen in
Week Three? Without ever saying it clearly, Fr. Nonell makes week three fit into
the illuminative way, abandoning Fr. de la Palma’s suggestion, and adopting the
Directories’ traditional approach. At least that can be concluded from the title
and content of the following chapters. First, chapter three is “Exercises aimed
at purifying the soul from sin, an overall analysis of week one.” Next come
two chapters on the imitation of Christ, the first giving an overview of week
one with the title “Exercises to Rid Oneself of Disordered Affections toward
the Goods of This World.” The other deals with week three under the heading
“Exercises to Rid Oneself of Disordered Affections or Repugnance toward the
Earthly Evils.” Finally, at the beginning of chapter seven, “Exercises to Kindle
the Love of God in the Soul,” devoted to week four, we find a short paragraph
that leaves no doubt about Fr. Nonell’s opinion and motives:
In the illuminative way, it was necessary to prepare the human being to

carry out all God’s will, especially where this will considers abstention
from a desired good or the bearing a naturally loathed evil. In the unitive
way, the point is to make someone conceive the love of true friendship
toward God Our Lord—57.

via free access
30 Chapter 1
We sense that Fr. Nonell remembers his Ars Ignatiana and looks for the
solution in the kingdom of “ends” … Let us make an effort to bring out clearly
the reason for what he offers us. He thinks we would achieve the sought-after
coincidence if it turned out that the Second and Third Weeks present one and
the same end under two different forms. Now, is that not the case, since the
illuminative way on one side has as its end to detach us from creatures and on
the other side the creature presents itself under the double form of a “desired
good” or of an “abhorred evil.” Instead of inflating the boundary between two
ways, we divide the illuminative way, and with that weeks two and three will
appear as the positive and negative parts, the upside down and the downside
up of this one way:
Here is the coincidence that obtained:
Purgative way = purification from sin week one

Illuminative way = detachment from the as desired week two
affection for creatures as loathed week three
Unitive way = union with the Creator week four
It must be acknowledged that there is an appreciable effort “to account for” the
Ignatian division. Above all, the recourse to “ends” and, in particular to the two
appearances creatures take on in regard to our “affection”—to our freedom—
seems to us in complete agreement with the Exercises’ general goal: “that one …
should regulate one’s life without determining oneself by any tendency that is
disordered (ut homo … ordinat vitam suam quin se determinet ob ullam affec-
tionem quae inordinata sit—number 21), and particularly with regard to the
Foundation, which analyzed the a priori conditions for attaining such a goal.
However, this is not completely successful.
To begin with, why should we divide the illuminative rather than the unitive
way? Certainly, we would agree with the tradition of the Directories in this way.
However, we could just as well say that week three represents the detachment
from creatures taken to the maximum, and the week four represents attach-
ment correlative to the spiritual good, the Resurrected Christ. This opinion
could avail itself of the Anonymous BI and even of Fr. de la Palma.
There is a more serious objection. The outline arrived at for the Exercises
does not seem at all to obey the same laws of internal logic as the division of the
three ways. The latter division quite clearly represents the ascent toward per-
fection as a continuous curve where one passes without gaps, sine saltu, from
one stage to another, from evil toward the better. On the contrary, Fr. Nonell’s
curve is discontinuous since, after having purified itself of evil, then detached

via free access
itself from the good that is desired, one comes back to consider evil once more
before adhering to perfect good. If the Exercises obeyed the same law of inter-
nal genesis as the three ways, week three ought to come immediately after
week one—for the fear of pain is nothing but the result of sin—and week two
ought to come before week four—since the desire for good is, in itself, only the
beginning for the union with the perfect. Ignatius’s work would become evil-
good-evil-good, two corresponding pairs of the four weeks. That is a winding
path, quite characteristic of the Exercises, with no analogue in the division into
three ways.
Consequently, with all his perspicacity Fr. Nonell does not manage to
solve the difficulty that has held us back from the start. In whichever direc-
tion we turn it, week three refuses to fit into the Procrustean structure. Is it
not that we are attempting something impossible, and uselessly? For suppose
that we have a challenge to have four coincide with three. We would not have
explained the winding outline and the equilibrium of the different weeks. Nor
have we explained their introduction (the Foundation), or their conclusion
(Contemplation to Gain Love), all essential features peculiar to the Exercises,
without analogue in the Three Ways. Especially, we have said nothing yet about
the centerpiece of the Exercises, a piece that does not appear in the traditional
division, but that we cannot pass by in silence here, without negating the very
essence of the Exercises: the Election.
Complaining that the editors of Retreats hardly insist on the Election,

Fr. de Guibert writes: “It cannot be said that everything gravitates around the
Election [for them]” (Semaine des Exercises, 1929, 194). What should we say
then, about commentators who have tried so much to account for the struc-
ture of the Exercises by means of a classical scheme where there is no place
for the Election, and where the whole effort can only succeed by masking its
central importance?
One must take into account that, however traditional the division into
three ways is, it stems from another epoch of spiritual reflection than that
of St. Ignatius. Before looking for the bases of a certain correspondence, it is
first necessary to discover the law that presided over the inner genesis of the
Exercises. We shall succeed in that only under the condition of making the
Election the very soul of that genesis, and of showing how everything else,
subject matter and goal of each division is organically linked to it. Not satis-
fied with grouping the goals of the different weeks under the labels of good
or evil, we must still show the relation of this good and of this evil with their

via free access
32 Chapter 1
content, a transcendent history of the world or “slices” of the life of Christ and
make apparent the bond that ties each part to the Election as well as to all the
other parts.
With that we think the difference between the three ways, a framework
for all sorts of uses, and the Spiritual Exercises, a unique work of art, becomes
diaphanous. On the one hand, there is a large vessel of the primitive temple
open to any god. On the other, we have the reflective plan of the cathedral ded-
icated to the true God. To be sure, the architectural goal is identical, to cover
a surface. But what differences there are! Instead of just any sort of entrance,
the cathedral receives its faithful through a porch, where the work’s essential
lines are already arranged. Next, inside, instead of a formless atmosphere that
does not introduce any determined measure, there is adaption, linkage, and
organic correspondence of all the architectonic elements. At its center the
cathedral enshrines the God that no ancient temple knows. This is also why in
his Exercises, Ignatius could enclose the divine instant of the human being, its
instant of freedom, and why all the parts of the edifice radiate out around the
Election as around the tabernacle. After the dark passage where the penitent
soul is purified of past faults in fear, under the pressure of first truths, massive
like defensive towers, comes the luminous height of the nave where the soul
is instructed in contemplating the mysteries of Christ’s life displayed in the
series of windows. The altar awaits it at the transept … the altar of the Election.
Called, the soul ascends to it, and holding in its hands the present where, deter-
mined to offer itself, it repeats the Hoc est corpus meum, before opening up its
arms upon those of the Transept cross. United to the sacrifice, the soul can
also be united to the triumph, and beyond the tomb, sit in the choir to enjoy
a foretaste of the future glory. Christ having disappeared, it is finally crowned,
like the cathedral, by an arrow that is hurled toward heaven to bring from it the
fire to gain love, ad Amorem obtinendum.
Let us take a respite from images!
The whole difference from the three ways to the Exercises consists in this:
the ways result from an initial reflection that groups diverse phenomena
according to an arrangement whose origin is spatial: beginning-middle-end.5
By contrast, the Exercises are the fruit of a consummate reflection on our act
5 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIª IIªᵉ, question 24, article 9: “Sicut etiam vidimus in motu cor-
porali, quod primum est recessus a termino; secundum autem est appropinquatio ad alium
terminum; tertium est quies in termino.”—In this way, St. Thomas bases the same division on
the comparison with the three ages, childhood, youth, and maturity.

via free access
of freedom, considered as the precise milieu where the human-divine process

develops, which raises the soul from sin to divine union.6
Before Ignatius, masters of the spiritual life had envisaged the ascent of the
soul only from the objective viewpoint. It is not that they paid no attention to
or were unaware of the fact that freedom is involved at every step. But what
struck the reflective ascetic was, so to speak, the changing material of the rep-
resentations that each stage brought laid out his eyes: penance and tears of
contrition, then exercises, and lastly the passion of the soul in contact with the
divine. It mattered little whether the master described his own experience or
those of others. Everything was always defined from the outside.
On the threshold of modernity, Ignatius was effecting an authentic revo-
lution in the spiritual world by no longer situating himself in the objective
point of view of the soul, but in the subjective point of view of the self, the
ego. Instead of mixing the formal element of the spiritual life with more or
less material objects and representations, the Exercises extract it and codify
it, showing the pure relation of everything that can be represented to the infi-
nitely subtle point at which the union of man with God is effectuated, the junc-
ture of freedom and grace. In technical terms, the Exercises give a dialectical
grouping of the a priori conditions of true freedom, which is identical to love.
We shall call this revolution Copernican by analogy to Kant’s revolution.

It allows us to give full value to the word, so often repeated in regard to the
Exercises, a book that is not read but practiced. This is a simple truism if it
is understood as only meaning that the manual of spiritual gymnastics ought
to be “acted out” and not just “thought.” But more profoundly, it signifies that
the very comprehension of the movement described and mandated by the
Exercises can only be given to the one who, after finishing them, perceives that
henceforth it is necessary to repeat them unceasingly.
Let it be noted: it can be said of every other ascetical or mystical book, only
the believer is capable of understanding it deeply, since in complete analyti-
cal rigor, the comprehension of the object revealed supposes a living faith, an
intelligence that fulfills the movement of faith. The same must be affirmed
of the Exercises but with far more powerful reasons. In the Exercises the
6 From Henri Bremond’s standpoint as “historian of religious feeling,” he has thoroughly

indicated the origin of this difference whose philosophical importance we point out. How
do I find God’s will in order to unite mine to it? Bremond says that this Ignatian question,
from which the Exercises arose, constitutes “a great rather troubling novelty. To see what
God wants has always been and always will be the rule. But before St. Ignatius, people were
less concerned to find this will than to carry it out,” art. cit. [presumably “St. Ignace et les
Exercises,” Vie spirituelle, supplément] (April 1929): 26–27.

via free access
34 Chapter 1
normal relationship of religious representation to the art that supposes them

is reversed. In the classical work of ascetics or mysticism, the material element
of their representation is so dominant that the formal element, the movement
of faith, although always presupposed, is drowned. In Ignatius’s little book to
the contrary, the existential structure of faith passes into the foreground, and
by that very fact, the traditional images are reduced to a minimum, discarded
in the shadows, retained only insofar as necessary to this structure and con-
tributing to make it stand out. In the same measure also, the purely and natural
human sense is attenuated, which these representations may offer the spirit
who, unconcerned with becoming more Christian, does not direct itself in the
specifically supernatural direction that they are aiming at. How, therefore, will
it be possible to comprehend the method of the Exercises and its very detailed
prescriptions before having experienced its efficacy? Or how can it be under-
stood without appropriating their sense in oneself and for oneself here and
now, hic et nunc, that is without reproducing in oneself and for oneself the
spiritual attitude that the Exercises signify: pure relation of the I to God, of the
self to the Self?7
7 “Pure relations,” but not at all abstract. For the relation must always be envisaged existen-
tially as Ignatius does, which means in the historical actuality where it is constituted. The
Annotations and the Additions would merit special study from this standpoint. In them,
under the form of brief psychological recipes, Ignatius teaches his disciple, along with the
importance of the spatial-temporal milieu, of the attitude of one’s body, and of how we should
behave toward it, the means of directing thoughts and affections in order to create the atmo-
sphere in which this pure relation of the self to God can germinate and expand. In general, the
Annotations consider more the social and historical milieu, and particularly what remains of
it once the vacuum made by the solitude of the retreat, namely the retreatant’s relationship
to the person who gives the Exercises. In this regard, it would be appropriate to emphasize
the value that Ignatius gives to communication, to openness, and in general to being-for-
another, as the condition of the development of discernment and the realization of the free
act in itself and for itself. It goes without saying that from the start the retreat director must
be a past master about the way in which he guides others. Also, despite all the difference that
are obvious, the retreatant’s relationship to him has some analogy to that of the subject of
psychoanalysis with his physician. (On this subject, see the presentation of Dr. Charles-Henri
Nodet and Fr. Louis Beirnaert in the volume Études Carmélitaines, Direction spirituelle et psy-
chologie [Desclée de Brouwer, 1951].) From the start, one who gives the Exercises ought to
“relate faithfully” and be “short” (Annotation 2); be circumspect (Annotations 8, 9, 10, and 14);
“warn” (Annotation 14); be “gentle” (Annotation 7) and “inquire carefully” (Annotation 6);
and “warn carefully” (Annotation 12); listen directly to the retreatant’s confidences about
consolations and desolations (Annotation 17); detect the sense and hidden motivations of
these consolations and desolations (Annotation 7); finally and above all, compensate for
and always be ready to neutralize the disordered oscillation of a freedom that has not yet
arrived at an equilibrium “in the center like a balance” (Annotation 15). The director of the
Exercises is one of the most characteristic and irreplaceable features of the Ignatian method.

via free access
This is why the Exercises, much more than the works of ascetics or even mys-
tics like St. John of the Cross, remain a sealed book for unbelievers. Someone
like Maurice Barrès can certainly invoke Ignatius as an “intercessor” and apply
the method of this “most surprising of psychologists” to the “cult of the self.”8 At
least he is not deceived by the transposition he carries out. But how many oth-
ers, after long, sincere study, have believed they had plumbed the depth of the
mystery of the Exercises, when really their remarks did not go beyond the most
superficial bark, limiting themselves to underlining and most of the time exag-
gerating the role of imagination in the “composition of place” or the “applica-
tion of the senses,” or the role of the will in regard to the “particular examen” …
Also, to the same extent is attenuated the purely natural and human sense that
these representations can offer to the spirit who, not caring about becoming
more Christian, does not orient itself in the specifically supernatural direction
it aims at. Happy still if, having compared the Third Way of Prayer to the prac-
tice of yoga, they abstain from presenting Ignatius as the Heir of I know not
what initiatic rites. Among the non-believers, only historians have appreciated
the influence of this book and have perceived all its importance. Yet precisely
by reason of their objective viewpoint, they were condemned to remain alien
to its soul and to being unable to penetrate its secret. How can we be surprised
about this, when we see a mind as acute as Henri Bremond, who knew the
Exercises from having made and re-made them, confess his ignorance about
the “canons” followed by Ignatius’s “dialectic.”
2 Deduction of the Divisions of the Exercises
One is free who determines himself, makes himself, creates himself, and
posits himself. From that comes a first definition of freedom, the positing
of the self by the self, which is the definition of perfect freedom. But since
human freedom is freedom in becoming, before the act by which it posits
itself, it is not. It is only after this act. Therefore, we can conclude that it
is also a passage from Non-being to Being. This is the second definition
of freedom. More precisely, our freedom can only become by putting into
practice our free choice, namely through a choice; choice between two
His simple presence keeps the requirements of this process from being misled in imagina-
tions or remaining in abstractions, and at the same time, he contributes to make the formal
purity of those requirements concrete and individual.
In 1931, in our concern to bring out the pure process, we hardly alluded to the director’s
rule in the pages that follow. But it is clear that those pages presuppose it.
8 Maurice Barrès, Un homme libre (1894), 77.

via free access
36 Chapter 1
possibles that are opposed as the positive and the negative. The result of
the choice is the exclusion of one and the positing of the other.
In this way, we have therefore four terms that can be represented as
the ends of an X, whose center is the choice. In the first two, before the
choice that makes freedom be, there is prevalence of non-being. In the
following two, which are after the choice, there is prevalence of being.
But if we want to think of the free act in its development, we cannot
stop at this intersection. These four terms must be laid out in a succes-
sion. Then will appear the order that presides over the unfolding of the
four weeks.
The affirmation that the Exercises set out a dialectic in which the formal ele-
ments of freedom are meshed in their rank may be surprising at first. But we
believe there will no longer be any doubt if in showing by a reverse move how,
starting from a pure reflection upon the human act, the four weeks are deduced
with the “matter” and “goal” peculiar to each.
To reflect on any of my free acts is to go back in memory over the delibera-
tion that preceded it and the execution that followed it; between two possibili-
ties I balanced and then inclined in favor of one that I brought to existence,
excluding the other. However faithful and exact my resurrection of the past
maybe, and however detailed my analysis, I never come to isolate my decision
from its motives or its consequences, so as to grasp purely my own act. Even in
my own eyes, the act obstinately remains a simple break between the conflict
and its resolution, It is an instant without duration that encloses a before and
an after.
To avoid vanishing into determinism, I therefore must attach myself to the
order of value that prevails among the elements of my free act. Freedom does
not consist only of an objective choice, but in a moral spontaneity, in a positing
of self by oneself. The common representation is deepened proportionally. If
choice for me is the occasion of positing myself, it is because the alternative of
the two possibilities in the before hides a deeper opposition than the opposi-
tion of their sensible, objective elements. In truth, the eternal myth of Hercules
at the crossroad of vice and virtue does not mean only that one can go right
or left. Good and evil are only defined by their correlation. Their opposition
further reveals to consciousness all the ambiguity of one’s being that is and is
not at the same time, and yet must be everything while being able not to be.
Likewise, if the trace of the alterative always remains in the after, it is in order
to allow the real consequence of the choice, the endpoint of the deliberation,
to appear in what is carried out. By seeing the two possibilities in becoming
in the before changed, one into a being posited absolutely, the other into a

via free access
possible that can no longer be, into a futurible, consciousness learns the neces-
sity hidden in its determination and the sacrifice of the possible that it entails.
Accordingly, in our representation, the act of freedom is necessarily laid out
in four divisions that are opposed two by two and that correspond to each other.
Two precede and two follow the undefinable burst of freedom. Reciprocal rela-
tions crisscrossing.
Already we sense coming up the scheme of the four weeks radiating around
the Election.
But it is necessary to pursue our analysis more deeply.
If we are not satisfied with determining the most general form of the free act
and want further to study successively each of its moments, it will be necessary
for us to represent them in isolation, and for that, to give them content. A pure
relation becomes object only under the condition of letting itself be some-
how substantified, reified. Accordingly, algebra surely takes the pure relation
of number as its object but makes it a letter. Here, however, we do not have the
right to carry out an arbitrary choice like the mathematician nor the power to
insert some particular datum like the psychologist. The content must spring
from some form of the being that we are trying to represent. We have defined
freedom as the positing of self by self in order to grasp it in the pure state and
reduce it to a point, so to speak. By contrast, now that we want to analyze it
as it exhibits itself, we must find a new definition that will render perceptible
the difference that the identity of the two “selves” covered up in the previous
definition, while conserving the relation of one to the other. Let us say that
freedom is passage from Non-being to Being. The “Non-being” corresponds to
the “self” in becoming that is represented in the before by a comprehensive
alternative, “Being” corresponding to the “self” that it has become and is repre-
sented in the After by a privative exclusion.
Positing of self by self and passage from Non-being to Being are two com-
plementary definitions. One expresses absolute immediacy: freedom needs
nothing outside itself to be posited. The other expresses absolute mediation.
In order to be posited freedom must surmount the infinite distance between
Non-being and Being. Thanks to the first, we will never be able to forget, how-
ever far the representation of this infinite distance takes us, the reciprocal inte-
riority of all our own divisions. And the second will allow us, as perfect as the
immanence of our freedom may be, to leave anything outside of itself that
would be exterior or indifferent.
With the ground prepared in this way, let us see how our four divisions
dispose themselves on their own in a linear sequence and give themselves a
content.

via free access
38 Chapter 1
It has been said that freedom was a passage from Non-being to Being,
quite simply because it was freedom in becoming or the becoming of
freedom. If we now consider, on the one hand, the before of the free act,
and on the other, the after of this free act, the before appears to us under
the guise of Non-being and the after under that of Being, because the free
act is as much the passage from the Non-being to the Being as the passage
from the before to the after.
But since there is nothing in human beings that is not in becoming, the
before and the after themselves have a becoming and each one therefore
is passage from Non-being to Being. Since it is passage from Non-being to
Being, the before conserves equally its negative character and the after
its positive character (instantly, we have just indicated). Consequently,
the passage from Non-being to Being will take place in the before in a
negative form: the passage from the positing of Non-being to the nega-
tion of this positing. Whereas the passage of Non-being to Being in the
after will take place under a positive form: the passage of the exclusion of
Non-being to the positing of Being.
Let us first try to define the sequence of our four divisions.

Since their totality must represent a becoming that rises from Non-being to
Being, it is evident that two of them will consider the negative side of becom-
ing (its Non-being). The other two will consider its positive side (its Being). The
first two divisions will describe freedom’s becoming before it is posited. The
last two will describe the becoming after freedom is posited.
Here now is how these divisions are going to be opposed to each other
within the before and the after as follows.
To represent the negative side of becoming, it is necessary and sufficient to
posit the exclusion of Non-being and then the negation of this positing.
To represent the positive side of becoming, it is necessary and sufficient to
posit the exclusion of Non-being and then the positing of Being:
Before After
1. Positing of Non-being 3. Exclusion of Non-being
2. Negation of this Positing 4. Positing of Being
Let it be noted that these oppositions are purely dialectical, which is to say,
obtained as St. Thomas requires, per compositionem et divisionem.9 One and
9 Aquinas, In Boethius de Trinitate, lection 1, question 2, article 1: “Pluralitatis et divisionis ratio

prima sive principium est ex affirmatione et negatione” (S. Thomae Aquinatis opuscula theo-
logica, ed. F.M. Calcaterra, O.P. [Turin: Marietti, 1954], 2:352).

via free access
four only posit separately and in order to redouble the two extreme terms of
our previous definitions: the passage of Non-being to Being. Two and three
posit only the necessary conditions for one and four to subsist separately; Two
does so by simply denying the reality that Non-being has attributed to itself at
the beginning. Three does so by denying all reality to Non-being.
This last observation permits us besides to observe immediately an odd
phenomenon of spiritual optics closely related to the difficulty that ushered us
into this debate. If we arrange these four divisions in a continuous line in order
to mark the progress that is brought about from one to another, we obtain this
succession: I, positing Non-being; II, negation of this positing; III, total nega-
tion of Non-being; IV, positing of Being. If, to represent their affirmative or
negative form by the usual signs, +−−+, it immediately becomes apparent that
the cut between II and III disappears, since there is simple progress in the
negation from one to the other; By whereas, the passage from I to II and from
III to IV remains marked by a solution of continuity.
So that if we did not take the central “cut” into consideration, we might
rightly declare that the passage from Non-being to Being involves only three
divisions: a beginning (= negation of a Non-being); a middle whose progress is
continual (= progressive affirmation of a Being); and an end, where progress is
perfected (= negation of all Non-being). And we find once again the traditional
division of the three ways, which, as we have said, is founded upon a purely
spatial vision and has the characteristic of making the Exercises’ essential cut,
the Election, vanish. Consequently, we understand to what degree the funda-
mental originality of this book consists in the central place of the Election. We
also realize how, by substituting the objective becoming of the three ways for
the subjective becoming analyzed by Ignatius, commentators have come to
forget, as Fr. de Guibert remarked, that in the Exercises everything gravitates
around this center.
In deducing the sequence of the four weeks, we have simultaneously built

the structure in which the representation of several constituent moments in
the act of freedom is laid out. Now, we must analyze, by the same method, each
of these divisions in order to recover its content and determine its end. The
link between content and end is expressed by these classic contrasts: defor-
mata reformare; reformata conformare; conformata confirmare; confirmata
transformare. The whole of our deduction will appear as a commentary on
the sequence of contrasts where tradition has very exactly and dialectically
summed up what is essential in the four weeks (although without perceiving
it as such).
In order to make clear the dialectic immanent in this interplay of contrasts
manifest in the prefixes clearly felt, we will now employ our second definition

via free access
40 Chapter 1
of freedom: the passage from Non-being to Being. In this way, the trajectory
that we have to run through and its correspondence with the Four Weeks is
determined as follows:
A. Before the Act of Freedom

1. Positing of Non-being … First Week
2. Negation of this Positing … Second Week
B. After the act of freedom
3. Exclusion of Non-being … Third Week
4. Positing of Being … Fourth Week
Deformata: The first movement of the free creature was to affirm its auton-
omy in the absolute independence of its willing. Made for obedience, the
creature deforms its being by disobedience. It thus posits Non-being, sin.
But it is enough to push evil to its completion for the remedy to appear.
Sin must abound in order that grace may superabound. In the measure
in which sin is going to want to invade everything and in the measure in
which it passes through all of the nothing that it is, it ends in the absurd.
Realizing the destruction of self that is the false endpoint of his disobedi-
ence, the sinner is amazed that he still exists. If this is so, it is because the
gift received on the day of creation has already been transformed into
pardon. The death he now knows he deserves because of his transgres-
sion has not come. He then understands that love is over him. The gift
that sin had deformed is love, which is going to reform him, and reform
him in pardon: Reformare.
Reformata: Since disobedience would lead freedom to its own annihi-
lation, in order to attain life, there is only one solution: to deny the previ-
ous positing, that is to adopt the reverse attitude, that of obedience to
the visible image of love; turn oneself again toward him from whom one
turned away; to follow him whom one turned away from. Since perfect
freedom presents itself to us in perfect obedience, it is enough for us to
want what it wants, to combat what it combats, to expect everything
from the one from whom it expects everything, in a word, to conform our
being to its being: Conformare.
Conformata: Henceforth, our only way of being free is to choose the
same thing that God wants us to choose. Essentially, this choice is that
of the new creation in Christ. The old creation that was under Satan’s
empire must be not only combatted but destroyed. Non-being must be
excluded, if at least the choice that I posit does not remain as an impul-
sive intention but is achieved and developed in all its consequences. To

via free access
conform my whole being to God’s invisible image supposes in effect that

everything in me, which is still tied to the sinner I was, should disappear.
Without doubt, therein is the supreme trial of my freedom, the trial of
death, but the only one able to confirm my freedom. Confirmare.
Confirmata: My decision has cut the root of sin and thereby has made
everything in me die that was opposed to the appearance of the being of
grace. Since the old creation has lost any foundation in my will, the new
creation is built on the new foundation. The positing of Being inevita-
bly follows the exclusion of Non-being. Confirmed by the trial of death
that it has overcome, the self, by the power of God who dwells within it,
sees the creature be born transformed into the glorious image of love.
Transformare.

via free access
via free access
part 1
Before the Act of Freedom

via free access
via free access
Chapter 2
Positing Non-being: Week One
The issue is not the non-being of the creature as such, that is to say, the
non-being of the contingent, but of the Non-being of freedom, which
affirms its autonomy in sin, which means it doubles the non-being of
contingency.
In order to be a moment of freedom, sin must develop. Since it appears
in time, it is subject to the laws of time.
What we want to understand and represent is not just any becoming, but the
becoming peculiar to the self, whose essence is to posit itself freely as self. As
we have seen, the first moment of this representation is the positing of the
Non-being of this self.
What exactly is this Non-being? To characterize it, does it suffice to say, “I am
not,” understanding by this the creature’s nothing proper to it, the simple fact
of my being able not to exist? Evidently it does not, because this contingence,
this particular non-existence, includes the affirmation of an essence. If essence
is properly determination and consequently in one sense the negation of the
Esse simpliciter, it cannot be posited without implying the affirmation of this
Esse. By this very fact, while positing the distinction of the “self” from God, it
tends to confuse it with him, thereby rendering this distinction abstract and
evanescent. In other words, the judgement, “I am not,” does represent the pos-
iting of the created essence as such. However, enclosing the absolute essence
of being underneath its negative form, it does not make a concrete distinction
between the self and God, and does not leave the necessary space for a real
becoming of freedom.
As well, for his part Ignatius posits Homo creatus est [Man is created] as the
Foundation of his Exercises. But for him, as for us, this is only a presupposition,
certainly necessary to comprehend the free act, but radically insufficient for us
to delineate its trajectory or even just its origin.
Following him, what we seek is the positing of the self, not in being and by
another (even if in a negative form), but of itself and in non-being. It is not
enough then to say, “I am not.” On the contrary, it is necessary to posit, “I am”
and continue with, “I am … having freely posited myself as Non-being.”
This positing of the Self’s Non-being is sin.

via free access
46 Chapter 2
Sin, indeed, is only the negation of self that freedom has begun to posit, or
rather has posited at the origin. It is irrational negation, without a motive, and
inexplicable, because to explain or give a reason is to connect, and because that
which by definition is posited at the origin cannot be connected to a before. It
is pure negation that only digs a hole, a vacuum, at least in the eyes of the one
who has gone beyond this “moment,” but that, to the contrary, for the sinner
takes on a positive appearance and constitutes the reality of his self.1
This positing of Non-being, this sin, is not a particular act among many oth-
ers; it is the originating act of the self; it is the global positing that develops of
itself and tends to encompass a whole side of being, its whole “past.” Nothing
less is necessary for it to be truly a “moment” of freedom and fill an “interval of
time” in its representation.
1 As we already see and as will be clearer still in the commentary on the Rules for the
Discernment of Spirits, Ignatius, in agreement with scripture and early Christianity, poses
the problem of evil in a fundamentally historical and existential perspective and not just
a rational and speculative one. In his view, sin and a fortiori Satan are not just “privation of
being” but imply a positing of Non-being that can only be suppressed by the grace of Christ
on the one side and by existential faith in Christ on the other. In his article, “Le problème du
mal dans le Christianisme primitif” (Dieu vivant, no. 6), Fr. Bouyer rightly drew attention to
the difference between these two perspectives. If a certain “dualism” seems to result from
this positive character attributed to evil, “it is not,” he very correctly says, “that God is divided,
but it is that he wants for his creatures both freedom and this free response to the love that
creates it, which is ‘faith’ in the Pauline sense. The first gift is the condition for the second.
But if we stop there for it, that sets up a barrier to his creative love. In this way, a real conflict
arises whose possibility appears as the necessary condition for the higher unity to which the
same love that creates freedom tends” (33).—The exchange of letters about this article that
followed between its author and Fr. Sertillanges (Dieu vivant, no. 8, 131–37) shows clearly that
it is not easy to unite the two perspectives distinguished above. Certainly, Fr. Sertillanges, as a
good exegete of Thomism, is right to claim that since the rational includes the historical, the
affirmation of the historical cannot be posited “at the cost of essential truths.” But it is mani-
fest that the opposite perspective, or the inclusion of the rational and its “essential truths” in
the historical, hardly plays a role in his eyes, supposing it is recognized at all. It is precisely on
this that Fr. Bouyer planned to shed light, and that Thomism must not neglect, if, as Étienne
Gilson gives us to understand in Being and Some Philosophers and as Jacques Maritain explic-
itly states in Court traité de l’existence et l’existant (Hartmann, 1947, p. 9 [English translation
by Lewis Galantière and Gerald B. Phelan, New York: Pantheon, 1948]), Thomism is an “exis-
tentialism” and the only “authentic existentialism.”

via free access
Positing Non-being: Week One 47
Panorama of Week One
The first column follows the order set down by Ignatius. Columns 2, 3,
and 4 only take up the content of column 1 from different points of view.
1 2 3 4
I I I I
First sin: instantaneous
positing outside time
(sin of the angels,
number 50)
Second sin: in time at Past: the Memory that Sin outside

the origin of a series Non-being pictures me
(Adam’s sin, number 51) exterior to the the Past or in itself
self
Third sin: individuation

of sin at a point of the
series
(sin of a human being,
number 52)
II II II II
Process of personal sins Present: Intelligence Sin for me
(numbers 55–60) Non-being that must know
inside self the Present
III III III III

Hell: absolute emptiness Future: all Affection that Sin in itself
denies all objective deter- the external feels the future and
mination and takes to the Non-being that and absolute for me
maximum all determi- has become reality of Sin
nation issuing from the internal
subject (numbers 65–71)
Let us only sketch this growth of sin, which follows the general laws of all rep-
resentation, the temporal scheme.

via free access
48 Chapter 2
The freedom that posits itself as Non-being is first pure freedom, instanta-
neous and definitive positing, and as if without relation to time. Let us call this
positing first sin.
But “first” is an ambiguous term, as the unity that can be transcendental
outside of any series, although including it, or predicamental, being part of a
series. Since the sin of which we speak must have a “history,” this first sin can-
not remain “transcendental” and must become “predicamental.”
Freedom that posits itself as Non-being is therefore posited as the first of an
indefinite series of acts that likewise posit themselves as Non-being. Let us call
this positing second sin.
In this indefinite sequence, freedom finds a matter completely ready to be
individualized: therefore it chooses any point whatever.
Freedom that posits itself as Non-being is posited then as some particular
point or other but belonging to this determined series. Let us call this positing
third sin.
We recognize here the subject matter of the First Exercise by which Ignatius
opens week one: Primum peccatum Angelorum, Peccatum Adam et Evae,
Peccatum particulare. Freedom is represented in the whole extension of its
Non-being by this triple positing. But this Non-being still remains external to
it. Since freedom is a “self,” it must bring back to itself all its Non-being.
Therefore, turning back upon the objective form of Non-being that it has
just determined freedom then perceives its personal relation to all this objec-
tive “past” of Non-being, and in the “present,” it is identified with this process
of sins. Let us call this positing Processus peccatorum … vitae meae (process of
sins … of my life). Second exercise.
This movement of conversion or of reflection from the past to the present

must end in a determination of the future. Compared to present and past, the
future seems empty of being and determinations. It is nothing yet in relation
to what has been. But it can and must be everything. Consequently the void of
the future is only apparent. It is the void of the Absolute that denies all objec-
tive determination but that also takes to the maximum every positing issuing
from the self, every form of determination.
But how can we take such a total negation to the maximum? Or where can
we find in absolute Non-being a content that permits the “self” to posit it in
order to represent it to itself. Up to now, this kind of question did not present
itself to freedom. For the very form of freedom being posited in becoming,
and afterwards its lived past have furnished it, first, with an intelligible content

via free access
in the triple sin, laden with concrete matter in the process of personal sins.
Here there is no longer anything similar. Rather, there remains the unity of this
content and of this matter, one becoming the form of the other. Therefore it
is insofar as Non-being is constituted by such a unity, that freedom can repre-
sent its absolute Non-being to itself. Now, this unity is achieved for the self in
“remorse.” It is an absolute eternal, remorse, invading the whole field of being,
penetrating the “consciousness” by all the “doors” and “windows” that allow it
to communicate with the object, and that, by identifying with consciousness
by means of its senses, is the way the self can end the growth of sin and take
its freedom’s Non-being to the absolute. Let us call this last positing absolute
Non-being, or with Ignatius, application of the senses to Hell.
Let us observe that sin’s “growth” determined in this way does not just fol-
low the temporal outline as an external framework. It also corresponds to a
progressive interiorization. The triple sin is sin in the past, as my memory is
enough to represent it. Finally, the processus of personal sins is the sin present
in my soul, such as my intelligence must acknowledge it. The application of the
senses to Hell is sin that begins to make me feel its future and absolute reality,
and thereby enters into contact with my affection.
Sin outside me or in itself—sin for me—sin in itself and for me.
There we have come to the whole matter of week one, discovered by pure
reflection. It remains to deduce its end.
We have just “touched upon” an end, the final end of sin, by seeing our
freedom posit itself in an absolute Non-being. How do we go further? How
do we make the negation, first of this positing of Non-being and then of all
Non-being, arise out of absolute Non-being? The task is impossible for those
who let themselves be beguiled by words and mistake reflexive deduction for
a creative production, confusing image with reality … In every deduction pass-
ing to the limit is the sign for a reflection to be carried out. For if what is beyond
the limit where deduction collides and seems to dissolve, were not posited or
at least positable, the deduction would deny itself. For, not only would reflec-
tion, which tends to produce the creative movement itself, be detained at
this moment, failing in its infinite task to the point of being not the image of
a creator but the reality of a sorcerer’s apprentice, but the very thing it had
posited previously would also disappear … What creature would subsist after
having annihilated that from which it has being? Each finite degree, therefore,
only persists on the condition of leading reflection on to what follows, and the
deduction that gets lost in the sands of the infinite serves notice to reflection
that it has exhausted its line and must return to its source, toward itself.

via free access
50 Chapter 2
The goal of the First Week is to make sin’s Non-being appear. For
that, it suffices to let sin develop. In setting itself up as Non-Being, free-
dom thinks it sets itself up in its fullness. In reality, if it follows its own
movement, in inevitably ends up in Hell. It then becomes aware that
this positing of oneself by oneself in Non-being destroys freedom itself.
Consequently, it passes from the experience of Hell to contrition, from its
absolute sufficiency to absolute dependence, from the absolutely autono-
mous positing of itself, which is its destruction, to the recognition of the
Being that is the source of its positing of self—the Being that has given
it being by which it has been able to posit itself as sin, the Being that its
sin presupposes. In the face of sin that expected nothing but from itself,
grace appears from which everything is expected.
What line have we exhausted then? That of Non-being in the objective repre-
sentation of freedom. It is time to recall it: however far our division brings us,
there is a reciprocal interiority of all the “moments,” because freedom is also
the perfect immanence of the positing of self by the self. For from the start,
have we not seen that the opposition of evil and good had the function of plac-
ing the self before the ambiguity of its being in order that it might freely posit
itself and be what it must be. Being and Non-being, evil and good, are correla-
tives, but there is an intrinsic sense in their relation. Evil and Non-being are
possible only in relation to a good and to a Being prior by nature. A priority of
nature that reverses itself in the representation. Good and being acquire exis-
tence only in relation to an evil and a Non-being prior to it, tempori prius. This
complex pair of complex oppositions has no other end than to permit the self
to posit itself, to permit freedom to be what it ought to be.
The unfolding of Non-being along its line should, therefore, not delude us.
If it finds its efficient cause, its factual explanation, in the self’s free positing at
the beginning, it only finds its full reason for being, de jure, in the apparition of
Being in the existence where Non-being itself has realized itself.
Therefore, Non-being can only be posited at the beginning of freedom in
order to be denied, and it is in fact taken by it to the absolute only to make
known the very nature of this freedom. Non-being thus takes its existence to
the Absolute, of itself so to speak, it crosses itself out of existence to make way
for the existence of this freedom. But in doing this, it acquires its truth, which
is to be the necessary condition of the manifestation of freedom in Itself, which
is to say of love.
When consciousness of sin has grown in the self to the point of realizing
in it the sense of Hell, sin is denied in a contrition that evaporates the false

via free access
existence and, correlatively, faith appears in an Incarnation of Being in the

“body of sin” appears [Romans 6:6 and 8:3].2
Nothing corresponds more exactly to Ignatius’s annotation 4. The week is

measured not in the conventional time of seven days, but in the spiritual prog-
ress. When the goal of week one, contritionem … de peccatis suis is achieved,
the retreatant automatically passes on to the matter of week two: Vita Domini
Jesu Christi.
2 This does not prevent that Christ himself should be without sin, absque peccato.

via free access
Chapter 3
Negation of the Positing of Non-being: Week Two
In order for choice to take place, it is necessary that in the before of the
free act, the branches of the alternative should appear. One of them is
given with the First Week; the other will be given by the Second Week.
Thus, the two possibles, grace and sin, will be present. But for a genu-
ine choice to take place, in order for there not to be determinism, it is
necessary for the two possibles to impose themselves upon free choice
with equal strength. Consequently, it is necessary that grace, the image
of grace, should increase in time like sin. More precisely, it is necessary
that in the face of sin’s autonomy, which was servitude, the Being should
appear, which posits itself freely.
Accordingly, in taking itself to the absolute, Non-being has as a result making

Being appear in the existence in which it has realized itself. But at the same
time as this Being tears Non-being’s false existence away from it, it assures
its truth.1
Therefore, what is this Being? Just as the self’s Non-being that posits itself
in the representation cannot be the only nothing belonging to the creature,
the self’s Being that posits itself now, cannot be the only being belonging to
the creature. This being no doubt suffices to deny pure nothing, but it remains
without strength to negate the Non-being that has redoubled itself: sin.
Accordingly, this Being of the self must be not that of the self that says: “I am
myself,” but that of the self that also intensifies itself: I am the one that I am
(Exodus 3:14). Except that, although this Being has the power in itself to negate
all positing of Non-being, it can only do so effectively—for my representation
where Non-being has posited itself—by entering into contact with the exis-
tence that I have given myself and by opposing itself to me directly and totally,
head to head and body to body.
1 In this way, we express in our own perspective what Pascal says: “Original sin is madness for
men, but it is given as such. Therefore, you must not reproach the lack of this reason in the
doctrine, since I give it without reason. But this madness is wiser than all the wisdom of men,
sapientius est hominibus. For without it, what will man be said to be? His whole state depends
on this imperceptible point. And how was it perceived by his reason, since it is something
against his reason, and how was it that his reason, far from inventing it by its ways, departs
from it, when it is presented to it?” (Pensées, fragment 445, Brunschvicg edition).

via free access
Negation of the Positing of Non-being: Week Two 53
To oppose a Non-being that is represented, there has to be a Being to make

itself present.
Now, if it is impossible to represent the pure Being of Freedom, the absolute
self in itself (because to represent is to determine), it pertains to the essence of
this Being, on the contrary to determine itself (since freedom is the positing of
the self by the self), and therefore to make itself present.
Just as at the point of departure of our dialectic, it was necessary to suppose
positing of a properly inexplicable freedom, because one without Before, but
absolutely necessary, because principle of the present representation, likewise,
here we must suppose that the positing of freedom is even more inexplica-
ble, but still more necessary, because it is a principle of possibility of the first
positing of freedom. Indeed, being is always natura prius, prior in nature, to
non-being.
Now, in the face of sin, grace posits itself; in relation to Adam, Jesus, Imago
Dei invisibilis (Colossians 1:15), posits himself, the man personally united to the
“Word of God,”2 and by that very fact grace “in person.”
Visible image of the invisible freedom, nothing less than this incarnate
grace is necessary to allow for choice. For, let us not forget, we are in the before
of an option, and at the end of this second moment, the opposition of evil
and of good must represent itself to consciousness. These are two possibles
between which it is has to decide itself. But two “possibles” that are very differ-
ent, since one (we just saw) has taken hold of reality in advance. Even before
arriving at the crossroad of vice and virtue, man is already vitiated. To balance
this self anew, and to compensate for the weight of the chains he bears, a pos-
sible freedom does not suffice, nor an abstract goodness; a real good is neces-
sary, a concrete freedom. But on the other hand, to enter into contact with
this self already embedded in its representation and to allow it a true initia-
tive, it is also necessary that being, the good, and freedom appear only under
a negative form. All these conditions are exactly satisfied by this “image” of
freedom, which cum in forma Dei esset … semetipsum exaninavit, formam servi
accipiens, in similtudinem hominum factus, [who, being in the form of God …
emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of
men] (Philippians 2:6–7).
The life of our Lord Jesus Christ is therefore going to constitute the antith-
esis of the history of our sins. In this way, grace is manifested in opposition to
sin, enough to counterbalance its weight, but insufficient to force freedom, so
that joy remains real and necessary for freedom.
2 Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, chapter 10, lectio 6.

via free access
54 Chapter 3
With the apparition of freedom-grace, in opposition to sin-servitude, we are

accordingly introduced into the second moment of the before. Just as sin has
known growth in time, grace must now also develop itself: this positing’s nega-
tion must equal itself to the positing of Non-Being.
Consequently, this growth in real duration makes this moment identical to
that which preceded it; but another element appears here that absolutely dis-
tinguishes this moment from the previous one.
If the growth of sin in time sufficed to fill up the first moment, it is because
freedom then did not have to appear properly. Its being, everywhere supposed,
was nowhere posited, since what was posited was only its non-being. Although
completely impregnated with dialectic, its growth was therefore only the
development of an material, objective element—freedom’s negative face. This
kind of extension no longer suffices to reveal freedom that must, here, appear
as such. Indeed, if grace is not only negation of sin, but also positing of free-
dom, even more, if it is only the first because it is the second, it is necessary
that it should represent itself formally as representing this freedom. In the face
of the temporal growth of grace, necessary to equal its objective being to that
of sin, which it must negate, it is therefore necessary to distinguish a formal,
subjective element, where a positive representation of freedom must appear.
In other words, since the second moment of the before must manifest to
freedom what it is—this is, what freedom can be, although it is not yet that in
fact (first moment: Non-being)—and what it ought to be—in such a way that
at the end a genuine act of freedom can and must take place (or exist there,
Dassein); a true positing of the self by the self, it is necessary that this moment
should contain freedom not only as objective existence—but also the repre-
sentation of what it is in its intimate being, for itself: Being that freely posits
itself as self.
In the moral act, it is also before its image, born of the body that the self is
aware of itself as an ought-to-be, and far from this opposition with an already
unreal image making the it a still more unreal representation, it permits it to
grasp itself as absolute reality.
Likewise, in this second moment, the apparition of Being contains not only
the objective Image of freedom, negation of the Non-being and possible lib-
erty, but also a real and absolute presentation of Freedom, the first traits of
an emancipated and free self. At the same time that the Image of Freedom
appears, a nova creatio is carried out—creation of grace—and far from it being
less real than the first—creation of nature—on the contrary, in it, freedom
makes itself strictly present, since the creation of nature, although tempore
prius, had as its end only to permit the glorious manifestation of this freedom.

via free access
Sin and grace, possibles among which I must choose, are not only
external to me, they are in me. In the course of the Second Week, they
no longer appear more opposed among themselves as vice and virtue,
good and evil, but as sufficiency and dependence, like the autonomy that
posits itself in function of what it already possesses and of freedom that
hopes to be, by receiving what it does not have; they are opposed, in a
word, lie the past, which is the less good of which I am master, and the
future, the better that will be given to me.
As subtle as this analysis may seem, going deeper into the reflection upon
our free act will demonstrate its correctness. Accordingly, let us return for an
instant to our initial example. By digging into it, we will make our future prog-
ress proportionally easier.
The opposition of vice and virtue, of good and evil, which we encounter at
every crossroad, reflects, as we have said, the ambiguity of our nature, both
body and soul, sense and reason. The analysis is certainly exact, but abstract.
It also has a double flaw: from the objective viewpoint, it represents the choice
between good and evil in an alternative form, whereas our concrete option
never takes place except between less good and better, since our will neces-
sarily wants the good; from the subjective viewpoint, it does not express the
reduplication, the total positing of self by self, which is the essence of freedom.
To tell the truth, the preceding analysis still rests upon a blueprint of free-
dom. It would be sufficient if man were only a limit between angel and beast.
But as he is rather the ground of their encounter and struggle, this analysis
must be completed. All the more, since my concrete option points at an indefi-
nite point on a tending toward the better, the perfection of a total choice.
Incapable of choosing pure evil, it is, however, myself and myself alone in my
sufficiency that is at stake in each one of my free acts.
Let us see, then, how, under the good and the evil that appeared at the cross-
roads, I come to re-encounter the characteristics of my concrete option: never
to want anything but the good and, yet, always to be able to choose total evil.
Evil is not only the seductive object; it is my sensuous tending that uproots
me from myself, and draws me in spite of myself and tends to monopolize all
being. I am not this evil without mixture, since I still stop myself, but I am it
already, since I am swept along and since my reflection is only an interruption,
a negation. Therefore, what is the Good? Undoubtedly, reason that opposes
this tendency. But if my reason only presents me with a pure idea, it would
lack the strength to stop the tendency. How might a possible deny the existent?

via free access
56 Chapter 3
No, my reason represents myself to me. The Good is consequently a Self. Not
the past Self, existing in fact. But a future Self, ideal and absolute. It is a Self
that I am—since, in contact with my present it balances my past—which,
however, I am not—since being opposed to my past, I have to become this Self;
but that I must be—since it represents the synthesis of my future essence and
my past existence.
However brief my reflection—and how would it not last … a little, since it is
strictly creative of time?—the debate engaged in the crossroads, at the surface
of myself, is internalized … By degrees, the crude external opposition is going
to be erased under a refined continuity and at the same time, under this light
disguise, an infinitely deeper contradiction is going to emerge.
In a deeper way, these are the two Adams that oppose each other within
me; the first is the man of the past, who, listens to Satan and wants to
make himself God; the second is the man of the future, who listens to
God and takes the form of a slave.
Let us work to grasp this change and discover its sense. The sensible object, ini-
tially in the foreground, disappears. Only the rising tendencies that arise take
part in the deliberation at the summit where they touch the soul. I am torn, no
longer between two objects or even between two laws, that of the members and
that of the spirit, but between two selves: “I feel two men in me …” The first is
precisely the self that, contracting all its past—the whole past of humanity—
to the extreme point of its tendencies, concentrates all its power in the present
where it becomes conscious of its sufficiency to be present in itself. By this
movement of reabsorbing of the sensible, this self tends to abstract itself in
order to posit itself at the limit of itself, purely present for itself.
Inversely, the Absolute Self, initially situated as if at the infinite of myself,
tends to draw near to it. Each of the sensible tendencies has in fact its intel-
ligible response. Riches are never coveted except for the mastery of the world
that they assure, and at the root of the most corrupt desires, there is always a
thirst for immortality. To the extent that the sensible turns back upon itself,
inwardly, intelligence unfolds itself outwardly, outside itself. The more the
first self tends to abstract itself to assume the figure of an angel, the more the
second tends to become concrete, to become incarnate spirit, spiritual body
that is present to me … Before me, in me, by the very effect of my delibera-
tion, these two men touch each other, their “members”—the members of the
earthly man, fornication, uncleanliness, passion, evildoing, and covetousness
(Colossians 3:5) as well as those of the heavenly (I Corinthians 15:48) man,
with mercy, compassion, goodness, humility, meekness, long suffering, charity

via free access
[Colossians 3:12–14]—their “members,” like the words of those who converse,

rediscover themselves, encounter one another, support one another, so as to
form but one body (Ephesians 4:4), a line ascending from Good toward the
better from a present, concentrate of the past, toward the future. For, on the
one hand, if the man of the past in me is Adam, the old man, the forma futuri
always remains however; and on the other hand, if the New Man is Jesus, the
man who is to come, who appears in the fulness of time. He is also the image
of the invisible God, the first born of all creation in him dwells all the fullness of
the Godhead bodily (Colossians 1:15 and 2:9). So, whatever my definitive choice
may be, whatever the sense that I give to the degree at which I situate myself
on the line of the better, it will always be a step forward, toward the realization
of the Good.
But perhaps this may only be an appearance … For although humanity is
only a body, from Adam to the Christ of the Parousia, the opposition of the
origins remains in this continuum, as in the geometrical line that the opposi-
tion of inverse relations stabilizes. Since in the “intercourse” of these two men,
it is I that express myself in them,3 therefore in Adam, always seduced by the
pure spirit, I live the dream of becoming like God, to posit myself at my limit
of myself, always present for myself; and also in Jesus I always hear the Father’s
commandment, the call not to cling avidly to my equality with God—my pres-
ence to myself—but to annihilate myself—in order to await my being of the
future where it will be given to me. To hold oneself back, to fix one’s abode
at a particular degree of goodness, or to give oneself unreservedly to the bet-
ter as such, the opposition is as categorical as between evil and good, because
the motive of my determination is either consciousness of my present suffi-
ciency or the desire of a future increase. Under the species of the less good
or of the better, there is the absolute antinomy of pride in the present—in
reality a phantom of the past that no longer is—and of faith in the future, gar-
ment of the Absolute. The choice always bears on being, but it assigns being
a minus sign or a plus sign. The minus penetrates this determined good and
doubles its determination in such a way that it in effect tends to pure evil; the
plus sign adds the infinite to this determined good. Or else taking up Adam’s
attitude sufficiency again, I give life to sin and increase the kingdom of death,
or else I have put off the old man with his doings and have put on the new man,
3 Augustine, Confessions, book 8, chapter 11, end: “Ista controversia in corde meo nonnisi de
me ipso adversus me ipsum” (This was the controversy I felt in my heart, about nothing
but myself, against myself; Loeb Classical Library edition, William Watt translation, vol. 1
[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960]).

via free access
58 Chapter 3
who is being renewed into knowledge after the image of him that created him
(Colossians 3:9–10).4
The special meditations on the kingdom, the two standards, and the three
classes form a design that is added to the mysteries of the life of Christ
and whose function is to symbolize the growth of freedom: first, appari-
tion of perfect freedom; second, which brings out the radical opposition
that my freedom must overcome; third, through total receptivity.
Panorama of Week Two
The Kingdom The Kingdom

Point 1: Once Being appears, it proclaims that
by right it is all in all (number 95).
Point 2: To pass from what is right to the Appeal to freedom.
fact, it will be necessary to pass from the Memory = past.
less to the more, from the good to the better
(number 96).
Point 3: The passage to fact already Positivity.
takes place through intimacy with Being
(number 97).
The Two Standards The Two Standards

1. To possess the world or to make use of it. Consciousness of
absolute opposition
proper to freedom.
2. To submit others to oneself or to submit
oneself to them.
4 This analysis allows us to account for some data of spiritual psychology: Corruptio optimi
pessima says scripture. Indeed, the more elevated is the degree of objective good, the more
violent is the opposite between the two “Men,” the deeper is the corrupting act of pride.
Whereas the saints are those who have only imperfections for which to reproach in
themselves, “as for example, if, having several supernatural lights about the same thing, they
follow the lowest by spiritual weariness or through lack of consideration” (P. Lallemant,
Doctrine spirituelle, 242), they are the ones who best realize the opposition of grace and sin.
Also they experience the greatest terror of God’s judgements, while their salvation is “mor-
ally infallible” (Lallemant, Doctrine spirituelle, 452). For common abstract, objective morality,
not choosing the better is to be content with the less good. On the contrary, for the saints’
concrete, intimate, and subjective judgement, such an option becomes more and more the
choice of the worse.

via free access
3. Positing of self for self or positing of self Intelligence = present.

outside of self Duality.
(number 46).
The Three Classes The Three Classes

1. Detachment from the Non-being To make this freedom
represented not affirmed pass to the limit of
(number 153). receptivity.
2. Detachment from the Non-being Will = future (affection).
affirmed as tendency
(number 154).
3. Detachment from the Non-being Negativity.
affirmed as actual
(number 155).
The First Week led, with the meditation on Hell, to the absolute suffi-
ciency of the self; the Second Week gets to the receptivity of the self.
In the light of this analysis, we now attempt to deduce the positive character-
istics of this subjective freedom that with its apparition reveals the image of
freedom.
We have defined freedom from two opposite points of view, the positing of
self by self—passage from non-being to being. Now, here the issue is precisely
to unite these two definitions, since at the very heart of the representation,
objective being must appear as definitively identical to the self of the subject.
Therefore, the exact union of our two formulas is going to express this split-
ting of freedom into two elements and is going to constitute the content of the
formal element of the second moment: Being that freely posits itself as Self.
I—Being or Totality: At the limit where Non-being has given way to the mani-
festation of Being, the latter is still only an imperceptible point, an infinitesi-
mal germ. Still, however little it may be, it is Being. And as it appears in their
Non-being, it owes itself the affirmation of its right to the whole extension of
being. For Being is neither this nor that, but the whole of all things. Precisely
because in fact it is not yet anything, it has to proclaim that it is the authentic
possessor and king and that its intention is, in fact, to institute its kingdom
(number 95).
II—Free Positing: In order to accomplish this equation of the fact to the right, it
is, therefore, necessary for it to grow and launch into the conquest of the being

via free access
60 Chapter 3
it is not; of the World. But since this conquest is that of freedom, it can also only
be a conquest by freedom. In this transit from fact to right—a necessary transit
since freedom is Being and all being—or can a freedom still be lodged?—At
the beginning of the dialectic, the choice consisted in being able to affirm one-
self: non-being; but here in this second moment, with sin having denied itself
and the image of freedom having appeared, the issue can no longer be one of a
choosing between evil and good; therefore it is within its very own being that it
must find matter for option. Since freedom represents itself objectively as pas-
sage from infinitesimal being to the totality of its domain; it is between the less
and the more than an alternative can still take place between the less and the
more. Two extreme limits enclose this passage: the lower limit—that very one
where we are—is immediately next to sin; the other, on the contrary, is at the
term where, having conquered its whole kingdom and excluded all non-being,
freedom reaches the perfect. Before subjective freedom, the line that goes from
the good to the better is split into two parts, the upper half being that where
the tendency to the Better dominates, the lower, on the contrary, where tend-
ing to the less good dominates. The way of perfection or of non-perfection; or,
following the social representation that achieves the lower limit rightly: the
way of precepts (non-Sin)—the way of councils (number 96).
III—With Oneself: Although this conquest of freedom by subjective freedom

always keeps the appearance of choice, it cannot fail to be accomplished, since
this freedom is already the actuality of what ought to be. In this actuality,
therefore, subjective freedom already possesses the perfection of its being …
Now, the being of freedom is to be a self; its perfection is to be a self that posits
itself as self, the absolute self. In the very measure in which this subjective
freedom represents its goal to itself, its ought-to-be, it effectuates this passage
to the limit of itself and is this very positing: for it, the absolute self becomes a
with-myself—mecum (number 93).
From its birth, faith contains a promise of divine familiarity that hope
immediately realizes in an initial charity.
Being that freely posits Itself, such then is this subjective freedom that the
image of freedom reveals before itself. Revelation that is identically the nova
creatio of grace. Just as the first creation is a call to being, this new creation is a
call to be being of freedom: the king’s call, to royal liberty.
Before the king’s appeal, subjective freedom, the self, barely having emerged
from the “body of sin” asks in its turn “that I may not be deaf,” ne sim surdus
(number 91), and, perceiving its ideal, turns itself towards it: Facio meam obla-
tionem … (number 98).

via free access
St. Ignatius has very precisely placed his contemplation De Regno Christi on
the cusp between the first two weeks: necessary conclusion of one and intro-
duction to the other.
The second moment, strictly speaking, begins with the start of the objective
growth of the image of freedom.
Like the that of sin, this growth borrows the temporal pattern and its intro-
duction in time is the first object of contemplation. Outside time at first, the
image descends here again by the intermediary of the angel (who is at the limit
of our time) into the time of humanity and it reaches it at its peak in the Virgin
Mary: Contemplatio de Incarnatione (number 101).
Next, since here the issue is no longer, as in the first moment, a positing of
Non-being but a positing of Being, the temporal scheme becomes a scheme
of real history in the common meaning of the word. Whereas the positing of
Non-being only offers semi-facts—destined to be denied as “facts” by the self
in the measure that their truth is established for it—the history of Being con-
tains concrete facts, belonging to the universal becoming of humanity and
revealing its truth.
And it is the history of the birth—Contemplatio de Nativitate (number 110)
and of the growth of a being, of a freedom that, although Being and freedom,
comes under the law of all beings in becoming and therefore must be little
first and only grow slowly in wisdom and in grace before God and before men
[Luke 2:52].
But, as this history’s only goal is to develop little by little the subjective free-
dom in order to permit it to posit itself in complete knowledge of what is going
on, the infinity of concrete details must progressively be subsumed under the
essential traits of this freedom and at the same time offer it a material.
What must be specified first of all for this subjective freedom is precisely its
relation to the matter itself of its representation, this relation becoming the
proper mean of its option.
Since the Being of grace really contains the negation of the Non-being,
this opposition must appear at the root of the choice always still to be made;
and on the other hand, if Non-being can no longer appear as such, since it is
denied, it is at least necessary that the body, the existence that it has attributed
to itself and that is not yet crucified, should manifest itself as the opposite, the
counterweight to the thrust of freedom toward its perfect existence.
As the image of freedom grows in its kingdom and lifts its standard higher,
the image of an enemy kingdom develops by opposition5 within subjective
5 Matthew 10:34, “I have come to bring a sword, not peace.”

via free access
62 Chapter 3
freedom itself, which also raises its standard … Overcome by right, since Being
is posited, but not yet vanquished in fact, since the negation that Being brings
has not yet deployed its strength. If the Being of grace is Jesus, the God-man,
its absolute antithesis in the representation must be, not Adam—the temporal
antitype—but the one who is sinner since the beginning and thanks to whom
my freedom in Adam has posited its Non-being at the beginning of time: the
adversary as such of the self is Satan, the enemy of humankind (number 136).
These two extreme poles have the effect of making the opposition burst
forth that subjective freedom must encounter to posit itself. Indeed, each of
them orients reality in its way, the matter of the representation. Consequently,
the self perceives under the form of opposite paths, the intention that will
allow it to achieve or not a union with its objective being.
Freedom, indeed, can bring back to itself its matter, the world, even to see
its own thing in it. In this case, freedom takes possession of a world that no
doubt is magnificent but limited. Or else, on the contrary, freedom can simply
consider the universe and all its riches as a means. In that case, freedom passes
through it and saves its impetus to tend beyond … Paupertas contra divitias,
poverty versus wealth (number 146).
But this relation of possession or of detachment makes sense only because
it is the symbol and the means of inner belonging or detachment by which the
self makes itself or not the center of the world, and the end of the revealed
world in its intimate and essential being, through other “selves.” To want wealth
or poverty, therefore, equals for subjective freedom to ask them for a cult or, on
the contrary, to accept not to receive one at all … Opprobrium vel contemptus
contra honorem mundanum (number 146).
At this point, it remains only to become conscious of the identity of the
attitude taken by subjective freedom with the principle, either of Being or
of Non-being, with the image of freedom, or with its adversary: positing of
self outside of self—positing of self for self … Humilitas contra superbiam
(number 146).
Everything that the idea of a rule of freedom retained from the flexibility at
the beginning of the second moment is made precise here through the appari-
tion of the opposite Kingdom. Two camps, two programs: two standards. To
the idea of simple extension to the whole is added the idea of definite organi-
zation, that of life.
Thanks to this opposition, subjective freedom obtains its cognitionem vitae
verae, knowledge of the true life (number 139) and no longer only makes its
oblation but asks ut ego recipiar sub vexillo Christi, that I be received under the
standard of Christ (number 147).

via free access
From its beginning, the image of freedom developed though its opposition
to the existence in which it incarnated in itself a subjective element, call to
freedom. At the center of its growth, the absolute dichotomous opposition,
proper to freedom, has just appeared under the species of the less good or the
better, so that the self now knows how to choose itself … Starting from noth-
ing, call to being, then growth up to full consciousness, such are the first two
moments of the creation of a freedom by grace. There remains a last stage: to
make this subjective freedom go to the limit in order to make it totally recep-
tive, open solely to grace and thereby identical to the positing of the absolute
self, to Being.
Now, what can hinder this passage to the limit is solely Non-being posited
right at the beginning of the dialectic—no longer as principle of Non-being,
since it has denied itself—nor even as objective existence—since the latter is
now denounced as the adversary’s ruse—but as still subjectively affecting this
subjective freedom that grace tends to create, which is to say, to posit: positing
itself.
In other words, it is only by denying all relation with the existence of the
Non-being through which it has had to pass and which it must use (if only to
know the image of freedom) that this subjective freedom will truly be able to
find itself in a state of equilibrium, ad instar bilancis (number 179) and to reach
the end of the second moment where it will have to determine itself.
Accordingly, after having represented the appeal of freedom to Being posi-
tively, then having unveiled the radical duality that characterizes the existence
of the self, the dialectic negatively represents the arrival of freedom to Being,
by a detachment, therefore affective, from Non-being that existence implies.6
Now, this detachment involves three degrees, three classes (number 149)—
according to the consciousness that subjective freedom achieves about its
relation to the representative dialectic through which it constitutes itself,
and according to the value that it ultimately attributes to the relationship. In
fact, now that subjective freedom has perceived itself as “called” and now that
it achieves clear awareness of the end to which it tends, it remains for it to
declare itself about the truth, about the value of this representation for it.
6 Let it be noted: here again we follow the same rhythm of “three powers” as in the First
Moment. It is only after the memory (Kingdom) and intelligence (Two Standards) have been
applied to deny the prior positing of Non-being that the affective intervenes to perfect this
negation.

via free access
64 Chapter 3
First, the whole process through which subjective freedom has developed
is representation in its eyes. Consequently, it will keep itself from denying its
truth as representation, but it will not wish to cross over the distance that sepa-
rates it from its ideal. Therefore, it will be content to maintain before itself
the image of its ought-to-be without taking a step to achieve the equation of
subject to object … In this case—in this first class (number 153)—the detach-
ment from Non-being also remains purely apparent. Not denied, but simply
represented, not affirmed. Subjective freedom remains subjective, not at all
objectified. The distance that remains to cross in order to reach equilibrium,
condition of the determination of the self by the self, will not be crossed.
Or else, this representation is for it true reality, and subjective freedom is
going to tend efficaciously to equal itself to its ideal … Then the detachment
will also be real; no longer only represented, but affirmed more and more,
affirmed as tendency … It is the second class (number 154).
This is not enough. It is necessary that subjective freedom not make the
least reservation in affirming the image of freedom as its image, its ideal …
third class (number 155).
But, however great, however sincere, its desire may be to equal itself to the
ideal of freedom, the Self cannot fail to feel at the same moment, the weight
of Non-being that continues to hold it back and even to pull it in a reverse
direction, preventing the choice of the better. Fruit of sin, the attachment
to the world, to its riches as to its power, may be overcome in principle, but
detachment is not yet effectively realized. Before the possible actuality of this
despoilment, freedom continues to experience a felt repugnance, sentimus
repugnantiam contra paupertatem actualem. Also, at this extreme point of the
before, where the self must determine itself with all possible purity, only one
means remains for it to extinguish such a disordered affect, ad extinguendum
talem affectum inordinatum (number 157) and to realize in itself this “indif-
ference” that will make it sensitive ad instar bilancis (number 179) to the least
movement of freedom: to pre-judge in some way the choice of this freedom, as
if it had to be against this felt repugnance, as if this choice had already trans-
formed a simply possible actuality into real actuality: to request in talks that
the Lord should choose him for actual poverty, petere in colloquiis ut Dominus
ipsum eligat ad paupertatem actualem … (number 157).
Thus, the affective detachment that the Meditatio de tribus classibus has
already brought to the perfect, is found in this the Notandum, posited toward a
plus-perfect. Not content with tending toward the limit of the before in order
to balance the whole weight of the Non-being, the self bears itself beyond
itself, past this limit in the direction of the after, anticipating the exclusion of
this Non-being and its riddance in a definitively dead past. Just one thing keeps

via free access
it from passing effectively from the before to the after: the ignorance in which
it still is about the ultimate determination if freedom, which alone can actual-
ize the election of the better. Whence its reserve in the face of the end whose
present it awaits: … as long as there is service and praise of his divine goodness,
dummodo sit servitium et laus divinae ejus Bonitatis (number 157).
Prior to examining more closely this passage that the Election must effec-
tuate from the before to the after, it is important to underline the correspon-
dence realized in the course of this second moment between the matter and
the form of the representations of freedom. Contemplation of the Kingdom of
Christ, Meditation on the Two Standards, and Meditation on the Three Classes,
constitute the structure of this moment where the self learns to recognize its
freedom as call to the totality of Being, then as combat against Non-being and
exigency of detachment from self. But the Mysteries of the Life of Christ have
come at the same time to fill out this scheme with appropriate content.
At the very beginning, while the call to the conquest of the Being that is
self and freedom could lend itself to illusion, it is the Mysteries of the Hidden
Life (numbers 132–134) of a Child, which have been projected before the
self, offering their humble appearance as a counterweight to the grandi-
ose dreams suggested in the Contemplation of the Kingdom: Annunciation,
Visitation, Nativity, Announcement to the Shepherds, Circumcision, Magi,
Purification and Presentation, Flight and Return from Egypt, Life at Nazareth
(numbers 262–271). This set of contemplations ends with Christ’s Visit to the
Temple at the Age of Twelve (number 272), where it already appears that this
adolescent, the image of Freedom, is capable, in the service of his Father, of
crushing underfoot the holiest affections and of making those he loves more
suffer: prelude that announces the affective detachment in which this second
moment is supposed to culminate.
After the Two Standards and the Three Classes have determined this limit
in precise fashion, the self encounters, by contrast, the Mysteries of Christ’s
Public Life (numbers 158–162): the Baptism in the Jordan (number 273) shows
the road open before him; then the Temptation in the Desert (number 274)
with its triple appeal of the Non-being to the senses, to the will to power, and to
pride, illustrates the problem posed to freedom; finally, the Call of the Apostles
(number 275) which renews and concretizes the king’s initial appeal. And as
henceforth, the self is not unaware to what degree it is necessary for him to
deny himself in affectu, in affection; it finds in the contemplation of the many
aspects of Christ’s historical action the lighting and comfort necessary for its
own concrete determination: teachings specifying the conditions of perfect

via free access
66 Chapter 3
freedom (Sermon on the Mount, number 278)—miracles on behalf of bodies

and souls representing the kingdom that the it must inaugurate (Wedding at
Cana, number 276; Conversion of Magdalen, number 282; Calming the Tempest,
number 279; Multiplication of the Loaves, number 283, Resurrection of Lazarus,
number 285, Transfiguration, number 284, decisions finally manifesting, along
with the obstacles inherent in any determined historical world, the responsi-
bility that freedom must assume in order to overcome them (Sellers Expelled
from the Temple, number 277; Sending of the Disciples, number 281, Meal at
Bethany, number 286; Palm Sunday, number 287).
Interpreting the content of these different scenes in the light of the three
exercises—Kingdom, Two Standards, and Three Classes—that form the frame-
work of this second moment, and appreciating according to the Rules of Dis-
cernment of Spirits the different movements that this spectacle makes arise
in it, the Self thus attains the proper end of this negation of the Non-being: to
prepare itself for the Election that will make it pass from the before to the after.
To perfect this preparation and serve at the same time as backdrop to all the
maneuvers of the Election, Ignatius proposes a fourth exercise to his retreatant
very useful to attach him effectively “to the true doctrine of Christ Our Lord”
(number 164): the consideration of the three modes or degrees of humility.
1 The Three Degrees of Humility
Neither contemplation, nor meditation, but consideration that must be con-

tinuous during the whole day in which the Election is made, and even lon-
ger if necessary, these Three Degrees sum up the whole process pursued from
the Foundation up to the Three Classes. In fact, the doctrine that they propose
has the generality of the principle that Ignatius has placed at the base of his
Exercises, including besides the precisions that the two moments of the before
have provided to this Foundation; it reaches and makes explicit the summit
reached at the end of the Three Classes.
Necessary for eternal salvation, the first day of humility supposes an obedi-
ence to the law of God such that, even if I were to become master of the cre-
ated world or save my own temporal life, I would not take into deliberation
the transgression of a commandment, either divine or human, that obliges me
under pain of mortal sin. This excluding of deliberation at the moment one
is preparing for the deliberation par excellence, the Election, thus recalls in a
negative way the point of departure for the Exercises, and the essential of puri-
fication from the sinful past, arrived at through the first moment.

via free access
The most perfect humility of the second degree consists in finding myself at
a point such that I no longer want or desire wealth more than poverty … and
that I do not raise the question of committing any venial fault (number 166).
The indifference described in the Foundation as the necessary project of
freedom reappears here as the stage that must be reached at the moment of
entering into deliberation for the Election, and the mention of venial sin to be
excluded alludes to the lights acquired about the roots of sin during the first
movement during the first moment both about the roots of sin and about the
demands of freedom during the second.
After having summed up in this way the path traversed through the positing
of Non-being, then to the edges of Being that negates this positing, the third
degree of humility, the most perfect, which includes the first two, implies the
wish of a total and irrational equation of the self to the Image of Freedom. The
exercise of the Three Classes ends in showing the necessity of such a disposi-
tion, and the Notandum that followed it already included that the self, in order
to overcome an affection or a repugnance that it felt, formulate such a wish …
What seemed then to be a simple optional counsel is transformed by the Third
Degree into a necessary condition of the deliberation.
We see here to what point everything in the Exercises is constructed accord-

ing to a system that, while not logical in the customary and abstract sense of
the word, is nonetheless extremely rigorous. For, the Third Degree is not only
contained in the Notandum of the Three Classes; it is already in germ in the
conclusion of the Foundation “desiderando et eligendo ea quae magis condu-
cunt ad finem” [by desiring and choosing those things that lead more to the
end]. On the other hand, its explanation at the end of an exercise that sums
up the whole trajectory achieved from the beginning of the process and in the
course of the whole before, is done in such a way that the after and the very
environment of the after is found there implicated in turn. Indeed, if to wish
and choose poverty with the poor Christ in preference to wealth refer to the mys-
teries of Christ’s childhood, by contrast, it is to the mysteries of the passion
that the desire for and choice of opprobrium with Christ replete with it rather
than honors, and to desire to be rated as worthless and a fool for Christ, who
first was held as such, rather than wise or prudent in this world (number 167).
Thus, the passage from the before to the after is prepared by a “consider-
ation” that, on the one hand, assembles everything that has gone before and,
on the other, anticipates what is going to follow. Indeed, the consideration
stretches subjective freedom to the limit of itself, in order to make it wish
and, literally, feel, the surpassing of its own condition in the before where its

via free access
68 Chapter 3
Non-being is still only denied by an indeterminate project of Being, without

however authorizing it to prejudge the concrete mode of this surpassing and
the real determinations of this project. Thus the consideration manages the
effective intervention of freedom that will render the self objectively free in
its decision; and at the same time, in a way that sharpens the senses and sum-
mons the intelligence to grasp what is going to take place, it disposes the self
in order for it to take advantage of it immediately in the After. There, finally, is
the end of the three degrees of humility. The end also, as we shall see, of all the
indications concerning Election.

via free access
Part 2
Passage from the Before to the After

via free access
Introduction to Part 2
At what moment does the growth of subjective freedom attain this culminat-
ing point? When will it have achieved the equilibrium ad instar bilancis, “as
in the middle of a balance scale” (number 179), between previously posited
Non-being and the negation of this positing, so that from subjective, as this
freedom was, it becomes true freedom, objective freedom, freedom determin-
ing itself at the same time that it is determined only by God?
—It is impossible to say. Like all intrusions of Freedom into the physical,
social, or religious world, this apparition in the Self is not directly graspable.
Nothing is more unlike than the Before and the After. But the point of passage
escapes all apprehension, precisely because we are not dealing with a thing,
but with an Act, not with a fact, but with a Fiat, not with a given but with a Giver.
However, reflection can distinguish diverse degrees of evidence in this
apparition, and to the extent that the evidence decreases, can hem in the “phe-
nomenon” with precautions, formalities, and rites, destined to provoke it, to
observe it, to record it with the least possible error.
From there, comes a group of paragraphs exclusively devoted to the Election.1
1 As the modern commentators on the Exercises have rightly pointed out, the group formed by
the paragraphs numbered 162 to 189, from the Three Remarks that precede the Three Modes
of Humility up to the Method of Reformation of One’s Own Life, contain many fragments
whose composition does not belong to the original Manresan nucleus of the Exercises, but to
the period in Paris when Ignatius perfects his work and notably gives the Foundation to it as
its introduction.
On this point, which does not directly pertain to our work but cannot be overlooked, let
us be satisfied with remitting to the little book, Les étapes de la rédaction des Exercises de
saint Ignace (Beauchesne, 1945), 26–32, where Fr. Pinard de la Boullaye provides an excellent
analysis of the reasons for this opinion.

via free access
Chapter 4
The Election
For Ignatius the study of this key moment consists first in reminding his
retreatant of the fundamental disposition in which he must be before making
his decision, then to advise him of the things capable or not capable of being
the object of an election, and then to distinguish the various “times” in which
the decision can be made, and finally to indicate a double “method” for coming
to a decision. A final paragraph shows how, outside the choice of a state of life,
the same principles can serve for “reform” and for progress in the state of life
already chosen.
1 Preamble to the Election
Ignatius’s first concern is to make the point, in a way that the self may have full
awareness both of the decisive moment at which he has arrived in the dialecti-
cal course of the Exercises and also of the importance of the choice that now
must assure the unity of the whole process of the further development. Also,
the Preamble to Making the Election is a return toward the principles set out in
the Foundation. This return only recalls what is essential in the initial exposi-
tion, but by looking more explicitly at the possibility of the wrong choice and
its deformity, so as to make the value of what is at stake stand out.
For freedom, the passage from the before to the after must be determined
in an absolute way by its very definition of middle between beginning and end.
The self’s whole effort at the moment of the choice that accomplishes this pas-
sage is therefore reduced to respecting the simplicity of this order, to observing
the quasi-geometrical rectitude of this alignment. Also, Ignatius says simply:
“In every good election, insofar as it is within us, the eye of our intention must
be simple, considering only the end for which I was created, namely the praise
of God and the salvation of my soul.” The choice of this or that means must,
therefore, be a pure function of its “mediating” character in relation to my end.
Also, “whatever I may choose, it must be such that it helps me attain the end
for which I am created.” [number 169] In the measure in which some other
motive would intervene to direct my choice, the fundamental order that must
preside over the genesis of freedom is diametrically inverted. For this disor-
dered motive makes the end out of the means and the means out of the end:
trahendo finem ad medium et medium ad finem.

via free access
72 Chapter 4
But the end envisaged by freedom is the infinite, the positing of self by
Self, which definitively overcomes the division of time. Whereas the means
is, as such, passage from nothing to Being through the before and the after.
To invert the fundamental relation of means and end is therefore to want
that the Infinite should be at the service of this passage and prolong this divi-
sion of the Before and the After instead of overcoming it. “Those who choose
first ecclesiastical benefices,” says Ignatius, “then propose to serve God in this
state, do not tend straight to God, but want that God should come straight to
their disordered affections” (number 169). The true Infinite escapes them, and
they can now attain only the “false infinite,” this endless progress about which
Hegel very well said that it was the “contradiction without remedy and simply
expressed as always present. Abstract and always incomplete passing beyond,
for lack of being itself passed beyond.”1 The circle in which freedom engages
itself through this inversion of end and means is no longer that which must
lead it, at the end of its becoming, to posit itself as self in the perfect unity of
its before and its after, but that which can only prolong eternally the conflict of
its divisions in its indefinite revolutions, Also, after having underlined already
twice the disorder of “those who want first to marry and in the second place
serve God in the married state, like the disorder of those who first want to
acquire benefices and then to serve God thanks to them,” Ignatius does not
fear to repeat a third time: “what they should have put in the first place, they
put in the second place,” before enunciating for the fourth time the principle
of order: “We must take as our objective in the first place to want to serve God,
which is the end, and in the second place to acquire a benefice or to take a wife,
if that suits me better, as the means leading to the end” (number 169).
Is it not significant in the highest degree that he insists so much on the pri-
ority of the end and the posteriority of the means at the moment when we
are dealing with freedom’s passing from the before to the after? Does it not
show that in the eyes of Ignatius there is, in principle, perfect correspondence
between rational priority and posteriority, on the one hand, and temporal pri-
ority and posteriority on the other, with the role of freedom in the here and now
of its choice being to actualize in fact this correspondence by right? Therefore,
we would not be mistaken to see in the Exercises an existential analysis likely
reconcile the historical and the logical. Perhaps even, since the rational order
principle-means end assures the connection of their four weeks and guides the
deployment of the free act through their succession, whereas their coherence
is fatally destroyed and servitude is engendered by the irrational succession
1 G.W.F. Hegel, Logik, 1:131, in Hegels sämtlicher Werke, ed. Georg Lasson (Leipzig: Meiner,
1905–44).

via free access
The Election 73
principle end-means, such an opposition could subsequently reveal itself as a

still better criterion than Hegel’s true and false infinite, to discern the true unity
of the logical and the historical from any counterfeit. In any case, for Ignatius,
it suffices to recall at the end of this Preamble the major principle already
enunciated in his Foundation: Nothing must move me to take such means or
deprive myself of them, if not the service and praise of God Our Lord and the
eternal salvation of my soul (number 169). “Eternal” is a relatively rare word in
the Exercises and it is not even found in the Foundation. If it is mentioned here
at the end of a development where the question is only about the relation of
means-end, is this not to indicate, along with the base upon which the whole
dialectic of historical existence rests, the essential role that the priority and
posteriority of such a relation plays in it to link historicity and eternity?
2 Introduction concerning the Things about Which Election Must

Be Made
About what things must election be made? This is what Ignatius examines
next in four points and a note. Let us be satisfied with emphasizing the logical
rigor of this examination.
“First point: It is necessary, (he says) that everything about which we have to
make an election should be indifferent or good in itself, and should be allowed
within our Holy Mother the hierarchical church and not in opposition to her”
(number 170). This is the immediate consequence of the role attributed to
Christ during the Second Week. Since Christ is the image of Freedom and the
hierarchical church (the presence of this Image in our actual existence), the
self cannot be engendered to freedom by opposing oneself to the directives
that are marked in this way.
In the second point, Ignatius distinguishes irrevocable elections, like the
commitment to the priesthood or marriage, and revocable elections, like the
acceptance or rejection of ecclesiastical benefices or of temporal goods.
After this distinction, the last two points envisage each of the two cases suc-
cessively. If we are dealing with an “irrevocable election” that is already made,
there is no longer, strictly speaking, matter for election. If the election was well
made, it remains to be perfected in one’s priestly or marital state. St. Ignatius,
who anticipates this case with a last paragraph Ad emendandam et reforman-
dam propriam vitam et statum, does not entertain it here. On the contrary, he
considers the opposite hypothesis, which is no doubt more frequent in his eye
of experienced director. With a touch of sadness, he then asks his directee to
“repent of the disordered affections” that have involved him casually without
due consideration in this “irrevocable election” and “to proceed in a way so as

via free access
74 Chapter 4
to lead a good life.” We feel it: it is not for such men that Ignatius composed
his Exercises. But he takes the occasion of their case to contrast to such a “bad
or oblique election,” that is to say, one made in function of bad or disordered
affections, with the divine vocation, “for every divine vocation,” he says, “which
is always pure and clear, without mixture of flesh, or of any other inordinate
tendency” (number 172). Accordingly, in the eyes of Ignatius, good election and
divine vocation are one and the same. And the whole effort of the self in its
choice simply consists in discerning the call that Divine Freedom addresses to
its own freedom.
Lastly, the fourth point considers the hypothesis of the election in a revo-
cable matter. If it was well done, there is no reason then to redo it; it is enough
to “let one perfect himself in it as much as possible” (number 173).
These last two points, therefore, tend to exclude from election two series of
contrary cases, regarding which Ignatius shows himself as optimistic for one
as he is pessimistic for the other. Those are indications for the benefit of those
who must use Ignatius’s method so as to avoid any waste of time. But his opti-
mism in regard to revocable elections remains rather theoretical. And a final
Note warns that in the case where such a decision would not have been “sin-
cere and well done,” it is important to begin it again as it should be, “if one has
a desire that excellent fruits notable and very pleasing to God Our Lord should
come from him” (number 174). A brief evocation of the kingdom, intended to
recall that the decision by which the self is going to pass from the before to the
after must be the concrete response to the undetermined call that has served
as the framework for the whole Second Week. Since this call is that of the para-
digmatic mediator, the self’s response will also have to be the choice of the
most suitable means to mediate the passage from the before to the after.
With the path thus cleared, Ignatius enters into the heart of the problem
by distinguishing Three Times, in each of which a good and healthy Election can
be made (number 177), and two ways of making it (number 178). In the form
of remarks or advice, extremely concise and precise as always, and that seem
to only envisage particular cases, there is there in reality a complete analy-
sis of the conditions of every free act, insofar as it intends to be essentially a
response to the call of Divine Freedom.
3 The Three Times of the Election
If we knew that Ignatius’s dominant concern is only to discover how freedom

can insert itself into historical existence, the choice of the word “time” might

via free access
The Election 75
seem peculiar. For here, what it designates in reality are the three states of the
soul, corresponding to the degrees of the divine call. Evidently, these “Times”
are independent from one another: one is called under the mode of the “First
Time”; another under that of the Second; still another in the Third. But that
does not prevent these “Three Times” from being intimately connected among
themselves, so much so that the analysis that Ignatius gives of them is going
to make us penetrate profoundly into his conception of freedom in historical
existence.
3.1 First Time

The First Time, Ignatius says, is when God Our Lord moves and attracts the will
to the point that, without doubting or being able to doubt, such devout soul fol-
lows what is shown it as St. Paul and St. Matthew did in following Christ Our Lord
(number 175).
It is important to set this description beside the one that the Second and
Eighth Rules of Discernment of Spirits for the Second Week give of the “consola-
tion without prior cause”: It belongs to God Our Lord … it is proper to God alone,
the Creator, to enter the creature, to convert it, to attract it, to change it entirely
in his love … And there can be no deceit in such a consolation, because it proceeds
from God alone (numbers 330 and 336).
As such a “consolation without prior cause” is the type and the very ideal
of consolation, just as Election in this First Time that leaves no place for any
deliberation or hesitation is the type and ideal of freedom. And it can be said
without any exaggeration that there is not one line in the Exercises that fails
to dispose the self to perceive this appeal of the Instant and to respond to it
generously.
The examples cited here by Ignatius run the risk of putting us on the wrong
track for his true thinking. Above all if we only pay attention to the conversion
of Paul while forgetting that Matthew’s call was no more “miraculous” than the
one the rich young man refused. So, interpreting the exercises from a purely
psychological but not existential point of view, one will say like Fr. de Ponlevoy:
The first time is cited because it is a fact that can well be recalled, and it
ought to be, because it is a right of God that must certainly be acknowl-
edged. But not only is the case rare, it is literally miraculous … This first
time can only be extraordinary, and it would be overly ambitious to
attempt something there and an illusion to hope for it.2
2 Armand de Ponlevoy, Vie du R.P. Xavier de Ravignan de la Compagnie de Jésus, 12th ed.
(1886[?]), 1:282–83.

via free access
76 Chapter 4
The last remark is perfectly exact, but does not contradict what we affirmed
above and does not justify the one that precedes it. If it is true that the spiritual
life pushes away all ambition of the strange and miraculous, it does not follow
that the self did not have to seek passivity in regard to the motion and divine
attraction of which Ignatius speaks here. To believe that this “First Time” is
cited here only as a remembrance is to fail to see that, on the contrary, it com-
mands the whole conception that Ignatius forms of the relation of human free-
dom and Divine freedom. Truthfully, the description of this “First Time,” like
that of “consolation without cause,” is at the very center of the Exercises, and
however rare may be the cases that appear to us as its psychological realiza-
tion, which is to say observable by another, their possibility alone nonetheless
determines everything else.
If truth be told, this rarity is much less than is generally imagined. For, if the
spiritual life is essentially union with God, how would the extraordinary not be
much more frequent, much more intimately mixed with the ordinary in it than
anywhere else? St. Augustine is not afraid to say regarding miracles that seem
to disturb the course of nature: God reserves it to himself to do them at an
opportune time in order that, “seeing things not greater but unusual, they may
be plunged into astonishment for whom the everyday things no longer have
value.” In his eyes, indeed, “the development of a grain of wheat or the govern-
ment of the world is a greater miracle than the satiating of five thousand men
by means of five loaves.”3 Therefore, let us not hesitate to make the identical
judgement about the extraordinary and the infrequent in the spiritual order.
And let us say, likewise and a fortiori, the least of our acts that tends toward
its true end or the economy of the redemption is a greater miracle than the
conversion of St. Paul.
The continuation proves beyond the slightest doubt that Ignatius under-
stands in this way the relation of the miraculous and the daily. Because, not
only does his description of “the second time” make it an intermediary between
the first that can be qualified as extraordinary if one holds to it, and the third
Time that, by contrast, certainly corresponds to the normal course of psycho-
logical life. But above all the Two Ways of making Election that he proposes to
the self that finds itself in this third time, as we will see, has no other goal than
to give it the means to reveal again the “movement and the attraction” of divine
Freedom—and consequently, a call identical in nature, if not in intensity to
the one a Matthew or a Paul heard.
3 Augustine, De Trinitate, chapter 2, 1–15. [Translator: the quotation is incomplete, because De

Trinitate also has books! We have not been able to locate it.]

via free access
The Election 77
For the rest, Ignatius never opposes the extraordinary and the ordinary, the
miraculous and everyday things. Regarding these distinctions for the use of
“scholars” based on apparently clear cut boundaries that in reality are shift-
ing as much as abstract, Ignatius knows nothing. On the other hand he knows
well the precise as well as concrete opposition of actual time when immedi-
ately, without prior cause, God calls, attracts, and moves the self, in relation
to the “time that follows” this instant. Let there be no doubt: If Ignatius pre-
ferred to speak here about Three “Times” of Election rather than three states of
the soul or three degrees, it is because—following the scriptural image of the
gift of God descending from above, which he often takes up—he represents
the divine vocation as coming to cut the horizontal line of time and simulta-
neously effect the passage from the before to the after by orienting the soul
toward what is above, toward God. Therefore, the shared characteristic of first
time and “consolation without cause” in Ignatius’s view is the presence of the
call from above, perceptible to the soul to the point that it cannot doubt it or
wish to resist it: the difference between them simply consists in that the first,
like the vocation of Paul or of Matthew, embraces and specifies the future of
a whole life, which the second leaves more or less undetermined. But, just as
after the instant of the “consolation without cause,” a second time necessar-
ily follows that does not enjoy the same privileges, the divine vocation does
not present itself to all individuals with the same indubitable and imperative
character. Also, it is necessary to distinguish a second and even a third time,
according as the call from above is disguised in appearances, whether they are
affective and break up its unity, or purely rational and refract its direction so
well that it seems to be confused with the ordinary course of time.
3.2 Second Time

“When much light and knowledge is received through the experience of con-
solation and desolation, and through the experience of the discernment of the
various spirits” (number 176). That, it seems, is what confirms the connection
we made between first and second times, on the one hand, and “consolation
without cause” and “time that follows,” on the other. Except that Ignatius here
envisages the “following time” about which Rule 8 for better discernment of
spirits speaks, as the time that precedes the instant of the divine vocation. This
is a new example of the role that the before and the after play in all of his
reflection. In fact, after the self has passed, in the two weeks preceding the
Election, through diverse consolations and desolations and after having taken
care each time to make an evaluation of them by means of the rules prescribed
for the purpose. It must then see its future clarify itself in two ways. Under their
different forms and occasions, the moments of consolation all designate the

via free access
78 Chapter 4
same direction to it, toward which Being attracts it upward, whereas those of
desolation show it the opposite direction, toward what is below.
As at the moment of making its Election, it gathers in memory all the indi-
cations contained in these successive experiences, and it will see the cluster of
the consolations concentrate itself on the vertical above its Nunc, likewise the
cluster of desolations downward. Certainly, the light and the attraction then
falling from above will not have the power and the evidence as at the immedi-
ate appeal “of the first time.” But from being mediated by memory, this call of
the second time is no less of the same nature. And the direct intensity that it
lacks is supplanted by the opposition of Non-being that the convergence of
desolations indicates. Between these two contrary poles, the middle is clearly
defined, and the self will no longer risk taking the end for the means and the
means for the end.
As we see, the problem is exactly the reverse of that posed by the time that
follows the “consolation without cause.” The memory of this instant must
then serve to interpret the “concepts and judgements” and discern the differ-
ent “projects and resolutions” that are then born. Here, to the contrary, the
memory of the previous diagnoses is what tends by itself to make a call appear
that in some measure is equal to that of the first time. The distance from the
immediate to the mediate evidently remains great and in a sense even total.
But, on the other hand, as the light of the sun remains identical whether it
casts light and shadows on a multitude of objects or strikes the eye directly,
so also the presence of divine freedom manifests itself as the same whether it
is through immediate consolation or through consolations that mediate it. In
short, between the vocation of the first time and that of the second time, there
is no other difference than between the simple unity contained in the instant
and the multiple split up into different discontinuous moments.
3.3 Third Time

The third time is, so to speak, the completion of the movement through which
the divine instant is divided. Ignatius defines it with a word: “The Third Time is
quiet,” which he explains as follows: “I said the ‘time of quiet,’ when the soul is
not agitated by various spirits and uses its natural powers freely and tranquilly”
(177). Earlier, waves of consolation and of desolation agitated consciousness,
their peaks of light like their precipices of shadow designating the opposing
directions between which the “middle” is defined. Now, the self has before it
only the horizon of time that projects itself before its eyes like the surface of
an ocean without ripples. To find with its path the means to cross it, it can only
exercise its natural faculties by referring itself to considerations recalled in the

via free access
The Election 79
Preamble to the Election. To help them fulfill their function in such a decisive
moment, Ignatius then offers his retreatant two ways of making Election:
“If the election,” he says, “is not made in the first or the second time, two
ways follow as to this third time for making it” (number 178).
In this simple phrase, is it not significant that Ignatius joins the two first times
and opposes them to the third? The latter is characterized by the action proper
to reflection and to the control of reason, and therefore Ignatius judges that the
second time, by itself, can give a certainty equivalent to that of the first. Here
we have confirmation of the correlation we made of these two. On the other
hand, how can we imagine that an election, even if it is made as calmly as pos-
sible, could fail to inspire itself by the criterion that defines the second time? It
is impossible in Ignatius’s view to enter into the process of the Exercises with-
out being immediately submitted to the movements of consolation and deso-
lation. The different recommendations contained in the Annotations prove
this, and more than any of them those of the Sixth Annotation, where he pre-
scribes that the retreat director should inquire and interrogate the retreatant
in detail, if he observes that the retreatant “is not moved by the impulses of
different spirits” (number 6). Hence, one would have had to understand noth-
ing about Ignatius’s method to suppose that he imagines an election where
these spiritual movements were not taken into consideration, even though in
these Two Manners, he makes no mention of them, and even speaks of the
impulse of sense (number 182) only in order to reject it. But this by-passing
and this explicit opposition prove to what point Ignatius here again reflects
not as a psychologist of introspection, but as a dialectician who analyzes the
different moments of the free act. And here we see confirmed in another way
the original connection that we have recognized from the start between these
three times.
4 Two Ways of Making Election in the Third Time (Numbers 178–188)
The first of these Two Ways analyzes in six points the genesis of the free act,
which is done under the light of reason alone. The second proposes four com-
plementary rules, designed to verify the result obtained in the first. The first
rule is the discussion where the self deliberates with itself in order to take the
best decision; the other rather resembles a consultation, where the self makes
itself another in order to appreciate from the outside, objectively, the value of

via free access
80 Chapter 4
the terms proposed to its choice. But what is common to both of them is the
effect to go beyond the purely rational by reflection alone and re-encounter
even in this calm time the “motion and attraction” that comes from above. Let
us view this rapidly.
4.1 First Way (Numbers 178–183)

It begins by asking the self to place itself “before the thing” that is the object of
the election. Evidently, that goes without saying. But Ignatius, who is as precise
as someone writing military regulations, is not afraid to say exactly what seems
useless but really is not. For, how many individual deliberations, not to men-
tion collective ones, go astray so quickly and so much that they soon lose sight
of their object! “What is this about?” This is the first and fundamental question
for Ignatius as for Foch.
Five points follow that recall exactly the structure of the Particular and
General Examinations so frequent in the course of the Exercises. This is so true
that a single method animates all these detailed prescriptions.
First of all, the Second Point defines what must be the initial attitude of the
conscience confronted with this object of election:
Necesse est tenere pro objecto finem ob quam creatus sum, qui est, ut lau-
dem Deum Dominum nostrum et salvem animam meam; et simul me inve-
nire indifferentem, sine affectione ulla inordinata, ita ut non sim magis
inclinatus neque affectus ad acceptandam rem propositam, quam ad eam
relinquendam neque magis ad relinquendam illam quam ad acceptandam.
[“It is necessary to hold as object the end for which I am created, which
is to praise God our Lord and save my soul, and, at the same time, to find
myself indifferent, without any inordinate affection; so that I be not more
inclined or disposed to take the thing proposed than to leave it, or more
to leave it than to take it” (number 179)].
The Preamble to the Election had already recalled this attitude in referring to
its source: aim at the end and be indifferent to the mean; it is a simple con-
sequence of the Principle or Foundation. In this regard, the commentators
note that Ignatius says here: me invenire indifferentem and no longer facere nos
indifferentes (number 23). The difference between the two verbs measures the
gap between the beginning and the end of the before. At the beginning, indif-
ference is still only a simple project of the will. At the end, after the first two
weeks, the self must find it as an acquired disposition and in a certain measure
already embodied in the affection. Also, Ignatius characterizes this indiffer-
ence both by the double participle non magis inclinatus neque affectus and by
its objective result: the balance between a double alternative whose four terms

via free access
The Election 81
he is ready to itemize. There again, the matter goes without saying. But, by
this care for precision we can measure the importance that the fourfold divi-
sion holds in his view. Other indications of this importance are going to be
furnished to us by the very comparison with which he sums up this Second
Point: … sed me inveniam veluti in stilo staterae, ad sequendum id quod sensero
esse magis in gloriam et laudem Dei Domini nostri et salvationem animae meae;
[“… but find myself as in the middle of a balance, to follow what I felt to be
more for the glory and praise of God our Lord and the salvation of my soul”]
(number 179).
The equilibrium of the beam of the balance scale is the image that haunts
Ignatius’s thought. This is not surprising, because as we observed, we are deal-
ing with an “examination” of the free act. Examen, Meillet’s French Dictionary
tells us, is the “vertical runner, the pointer on the beam of the balance scale.”
Furthermore, it is evident that this equilibrium preceding the reflexive “weigh-
ing” suits particularly well the description of the before of this third time. Isn’t
it the “calm time” where the self only perceives its duration under the form
of the horizontal? It is precisely this form that becomes the ideal reflection
of the self’s indifference here. But in evoking the equilibrium of the balance
scale as condition of this free act, Ignatius again has the advantage of recover-
ing the fundamental representation of his dialectic, which is balancing of the
before and the after in the search for the Instant that joins time and eternity.
Indeed the horizontal equilibrium of the balance scale depicts both the situ-
ation of the self in the hic et nunc, between the before and the after, as well as
the possibility of its oscillations between the two terms of the alternative that
the choice of means, or the passage through the middle, proposes to freedom.
Besides, as this unstable balance must be broken in favor of the authentic after,
which is to say of the means that leads to the end, and that such a result must
be indicated by the vertical arrow, we see that by means of this image, Ignatius
teaches us, without the appearance of doing so, to look in the direction from
which the call from on high can come.
High and low, before and after, oscillations of the pointer of a balance scale
around a hic et nunc that can be represented by the crossing of two perpendic-
ular axes, are so many images that undoubtedly in Ignatius’s view characterize
the Election, this central and truly crucial point of the Exercises. So much so
that one can wonder whether their dialectic would not be susceptible of being
represented by a geometrical diagram, where the strange problem from which
we started—that of the relation of the four weeks to the three ways—could
also appear and perhaps even find its solution. Here let us limit ourselves to
posing the problem, allowing for coming back to it later.

via free access
82 Chapter 4
Whatever the case may be, in this second point, where Ignatius wants to
shed light on the relation of the act that is free and by hypothesis purely ratio-
nal with God’s freedom, it is certain that the image of the balance scale allows
him to recover, as we were just saying, the vertical line of the call from above:
indeed, the indifference symbolized by the equilibrium of the pointer is still
only a prelude that must lead to the decision, to the choice of means. Now,
immediately after having evoked this image, here is how Ignatius, pursuing the
same comparison, expresses the way in which my decision will be guaranteed:
starting from this indifference it will be enough “to follow what I feel to be
more for the glory and praise of God our Lord and the salvation of my soul”
(number 179). Therefore, after the equilibrium it is the “sensitivity” of the bal-
ance scale that invites me to “feel” the weight that inclines me from above in
the sense of divine freedom.
By means of this mechanical symbol, do we not see the reversal that is

effectuated in the whole analysis of these three times of the Election? The first
supposed a decisive intervention of Freedom on the vertical of the now, deter-
mining the means and making the self break through the middle between
Before and After. In the second time this pole of Being became blurred, but
simultaneously the pole of Non-being sprang up in order that the tension
between up and down should suffice to define this middle. By hypothesis, the
third time suppresses this tension in order to leave to the self the whole ini-
tiative of choosing the means to pursue its horizontal becoming … But the
mere description of the state in which the self is found indifferent warns it
that it must again seek to feel that which is more according to the end. This is
to say that, by the intermediary of the balance scale, we are sent back first to
the opposition of down and up, therefore to the second time and through it
to the “attraction and to the movement that comes from above,” as the deter-
mining principle of the free act, in short, to the very essence of the first time.
Accordingly, after having traversed the three moments of the Election by
means of the most simple image possible, it appears once more that the circle
of the Ignatian dialectic is circumscribed.
Far from rejecting this interpretation, the third point confirms it fully by
recalling the first time’s specific image. Indeed, this is the prayer that Ignatius
then suggests to this freedom in equilibrium: Petere a Deo Domino nostro ut
velit movere voluntatem meam et ponere in anima mea, id quod ego facere debeo
circa rem propositam, quod magis sit in laudem et gloriam suam, discurrendo
bene et fideliter intellectu meo, et eligendo conformiter ad suam sanctissimam et
beneplacentem voluntatem. [“To ask of God our Lord to be pleased to move my

via free access
The Election 83
will and put in my soul what I ought to do regarding the thing proposed, so as to
promote more his praise and glory; discussing well and faithfully with my intel-
lect, and choosing agreeably to his most holy pleasure and will”] (number 180).
Thus, the indifferent equilibrium of the will is accompanied by the wish
that it be broken by God himself, moving this will and positing in the self the
decision that will be indivisibly God’s and man’s. There is a wish for pure pas-
sivity, but that in the meantime is going to engender the activity of the I who
wants to do what it ought on the actual occasion, using its intelligence and its
will to conform it to God’s and thus to achieve the synthesis of activity and pas-
sivity. Ignatius considers this unity—we know this besides and will recall it at
its moment—as the first rule of action.
With a mathematical rigor, the fourth point lays out the plan of the discus-
sion, where the self must deploy its proper activity. Already, in regard to the
second point, we have indicated, in spelling out the terms of the alternative,
how Ignatius finds again a four-part diagram. The diagram furnishes here the
plan of deliberation. Like the pointer of a balance scale with two equal arms,
the alternative proposed to freedom has two terms: to adopt or not adopt a
certain means. For each of the two opposing solutions, it is necessary to deter-
mine the advantages and the disadvantages in function of the end: positive
reasons and negative reasons for adopting this means or not adopting it. As
for the discussion of an equation, they can be disposed in four columns, where
the plus sign + will alternate with the minus sign −. To view the problem in
these four aspects that oppose each other two to two, like the four sections of
a trigonometric circumference, is quite evidently to circumscribe the circle of
reflection again.
In regard to this fourfold diagram of deliberation, therefore, it turns out that
we re-encounter the same image that quite early, in regard to the three times
of Election, suggested to us the idea of a geometrical representation of the
dialectic of the Exercises. It is difficult to attribute such a coincidence to mere
chance. All the more so in that, as we indicated in studying the division of the
Exercises, in many regards the four weeks present an alternation of the positive
and negative analogous to that of rational deliberation.
After having explained successively its content and its order, we will return
to this characteristic alternation at the highest point of the Ignatian method.
But it is necessary in passing to underline such a parallel, because by confirm-
ing the importance of the problem that has astonished us from the outset, it
justifies our notion of seeking its solution by means of a geometrical diagram.
Ignatius, to be sure, never dreamed of all that; but it is a fact, and one that casts
extraordinary light on the nature of his genius, that his text, which is so simple

via free access
84 Chapter 4
in appearance, offers such complexity of relations for anyone willing to look

into them. It is also a fact that the symbol of the balance scale gains its full
importance through the four part discussion, since the symbol indicates that
the discussion that results from the deliberation, must spring from the quasi-
algebraic summation of the motives.
The fifth point says so expressly:
Postquam ita discurri et ratiocinatus sum in omnes partes super re propos-

ita, videre quam in partem ratio magis se inclinet. [“After I have thus dis-
cussed and reasoned through all sides of the thing proposed, to see to
what part reason more inclines”] (number 182).
Accordingly, the self’s activity consists in going through all the aspects of the
question that are four in number in a rational discourse. But like the activity of
the physicist who has disposed on the plates of his tare balance scale, weights,
and objects to be weighed, it limits itself to that. The result no longer depends
on him; he has only to see the result, to read it on the dial where it is inscribed.
The same goes for the free act; it is no longer the self who must choose, it is
reason that must incline its will. Here, rational objectivity is equivalent to the
divine motion of the other two times and the only concern of the self must
be not to confuse it with some sensible motion whatsoever. Et ita, secundum
majorem motionem rationalem, et non motionem ullam sensualem, debet fieri
deliberatio super re proposita. [“And so, according to the greater inclination of
reason, and not according to any inclination of sense, deliberation should be
made on the thing proposed”] (number 182).
Once the decision is obtained by this purely rational process, the self no
longer has to do anything but press on with much diligence to prayer before
God Our Lord and offer him such election that his Divine Majesty may be pleased
to receive and confirm it, if it is to his greater service and praise (number 183).
By this movement of prayer and offering, the self turns again toward the end
that from the start has inspired all its efforts. And in asking that its choice be
accepted and confirmed, if it is true at least that it is the greatest service to
God, it notes that in crossing this capital passage from the before to the after,
it remains oriented by the same End and ready to pursue its route according to
the essential rhythm that has led him so far.
4.2 Second Way (Numbers 184–188)

The second way of making Election comes to confirm in some way from the
outside the result obtained by the deliberation that while going around the

via free access
The Election 85
circle of motives has remained centered on the self. The physicist who wants to
eliminate the error that might come from his balance scale uses the method of
double weighing; he makes the object to be weighted as the “tare weight,” and
then takes it away to weigh the tare. In the spiritual realm, this is exactly what
this second way tends to achieve.
Its First Rule indicates the result to be sought in such a case: ut ille amor qui
me movet, et me eligere facit talem rem, descendat desursum ex amore Dei; ita
ut ille qui eligit sentiat primum, in se, quod ille amor quem plus aut minus habet
erga rem quam eligit sit unice propter suum Creatorem ac Dominum. [“so that
the love which move me and makes me choose such a thing should descend
from above, from the love of God, so that he who chooses feels first in himself
that that love, more or less, which he has for the thing which he chooses, is
uniquely for his Creator and Lord”] (number 184). Since the “rational motion”
takes the place of divine motion, it is necessary to be sure that it is really such.
The balance of motives manifested this motion through an oscillation around
the horizontal axis. But just as the flexibility of the beam and the defects of the
pivots upon which the beam and plates rest introduce possibilities of error in
the balance scale, similarly the self, unless it succeeds in perfectly centering
and balancing the motives in the course of his deliberation, can undergo, with-
out being aware of it, the weight of some sensible motion. Also, now Ignatius
no longer asks it only to sum up these motives to feel toward what side reason
inclines but also to seek to recognize the divine nature of this rational inclina-
tion. And he indicates two signs of it: this weight that is apparently completely
rational is in fact affective—it is a love; and it “descends from above” (184).4
Let it be noted: the first way of making Election already supposed that the
principle of the decision could not be a purely rational motion. Otherwise,
would Ignatius have presented “indifference” as the disposition “to follow
what I feel to be more for the glory and praise of God” (number 179). He is
not unaware that the rational and the affective are so tightly bound up in us
that it is chimerical to imagine a purely rational deliberation. If his first way
seems to hold to this plan, the reason is that by concern for precision, he plans
to acknowledge first all the rights of reason at the same time as to oppose it
to lower affectivity that he calls here motionem sensualem, [“inclination of
4 We see it: Ignatius recovers here the Augustinian doctrine of the two delectations, “trahit sua
quemque voluptas” (In Evangelium Johannis, 26, 4–7, Patrologia Latina, 25, 1608); “quod amp-
lius nos detectat, secundum id operemur necesse est” (Expositio Epistolae ad Galatas, 49;
Patrologia Latina, 35, 2141). But as he never denies free choice to freedom, even when sinful,
he avoids the absurdity that Jansen will commit in regard to the delectatio victrix, the winning
delectation.

via free access
86 Chapter 4
sense”] (182). Except that, he also knows that if the rational is truly stripped of
the carnal, in compensation it needs to be sustained and crowned by a higher,
strictly celestial affectivity, “descending from above.” That alone will be able to
eliminate definitively the influence of the “sensual” by substituting its own for
it. All the more so in that this “sensual” of which Ignatius had experience from
Manresa on, can assume the most ethereal appearances. “Satan transforming
himself into an angel of light” is the case contemplated by his Fourth, Fifth,
and Sixth Rules for Better Discernment of Spirits (numbers 332–334). There
too, in order to track down such a ruse, Ignatius has recourse to a double crite-
rion, first intellectual, then affective, their combination alone being capable of
warding off all fraud.
We will return to these rules where the method of Ignatius is revealed in all
its precision, because there it is applied to the most difficult case that the micro
decisions can present, through which the spiritual life develops. But here,
where the issue is this macro-decision of a choice of state of life, it is clear that,
after the rational deliberation instituted by the first way, the second brings in
an affirmative criterion that tends, still more than the previous deliberation,
to get through in the second time to the election of the third time, where by
hypothesis it always is situated. Indeed, is not the point to definitively elimi-
nate all sensual motion, therefore coming from below, for the sake of “the love
that descends from above, from God’s love”? Moreover, it is worth the trouble
to note how Ignatius connects this affective criterion to the rational criterion
by means of a reflection on time. The same will hold for rules four, five, and
six, of which we have spoken. But, as the text of the second way is particularly
condensed, it is easier to recognize in it the role that the dialectic of time plays,
although nothing at first sight indicates that the relations of the before and the
after situated on the horizontal line where the rational deliberation has devel-
oped, could change itself into those of Being and Non-being, which themselves
are opposed, by contrast, as the high and the low.
Therefore, let us examine the means that Ignatius indicates to make us,
first, discern whether the greater or lesser love for the means chosen that the
self experiences comes or does not come from above, and then to want that it
should descend “solely” from the love of God.
Since the self’s subjectivity, like the balance scale’s individuality, is what can
be the source of error in the result of the rational weighing, Ignatius begins in
his second rule by eliminating as much as he can: Secunda, spectare hominem
aliquem, quem nunquam viderim neque cognoverim et desirando ejus omnem
perfectionem, considerare quid ego illi dicerem faciendum et eligendum ad
majorem gloriam Dei Domini nostri et majorem perfectionem animae suae; et

via free access
The Election 87
faciendo similiter (pro me ipso) servare regulam quam pro altero poneo. [“The
second, to set before me a man whom I have never seen nor known and desir-
ing all his perfection, to consider what I would tell him to do and elect for the
greater glory of God our Lord, and the greater perfection of his soul, and I, doing
likewise for myself, to keep the rule which I set for the other”] (number 185).
To abstract from my own interiority, to consider myself as an unknown that
I encounter for the first time, but to whom I nevertheless suggest the whole
perfection that I envisage for myself, in short, to make oneself other in relation
to oneself, this is the means advised by Ignatius. That this advice comes from
an alert psychologist is clear; since we are better judges in the affairs of some-
one else than in our own, it is appropriate to act also for oneself, according to
the same principles in virtue of which the psychologist is qualified to direct
others. But it does not immediately appear that Ignatius here goes beyond the
most subtle psychology and is inspired by a strictly existential reflection.
To perceive this, we need to recall that, in the context of the Annotations
concerning the relations of the director of the Exercises with the retreatant, we
already indicated the importance that being-for-others had in Ignatius’s eyes.
He specifies the role of this relation in Rule 13 of the Discernment of Spirits
for the First Week (number 326), which likewise advises recourse to the other
as to a mirror capable of automatically uncovering the deceits of Non-being.
Indeed, the opening of conscience obliges the self to objectivity its intentions,
to confront them with the judgement of others. Thereby, it provokes the self to
emerge from its subjective time in order to pass into the perspective of some-
one who embraces this time from the outside and more easily discerns rec-
titude or twistedness of these intentions. Undoubtedly, in this second point,
there is no question of opening to the director. Nevertheless, as he recom-
mends objectification, which is its necessary prelude, it is clear that it already
begins the same movement, and, before any recourse to others, is susceptible
of liberating consciousness from the mirages that Non-being causes to arise in
the course of the genesis of the free act.
If Ignatius had remained there, perhaps we would not dare to affirm, despite
the approximations that we just made, that such counsel is based on the dia-
lectic of time. But the development of his thought can leave no doubt on this
subject.
Here, indeed, is the new consideration that the Third Rule proposes: Tertia,
considerare, ac si essem in articulo mortis, formam ac mensuram quam tunc
velem tenuisse in modo praesentis electionis, et regulando me secundum illam
( formam), faciam (ita) omnino meam determinationem. [“The third, to con-
sider, as if I were at the point of death, the form and measure which I would
then want to have held to the way of the present election, and regulating

via free access
88 Chapter 4
myself by that (form), let me make my determination such in everything”]

(number 186).
To represent myself now as if I were at the precise moment of death, is
that not to pursue this movement by which I have already made myself other
regarding myself? Is not death the passage through which I become totally
other for all the others, reduced as I am to a body that no longer permits any
communication with them. “In all things, consider the end,” says the wisdom
of nations. Death is precisely this term of my subjective time and of all objec-
tive time that is founded upon it, and that is why death clarifies the end of all
things with a timeless light. From that, we understand why Ignatius recom-
mends doing, in case of need to start over, all the operations specified by the
Modus prior Electionis under the burst of light that this end of time projects on
the nunc and to take this presence of death as “the form and measure” of “all
that I have to do” now. In a particularly expressive way, this presence puts back
before the eyes of conscience the end that I ought to envisage primum, as the
Preamble to the Election put it, in order to find secundario the exact means
that leads to it. To focus its alignment with the moment of death, with this
ultimate after, is the means of discerning precisely the middle that makes us
cross through the nunc.
But death is not only negation of time, of the objective as well as the sub-
jective duration. As a passage, death opens up into the reality of the Eternal.
Doubtless, Ignatius writes here in articulo mortis simply as the customary
expression. He did not imagine that this word articulus, articulation, the joint
of members in organic beings, applied to time “by extension designates,” says
Meillet’s Dictionary, “the precise moment” in which the juncture between
two events is made. But, by his dialectic’s internal logic, Ignatius’s Fourth rule
involves nothing less than precisely the event that follows death and the clos-
ing of all time: the Judgement of eternity.
Quarta, attendere qualem me inventurus sim in die Judicii, cogitare quomodo

tunc vellem deliberasse circa rem praesentem, et regulam quam tunc vellem tenui-
sse, eamdem nunc assumere, ut tunc me inveniam cum plena voluptate et gau-
dio. [“The fourth, looking and considering how I shall find myself on the Day
of Judgement, to think how I would then want to have deliberated about the
present matter, and to take now the rule which I would then wish to have kept,
in order that I may then find myself in entire pleasure and joy”] (number 187).
To represent myself, not just at the end of my time but at the end of all
times, on the day of the general judgement,5 preceding the final resurrection,
5 We interpret el día del juizio as designating the general judgement rather than the par-
ticular judgement. Evidently, in the whole context we are dealing only with the individual

via free access
The Election 89
is to make the flash of eternity enter into my present deliberation. To weigh the
motives of my decision in this light of the judgement is to value each one with
the very eyes of God. To assume now the rule that I would then have observed,
is to identify my actual nunc with the eternal nunc, to render myself as much
as I can contemporary of eternity, and consequently to dispose myself to the
instant that characterizes the first time of the election and excludes all pos-
sible doubt. Evoking the plena voluptas and the gaudium that I wish to have on
the day of this Judgement, Ignatius seems to allude only to heavenly happiness.
But in his vocabulary, these words strictly designate consolation, and the full-
ness evoked here is therefore related with the heavenly Instant of “consolation
without prior cause.” How can we fail to recognize there again this movement
of the dialectic so often observed already? The final words of all this analysis of
Election and in particular of this second way, supreme effort toward objectiv-
ity, lead us back quite naturally to the point of departure of this whole process.
Perhaps here, more clearly than anywhere else, in these few central pages of
the Exercises, we see at work the action of the internal dialectic that governs
all the endeavors of the reflection, articulates its different moments, and leads
the whole movement toward a perfect determination. The opposition of the
three ways and of the four weeks led us to investigate this dialectic. Now, as we
have already noted, between the three times of the Election and the fourfold
arrangement of rational deliberation, an analogous opposition is found, but
in the contrary sense. The classical division of the three ways first appeared to
us as a form where becoming stretches out in a purely linear manner, whereas
the crisscrossing of the four weeks seemed to have some relation to the totality
of the circular form. By contrast, here the division into the three times is pre-
sented in relation to the vertical and no longer in the sense of the horizontal.
Indeed, the first time is the junction of the temporal Nunc with the totality of
the eternal that encompasses all time. The second is rendered concrete by the
opposition of the two poles of Being and Non-being, between which the now
of freedom is situated. Lastly, the third time appears under a purely horizontal
form as the “beam of the balance scale.” Through these three times, the Instant
that is unity of time and eternity is therefore broken into two opposite centers
before the horizontal of “calm time” appears as the limit of this breaking up.
deliberating self. From this point of view, it is tempting to understand this expression as
first designating the particular judgement. But, besides the fact that both the article and the
noun used here imply, to our understanding, a clear allusion to the last day, distinct from the
articulum mortis, it seems that the dialectical movement of this whole method, as we have
explained it, requires the passage to the universal. For Ignatius, as for scripture, the authentic
eternal or concrete universal is delivered in eschatology—which evidently does not prevent
this Judgement “Day” from containing a reference to the particular judgement.

via free access
90 Chapter 4
This unstable limit can be determined in function of a true or false, positive or

negative infinite.
That is when the Two Ways of Making the Election present themselves as
two complementary ways to come back to the initial unity starting from its
final state of break-up. The first, the direct method starts from the very dual-
ity characteristic of human freedom, intensifies it, and finally shows that the
rational motion resulting from the combination of the four sectors opposed
two by two, finds once again the verticality of the instant under another form.
The other, indirect method, after having identified rational motion and love of
God and thereby isolated both from sensible motion, separates the self from
its subjectivity by making it regard itself as other, next as becoming totally
other or as dying, finally, as judged by God himself. Once again, these are four
degrees by which the authentic presence of the self to itself—the one which
is necessary in order that the rational may appear in its purity—is stripped of
its inauthentic subjectivity, first by the simultaneity of the other, next by the
presence of death announced by the other, and lastly by the contemplation of
eternity revealed by death. The distance of the self from itself that the consid-
eration of the other introduces is thus found to be taken to the extreme point
of the future, then of all time, and by that very fact, and curves itself back in the
fact itself in order to render the initial identification of the rational and divine
freedom more perceptible.
“All consciousness of self wants the death of the other,” it has been said, tak-
ing up an expression of Hegel. This is true. But death that comes to me by the
other, when the self assumes it, becomes the way by which the future discovers
its true sense and its end: possibility of contemporaneity with the eternal.
5 For the Amendment and Reform of One’s Own Life and Condition
(Number 189)
Under this heading, a final paragraph concludes the pages devoted to the
Election. There, Ignatius considers the case of those who are settled in ecclesias-
tical office or in matrimony, and simply advises, in place of making the election,
to give them a form and way to amend and reform each his own life and condition.
These few words legitimate the progressively more and more extended usage
that the Exercises soon knew. First elaborated to guide in their choice of state of
life generous souls capable of leading an apostolic life, they did not take long,
even in Ignatius’s own hands, also to serve as well to give new impetus to souls
already involved in such a life; next, the practice of “closed retreats” was gener-
alized, whose purpose was simply to renew the spiritual life whether of fervent

via free access
The Election 91
faithful living in the world or of religious communities. Subsequently, by an

inevitable slope, their plan and certain of their procedures were utilized by
the Jesuits and even by religious of other orders for preaching and for popular
missions. Without being foreseen here, such an extension flows naturally from
what Ignatius explicitly authorized. And although the extension has had con-
sequences (even some not completely felicitous) in the understanding of the
book and of its method, it cannot be affirmed that it did not respond in some
way to the author’s intention. For, if it is true that Annotation Eighteen recom-
mends to “not go on into the matter of the Election or into any other exer-
cises that are outside the First Week, with subjects less endowed and with little
natural capacity,” it nevertheless foresees an adaptation of the Exercises that
will make them profitable for anyone who desires to go into them (number 18).
Such universalization through adaptation, necessarily involves some degra-
dation of the method. On the other hand, it is yet another mark of its success.
Ignatius defines it by specifying afterwards the means to amend and reform
one’s own life: “To go on to this end, and reach it, each one must, with the help
of the exercises and the methods of election indicated above, consider and
ruminate what house regime to follow, and what domesticity, how he has to
direct and govern it, teach it by word and by example; and likewise with its rev-
enues, what part he must keep for his family and for his house and what part
must distribute to the poor and to other good works” (number 189). For this
last case, in particular, he has composed Rules to Observe in the Distribution
of Alms (numbers 338–344), the first four of which represent exactly the rules
of the Second Way of Making Election, while the three others set us on guard
against disordered affections toward another or oneself. As disordered affec-
tions easily make us “sin by excess, rather than by defect,” he advises that one
should incline in the opposite direction in order to follow the example of
Christ more closely (number 344).
Such precisions prove that in Ignatius’s eyes, his Exercises and in particular
his methods of election have an absolutely universal bearing. They hold not
only for this macro-decision that commits a whole life, nor even just for this
middling decision that is a plan of reform—which also can certainly be the
point of departure of a second conversion, but that most of the time is effective
only for the interval between two retreats; the methods are also appropriate
to direct the multitude of choices implied in the management of a house, the
practice of a profession, and all our relations with others, even if that involves
only a word to be uttered or not uttered. In short, in our daily life, there is no
micro-decision, however lowly, that does not come under their jurisdiction.
Certainly, nothing is more logical. Because what would be an “improvement or
a reform of life” that does not care to reach the last detail?

via free access
92 Chapter 4
Consequently, according to paragraph 189, the method of the Exercises

needs to be universalized to a twofold aspect: first in extension, its structure
permitting it to adapt itself step by step to serve for the sanctification and the
conversion of all men, however, mediocre they may be; next, in depth, its gen-
eral principles ought, for one who has assimilated them, to determine the most
minute choices. The result is truly paradoxical if we realize that the origin of
the structure and of its principles is nothing other than the singular experi-
ence, in all senses of the word, that Ignatius lived in Manresa.
Let us take the time to ask ourselves about the sense and the value of this
double universalization. The first, to be sure, only regards the historical des-
tiny of the Exercises, while the other directly involves what is essential in the
method. Nevertheless, as these two aspects are nothing less than independent
of each other, such a quest, even if it seems at first to take us somewhat away
from our purpose, will not be entirely useless.
In the articles that are at the point of departure of our essay, Henri Bremond
summarily examines the history of the Exercises and is not afraid to say that
it is inaugurated by an “eclipse” or better yet, by an “agony,” and that if the
Exercises soon will find “a second life,” nevertheless “before and after the cri-
sis … the Exercises are not the same book. In truth, they did not survive St.
Ignatius and four or five of the first team who alone had understood them
perfectly.” It is not that later Jesuits lacked intelligence or good will. On the
contrary, through their apostolic activities, direction, teaching, preaching, mis-
sions, Ignatius’s book is at the origin of a spirituality that offered considerable
irradiation. Except that this very irradiation could not help his disciples “to
assimilate the philosophy of the Exercises,” which in Bremond’s view “could
not be assimilated by them,” because, “in order to live it or to communicate it
to others, it was necessary to be St. Ignatius himself or another St. Ignatius.”6
He rather inclined them to forget that this book resembled no other and to
seek its interpretation in directions in which the Exercises could never recover
their original sharpness. Losing sight of the fact that Ignatius had “forged a
discipline not of conversion or even of sanctification, but of election,”7 with
the same stroke they were bound to abandon “this mystique of election, the
great spring, the soul of his book.”8 Certainly, its text remained untouchable;
6 Bremond, “Saint Ignace et les Exercises,” La vie spirituelle 20 (1929): 1–47 and 73–111, supple-
ment; (May 1929): 103–4.
7 Bremond, Vie spirituelle (May 1929): 105.

via free access
The Election 93
nevertheless, “the interpretation and application whether of these ‘pages’ or

of the whole will be controlled by a new philosophy that is no longer and that
should not or could not be that of Manresa.”9 About the new philosophy Henri
Bremond finally adds that it was soon divided into “two schools, one that inter-
prets the Exercises in the light of the mystics, the other for which Ignatius’s
book is no more than a manual of ascetic heroism.”10
Not everything is false, certainly, in this abridged and rapid reconstruction

of the Exercises’ historical destiny. But it matters all the less in criticizing its
value that this history afterwards has been the object of the most exhaustive
and most objective studies. For the moment, let us not even inquire whether its
author, by thus opposing asceticism and mysticism so radically, is not inspired
more by his own “philosophy of prayer” than that of Ignatius. Before him, in
the conclusion of a short article that Henri Bremond cites more than once with
praise, Fr. de Grandmaison had already noted that the Exercises are neither a
manual of asceticism nor a treatise on mysticism. The Exercises rather tran-
scend such a distinction, because they propose as the program for a candidate
to sainthood “acts and dispositions that produce them” such that they do not
seem capable of being exceeded.11
However, if Fr. de Grandmaison was criticizing in advance the conclusions
at which Fr. Bremond was going to stop, he had in some fashion quite involun-
tarily opened the way to Fr. Bremond in this very article. In fact, with as much
historical sense as psychological perceptiveness, he defined there the point of
view starting from which the elaboration of the Exercises of Ignatius can be
understood. But, still less concerned than Bremond with seeking what ought
to be this “philosophy of Manresa,” which after having inspired the book had
guaranteed it such diffusion, he left its universal extension without justifica-
tion, and by that very fact handed it over to arbitrary interpretations.
After having re-read the page from which Henri Bremond subsequently
drew his argument, we will understand better the defect we would like to rem-
edy. Fr. de Grandmaison writes,
The Exercises look above all at a concrete, clearly determined case: their
end is to place a man who is still free to dispose of his life and very well
endowed for the apostolate, in the situation of discerning and generously

10 Bremond, Vie spirituelle (May 1929): 110–11.
11 Léonce de Grandmaison, “Les Exercises de saint Ignace,” 391–408 in Recherches de Science
religieuse 10 (1920): 404–8.

via free access
94 Chapter 4
following God’s call … That is the hypothesis of St. Ignatius, and it is the
only point of view that does full justice to his design, permits us to grasp
its overall economy, explains its presences and absences, what the author
has put there and what he neither wanted nor even thought of putting
there.
Nothing could be more accurate. And what follows is just as much so, in one
sense. Nevertheless, as Henri Bremond will find his justification in comment-
ing upon this text, it is necessary that we double down with our attention.
To use the Exercises in order to amend one’s life in an already known and
accepted vocation, in order to reform spiritual abuses or to encourage
a soul of good will in goodness, to convert or at least touch a popula-
tion that has strayed from its obligation, this does not contradict the
author’s intentions, but it is to depart from the work’s original hypoth-
esis. (As much as to say, comments Henri Bremond, that it is to fail to
take the author’s intention into account.) It is to condemn oneself (ratio-
nally and meritoriously) to adapt it, to modify it, to take some of it and
to leave some of it out (and to add to it, Henri Bremond again elabo-
rates). Consequently, it is to expose oneself to judge ill about it, if one
adopts such an experience, even renewed and prolonged, as the basis for
the conception that one forms of the Exercises. Likewise, it is to expose
oneself to misrepresent the book’s methods and views to the extent one
would have the illusion of applying the Exercises literally—and not of
adapting them deliberately—to a case for which they were not originally
and primarily composed.
“How can we fail to recognize,” adds Bremond, “that this illusion is universally
extended and that up to now, the almost complete unanimity of the commen-
tators has done nothing to put their readers on guard against it?” After this, he
believes he is right in judging that the Ignatian method, by the very fact that it
was understood thus, was undergoing a “profound change through which this
completely new discipline, stripped of its distinctive characteristics, already
falls back into the ordinary structure of apostolic work: preaching, direction.”12
Here we have something that is perhaps too quickly stated. Does such a
clear cut distinction exist between “election” and “sanctification” or “conver-
sion” that Ignatius’s “mystique” and “discipline” must lose all their originality
by stretching from one to the other? Does supposing that do complete justice

via free access
The Election 95
not only to the objective value and content of Ignatius’s work, but to the intent
of its author in the first place?
Fr. de Grandmaison seems to have underestimated the range of that intent
when he wrote the following phrase that Bremond later underlined and made
worse: “To use the Exercises in order to amend one’s life in a vocation that is
already known, in order to convert a population, and so on … is not to contradict
the author’s intentions, but it is to depart from the original hypothesis of the
work.” For, in paragraph 189, did not Ignatius expressly foresee such an applica-
tion of his “exercises and methods of election”? To accept this first extension
toward universality and not to neglect it in the interpretation of his work is,
therefore, not only, as Fr. de Grandmaison says, “not to contradict his inten-
tions,” but “to take account of them” is exactly the opposite of what Bremond
adds. For, conversely, to reject their extension would be to contradict them
directly. How then does it come about that Fr. de Grandmaison used such a
timid formula, this double negation “to not contradict,” that opened the door
to the counter-truth that Bremond extracted from it? Was he unaware or did
he inadvertently forget the existence of paragraph 189? In no way. He is so far
from being unaware or forgetful of it that in a note to this phrase, he indicates
it, as if he were addressing to himself the objection that we are making to him:
“It is true, secondarily, and for those who no longer have the possibility of dis-
posing freely of their lives, that St. Ignatius proposes a little plan of reform and
amendment.” Only, here is how he responds to it: “But there we manifestly have
an application that is an afterthought, an appendix, not the first objective and
the original tenor of the Exercises.”
Let us not dispute the value of such a distinction, especially from the
point of view of the historical and psychological genesis of the book that
Fr. de Grandmaison wants to bring out here: destination first, application
secondary. But let us note that the distinction can take on different mean-
ings, which we must distinguish because they are capable on the rebound
of clarifying or obscuring the understanding of this genesis. “Application
that is an afterthought” and “appendix” specifying the sense that, taken by
Fr. de Grandmaison, motivates his “to not contradict” transformed by Bremond
into “not take the author’s intentions into account.” Now, if we are not mis-
taken, afterthought is equivalent to fortuitous or contingent; and appendix lets
us understand that number 189 could be cut out of the book without depriving
it of any essential organ …
Strictly speaking, here is what can still be well understood. Strictly speaking,
that is to say, if in order to understand the origin and the scope of the Exercises,
we remain within the perspective that Ignatius could have of it when, around
the 1530s, he was beginning to assemble his papers. But would the Ignatius who

via free access
96 Chapter 4
proposed his book for Papal approval fifteen years later have accepted ampu-
tating this paragraph from it? Surely not. And to focus immediately, along with
the reason for our assurance, on what is missing from the understanding of the
historical, when it is too closely tied to the psychological original, or is shut up
in it, let us specify the sense that we give to the same distinction by saying: this
paragraph is a secondary application, that is to say a logical consequence of
the first destination of a work whose essential fecundity it denotes. So much so
that taking it out would not be to take away an “appendix” from it, but literally
to emasculate it. This would evidently contradict the author’s intentions and
in addition would attribute to chance or what amounts to the same thing—
would make incomprehensible the book’s historical destiny and the universal
appeal of the spirituality to which it gave birth.
In thus preferring to see in this paragraph not an “application of an after-

thought” but a logical consequence of the Exercises’ method, not an “appen-
dix” but the sign of their essential fecundity, we have not only justified the
progressive extension they have known. It seems that we have also made an
important step toward the discovery of this philosophy of Manresa.
Indeed, if Ignatius was aware that the principles almost exclusively drawn
out of his individual and completely singular experience had to hold not only
for rare, elite souls, but for many others, and even in some measure for all, was
it not necessary that, in one way or another, he was convinced he had reached
the point where the logical and the historical are intimately united? Now, as we
have said, even if at the beginning of his career, he has not yet perceived the
scope of his papers, it is impossible to deny him the clear consciousness of it
from the day when he added this short paragraph to them. Because it is not by
chance that he places it as the conclusion of the pages where the heart of his
mystique of election was transformed into a discipline of election. In order not
to understand, in reading him, that this discipline can be applicable to every-
one, his spiritual sons would really have had to tear out their eyes! Particularly
as—a provocative detail that deserves to be underlined—Ignatius contem-
plates not only the case of those who no longer have an election to make in
the sense of his “original hypothesis,” as Fr. de Grandmaison says; but he sup-
poses besides that, among them, can be found people to whom his method is
rather unpleasing: “When they have no opportunity,” he says, “or have not a
very prompt will to make election about the things which fall under an elec-
tion that can be changed, it will be very helpful, in place of making election,
to give them a form and way to amend and reform each his own life …” But in
fact, “instead of making an election” that could have a bearing, for example,

via free access
The Election 97
on the disposition of those “temporal goods” mentioned shortly before, what

does Ignatius propose to them? Nothing other than using “methods of elec-
tion” in order to order their houses, their revenues, and all their acts, in the
smallest detail …
Holy simplicity and tranquil cunning of the first Jesuit! And on what motive
does Ignatius support himself to have such a mixture be admitted? “To reform
your life,” he explains to these mulish souls, but it is simply “to orient your
life, your state, your condition as creature, toward the praise and glory of God
Our Lord and the salvation of your soul” (number 189). In this way we get a
vivid grasp of how Ignatius leads them in one leap to the Foundation, the most
universal principle of his Exercises, to overcome obstacles, doubtless the most
casual, and to obtain the most extensive possible application of his method.
For the rest, if he is convinced that the method is very profitable for every-
one and even for rebellious souls, it is due to the fact that after his conver-
sion, he never ceased to experience its sanctifying power in the first place at
every decision of his life, from the most important to the smallest. The Pilgrim’s
Narrative contains many proofs of this. Likewise, from the testimony of his
first companions much more than from the fragments of his Spiritual Diary
that have been preserved for us, we know that the principal dispositions of
his Constitutions were, one by one, deliberately weighed in the scales whose
operation he describes in these Exercises. To be sure, he never asked himself
how such a universalization in depth could ground the universalization in
extension that initiates his paragraph 189, and still less how one and the other
could flow logically from the very uniqueness of his own experience. He is not
concerned with reflecting upon the unity of the logical and the historical upon
which he was living and to set it out in abstract concepts. In this sense, he is no
philosopher, and there is no “philosophy of Manresa.”
But as much as he is unconcerned with doing the work of an intellectual, to
the contrary, he is concerned to communicate to others the fruit of his experi-
ence, defining endlessly and in many ways the sole end to be achieved and
specifying with the greatest detail obstacles to avoid and the means to adopt
to live of the same life as he does. In this sense, he is no less of a philosopher
than Socrates, and there is no reason for his philosophy not to be assimilable
for those who go to the trouble of joining his school.
That the secret of the unity lived by Ignatius and diffused by his method has
been fully understood only by a few rare disciples is not at all surprising. It is
no more surprising that in proportion as the members of his Order amplified
their apostolic works, they should have paid less attention to this secret, or
even have more or less lost sight of it at the moment when they tried to situate
the source where their life was nourished and to describe its originality. In the

via free access
98 Chapter 4
course of generations and by their very diffusion, the Exercises have therefore
less “lost their original soul,” as Bremond says, who sees in this loss a “common
phenomenon in literary history,”13 than seen their original luster of light and
their transparence covered over by a centuries-old sedimentation that mud-
died them even in revealing their scope. This is a common phenomenon in
the history of religious intuitions and institutions. Even the gospel of Christ
has not been exempt from such a law, and the problem that the understanding
of the Exercises poses is not, in keeping with due proportions, of a different
nature than that of the believer who asks himself about the original sense of
his faith: in both cases, the issue is to rediscover the freshness of a primitive
seed through a tradition which does not unveil it any less than it dissimulates it.
In what measure has the traditional interpretation of the Exercises, in differ-
ent epochs and in its most striking representations, succeeded in fulfilling such
a task? As it does not matter to us here to find that out, let us leave that con-
cern to be debated by the historians. Though not as generalized as Bremond
says, the “illusion” that Fr. de Grandmaison denounces may have been fairly
widespread. But this kind of deficit seems to me to belong to the reflexive
rather than the vital order. Indeed the breadth of apostolic successes gener-
ally attributed to the Society of Jesus and credited to its new spirituality testi-
fies that the Order has remained on the whole faithful to the Exercises’ deep
inspiration. Otherwise, would it be explicable that this little book was finally
recognized by the church as the “wisest and absolutely universal code” of the
spiritual life? But it is one thing is to live and act as an apostle, and another to
reflect upon the principles of the apostle’s life and his action. Perhaps, even
while remaining thoroughly careful of uniting theory and practice, like their
Father, Ignatius’s sons have succeeded better at effectuating this synthesis in
their apostolate than at explaining reflectively the principle itself of this effi-
cacy. And doubtless, the greatest mistake was to have employed for such a task
completely ready-made philosophies, and fatally without relation to the expe-
rience of Ignatius, instead of going to search at Manresa itself, I mean into the
problem that was posed there and into the solution that was given to it, the
principle of the philosophy capable of explaining the value of the Exercises.
We have just seen that the investigation of this “philosophy” is enough to
clarify both the psychological origin and the historical destiny of this book by
showing simply that when Ignatius added this paragraph 189, he intended to
affirm the spiritual value of his method for everyone and for all their decisions.
Now, to better discern upon what principle his method could have been thus

via free access
The Election 99
universalized both in depth and in extension, we can ask ourselves about the
relation of this paragraph to the book’s objective content. If our investigation
attains some result, this time we will not have to claim or to show that Ignatius
himself clearly perceived such a principle, particularly in the form in which we
express it. Indeed, the content of the whole work based on its language can by
reason of this foundation greatly surpass what its author consciously wanted
to put into it. Isn’t it the stamp of genius in every realm, artistic, philosophical,
or religious, to say infinitely more than just what one wants and thinks he is
saying? And isn’t it enough that an interpretation should succeed in making a
work’s deep intelligibility stand out for that interpretation to be justified at the
same time?
Let us note first: paragraph 189 ought to prevent the retreatant from remain-
ing in generalities and commit him, on the contrary to apply the universal
principles of the Election to concrete reality by descending to the smallest
details. Now, such a concern corresponds to a specifically Ignatian character
trait that his historians and commentators unanimously point out and empha-
size. Bremond’s literary habits are disconcerted by the way in which both the
Exercises and A Pilgrim’s Journey are composed:
Ignatius (he writes) neither narrates nor reasons in our fashion. We have
neither a book nor a history there. One might believe that it lacks a sense
of proportions, that only detail interests him, and the most minute. He
acts large and sees small. We have Don Quixote as told by Sancho, Joffre’s
orders interpreted by an adjutant.
On his side, before the way in which Ignatius commands and governs,
Fr. Cavallera asks himself, “How has the same man been able to interest him-
self so much in minutia, and on the other hand, inspire himself in such grandi-
ose and such universal outlooks?” In this regard he does not hesitate to evoke
“the example of Napoleon.”14 Bremond reproaches him for this, but it is to add
onto this comparison immediately:
In Napoleon the antinomy is only in time: he attaches himself back and

forth to the general and to the particular, but he does not confuse them.
Ignatius is the opposite; he does not descend from a grandiose view to
minutia, he is a completely concrete genius, it is we the intellectuals who
14 Ferdinand Cavallera, “La spiritualité des Exercises,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique

(October 1922): 367–68.

via free access
100 Chapter 4
attribute to him this mania for detail. But he embraces everything in a

lump, the general and the particular, the essential and the accessory: then
these massive intuitions, bubbling over, he translates for whatever they
are worth, taking hold of the first detail that comes up.15
The last feature of this description seems suspect to us. For, in the end, if it
were exact that Ignatius had translated his intuitions for better or for worse or
in a happy go lucky way, how would the same critic have the right to say in a
passage we have already quoted: “Be assured that he has left nothing to chance
in the composition of his book, that he has peeled all the words …”? But it mat-
ters little.
In truth, here as on other occasions, Henri Bremond has an accurate and
penetrating intuition; but lacking philosophical technique, he does not suc-
ceed in analyzing the intuition correctly. A glance is enough for him to per-
ceive that the Exercises must be explained first of all by the “concrete logic
and piously passionate dialectic of Ignatius.”16 But then, not knowing well
in what a “dialectic” might consist, above all if it is “living and concrete,” it is
Bremond who is reduced to translate his intuition in a happy go lucky way.
Because, he remains within the memory of his years of Scholastic philosophy,
the term “dialectic” hardly evokes more in his mind than the sequence of syl-
logisms of the type: Every man is mortal: but Socrates … therefore … Also, he
wants Ignatius to descend thus from the general to the particular—let us say
more exactly from the universal to the singular? In its eyes, the Ignatian genius
“embraces in a single block, the general and the particular, the essential and
the accessory …” Let us refrain from condemning the formula, but let us note
that it explains neither why Ignatius remains careful about detail down to
minutia, nor how his grasp “of a block” distinguishes the two opposites no less
than it unites them.
The problem that Henri Bremond touches upon here is clarified—as is the
defect in his description—if we ponder that a dialectic can only be concrete
and living in the measure that it succeeds in rising up from the singular to the
universal as well as in descending from the latter to the former. Now, every-
one is in agreement about this: “The book of the Exercises is, before all,” says
Fr. Cavellera, “the fruit of the personal experience of the converted saint.”17
Bremond develops this:
15 Bremond, Vie spirituelle (April 1929): 8.

17 Cavallera, “La spiritualité des Exercises,” 356.

via free access
The Election 101
An autobiography much more than a treatise. It is true … all mystics tell

their own story more or less … But St. Ignatius does not confine himself to
that. In narrating himself, he maximizes himself, if one can speak in this
way; he transposes his own experience into the doctrinal order; he judges
and measures the experiences of others on this model alone. His interior
life is so dramatic, he has observed it so passionately, that he seems not to
imagine that God could work upon souls in any other manner … He sees
in his image the disciples whom he wants to fashion, or to put it better,
whom he wants to lead to allow themselves to be fashioned by God. For
the idea of lording over souls, of substituting his stamp in them for that
of God, would horrify him. Sibi et Deo relinquatur; [“Let each one be left
to himself and to God.”] But since, in each of the souls the Ignatian type
is reproduced but for a few nuances, he thinks that in each of them, the
inner history of Ignatius will begin again.18
It is impossible to say it better: because they are a “didactically recast

autobiography,”19 the Exercises offer, by their very genesis, the example of the
first of two movements that seemed to us to characterize the concrete dialec-
tic: rising up from a completely singular experience to universal principles.
But then, how can we doubt that the disconcerting “mania for detail,” which
this work reveals in particular, results from the inverse movement? And since
we have only spoken of this character trait to clarify the sense of paragraph 189,
isn’t it still more evident that by prescribing that the rules of the election be
applied to the smallest decisions, this plan of reformation marks the require-
ment of this second movement, descent from universal principles to the sin-
gularity of choices?
Without fear of being mistaken, we can affirm that these two movements
are both equally essential to Ignatius’s method. Because, under the name of
analysis and of synthesis, there is hardly a philosopher who has not recognized
in them the very rhythm of the life of intelligence. It must also be presumed
that their specific unity, at the same time principle and result of this method,
constitutes the foundation thanks to which the method can be universalized
both in extension and in depth.
To better penetrate the nature of this unity and thereby the value of this
double universalization, let us try to specify still more the boundaries between
which its double moment is developed. But before that, it is necessary to
18 Bremond, Vie spirituelle (April 1929): 5–6.

19 Bremond, Vie spirituelle (April 1929): 9.

via free access
102 Chapter 4
observe that the Ignatian dialectic appears “living and concrete” already by the
mere fact of its spontaneity and its attitude. Indeed, he has not learned this
art from anyone. And it is from the time of his convalescence, “when he was
at Loyola, still suffering because of his bad leg,” that he began to reflect on
“that diversity of spirits and of thoughts” and to take the notes in his copy-
book, from which “he later drew what concerns the elections in particular.”20
At Manresa, at Paris, at Rome, he will not cease henceforth to pay attention to
his states of soul and those of others to deduce from them general rules, then
to test the value of these rules in new experiences, by noting again causes and
circumstances that can favor the success or explain the failure. From there, this
mixture of grandiose vistas and of minutiae comes this appearance of doing
big and seeing small, that mislead those who have not pierced into the secret
of his method.
All the more so in that for Ignatius, the passage is so rapid in both direc-
tions, up and down, that it escapes someone who lacks an experienced eye.
Grasping the result without perceiving its genesis, a Bremond believes that
the genius “embraces everything in a block, the general and the particular,”
even if you explain afterwards this inexplicable combination by a so-so trans-
lation … Since despite everything, the book where Ignatius’s massive intuitions
are set down presents many logical divisions where as many combinations are
inserted by preference or by force, in the face of this mixture of order and dis-
order, the very criticism of it is reduced to speaking of “dialectic” obeying “par-
ticular canons, quite real, but that we do not know.”21
20 Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 99, Tylenda, 120.

21 When Henri Bremond is more inspired, or rather when he moves in his special domain,
literary and psychological criticism, he is the first to grasp and indicate the double move-
ment of the dialectic. Proof of this is found in one of his Notes on the Exercises concern-
ing the Contemplation of the Nativity. Regarding the Ignatian “composition of place”
and more generally contemplation of the Bonaventurian type, he studies there the role
that imagination plays in acceding to true “prayer” and concludes thus: “It is not without
some profound reason that one and the same word “contemplation” designates these two
exercises. Furthermore, note that in those who give themselves to this method, there is
a curious optical illusion. They have often not seen what they tell us they have seen, at
least during the exercise itself. These visions, at times quite detailed, colored, and precise,
whose memory is fixed by their writings, are only presented to their spirit when the exer-
cise is over. During their true prayer, a few rapid and vague traits had sufficed, and from
this pictorial contemplation, hardly outlined, they had passed to a mystical contempla-
tion, without even perceiving the transition: the imagination of the stairway, if I dare to
express myself thus. And in both directions: going up and down. That seems true to me and
very particularly of St. Ignatius himself” (our emphasis, Gaston Fessard) (Bremond, Vie
spirituelle [June [sic] 1929]: 181–82).

via free access
The Election 103
Ascent and descent, this rhythm of the Ignatian method must all the
more easily escape his merely historical and psychological interpreters that
the rhythm is deployed with rare spontaneity and rapidity, but above all also
with rare amplitude, the terms that it ties together being as far apart as they
can be … In his imprecise language, Bremond has designated them as “gen-
eral and particular, essential and accessory.” When we refer to the language
of Hegel, where particularity is first of all the middle term between the oppo-
sites, we have preferred to speak of universal and singular. But this is not yet
to say enough. Because the singular from which Ignatius starts, is his personal
experience, his intimate history, more exactly still the different movements
of his affectivity, therefore this history in what is most individual and most
fluid about it. And the universal where it first raises itself is not the intemporal
abstraction or of a concept or a principle of morality. If, as Henri Bremond has
clearly seen and said, his intimate history can take on the value of a type in his
eyes, it is because, even if he uses such principles (as for example the opposi-
tion of good and bad spirits or the relation principle-means-end) he imme-
diately goes beyond such stages to put them in relation with the universality
of history. But in its turn, history, as soon as it is attained, does not remain in
the state of impersonal generality. On the contrary, it appears to him as the
place where the singularity of Divine Liberty is manifested, inaugurating in its
turn an order of universal principles, or rather historically determining those
that the opposite movement has already encountered in order that they may
serve for a precise end: to allow for Ignatius’s freedom to unite itself to Divine
Freedom in the singularity of his choices, and by that fact to become the type
of all freedom.
It is clear: the dialectic of Ignatius follows canons that scholastic, Cartesian,

or Wolffian logic, hardly know how to distinguish. The canons certainly have
more relation with those of Hegel’s Logic. Up to now, to help us discover them,
we have had recourse more to the Phenomenology of Spirit, because the analy-
sis of time according to the before and the after, which gives the Exercises their
structure, appeared to us to be more related to this work. However, since we
began to comment on these pages in the Election under the title of Passage
from Before to After, this relation of temporal succession is no longer what has
dominated and guided the Ignatian analysis. Without in any way renouncing
the determinations that the analysis gives to the relations of temporal succes-
sion, a totally different relation is imposed upon it.
In truth, the relation was already present previously but, so to speak, as
a background. As we entered the way in which we explained the Times of
Election and the Manners of Making It, the relation of up and down is visibly

via free access
104 Chapter 4
what has taken the lead to characterize, firstly, the relation of God and the
self in the hic et nunc of the decision, and also the opposition of Being and of
Non-being. This is so visibly the case that the image of the balance scale evoked
by Ignatius in these pages and underlying all his analyses seemed to us to offer
a representation of the way in which the relation of the before and the after
crisscross in his eyes with the relation of the high and the low, even suggesting
to us the idea of a geometrical diagram to symbolize the Ignatian dialectic …
And lo and behold, in commenting this last paragraph on the Amendment and
the Reform of One’s Own Life, the terms of going up and down impose them-
selves on us to characterize the double movement that grounds this dialectic’s
value, at the same time as the connection accomplished between the singular
and the universal suggest to us an connection with Hegel’s Logic.
In all of this, there is nothing that is by chance. If the relation of the before
and the after grounds the division of the Four Weeks, it is logical that at the
central point, where temporal and eternal must be united, the importance of
the relation between up and down imposes itself as more fundamental. And
if the Ignatian dialectic succeeded in uniting the singular and the universal, it
was also necessary that we should think of referring it to the Hegelian Logic.
Such a reference immediately raises the question: would Ignatius’s dialectic be
capable of coping with the problem Hegel posed, without being able to resolve
it: namely the problem of the relation between the historical and the logical?
It is too early to resolve or even to examine such a problem closely, so evident
is the difference between Ignatius and Hegel, so great is the distance between
their two works—whereas the few traces that we have drawn in order to relate
them look tenuous and far apart—that some will rather be tempted to ask
whether such a question even deserves to be posed.
To this doubt, let us reply simply what will conclude our long excursus on the
subject of the short paragraph 189: It is a question that world events of the 1930s
and more particularly of the last fifteen years, have imposed on an increasingly
large number of contemporary minds, even among the least inclined to pure
philosophy. It is the question of the sense of history under its double form,
theoretical (Does history have a sense and how is it discerned?) and practi-
cal (How do we choose among the options of political life and be assured of
not going against the tide of history?). Although properly speaking Hegel did
not pose either of these two questions and although in this current form they
derive directly from the spread of Communism and from the claims of his-
torical and dialectical materialism, it is undeniable that both have their first
origin in the philosophy of the one who believed he could, through the system

via free access
The Election 105
of absolute knowing, definitively unite logic and history, Marx having wished
to “suppress the proletariat” only in order to “realize the philosophy” of Hegel.
Now, the problem Ignatius posed to himself, is, as we have said and repeated,
how to unite on every occasion my freedom to the will of the eternal. Isn’t
it already evident that under a humble and practical form, the original ques-
tion contains the germ of the double interrogation that we owe to Hegel and
Marx? But besides, in order to resolve this personal problem, Ignatius elabo-
rates his Exercises, and, in particular, his methods of Election, and he proposes
them to others. And we have just seen that in this paragraph 189, fruit of a
long experience of himself and of others, he proposes both as means of a plan
for reformation and as capable of directing the options of all on every occa-
sion. The process of time, furthermore, has confirmed the correctness of his
prognosis. Asking ourselves about the universal extension that his Exercises
have achieved in the course of their centuries-old development, we have rec-
ognized that, without his desiring it at the start, nor even afterwards foreseeing
this spread as being so great, nevertheless corresponds to his most intimate
desire, to his most fundamental intention. Such social and historical fecun-
dity is indeed the logical consequence of this universalization in depth that he
explicitly inscribed in his theory after having practiced it all his life. Ultimately,
seeking for the foundation that was able to assure such a universal and exem-
plary reach, did we not have to perceive that Ignatius could find leverage only
on this unity of the logical and the historical by living it in a completely con-
crete manner, without needing to reflect on it? Hence, are we not entitled to
think that his dialectic must have enough power and penetration to be mea-
sured against the problems that Hegel bequeathed to us?
Certainly, this simple presupposition does not dispel or level all the difficul-
ties that such a simple assumption supposes. But it is no small thing to have
acquired a sharper and more extensive awareness of the object of our research
thanks to this paragraph 189 at the heart of the Exercises. When we grasp bet-
ter the interest occasioned by the discovery of the philosophy of Manresa, we
must go further. All the more so in that this paragraph, as central as it may be in
this regard, remains a minute part relative to the general plan of the Exercises,
or let us say rather, a simple aspect of the passage between the before and the
after that divides the four weeks in two. Therefore, it is not surprising that the
meaning of the problem it raises, and for whose solution it allows us to hope,
cannot be completely extricated at the present. This is further reason to resume
the course we have begun. After having finished it, it will be time to return to
this problem to see whether the Ignatian dialectic has the scope that we attri-
bute to it and is susceptible of holding promises we can now measure better.

via free access
106 Chapter 4
However, before getting back on track, let us remark that this paragraph
offers a particularly striking illustration of the double movement that consti-
tutes this dialectic. Indeed, immediately after having said that his methods of
election should guide all the decisions that the direction of a household or
the distribution of income involve, Ignatius adds: not wanting nor seeking any
other thing except in all and through all the greater praise and glory of God Our
Lord (number 189). Thus, after having descended down to the singularity of
acts of everyday life, he rises to in one leap to the peak. And it is to enunciate
then, more strongly and more clearly perhaps than anywhere else, the general
principle that governs the whole analysis spread out over the Four Weeks and
the multitude of minute details that dwell in it.
Cogitet unusquisque tantum se profectum facturum esse in omnibus rebus
spiritualibus quantum exiverit a proprio suo amore, voluntate et utilitate. [“Let
each one think that he will benefit himself in all spiritual things in proportion
as he goes out of his self-love, will, and interest” (number 189).]
Let each one think—therefore the issue is certainly a principle for
intelligence—that he will benefit himself in all things spiritual—that is to say,
at once in all sorts of virtues and on the occasion of all the choices where the
rules of election can be applied—will be all the more great in proportion as
he goes out more of himself—that is to say sheds—his self-love, his own will,
and his egoist interest. The proportion that measures spiritual progress echoes
the Foundation’s tantum … quantum. But here, moreover, we find focused the
transformation of the initial indifference in regard to the means in order to
assure to the maximum progress: as it consists for freedom in receiving each
and every one of its determinations from the love of God … To be free of any
doubt that the latter direction is exactly the reverse of the form from which
God’s love comes, that is to say downward, it is enough to perceive that these
words allude at the same time to the three stages distinguished by the Two
Standards, to the dispositions of the Three Classes of men, and above all to the
Three Degrees of Humility.
Let us take the time to make these allusions stand out by adopting the
reverse order to that of Ignatius, with the proviso of then justifying his order
afterwards:—in the first place, in opposition to “the longing for riches”
(number 142) and even to simple “attachment” that prevents adopting the
means of salvation (number 153), abandonment of any “egotistical interest,”
which assures the “first manner of humility” consisting in “that I so lower
and so humble myself … that in everything I obey the law of God to the point
that … I would not be in deliberation about transgression of a command-
ment … binding me under pain of mortal sin” (number 165)—then in opposi-
tion to the search for the “vain honor of the world” (number 142) and to the

via free access
The Election 107
attitude of a freedom positing such conditions “so that God would come to
one’s will” (number 154), “shedding any will of one’s own,” which establishes
the self in a humility deep enough to no longer even “entertain the hypoth-
esis of a venial fault” (number 166);—finally, at the opposite pole from “pride”
(number 142), “get out of love of self” to the point that “the heart abandons
everything” in advance in order to “want only what God our Lord wills him to
will out of a desire to serve better” (number 155), and even pushes this desire
to the third degree of humility, which is to say, prefers even when … all things
are equal for the praise and glory of the Divine Majesty … chose poverty with
Christ poor rather than riches, opprobrium with Christ replete with it rather
than honors, and to be rated as worthless and a fool for Christ … rather than
wise or prudent—all in order to imitate and be more actually like Christ Our
Lord (number 167).
In short, the deeper the abasement of my freedom will be, the more God’s
love will come from on high to unite me more intimately to his freedom. As
Ignatius insists on making this opposition of Up and Down stand out here,
he mentions in the first place “getting out of self-love,” because that is what
governs and measures the abandonment of one’s own will and of egoistical
interest. He thus accents the elasticity of his dialectic between the singular and
the universal, whose terms, as we have noted, are as distant as they can be. It
was not enough to say this, since he himself, to obtain the maximum union,
begins by increasing to the maximum the distance between the self and God.
But the “similitude” expressly invoked by the third degree of humility, to which
this “going out” of “oneself” implicitly refers, enables us to perceive that the
elasticity upon which Ignatius bases himself does not differ from that which
pushes the mediator to carry out the movement of the Incarnation expressed
by St. Paul’s seipsum exinanivit … This is to say that Ignatius’s dialectic refers to
the very life of the Trinity as to its perfect exemplar.
We will have to keep that in mind.

via free access
via free access
Part 3
After the Act of Freedom

via free access
Introduction to Part 3
The before has developed the conditions of free choice; the after must mani-
fest its consequences. The principal one is to make Freedom appear by the
change itself that the choice effectuates in its absolute self-positing.
The after, insofar as contrary to the before, must therefore display, first,
a change; second, a change that is real production of Freedom; third, as the
Absolute Self.
First, to change or become other supposes both identity—otherwise there
is no unity of what becomes—and difference—otherwise there is no change.
But becoming considered as a whole or laid out in different parts, is never
composed only of “same” and of “other,” of identify and difference. Therefore,
the after will have the same composition as the before, and the only diversity
that can oppose them is that the proportion of their component elements is
reversed, that the sign with which the components are affected be reciprocally
exchanged. What has (had) Being in the before, has Non-being in the after. This
is a formula of becoming that in some way is algebraic; it simply expresses that
in it the contraries pass into one another.
Passage of Non-being to Being; freedom is the passage from the negative

to the positive, that is to say that its elements change signs in passing
from the before to the after. Dialectical inversion, image of the conver-
sion effectuated.
Of the two possibles which were the evil and the good or more exactly
the less good and the better (sin and grace), I have now chosen the sec-
ond. Since, however, the possibility of sin was not an abstraction in me,
but a reality, it is necessary that this reality of possible sin be destroyed
(Third Week). Contrariwise, grace will no longer have only the reality of
the possible but that of the existent (Fourth Week).
Second, given that this becoming is that of freedom, by its very form it must
represent the passage from Non-being to Being. Since it has a sense, the change
of sign must be produced in favor of Being.
In the before, the value of being belonged to Non-being, to evil, so that when
good appeared it was clothed in the guise of the non-existent, of the possible,
of the image facing the real.—By its sovereign determination, in Election,
freedom works a transfer of value: reality that evil attributed to itself must
not belong to it, but it is the good that must be. Although in effect Non-being
is, Freedom declares that Non-being must not be, and although being is not,
being must be.

via free access
This transfer of value defines at the same time the succession of the two
moments of the after: the spoliation of the one who has, is anterior to the
enrichment of the one who has not. The spoliation of Non-being: exclusion
of Non-being (III) will therefore precede the enrichment of Being: positing of
Being (IV).
The purely formal inversion thus takes on the figure of conversion, where
the converted person burns what he used to adore, then adores what he has
burned.
The final result of the conversion will not be to re-establish the freedom
in the blessed primitive state where we represent it to ourselves at the origin
of the dialectic of time, having to choose between good and evil, but already
in a certain possession of the good … For good and evil must keep the trace of
their passage in the before; likewise, reality and possibility must bear the mark
assuring that the dialectic is not a vain representation, a simulation where
nothing “serious” is at stake, but the true objectification of a real passage from
Non-being to Being, so much so that one cannot return backwards.
At the end of the after, Being, the good, will have an existence in fact equal
to its ought-to-be, and evil a non-existence by right equal to its non-being in
fact. When the harvest will have grown to full maturity, tares and pure wheat
will separate by themselves. Or in purely abstract terms, the Being unraveled
from Non-being will affirm itself as Being and the Non-being as Non-being.
If truth liberates, freedom also verifies, giving to the one who has and taking
from the one who has not the very thing he believes he has.
Term that to tell the truth is no longer part of the representation, but is
beyond all time. The after of the representation only approaches it. Indeed
if the dialectic despoils evil of its objective existence, it does not thereby
remove all possibility from it. If evil in the after became a pure impossible, that
would be to deny by the very fact that freedom, in order to be constituted in
us, needed to cross through Non-being, suppressing the reality of sin, and by
that very deed to reduce the representation to a useless phantom, and finally
to deny freedom precisely while claiming to affirm it.1 On the one hand, evil
therefore, retains the possibility that in the before was the condition of its
objective existence; but on the other hand, its possibility intrinsically bears the
stamp of time; it is the futurible, genuinely possible in relation to the before;
really impossible in relation to the after.
1 Rationalism, which always consists in denying the reality of time, under the pretext of more
purely affirming reason, even and above all when they seem to be identified. Thus Hegel and
also Brunschvicg.

via free access
112 Introduction to Part 3
Conversely, the good acquires all the more objective existence as the bad
loses. But this reality in its turn bears the stamp of its origin. It is well and good
the existence of the necessary, what ought-to-be, and its glory shines through it,
but despite everything, it remains existence born of a possible: spiritual body.
Body, that is to say that its reality is really the result of free choice transforming
a possible. Spiritual, that is to say that its reality authentically expresses the
absolute necessity, that of Being, of spirit and of love.
In the Third and Fourth Weeks, there is no need to present to me in spe-

cial meditations the diagram of freedom of which I now have the expe-
rience. It is indispensable in the Second Week to create a link between
Christ, Image of true freedom, and this appeal that make Christ resound
and by which I begin to be free; this diagram the disappears, because the
union between grace and freedom has then become real at the time of
my decision. So real, that across the particular point, the “this here” where
my human decision cannot fail to insert itself, the decision becomes the
principle of the new creation.
Third, lastly, this Being, which must be, must produce itself as the absolute
SELF.
In the before, a certain apparition of this self has already been produced.
In the face of the first moment, completely occupied by evil, there God has
appeared under the attenuated, degraded form of an image, of an Ideal; and
the Image in turn has developed a call to freedom—a completely subjec-
tive freedom—which was the first seed of the self in Me. Although this “call”
seemed still more unreal than the image, it is what succeeded in balancing, at
the very heart of the representation, the totality of objective and natural exis-
tence that opposed itself to it by virtue of the initial positing of sin.
In the Second Week, as we saw, the special meditations of the Kingdom, the
Standards, and the Three Classes form a framework that is superimposed upon
the mysteries of the life of Christ and have the function of symbolizing the
growth of this pure form of the self and of elevating to the maximum the oppo-
sition between First and Second Week (= sin and grace) in order to lead to the
Election … Before giving its reason, let us note that the Third and Fourth Weeks
no longer admit this structure of special exercises, but the simple unfolding of
mysteries to which only three new points are added in the Third Week and two
in the Fourth Week. If, when the pure form of the self, the call of grace, was still
totally subjective, it really deserved having a special structure in the represen-
tation, how does it happen that after having objectified itself in Election, noth-
ing symbolizes its new being any more, otherwise more solid, however, than

via free access
that of pure form? Let us try both to answer the question and explain what is
the absolute SELF that produces itself in the after.
In objectifying itself in the election, subjective freedom has become embod-
ied, and the being that it thus acquires is not a new being but the very con-
sciousness of the identity of this Self, determined by grace and determining
itself freely, with the absolute self. Far from being a new determination that
would require the apparition of a new element in the representation, the con-
version resulting from the Election is, on the contrary, the suppression of an
opposition that in the course of the second moment, had required the distinc-
tion of the image and of the call. After having called to union, to freedom, grace
effectively unites and frees. This is why the previous opposition disappears.
Indeed, the place of this union, if it can be said, is no longer in and can no
longer be sought in the representation, since the representation, on the con-
trary, is the place of disunion. It is in the hoc where the freedom that escapes
from the body of sin finds its body of grace: more exactly still, it is the one
who says this hoc. In this resolution, which is my new body as a convert after
the Election, the absolute self, creating me a second time, and myself creating
myself freely at the same time, are perfectly united. The opacity, the division
that evil had put in me and that in the before needed the apparition of the
form of unity as third element, has been denied by the Election and at least in
principle has disappeared. The unfolding of the after will be able to content
itself with making the reality engendered by the negation appear in the repre-
sentation. This is why it represents itself in two successive moments that are
in fact like those of the before, the two faces, positive and negative, of one and
the same movement.
The absolute self, which produces itself at this moment of the dialectic, is
therefore the concrete self of the one who has just converted himself to God
and lives it in God. It is useless to seek his presence elsewhere; and the rep-
resentation does not have to contain a trace of a new element. It certainly
must rather testify that the union is realized. This is also what it does; because
Christ, within the Mysteries that follow, effectively enjoys a new presence: that
which he acquires in the action of grace in which he exchanges in principle his
body of sin for a body of grace [action of grace]. This presence is not itself a
new determination in objective existence, but the beginning of the conversion
of the world of nature into a world of spirit, the suppression of the separation
that sin had effectuated between God and his creature.
If it is true that the Exercises lay out the structure of the free act and ana-
lyze it as we have just shown, one of the first and not the least result of the
Ignatian reflection is to make the most of the eucharistic mystery, to the point

via free access
114 Introduction to Part 3
of designating it as the central point where everything converges and from

which everything flows.
A more objective and less profound view grants more importance to the
birth and death of Christ. Don’t these two events mark by two ruptures that are
especially apt to spatial and social representation, the limits between which
the existence of Jesus is unfolding like that of every other man? Whereas the
word of the Last Supper does not appear so different from his other sayings and
deeds. Let us note in passing: here we have a new reason for the effacement of
the four part division in the interpretation of the Exercises to the advantage of
the classic three part division, the continuity of Christ’s existence contributing
to blur both the cut of the Election and the central role of the eucharist.
According to the perspective proposed here, Christ’s birth and death appear,
on the contrary, as intimately depending on the intention that reveals itself in
the Hoc est corpus meum, and as the means of making it manifest. This hoc
marks the extreme point, so to speak, of divine freedom’s going out of itself,
whose two intermediate stages on the way have been creation and Incarnation,
and on return will be redemption and sending the Spirit (nova creatio). From
this point of view, the eucharistic hoc becomes the hinge around which the
twist is effectuated, the conversion that the whole life of Christ brings about
for the world.
Likewise, meditation, habitual reflection on this life insists readily on the
extrinsic or worldly causes that make Christ be born here and die there …
Certainly, as all and every one of the events of this life are part of the same his-
tory whose goal is the salvation of the world, it is right to affirm that all their
causes are providentially directed toward the fulfillment of divine plans. These
affirmations are beyond doubt completely sound in the eyes of faith, but nei-
ther their bond nor their relation to our freedom is shown thereby.
By contrast, from the fact that it places the eucharist at the center of two
pairs of movements—sin–grace on the one hand, death–resurrection on the
other—it seems to us that Ignatius manages to make in some way perceptible
the immanence of divine freedom that leads this whole interplay, also the
union of God and of the hoc, of the universal and of the singular, that condi-
tions our freedom and its unity with his.

via free access
Chapter 5
Exclusion of All Non-being: Third Week
By opening the Third Week with the contemplation of the Last Supper,
St. Ignatius manifests the connection of the free act with the Passion.
Just as at the Last Supper, Jesus decides to die and just as this decision
becomes the authentic cause of his death, likewise the response to grace,
which constitutes me as a new man (spiritual body), is the cause of death
of the old man (body of death). But there is no pure freedom for us; if we
were to choose the most spiritual reality, we cannot at the same time fail
to choose a particular sensible reality that becomes the body of this soul
that is free decision (body of grace), the accident of this new substance
(eucharist). The passage of the body of sin to the spiritual body is accom-
plished, therefore, by the intermediary of the body of grace.
In the before, the development of subjective freedom had the effect of estab-
lishing an equilibrium between Being and Non-being. An equilibrium was
immediately broken as soon as obtained … At the very moment when the self
“takes on the sentiments” of the image in the unity of one and the same act,
a determination is posited in it effect of the absolute freedom—and it makes
a resolution—first realization of subjective freedom. In the Christian, as in
Christ, man and God make only one; they have no more than one and the
same act.
The Election is closed by an offering: offerre Deo Domino nostro talem elec-
tionem ut divina sua Majestas velit illam recipere et confirmare … [“… offer him
such election that his divine majesty may be pleased to receive and confirm it”]
(number 183). Present where the synthesis of the past and the future is realized.
The first instant that follows this offering—the first instant of the after—
must evidently be the first apparition of the future as present, an apparition
that has a double result.
1. Make present, although invisibly, the Being of freedom.
2. Consign in principle to Non-being, to death, the past that still veils the
presence of this Future.
The Third Week indeed opens with the contemplation of the last offering of
Christ.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004504738_011 Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

via free access
116 Chapter 5
I—Contemplatio: ultima de Coena Domini
In its gesture of offering, subjective freedom reflects the present where it deter-
mines itself and pronounces, Hoc est corpus meum quod pro vobis datur. In fact,
to take a determination is for freedom to choose within the sensible the point
of support around which must be carried out the total reversal of the initial
situation; Non-being becoming unreal, Being real. Therefore, it is this same
judgement that contains a death sentence for the individual and a seed of res-
urrection in a Community.
Seed of resurrection: By positing itself, freedom takes the body of grace: the
eucharistic body.
Indeed, its determination is not a simple accidental change that remains on
the surface of the self. Since, strictly speaking, it is creation of Being, positing
of self, it attains substance immediately. The substance of the old man is con-
verted into that of the new man. Transubstantiation.
Before this conversion, grace, this principle of subjective freedom, was
only an accident fallen from heaven, in a self whose entire substance, whose
act, had first posited itself Non-being. Afterwards, it is the reverse: in the new
man, body and soul are creation of grace, and the objective existence of sin
becomes an accident. The call to freedom goes from the outside to the inside;
the response in the opposite sense. But before the response is expressed out-
side, it is at one stroke conceived inside and then passes little by little to the
outside.
Death sentence: To take on the body of grace is at the same time for freedom
to renounce the body of sin.
The decision that closes the deliberation has the effect of rejecting into all
the elements that have permitted on the one hand, but delayed on the other,
this apparition of the determination of freedom. The resolution acts in our
life in the manner of a cleaver that splits everything that the being had up to
this point—tendencies, motives, history—the moment they enter into contact
with the resolution.
Freedom displays its highest activity by submitting its objective being, its
body, to a supreme passivity.
Indeed, if the free determination is properly the possibility of the future as
present, the present itself insofar as produced from the past is found rejected
in Non-being. Under the action the future that renders itself present, the pres-
ent shifts into the past … the passage of Being to Non-being is properly a pas-
sion, entailing the death of the old man for the apparition of the future man.1
1 The passage from the present to the future is habitually represented as the fruit of the
pressure of the past: the past heavy with the future, Bergson says.—Here we end up in a

via free access
Exclusion of All Non-being: Third Week 117
Transubstantiation and passion are consequently linked as the inside and

outside of the same conversion. The inside, like everything spiritual, is done in
an instant, while the outside, the passion, is realized in time.
At first glance, the eucharist is a commemorative ceremony; except that,
as Christ is God, this ceremony could be instituted before what it was to com-
memorate … A deeper reflection on the cult, the mass, consists in seeing in
the Last Supper, the progress, the title of the tragedy that is going to unfold
itself afterwards, title without which the tragedy would have remained incom-
prehensible for us.—Accordingly, here we are led to conceive the eucharist
as a true cause of the passion. If the latter precedes the former, it is not only
because a divine arbitrariness permitted it, not even by a necessity based
upon the laws of our knowledge, but because the passion is only the material
execution, certainly necessary but secundario, of a spiritual movement that
terminates in Hoc est corpus meum. Without the going out of itself of Christ’s
freedom, which is translated in this word, there is no possible passion.2
The analysis of a human election will make this relation perceptible. Take,
for example the election of the young man who, in the course of the Exercises,
decides for religious life. “This life, such as this religious life, is my body” he
declares and God declares in him at the end of the Second Week. The opposi-
tion between the grace that calls him and his will bound to the body of sin and
its disordered tendencies has been resolved; his true freedom has just been cre-
ated and created itself by taking a body of grace. In regard to his sensible being,
this body is still only a resolution, a word that envisages the representation of a
diametrically opposed view. Far from being born from the past, the present is born from the
future. Instead of the past achieving its potentialities in the present without this future being
anything but an indeterminate receptacle, here it is that the Future realizes itself in a Present
where everything that is not what-is-to-come must fall into a past without value.
In the very diagram of time, the opposition is revealed as a philosophy of nature, which
inevitably supposes a God who produces himself, who is to be born, and on the other hand, a
philosophy of grace that, having to suppose a God who is Pure Act, sees the God who makes
himself (mystical Christ) as the free determination and communication of this act of love.
2 This dependence of the passion in relation to the eucharist did not escape the fathers. A wit-
ness is this passage from an Antiphona of St. Ephrem, whose French translation we take from
Fr. Mariès:
This people [the Jews] certainly could kill him.
He himself killed himself by his own hands.
This is one slain that his own hands slew,
That their madness crucified on Golgotha!
If he had not killed himself in the Mystery [the eucharist],
They would not have killed him in reality!
(“Une Antiphona de saint Ephrem sur l’Eucharistie,” Recherches de sciences religieuse 3 [1954]:
400.)

via free access
118 Chapter 5
social state. Just as the eucharist at the supper is only the Hoc est … applied to
what is called bread. But as in its profound and authentic being the eucharist
is the movement of transformation in God that believers will undergo in the
time that follows upon contact with it, by virtue of their faith, likewise under
the resolution, “I will be a religious,” a movement of transformation in God
appears, which this young man’s being will undergo little by little, in the mea-
sure that religious life is going to penetrate it and that he begins to undergo
from now on.
And in one and the other case, this moment has the same point of departure
and the same objective: the exodus of a naturally egotistic and limited indi-
vidual, and opening into a Universal Community. “This is my body given for
you and for the many,” says Christ, and the young man is also swept along to
his sacrifice by love of other selves (poor, sinners, pagans, children, and so on,
according to the vocation), and through these “selves that are you” for him, out
of love for the multitude where God objectivizes himself to his eyes.
Lastly, the presence in him of this movement of transformation is going to
provoke his death to the world. Leaving the retreat, nothing has changed on
the outside. But, little by little, the resolution, this body of grace, is going to
eat into the body of sin, the covering that still hides it. For example, this young
man had envisaged a certain profession, certain studies, certain travels …
When these projects will present themselves to his consciousness to be
carried out, they will come up with the resolution that will clearly cut these
desires of nature in order to allow only for those of grace to be carried out. It
is a question of time for death appear to the eyes of everyone by the religious
profession that is also the beginning of a life of glorious body.
That the eucharist is tied to the passion is also contained in the common
representation that sees all external events, immediate causes of the passion
(hatred of the Pharisees, betrayal of Judas, and so forth) as directed by provi-
dence: but this means still remains very abstract and general in comparison
to the immediate, concrete bond that constitutes the body of grace, means
of passage from the body of sin to the spiritual body. The only bond capable
also of accounting for the institution of the eucharist as completing the pascal
sacrifice. Easter is the memorial of the essential passage that is the passion.3
3 Cf. for example, St. Bernard, Sermo de resurrectione. Again, the fathers habitually say that in
communion it is not the eucharist that is transformed into us but we into it. This sheds light
on the active role of the body of grace in comparison to the body of sin. Just as the young
man becomes the victim of his resolution, so also Christ in his eucharist. On the cross, he is
the first human particle consumed by the Universal eucharist.

via free access
1 The Growth of the Exclusion of Non-being
The determination to the eucharistic Hoc therefore consigns to death indi-

vidual existence. The passion is the passage from the present existence to the
non-being of the past. Fruit of freedom, it begins from within, by the Agony of
the soul.
II—Contemplatio: de Coena usque ad Hortum inclusive [Contemplation from

the Supper up to the Garden inclusively] (number 200)
The agony marks the insertion of freedom, which has just posited itself, at the
very root of the egotistical, carnal individual. Since his will, in positing itself in
Non-being, has brought with it an infinite power, it tends to live, to perpetuate
itself indefinitely, in a present born of the past, and violently opposes itself to
the absolute self that makes itself present and is already a Thou for the I who is
agonizing. The reality of this I appears here as the negation of this individual
self: Non mea voluntas … and the identification with the Thou in which this
I has its origin and its principle in a community of nature; … sed tua fiat, Pater.
The unity of the two wills, that which comes from the past and that which
comes from the future, and the reality of the option that freely sacrifices the
first to the second remain inscribed in the after by a conditional desire: Si pos-
sible est, transeat a me calix iste [“If thou be willing, remove this cup from me.”]
(Luke 22:42). A wish where the human truth of the futurible that, in the after,
reflects the opposition essential to the before.
Furthermore, it is worthwhile to observe that what is “objective” for him
who says, Non mea voluntas sed tua fiat [Not my will, but thine, be done.], is not
identical to what was objective for the freedom that decided itself in the Hoc
est corpus meum. Then, the plurality of the yous was contrasted with the con-
crete individuality of the self; and, in the choice, it became precisely the goal
of its determination: … corpus … quod pro vobis traditur. Now on the contrary, it
is the absolute thou that rises before the natural will and, in an abstract sense,4
the will of the individual. The reason for this change is that this thou, precisely
because it is the origin and the bond of the multiple you, can only appear as
such and ground their community in the measure in which the egotistical
and carnal self has renounced the pride of its first positing in Non-being and
accepted to undergo death.
4 Abstract in the sense that the natural will has lost all right to existence since the election and
by it. But, in fact, it remains concrete and continues to exist up to the end of the agony, of the
struggle unto death.

via free access
120 Chapter 5
Accordingly, from the outset of this third moment, the content of the fourth
moment, positing of Being, is announced at the same time that its extreme
opposition to the first moment is recalled.
After the passion of the soul, it is for the body to go on, to be denied. The
body is the bundle of tendencies where the will-to-be, the initial positing of
the self, is determined; and the bond of this bundle is the will to survive of the
species … The negation of each of the tendencies is the pain; that of the bond is
death. But as these tendencies in reality are the will-to-be of a Non-being that
still tends to posit itself, pain, in so far as it results from free choice, from deter-
mination, is in reality the negation of a negation. It is the counterweight of
concupiscence, and like concupiscence opens onto generation, the pain ends
up in death.
St. Ignatius indicates three “points” that have to structure all the medita-
tions of the Third Week and that are its three dialectical Movements: the
active will of the God-man (number 195), the apparent passivity of the
divinity in the face of suffering (number 196), whose result is the destruc-
tion of sin (number 197). (As a parallel, see the two points that will be
proposed for the Fourth Week, numbers 223 and 224.)
Determined thus in its growth and in its ending, the third moment is accom-
plished like the second, by the representation of a real history with contin-
gent details. Beside the already determined framework, it is necessary to lead
each one of these details, in its very particularity, to the center that it exposes,
to freedom. Just as the Contemplations of the Kingdom, of the Standards, and
of the Three Classes had the goal of giving the sense of the history of Christ,
the special Points of the Third and Fourth Weeks must allow for each of these
details to be attached to the dialectic’s totality itself.
First: The origin—It is the will’s free determination. Pain as pain has no mean-
ing. For it to serve for Redemption and for the conversion in the third moment,
its relation to the will must be demonstrated. Now, this relation is not just that
of a permission, of letting be, but that of an origin: Ea quae Christus pati vult …
“Those things that Christ wants to suffer …” (number 195). Human will? Or
divine will?—It is the human will, not insofar as it is in itself and for itself
but insofar as it dies and has already died, united to the divine will. The one
who wills to suffer is the man who accepts the Father’s plan. The one who
would like not to suffer is the man (first Adam) who represents himself in his
enclosed individuality, in himself and for himself. The reality of pain proves

via free access
that this representation has its source in a real will, although one whose sense
is negative. Pain, place of passage from the particular to the universal, breaks
the closure in which the self has shut itself up.
Second: The development—If the will gives the impetus to suffering, it seems
that once suffering is unleashed, the will is disengaged, that it becomes passive
before the events. It is mere appearance but necessary appearance. Divinitas
se abscondit … sinit pati sacratissimam humanitatem … no longer Christ who
allows suffering, it is God who orders, the divine nature not the Father him-
self, but God considered as in the abstract, the divinity upon whom everything
depends … This “allows,” sinit, contains so to speak the acknowledgement by
God himself of the subsistence proper to negation, to Non-being, which in the
representation is called the contingency of events. All events, it is said, are
willed or at least permitted by God. And, in fact, insofar as they are launched
by the evil that has taken positive existence, God lets them act, but then God
is being considered in his abstract nature: divinitas. By contrast, in his con-
crete being, he is this “game” of three divine persons, this dialectic of trinitar-
ian life that in the very midst of the positive existence of evil, wills and creates
freedom.
This passage from the abstract to the concrete, from divine nature to
Deus-Caritas is, in our knowledge, the very history of the redemption. This
sinit, this divine laissez-faire, is therefore a moment of the representation. In
terms of reflection, it can be translated as follows: the negation that achieves
existence, denies itself by this very fact. The Fathers expressed the same thing
by speaking in images: God unchains Satan so that in killing the innocent one,
Satan loses his rights over humankind …
The distinction that has just been made between Deus and divinitas must
not surprise us. The whole history of the fifth century Christological con-
troversy turns, so to speak, around it: and the reason is that, by not having
perceived it, Nestorius rejected the theotokos. Since Mary is Mother of
God, but not of the divinity, so also it is not the divinity but God who dies
on the Cross.
Third: The end—Finally the negation of negation must appear as such. It is

what assures the reflection of the after over the before. Omnia pro peccatis
meis, [“All this for my sins”] (number 197).
The law of correspondence that, to the Non-being’s initial positing in the
first moment, opposes its exclusion at the third moment, holds down to
the last detail. Just as the initial positing made itself concrete in a processus

via free access
122 Chapter 5
peccatorum … omnia peccata vitae meae, [“for my sins … all the sins of life”]
(numbers 55–56), the exclusion of these sins is made concrete in a processus
dolorum that is exactly the reverse. As the sphere of sufferings expands, the
sphere of sins diminishes. Through the concrete pain, sin loses its reality, it
is remitted to its rank and finds its truth there, the truth of what must not be.
After, through the Mysteries of the Passion, the negation has grown in
the measure of sin, Non-being’s will-to-be has been extinguished at a blow. The
death of the Man of Sorrows is the annihilation of sin: Consummatum est. The
objective existence of sin has departed definitively. Passus est.
2 Passage from the Third to the Fourth Moment: Triduum Mortis
In the course of the Triduum Mortis, thanks to which death appears very
real, the body is no longer anything for the self. It only exists for others,
for society, for Humanity; the soul for its part can neither act in the pres-
ent nor form projects for the future; it has only its past, its memories, for
itself. But its memories themselves disappear into the nothing if they do
not attach themselves to the memories of the humanity that does not die,
and continues to have a present and a future besides its past. While await-
ing the final resurrection, therefore, the individual subsists in humanity,
in the state of extreme division of its body and soul, in his death.
The place is ready for positing Being. All that was the fruit of the objectification
of the finite self has been denied as having its subsistence in itself. Freedom
can appear.
In the dialectic, we have already encountered an analogous point: the pas-
sage from the first to the second moment. The affective realization of Hell had
the effect of letting the Image of Being appear in its objective existence. Here,
the affective union with the death of the Image must have the effect of letting
Freedom appear in its objective existence.
There is one difference, however: here the passage is not immediate;
between the death of the image and its glorious reappearance there is the
Triduum Mortis. What is the meaning of this interval and why is it necessary in
the dialectic of Being?
Let us first note the difference that exists between the first moment and
the point where we are at present. In the first moment, the dialectic is com-
pletely individual, subjective, without content of being properly speaking; and

via free access
it is necessary that it be so, since this moment is that of the Non-being. It only
requires the most general framework of history (angels, Adam) and always on
its negative side: sin. Here, on the contrary, a historical development has taken
place that gives a positive content, and the proper object of the representation
is furthermore only the destiny of an individual among all those who make up
this history.
To clarify further our progress, supposing that Christ was immediately res-
urrected at death, what would be missing for Christian faith—It would lack
the very reality of death … The disciples would have been incapable of distin-
guishing between a real resurrection and a simple transfiguration. Becoming
definitive, this transfiguration would have made suspicious, by reaction, the
very reality of Christ in his earthly life. Docetism would have become likely.
The possibility of observing real death and thereby confirming the Son’s real
resurrection is what makes the Triduum Mortis necessary for faith.
In dialectical terms, we can say that this necessity comes from the lack of
compatibility between the individual and the social.
Death is a passage insofar as the individual is in direct relation with Being;
in some manner it is the bursting of its limits and its flowing into Being. It is the
limit of a becoming that immediately includes the beyond.
By contrast, death is a state in the measure in which the distinction between
individual and society is necessary for the representation of the becoming of
Being. Only the individual dies and can die.5 And it dies to manifest, on the
one hand, the reality of the hoc to which the spirit has united itself, and on
the other hand, the truth of the relation that after death reunites the hoc to the
spirit, that of spiritual freedom.
To show the reality of the hoc is to make apparent the extreme disunion to
which the self, the finite spirit, is reduced by its sin. As far as the individual
is alive, his self, his activity makes him a center for others; he stands up; he
moves, he inquires and he answers. By contrast, in death, this center is divided;
according to the classical definition, there is separation of soul and body. But,
to tell the truth, the body is no longer body. The body is me-for-others. Since
the soul, the self, is precisely separated from this me-for-others, there no longer
remains a body in the sense of a part of the man, but a thing, a that, which has
only the unity that other people’s perception and memory confer on it: a pure
multiplicity synthesized by others. The Non-being of objective existence that
the I attributed to itself by its sin is thus manifested. The others confirm this
5 Before Original Sin, Adam was immortal; to be accurate, humanity itself does not die, but the
world ends.

via free access
124 Chapter 5
decision of destiny: the one who is dead is laid down and put in the tomb, a
return to indistinct and common matter.
Another element remains, that of unity; the self. What does it become? Such
a question can be raised only in the measure in which death is known not only
as a state but as a passage. Otherwise, indeed, since the form of the body’s
unity is purely and simply annihilated, there is no longer any question to be
raised about a further becoming. The soul is not yet in the state where it will
be when the passage will be carried out. So, what does it become while wait-
ing? Separated from the body and from others, it is evidently subject to a force
opposed to the one that moves the living toward the light and toward what
is above … Following the direction indicated and already taken by the body
become cadaver—cadaver like πτϖμα means in fact that which has fallen—
it descends to the realm of shadows into the infernal regions. These infernal
regions are much less the subterranean places that we attribute to the imagi-
nation of the ancients, more or less unaware that the world is round, than the
kingdom of the past, that of remembering. In fact, this dialectic of death is
carried out for-the-others in their representation. The dead individual, his self
especially, has now become past, which is to say that it has interiorized itself in
our knowledge and can no longer rise up to the light of the present: it is dead.
If its body is in the earth, its soul is in this profundity, to which we descend to
retrieve our memories.
One last question: since death is only a passing state, the two elements of
objective becoming—body and soul—remain united in some manner, despite
their separation in relation to the representation of others. What is the “milieu”
in which soul and body of the dead individual remain united in the extreme
division?
The sense of this question and its answer will be apparent if we switch it
into the ordinary analogue of death, which is sleep. Between two periods of
being awake, what is the “milieu” that maintains myself in contact with my
body, so that upon awakening the question of my identity is not posed? In
other words, how can I measure the time that slips away between the instant
when I go to sleep and the one when I wake up?—Evidently the external move-
ment, clock or sun. But it is still necessary that this movement itself should be
measured, that is to say, embraced and included in a consciousness that relates
it to an absolute (at least in relation to my subjective time). This consciousness
is that of the community in which time objectifies itself and measures itself in
the form of the calendar, that of humanity. By this consciousness, by its memo-
ries, I will pass to the affirmation of my personal identity in order to renew the

via free access
thread of necessary continuity. This “milieu” that maintains united everything

that I conceive of as separated during sleep is society, humanity. Humanity
is at the same time my mother insofar as I am only a natural individual and
my daughter insofar as I, as an individual conscious of himself, am already in
relation with the absolute and find in it the foundation of the objectification
of time.
The milieu where the body and soul of Christ remain united in their extreme
division is also humanity, the humanity personified in the phenomenological
dialectic by the Virgin Mary, both mother and daughter of God.
At the time when the Son of Man is no longer for-other-men, his corpse, solu-
tum et separatum ab anima, [“separated and apart from the soul”] (number 208)
rests in the arms of his Mother. What Mary receives and perceives is no longer
the body of sin since the Death of Christ has annihilated it for his Mother as for
humanity. It is not yet the spiritual body. Between these two extremes Christ
has placed the body of grace as an intermediary.
Is it necessary to recall that these reflections only take up again those of

St. Paul? “For what the law could not do in that it was weak on account of
the flesh, God, sending his only Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as
an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). See likewise
Romans 8:10ff and compare it to I Corinthians 15:35ff. It is striking that in
John 12:24 the grain of wheat, image of Christ who dies and is resurrected,
clearly alludes to the eucharist.
Indeed, the cadaver of Christ is a pure hoc, preserved from corruption, main-
tained in its unity without a principle of unity, and which is the pure means
of an act of faith for his Mother’s perceiving consciousness; just as the hoc of
the consecrated host, despite its appearances of substance, remains the unity
of appearances and for the believer is only the means to affirm hic et nunc that
the sacrificing and sanctifying action of its faith is real. At this time, when Mary
is, as it were, definitively full of grace, mother of all grace and queen of the
priestly race, it is the host about which she can say in all truth: Hoc est corpus
meum, offering to God the Father the eucharistic sacrifice of his Son and of
humanity.
As for Jesus’s soul, it is in the consciousness of New Eve, in the memory, in
which she digs into the most remote part in order to reach and awaken the
company of the just and of the saints who, since Adam and Eve composed this
consciousness of humanity, whose flower is Mary.
But in this moment, the consciousness of the Co-Redemptrix still only per-
ceives the separation, the division that death has installed in her Son, and she

via free access
126 Chapter 5
is the milieu where this division is realized; she undergoes an equal strain that
is death within her life. Considerando solitudinem Dominae Nostrae cum tanto
dolore et animi afflictione. By her side, and associated with the same pain, and
like her dead with the dead Christ, the faithful disciples remain: “Considering
the solitude of Our Lady with so great grief and affliction of the soul.” Next
to her, there remained the faithful disciples: deinde discipulorum solitudinem
[“then the solitude of the disciples”] (number 208).
As at the beginning of the second moment, Mary was the place of the appa-
rition of the Image of Being; now she is also the place of its transformation;
from a simple presence in a hic et nunc, into a glorious manifestation, a per-
petual presence, usque ad consummationem saeculi [“until the consummation
of time”] (Matthew 28:20); from a simple outer passage to an inner abode of
the Spirit. In Mary’s solitude the passage is effectuated from panful memories
to triumphant hopes.
3 Application to the Act of Freedom
That the Triduum Mortis, necessary stage of the dialectic of representation,

must have its correspondent in the act of freedom will become evident if we
are mindful that the distinction individual-society that grounds its origin is
also inherent to each one of our acts as the soul-body distinction.
Let us return to our example of the young man called to religious life.
Summing up a whole life within himself, he has a better chance of making
apparent to simple psychological observation the truth that reflection discov-
ers in the least act of freedom.
Therefore, this young man has seen his freedom determine itself into the
hoc of religious life, and he has immediately entered into agony, undergoing in
his natural desires the passion necessary to enter into glory. Glory believed, not
tasted. At the end of his passion, there he is detached from all money, hope of
fertility, self-will; there he is lying in the tomb. What remains in him? A cadaver.
The cadaver of his desires, of his dreams, of his natural affections, from which
life has withdrawn. In the face of everything that attracted or repelled him for-
merly, he now finds himself in a certain state of insensibility, having in a sense
suffered too much, to suffer still more. And the soul of his drives and his dreams
has disappeared at the same stroke, drained into the limbo of the past …
But this cadaver is also in him only a completely superficial hoc, the cover-
ing of a chrysalis, dead skin, a cadaver of the past recognized as such. The true
being of this young man, his self, finds emigrated, in his body of grace, in this
humanity of yous for whom he has sacrificed himself. It is this new humanity

via free access
which has brought forth in him the image of the perfect life in opposition to
his life of sin, that which now holds its cadaver in its arms, that finally which
is born in some way from its sacrifice, through him full of grace, since this sac-
rifice has cut at their root the source of the concupiscences, and is waiting in
silence and solitude for the sin to convert into joy …
In the great sacrifices and conversions that have a bearing on a whole life,
this state of death, intermediary between the pains of the Passion and the
consolations of the resurrection, could perhaps be psychologically observable
in some measure. Just as in music the ear does not endure changes without
transition of modes and too distant tones—and the musician knows how to
lead by successive gradations up to silence, starting from which the reversal is
effectuated—likewise the life of sentiment requires the interval of a silence, of
a solitude, and as it were of an absence of sentiments in order to pass from the
paroxysm of suffering to the triumphs of joy. The dialectic of the sentiments
corresponds to the dialectic of representation. And for the same reasons. For,
sentiment in the individual is that by which his self communicates vitally with
the species in nature, before this sentiment, reflected, purified, and transfig-
ured by the word, makes it communicate with everyone through the Spirit.
Generally without doubt, this state of death will escape introspection. More
generally, joy and pain will mix (and it must be so since the two moments of
the after are in one sense simultaneous) so that the soul will rather be con-
scious of a state of trouble that disappears little by little, the most perceptible
point being the apparition of victorious joy that finishes the combat at a single
strike. Quam suave mihi subito factum est, carere suavitatibus nugarum? Et quae
amittere metus fuerat, jam dimittere gaudium erat. [“How pleasant was it all on
the sudden made unto me, to be without the sweets of those toys! Yea, what
I feared to lose, was now a joy unto me to forgo.”]6 But if it were possible to
observe the process of variation of feeling minutely, this interval of solitude
would become observable.
Before passing on to the fourth moment, let us cast a glance back on this
dialectic of sentiments.
First Week: from contrition to faith.

Second Week: from faith-knowledge to imitation.
Third Week: from faith-compassion to hope.
6 St. Augustine, Confessions, book IX, chapter 1, Loeb Library, vol. 2, pp. 2–3.—However ele-
mentary this analysis may be, it could be clarified and made precise by the study of conver-
sions, for example, Book IX, chapters 8 and 9, in the Confessions.

via free access
128 Chapter 5
The first moment has had the goal and the limit of awakening and devel-
oping a feeling of fear and of sorrow in the face of sin: contrition. By the very
fact that it is born out of the sense of Hell, out of the absolute separation from
God, this contrition has the result of making the very condition of its exis-
tence appear: faith in him who is the bond more absolute still than separation.
Contrition therefore is the negative and immediately perceptible side of the
creation of the freedom whose reflexive and positive side is faith.
In the second moment, faith has grown, but without being interiorized.
It has acted, but in the manner of an intellectual attraction, a balancing, but
barely, the sensitive attractions determined by sin and that contrition has not
suppressed. For us—situated so to speak at the end point and outside of the
dialectic—who know in some manner how the image depends on Being, how
it is born of Being, and who perceive in a certain measure its truth, this intel-
lectual faith in a historical and contingent fact, in a kingdom to come but not
present, appears as the immediate manifestation, as the texture of grace, in
which the Spirit is wrapped. But, for the consciousness that is inside this sec-
ond moment, this Faith is only the attraction of an end, a last end to be sure,
but that remains as it were external to the consciousness. Faith determines a
knowledge in this consciousness that already orients the will, but as an exam-
ple, where the point is to imitate the example, more than as a Being that one
has to come to be. And that is why, at the end of this second moment, the con-
sciousness remains truly free in the most ordinary sense of the word.
In passing from the second to the third moment, faith is redoubled and
acquires a new dimension in consciousness: some depth. From exterior as it
was, it becomes interior. From simple assent in a transcendent representation,
it becomes voluntary adherence in an immanent becoming. The movement
by which the individual emerges freely from itself, renounces its egotistical
subsistence—to the point that by the same stroke the world equally loses its
subsistence and its depth for him and is reduced to a superficial appearance,
eucharistic species—is also the movement by which faith reflects and wins its
present subsistence. The result is the following: instead of appearing only, as in
the before, the ideal negation of reality, it acts in the after as a really destruc-
tive power, mortifying the sensible attractions, consuming the wrapping of sin.
This is a negative reverse side that still only supposes a positive side. Just as
contrition suppressed sin, and once reflected upon, allowed faith to appear as
a call, so also here compassion erases the consequences of sin and must mani-
fest under what condition faith exists and subsists: this principle of living faith

via free access
is hope, response of the Spirit who rewards the fidelity of subjective freedom
under trial.7
Not that hope was absent from this whole process. From the first call of faith
in a kingdom to come, hope is there as the bond of these representations. It
is there especially as the soul of the movement that in the course of the third
moment, destroys and consumes the individual. It is hope that gives to Faith
the ability to bear the arduum of the passion. An active presence, but invisible
until then, hope must now manifest itself.
7 Romans 5:3–4: Scientes quod tribulatio patientiam operator. Patientia autem probationem, pro-
batio vero spem. “Knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, probation; and
probation, hope.”

via free access
Chapter 6
Positing of Being: Fourth Week
Just as at the end of the First Week the divine initiative was what made us pass
from the experience of absolute sin, of Hell, to the discovery of grace, so also,
the free divine initiative makes us pass now from death to life.
At the end of the first moment, Non-being had developed to the point of
attaining the absolute in negation; and in the reflection upon this absolute, the
image of freedom was appearing in the body of sin.
In the course of the third moment, an analogous development occurred, no
longer just affecting a subjective consciousness, but the objective conscious-
ness. Sin has developed its consequences, its kingdom, its existence, up to
reaching the absolute again, provoking within the Image of Freedom the con-
sciousness of abandonment, of absolute separation, and exteriorly the death
of God … Since Hell is here victorious over God, Non-being over Being, it seems
once more that the dialectic leads to the absurd.
There again, this appearance is destined to reveal, on the contrary, freedom’s
initiative and absolute mastery, also to invite our reflection, to find the same
moment, the same triumph.
Accordingly, the death of God, fruit of sin, has the result of allowing to
appear the life of God, a visible and perceptible grace as such. No longer merely
image but word of life.
What, therefore, is this life of God?—Just as to deny sin (Non-being), it was
not enough to have the being of the created self but there had to be the Being
of the absolute self, to deny death, there also has to be the life of the absolute
self. And in order for this life to appear as such, it has to enter into contact with
the very garment that death has acquired and tear it away from death.
Consequently, this Life is the reanimation of a cadaver: resurrection,—and
the reconciliation of the separation: redemption.
Wanting to posit itself as autonomous, human freedom ends up in its

opposite, slavery of sin (First Week). To destroy the latter, to destroy the
Non-being of freedom, the Being (grace) has first posited true freedom in
the body of Sin (Second Week); finding leverage in the body of grace, in
order to take away from Sin all its consistency, grace then denied this body
of sin in which it had first manifested itself (Third Week). Henceforth,
freedom itself can posit itself without hindrance and starting from the

via free access
Positing of Being: Fourth Week 131
body of grace, give itself a body that perfectly expresses it, a body, free
spiritual (Fourth Week).
In the resurrection, the Being that freedom posits is a being such that it no
longer opposes itself to freedom.
At the beginning of the first moment, freedom immediately posited its
being, and the result was the birth, in the face of its self, of a non-self. Also, in
the course of the second and third moment freedom has posited the negation
of this Being, by representing itself under the form of a self that voluntarily
denies itself …
At the beginning of the fourth moment, the reflection encompasses the
entire way traversed so far, and freedom posits it before itself as the very means
of positing itself and of manifesting itself in its absolute freedom.
As we saw above, incarnation and death have let it appear that grace is a
Being that posits itself freely. Resurrection and redemption now manifest that
grace is a self that posits itself freely as Being. Two opposed movements that
mutually condition one other.
Freedom becomes a self that posits its being, no longer immediately, but
mediately in such a way that, after the negation has suppressed from imme-
diate being all that is non-self, the self no longer finds anything in its being
but self.
The body rises, which is to say that the hoc where the spirit first determined
itself, is not annihilated but reassumed again it its truth. For immediate con-
sciousness, it seems that this resurrection consists in taking up and recovering
the resisting thing that is impenetrable to the spirit. But the latter has been
dissolved forever in death; and there remains only the fluid appearance of it,
the movement where the self sees only self. In all that is positive in the nega-
tion of non-being, the spirit recognizes its act, and for it, this double negation
is no more than the transparent medium through which the Self posits itself
as Being and takes up this Being in itself as self; and imponderable and non-
extended ether where the instantaneous and intemporal movement of Being
that makes itself Being, of freedom that posits itself by itself, is developed.
After having thus attempted to express the essence of this positing of Being
in the fourth movement, let us try to analyze its representation.
In the resurrection, the self, the soul of Christ, rises up, so to speak, from the
utmost depths of the past that has swallowed it and takes its own hoc up again
in sensible being. It is present to itself, being for itself, directly.

via free access
132 Chapter 6
The first manifestation of this direct presence to itself, is to disappear

from the eyes of those who are still present to themselves only by the nega-
tion of themselves.—For those who find themselves in the before of the act
of freedom, which is to say in sin still not destroyed by sacrifice, taking up this
hoc again appears as the disappearance of a cadaver. In the web of determin-
ism that they impose upon the world with the hope of making this non-being
“theirs” and of re-encountering themselves in it, there is a black hole over
which they incline to look for the caver of Jesus … In vain. Ecce locus ubi posu-
erunt eum … non est hic … surrexit. [“Behold the place where they laid him …
he is not here … he is risen”] (Mark 16:3 reverse order). If Christ’s hoc were hic,
then non-being’s determinism would also be sealed forever … But, non est hic,
and the impossibility of tying up their egoistical dialectic there is the invitation
to look elsewhere for this missing link and perhaps to place it at the center of
a dialectic of freedom, by finding this hoc, precisely where Christ shows it to
them saying: Hoc est corpus meum.
The correlative of this disappearance is the apparition of this same hoc to
those who are found in the after of the dialectic of freedom. The apparition is
certainly that of a body, the object not only of individual perception (incapable
of discerning an objective image from hallucinations) but the perception of
several persons (seen heard, touched by diverse witnesses whose testimonies
mesh with one another about one) and who eats in front of them, which is to
say uses up and consumes the substance of the world, suppresses it in order to
become the totality of it, the synthesis.
Serving thus as “means” for a Self to act upon the senses and in the world
of the others, this “hoc” deserves the name of “body.” But because death has
suppressed everything that was negative in it, everything that was “obstacle,” it
no longer offers access to negation and appears as the pure being of freedom:
spiritual body.
What characterizes our body (besides the means of action that it is) is its
passivity. This is to say that it can suffer, be denied, pass into the past. Not
that this passivity is essential to the idea of body. The body of Adam does not
offer him an immediate grasp; conceived as still on this side of becoming, it
was able to not pass away, posse non mori. Our body, by contrast, because it
is in becoming and the very place of becoming, cannot not pass, non posse
non mori. But once passed away, what has passed away no longer passes, and
even re-objectified in the freedom of reflection, it can no longer pass away,
non posse mori—it is impassible. Seminatur in corruptione (Adam the Sinner),
resurget in incorruptione. [“It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption”]

via free access
(I Corinthians 15:42). Form of the future, liberated from the past, it makes itself
freely present.
Although in becoming, our body does not pass away entirely. But the space
where our beginning is represented and, veritably, is conserved, is a new
shackle. A prison where we feel our impotence more vividly, our infirmity, in
regard to the world that oppresses us from all sides, Prior to becoming, Adamic
space had only two dimensions somehow, like our imaginary space, and the
will determined itself in it as easily as we trace the projection of our move-
ment on a map. What was “map” for Adam is for us turned into a “natural sized
ground,” and we must toil through mountain and valley. Beyond becoming,
the resurrected body, to the contrary, contains real space as our spirit contains
the world of its thoughts. Even determining a “this” or a “that,” any other point
whatsoever is immediately contiguous to it, because the points of this over-
turned world no longer expel each other like the instants of becoming, but
imply each other like concepts in being. In order to pass from one to the other,
the milieu that must be crossed is the spirit, the absence of milieu. Because
milieu says negation and because the spirit is negation of mediation, media-
tion having become immediate, the resurrected body enjoys an infinite agility.
Seminatur in infirmitate, surget in Gloria. [“It is sown in weakness; it is raised in
power” (I Corinthians 15:43)].
Swept along in becoming, enclosed in space, our body becomes darkness
and opacity itself. Of itself in Adam, however, it was the medium of commu-
nication. But in us, what ought to be means of knowledge for selves among
each other, is in fact the obstacle. Through our body, we fail to know and fail
to be known, we forget and are forgotten. It has been said, “Matter is what
puts forgetfulness in us. Seminatur in ignobilitate (literally: in lack of know-
ing and of being known).1—The resurrected body, by contrast, is a transpar-
ent and illuminating medium. Since Christ’s hoc is now just the immediate
being of the free movement by which the self has posited itself and constituted
itself as self, each self only sees in this self the proper history of its becoming,
1 It is true that ἀτιμία, which the Vulgate translates by ignobilitate, unlike the Latin word’s ety-
mology, does not immediately refer to “knowledge.” Except that by not being more original
but derived, its reference is no less essential to the sense in which Paul takes the Greek word
here. Indeed, if τιμή means first of all price, then valuation, and finally consideration and
honor, by this very extension it comes to include this same relation to “knowledge.” Thus it is
related to δὀξα. Μετά τινῆς καὶ δόξης ζῆν, says Plutarch, for example. Now Paul talks of ἀτιμία
precisely in relation to δὀξα. And δὀξα, which originally means what appears, what manifests
itself, is exactly rendered here by the Vulgate’s gloria. Therefore, it is enough to recall the tra-
ditional definition of this word: “clara notitia cum laude,” to perceive that in basing ourselves
on the Latin word’s etymology, we are only developing the sense implied here by ἀτιμία.

via free access
134 Chapter 6
its freedom, but clarified and understood. Knowing itself in this self, each self
knows at the same time all selves and is known by each one. Surgit in Gloria
[I Corinthians 14:43].
The exterior negations, becoming, space, opacity, are only the consequence
and reflection of the inner and fundamental negation: the negation of the
self, egotistically turned in on itself, whose body becomes impenetrability
itself that resists so much both every emergence outside itself and the re-
entering of another in oneself. Nevertheless, in Adam, the body was the place
of union—the woman emerging from man as his word (I Corinthians 11:7), the
man having to emerge from the woman as her son—the diaphanous medium
where the thoughts of both are exchanged without refraction. While for us, as
Maurice Blondel noted, “The body is a strange solitude, and all that could be
said about the union is nothing in comparison with the separation they cause.”2
Seminatur corpus animale: “It is sown a natural body.”—The resurrected body
is transparency itself, the medium where the “selves” not only know each other
but compenetrate one another in unity. Surget corpus spirituale [“It is raised a
spiritual body”] (I Corinthians 15:44).
Let us note, furthermore, that the subtlety of the glorious body is only
the consequence, in our world of representation, of the porosity that matter
acquires for the spirit that has gone out of itself in the sacrifice. If subtlety is
conceived on the model of a purely natural property, without relation to free-
dom, how could we explain that Christ’s body, while being capable of pass-
ing through walls and closed doors without meeting resistance, by contrast
presents resistance to his disciples’ bodies? Moreover, Christ shows himself
resistant and in some measure impenetrable more to their senses than to their
bodies. This impenetrability therefore is rather to be attributed to an insuffi-
cient deployment, to a remainder of retrenchment into the disciples’ selves, in
whom Faith, union to Christ’s sacrifice, is still not perfect.
Commenting on the apparition to the disciples at Emmaus, St. Gregory the
Great remarked:
Talem se ei exhibuit in corpore qualis apud illos erat in mente. Quia adhuc
in eorum cordibus peregrinus erat a fide, ire se longius finxit. [“He showed
himself in body, as was he in their minds. Since, in their hearts, he was a
pilgrim by faith, he pretended to go further with them”]
Homilia 23, In Evangelia3
2 Maurice Blondel, L’action: Essai d’une critique de la vie et d’une science de la pratique (Paris:
Alcan, 1893), 256 [English translation by Oliva Blanchette, Action: Essay on a Critique of Life
and a Science of Practice [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1984]].
3 In Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Bernard, we find the same idea, not only on the subject of
the apparitions of the Risen One but also regarding Christ’s earthly life and in particular his

via free access
St. Thomas, who quotes this passage, deduces its general principle:
Innotescunt divina hominibus secundum quod diversimode sunt affecti.

Nam illi qui habent mentem bene dispositam, secundum veritatem divinam
percipient. Illi autem qui habent mentem non bene dispositam, divina per-
cipient cum quadam confusion dubietatis vel erroris. [“Divine things are
revealed to them in various ways, according as they are variously dis-
posed. For those who have minds well disposed, perceive divine things
rightly, whereas those not so disposed perceive them with a certain con-
fusion of doubt or error”].
Summa Theologica, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province,
http:///www.microbookstudio.com
Thus, according as they are more or less well disposed, the disciples’ faith
needs to be shored up and confirmed by the testimony of the senses. But when
their faith shall be perfect thanks to the gift of the Spirit, they will proclaim:
Beati qui non viderunt et crediderunt. [“Blessed are they that have not seen, and
yet have believed”] (John 20:29).4
transfiguration. Let us limit ourselves to remitting to Fr. Henri de Lubac’s scholarly Aspects
du Bouddhisme (Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1951), especially pages 108–12 and 119–122, and more
generally chapter 3 devoted to show similarities and difference between Christ’s various
appearances and Buddha’s.
4 In the same line of reflection, in which moreover Jerome and Augustine readily engaged
theology, it seems to be permissible to propose an explanation of the Virgin Mary’s virginity,
especially in partu. The total absence of sin in the Immaculate One not only exempts her
from the pains of childbirth, consequence of the original fault, but also renders her own body
penetrable, “porous,” at the moment of the Incarnate Word’s birth. It will be asked why then
did this penetrability exist at this moment alone and no longer in all the subsequent relations
of the Mother and her Son: And is not St. Thomas’s position preferable, who seems in the
event to care little about the analogy with the qualities of the glorious body and to assimilate
this miracle to that of Christ walking on water and simply chalk it up to the divine power?
(Summa theologiae, 3, question 28, article 2, reply to second objection).
However, the Common Doctor himself took care to distinguish this kind of miracle, sim-
ply wrought for the “confirmation of faith” from those that are “objects of faith”; the first
requiring only to be “noted”—manifesta—the second, on the contrary, “more hidden”—
occultiora—requiring that we discover in them “what is more becoming to divine wisdom
and serving better for the salvation of men” (Summa theologiae, 3, question 31, article 1, reply
to second objection). Now, among the latter, St. Thomas lists notably: “The virginal child-
birth, the resurrection of the Lord, and also the sacrament of the altar.” In consonance with
the most profound thinking of St. Thomas, we can maintain the explanation proposed above
and respond to the objection that it caused to come up: the reciprocal penetrability of Jesus
and Mary is reserved to the moment of childbirth alone, because the birth alone inaugurates
the appearance of the Incarnate Word in the society of men; whereas the natural and histori-
cal world in which he lives henceforth is to all appearances in similitudinem carnis pecccati

via free access
136 Chapter 6
1 Application to the Act of Freedom
In the moral act, it is a resurrection that also necessarily follows the passion,
provoked by the free determination: Hoc est corpus meum.
After the carnal man, his senses frozen, lies down in the tomb and the
dreams united to those senses have descended, passed on to the realm of shad-
ows without solidity, an inner man rises again, spiritual. The Being for which
he sacrificed himself, the community of the yous in which he chose to incar-
nate himself, is now his true body. It is a self for him, the self where negation
for the me is no longer found. Possession of oneself and of the other selves.
In this same hoc, in this same body, where earlier Non-being realized its
negations (suffering, weakness, ignorance, egoism), the free self now deploys
its prerogatives.
The objects that attracted the sensible tendencies and whose loss was cause
of pain are now stripped of all attraction, Surget in incorruptione. [“Rises in
incorruption” (I Corinthians 15:42)]. Hence, Ignatius’s gift of chastity, after his
general confession and his scruples. In the same way Augustine character-
ized the transformation effectuated by his conversion: Quas amittere fuerat,
jam dimittere gaudium erat. Ejiciebas enim eas a me … et intrabas pro eis omni
voluntate dulcior, sed non carni et sanguine … [“What I before had feared to
lose, was now a joy unto me to forgo. For thou didst cast them out from me,
and instead of them camest in thyself, sweeter than all pleasure, though not to
flesh and blood …” (Confessions, book IX, chapter 1, Loeb Library translation,
vol. II, 4–5)].
Where carnal man saw only obscurity and absurdity, ignominy and dis-
honor, now a luminous and glorious meaning blazes forth. Augustine goes
on: … omni luce clarior, sed omni secreto interior; omni honore sublimior, sed non
sublimibus in se … Ubi erat tam annoso tempore et de quo imo altoque evocatum
est in momento liberum arbitrium meum … [“brighter than all light, yet deeper
within than any secret; loftier than any honor, but not to those who are lofty in
(Romans 8:3) is characterized by contrast by the impenetrability of bodies. We could add

that in the same manner, basing ourselves upon Hegel to clarify an analogy already admit-
ted by St. Thomas (Summa theologiae, 3, question 28, article 2), the deed or the word in
which the concept engendered by the intellect is incarnated thanks to language’s creative
imagination, is thereby given birth by the imagination without experiencing suffering or
physical lesion; but once proffered, the human word also acquires a natural and historical
being that resists both others and the one who emitted it. More still, if this word consecrates
a decision such as Hoc est corpus meum, it will not fail to provoke the passion and death of
its author … With that and thanks to the Ignatian dialectic, a relation is discovered between
the three mysteries of the Virgin birth, of the resurrection, and of the eucharist, a relation it
seems not unworthy of divine wisdom and whose interest precisely concerns the salvation
of all and of each man.

via free access
themselves … But where in all that long time was my free will and from what
deep sunken hiding-place was it suddenly summoned forth in the moment…?”
(Confessions, book IX, chapter 1, Sheed translation, 151)].
What seemed to him to be shackle, diminution, impotence, manifests itself
now as means, power: Surget in virtute.
Finally, instead of being turned back upon oneself, living soul, but closed
to any other and unable to penetrate any other, this self finds itself at home in
every other self. Surget corpus spirituale.
By denying within itself the first man, Adam drawn from the earth,—the
self is identified with the last Adam—who comes from Heaven and has been
made vivifying spirit (I Corinthians 15:45–47). On account of not having avidly
held to his presence, to self of the past, the presence of the future—no longer
only of the second Adam (form of the future, but who in the second moment
has not yet fully appeared as such) but of the last one—manifests itself in the
hic et nunc.
It is obvious and almost useless to make the same application to the exam-
ple of the young man who, having chosen religious life, undergoes a violent
death by his vows, a martyr he is usually called (a eucharistic death would be as
right), and then thanks to them leads a social life of a resurrected body.
2 Growth of the Positing of the Being
The Third Week closed considerando solitudinem Dominae nostrae cum tanto
dolore et animi afflictione, [“considering the loneliness of Our Lady, whose grief
and fatigue were so great”] (number 208). The Fourth Week opens with the
Prima contemplatio, Quomodo Christus Dominus noster apparuit Dominae nos-
trae, [“How Christ Our Lord Appeared to Our Lady”] (number 218). As we have
seen, the reason for this is that the Virgin, figure of humanity, has been the
bond of Christ’s body and soul during the Triduum Mortis … Therefore, it is in
and for this humanity that the new unity of the two elements, body and soul,
past and future, must manifest themselves, which, after having undergone the
trial of negation, compose being and its Presence …
In spite of everything, one may perhaps be astonished that the mystery of
the resurrection itself is not the proper object of this first exercise, and is, on
the contrary, so clearly combined with the mystery of the apparition to the
Virgin that it seems to be completely resorbed in it.5 Why such telescoping?
5 Only the title of “contemplatio” in the Mysteria distinguishes resurrection and apparition
to Mary as two different objects. By contrast, the text supposedly developing the title a little
further only mentions the second (no. 299).

via free access
138 Chapter 6
All the more surprising that the gospel does not mention this apparition and
St. Paul, to cap it all off, attributes rather to Peter the primacy of the manifesta-
tions of the Risen One (I Corinthians 15:5). As if he foresaw our astonishment,
St. Ignatius briefly explained what he had in mind, in the Mysteria, about the
motive that determined him, in spite of the silence of the Gospel, to posit in
the first place this apparition to Our Lady: Licet non dicatur in Scriptura, hab-
etur pro dicto … quia Scriptura supponit nos habere intellectum, sicut scriptum
est: “Adhuc et vos sine intellectu estis?” “This, though it is not said in Scripture,
is included in saying that he appeared to so many others, because Scripture
supposes that we have intelligence, as it is written: ‘Are you without intelli-
gence?’”] (number 299).
By comparing this habere intellectum to the ut pie cogitatur meditando
that Ignatius employs in the similarly hypothetical apparition to Joseph of
Arimathea (De duodecima Apparitione, number 310), it is clear that Ignatius
does not mean there to base himself only, as here, on a pious exegesis. If we pay
attention to the reference to Matthew 15:16, that comes to re-enforce his for-
mula, we will be unable doubt that, under the appearance of a mere appeal to
the good sense of every Christian, Ignatius really invokes nothing less than the
intelligence of the becoming for freedom and faith, as it must exist in his dis-
ciples in the first place and even more so by reason of the familiarity acquired
with his method at the precise moment of this becoming to which they have
arrived. Thus, this explains why this spontaneous adhuc et vos flowed from
his pen.
By referring to the structure of the Exercises, which Ignatius thus indicates
to us as a criterion, let us therefore attempt to understand more deeply the
place he attributes to the Virgin at the dawn of this growing positing of Being.
Earlier, to clarify the significance of the Triduum Mortis, we indicated the
difference there is between the transition from the Third to the Fourth Week
and that from the first to the Second Week. Now we must insist on their close
similarity. The first of these two transitions took place, as we saw, when the
consciousness of this self alone, already informed about how nothingness can
be by the comparisons of the third point of the second exercise (number 58),
sin has grown to the point of making it realize the sense of Hell: the contri-
tion that then denies the false existence of sin makes it perceive correlatively
the call of Being “in the body of sin.” It is also in the solitude of Mary, “whose
grief and fatigue were so great” (number 208) out of her compassion for her
Son dead and descended into Hell, that in Ignatius’s view the inversion of the
movement is brought about that makes him appear at the end of the Triduum
Mortis, body and soul united again by the resurrection, to his blessed Mother,
bringing her intense joy about his great glory and joy (number 219). Accordingly,

via free access
on either side there is a passage from the negative to the positive, from extreme
sorrow that is infernal in some way to a no less great joy, authentically celestial.
Let us consider now more closely the ambiance in which this double pas-
sage occurs and the means Ignatius employs to describe in each instance the
movement produced and to engage his retreatant’s soul in it.
In the Meditatio de Inferno, the growth of sin down to the absolute of Hell,
leaving the field free to the call of Being, takes place completely in the sub-
jective consciousness, and Ignatius has recurred to the imagination to be the
instrument of this passage to the limit. To tell the truth, this exercise is the first
example of what he later calls applicatio sensuum imaginationis and prescribes
every day as the “fifth contemplation” (number 121) for each of the following
weeks. In the absence of perceiving this connection or at least of grasping its
exact value, more than one profane commentator has believed that St. Ignatius,
borrowing the material of his mediation on Hell from the medieval mysteries
and from preachers of his own times, also asked that his retreatant try to give
himself, so to speak, gooseflesh by the most frightening imaginations. This is to
completely miss the sense of this exercise and its author’s intention.6
On the contrary, specialists in ascetics have correctly seen that Ignatius’s
very frequent recourse to the imagination and his very concrete evocations are
always aimed not only at fixing this “mad one of the house,” the imagination,
but in placing consciousness in the best disposition to unite itself to God’s will
and to grasp its different motions. It has not escaped most of them that these
senses of the imagination are to be brought into connection with the spiritual
senses, ever not only exercised but also evoked by contemplative souls, the
theory of which was elaborated little by little in the Middle Ages, especially in
St. Bonaventure.7 But they seek much less to specify the relation of the ones
to the others than to separate the first from the second or to determine the
6 Indeed, what ought to strike us first in this meditation is the importance of the form—
distinction of the five senses—in relation to the matter and the matter’s sobriety. For each
sense, it is totally legitimate if three or four objects are designated, and moreover by a single
word, almost all taken from scripture, furthermore. It is difficult to be briefer. Even the “com-
position of place” however ritually devoted to deploying the imaginary, is satisfied here to
ask to see visu imaginationis longitudinem, latitudinem, et profundidatem inferni (no. 65). It
is impossible to wish for a more bare, “more intellectual” imagination. Besides, how can we
fail to see that this text refers implicitly first to St. Paul as asking the Ephesians to understand
what is the “breadth and length, the height and depth” of the love of Christ [Ephesians 3:18],
and there, through it, to the contemplatio ad Amorem.
7 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Le début d’une doctrine des cinq senses spirituels chez Origène,” Revue
d’ascétique et de mystique (1932): 113–45, and “La doctrine des sens spirituels au Moyen Âge et
en particular chez S. Bonaventure,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique (1933): 263–99.—See also
Joseph Maréchal, “Application des sens,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité.

via free access
140 Chapter 6
relation of the latter to the degree of prayer, active or infused. Thereby, getting
involved in purely theoretical questions that Ignatius nowhere envisaged, they
fail to draw from the Exercises’ own development all the light that shines from
it on this particularly difficult problem.
In seeking to investigate this subject and from the viewpoint of Ignatius’s
thinking, we will see illuminated at the same time the place that the resurrected
Christ’s apparition to the Virgin holds at the beginning of the Fourth Week.
If we refer to the structure of the Exercises, we believe that, it must be stated
for Ignatius that the imaginary senses set in motion by the meditation on Hell,
do not fundamentally differ from the spiritual senses, taken in the most mys-
tical acceptation of the term; and that the unfolding of the four weeks has
the goal of progressively awakening and educating the latter through and by
means of the former, in order to dispose the consciousness in which they
compenetrate each other to the most perfect unity with God—that very unity
described in the contemplatio ad Amorem, peak of the Exercises. In one sense,
we could say that in Ignatius’s view, the imaginary senses, even in the most car-
nal man, are spiritual senses, but whose orientation is perverted because they
are passive, not of Being, of God, but of Non-being, of Satan. The affirmation
appears paradoxical, but to justify it, it suffices to turn to the First of the Rules
for Discernment of Spirits for the First Week.
In illis qui eunt a peccato mortali in peccatum mortale, solet commu-

niter inimicus proponere eis delicias apparentes, efficiendo ut imagi-
nentur delectationes et voluptates sensuales … [In those persons who go
from mortal sin to mortal sin, the enemy is commonly used to propose
to them apparent pleasures, making them imagine sensual delights and
pleasures …] (number 314).
At this lowest state of the spiritual life, where the purgative way seizes the
carnal man, the Ignatian application of the senses in some manner finds its
perfect exemplar except reversed, in the dissolute person’s delectatio morosa.
This may already make us understand why, in the Second Week, Ignatius will
place this form of prayer at the end of the day, ante coenam, and why the 1599
Directory declares it extremely easy, valde facile (chapter 20, 1). Moreover, pre-
cisely because the imaginary and the spiritual are intimately mixed in sinful
pleasure, this mode of activity of consciousness must contain the pivot for the
redirection to be carried out at the end of the First Week and offer the most
efficacious means to effectuate this movement. The continuation of the rule
cited indicates this pivot very precisely:

via free access
In quibus personis bonus spiritus utitur modo contrario, pungendo illos

et remordendo illis conscientiam per synderisin rationis. [In these persons
the good spirit uses the opposite method, pricking them and biting their
consciences through the synderesis of reason] (number 314).
And these means are precisely those that are brought into play, when it ana-
lyzes this remorse of consciousness in function of the images peculiar to the
five senses in such a way as to make the sense of Hell present. We see that
Ignatius’s whole originality consists in taking as his foundation the inner atti-
tude that the sinner’s delectation implies and making shame arise in him in
the opposite direction, shame for what he has pursued until then, by using
as steps the traditional images of the pains of Hell. At the end of his ascent,
the carnal man achieves consciousness of the Non-being realized under sin’s
“apparent delights.” By the application of his “imaginary senses,” his spiritual
senses, up to then reduced and captive, begin to be set free and capable of
perceiving the call of Being.
This call henceforth comes to it, as we have seen, under the form of an image
of liberty, inviting it to reconquer the whole world beginning with himself. It’s
understood that Ignatius continues using the method that has just shown itself
so efficacious. But whereas the imaginary senses had until then no other object
than the remorse of a bad conscience, and their application no other end than
to make present the synderesis of reason at the root of the spiritual senses, the
first senses henceforth encounter an infinitely more rich matter because it has
as its substrate the human history of this image of liberty: the Mysteries of the
Life of Christ; whereas the second senses on the contrary at first find before
them only an open emptiness, wherein they have in every case to discover:
this sense of history before savoring it and taking it all in (Second Addition,
number 2). Before this new situation with its unprecedented difficulties and
notably its possibilities of illusions, Ignatius intended to face up to precisely by
sketching Rules for a Better Discernment of Spirits, More Adapted to the Second
Week and to the following weeks.
The rest of the Exercises must in fact strive, starting always from the imag-
inary senses and by leaning on them, for the awakening and the education
of the spiritual senses henceforth liberated. As these senses are the specific
organs of information and apprehension of the conscience that now wants
to follow the image of liberty, imitate it, and uniting itself to it, the final effi-
caciousness of the retreat depends of the success of such a culture. Let us be
content with indicating briefly how the three last weeks concur in this work,

via free access
142 Chapter 6
each in accord with its own tonality and according to its distinct function in
relation to the Election, knot of the entire process.
As the imaginary senses are exercised during the Second Week on the mys-
teries of the childhood and of the public life of Christ, their “application” must
then contribute to making present to the spiritual senses a twofold possibility:
first that very general one of a life oriented in the future in a direction diametri-
cally opposed to the one that the processus peccatorum vitae meae has revealed
in the past: then, the very precise one, of a concrete decision that objectively,
by consecrating such a change, should become the effective principle of this
quite new life.
Once this decision is taken, the imaginary senses are applied to the myster-
ies of the passion in order that the spiritual senses will realize that the exclu-
sion of inordinate tendencies, roots of my past sins, is the necessary condition
for this option to truly obtain its end: to conform my willing to the image of
freedom. The body of Christ in the tomb, his soul gone down to Hell and the
solitary compassion of Mary, those are the last images of this Third Week
where they will be able to take hold of exigencies pushed to the extreme and
of death to oneself as much through abnegation of all carnal desire as through
the radical abasement of all pride, as through the confident expectation, in
solitude and affliction, of the redemptive fruits of this annihilation.
Now, it should be easy to understand in all its extension and all its depth the
place that Mary holds at the turning point from the Third into the Fourth Week,
and why Ignatius, despite the gospel’s silence, has joined so intimately Christ’s
resurrection and the apparition to his Mother on the grounds only of the intel-
ligence of the becoming of freedom. In the representation of this becoming,
not only does Mary allow us to grasp how Divinity always remains equally united
to both Christ’s body separate from his soul and to this blessed soul descended
into Hell (number 219). But, at the same time, it is in the imagination of this
Mother of Christ image of freedom, that both the night of the imaginary senses
and the night of the spiritual senses is realized to the maximum. Also, it is in
and for her that her Son’s resurrection must begin to produce its fruits. When
Christ’s body, reduced to the state of hoc, is taken up again by his soul, ascend-
ing gloriously from the limbo of the most distant past, with the souls of the
just snatched from this non-sense, it is first for Mary, figure of the new human-
ity, that this reunion takes place in which the Presence of the most distant
future appears: dawn of the day when God will be all in all [I Corinthians 15:28].
Through the effect of this presence, it is also first in Mary, despite her mortal
body, that the triumph of Christ over death, “wages of sin,” is also manifested,

via free access
by inverting in it the relation of the imaginary senses and the spiritual senses.
Upon emerging from the double night in which they have all been buried, the
spiritual senses cease being dependent on the imaginary senses as they had
been until then. Having become immediately docile to Christ’s divine glory,
the spiritual senses rather dominate the imaginary senses, illuminate them,
sharpen them, and fortify them, as the Son’s soul does for his own body, by vir-
tue of the hypostatic union, as soon as it is rid of the shackles of the flesh of sin.
Such an inversion, which furthermore is not without its parallels in human

psychic life when left to its own powers,8 characterizes the unitive life, in con-
trast with either the purgative or illuminative life. Given the love that joins
Mother to Son, there is no doubt that at the moment of the resurrection, this
life has attained in it perfect fullness. We could undoubtedly say that the “spir-
itual body” of Mary has henceforth finished its growth. If it does not mani-
fest itself by miraculous effects like her Son’s, it is that Mary must continue to
belong to the natural and historical order of humanity in order to guarantee
Christ’s human origins and to witness the authenticity of the incarnation for
the first Christian generation. It is also in order to watch over the destinies of
the church still to be born, by being the soul and center of the little “upper
chamber where they [the disciples] were ordinarily abiding” [Acts 1:13]. But
when the Spirit, descended through her upon the first apostles, will have given
them the power also of giving birth to the word of salvation to them too, she
will be able to sleep in the peace of the just; and shortly thereafter nothing will
oppose her rejoining her Son, body and soul united in the miracle of her glori-
ous assumption, the first fruits of the risen humanity.
8 In relation to the animal’s sensitive life, do not intellectual life and moral life already imply a
domination of the imagination by the spirit? But esthetic life certainly offers the best analogy
of this inversion. Let us reflect upon the purifying asceticism demanded by mastery in any art
and in the enriching culture through which the artist must furthermore educate and refine
his taste before genuinely becoming a creator. And he only becomes an artist in the measure
in which, under the influence of a concrete inspiration that he can prepare himself to receive
but not give himself, he succeeds in conquering the obscurity and the weight of matter to the
point of making the idea perceptible in stone or marble, in sounds, colors, or words. What
directs the creation then are its “spiritual senses”—that of rhythm, of life, of expression, in
short of beauty—that transmit their orders to the “imaginary senses” obtaining and guiding
by their intermediary the reflexes of the organs in immediate contact with the matter to be
informed. The work of art in its turn is born in this way and becomes the source of aesthetic
emotion and culture, even of dreams of the primordial paradise, for the “imaginary senses”
and “spiritual senses” of others too, but according to an inverse relation to that of which it is
the fruit.

via free access
144 Chapter 6
If the witnesses of the last period of Mary’s life have only held onto her
“perseverance in prayer amid unanimous disciples” (Acts 1:14), would not the
reason be precisely that the very nature of this prayer, and in particular of its
perseverance, placed her above the fluctuations and variations that might have
betrayed her in the eyes of others? The mystics agree in affirming that the high-
est degrees of union no longer involve the ecstasies, ravishments, and other
marvelous manifestations by which the divine undertaking is marked in its
lower degrees.
The same goes for Mary; however intimate and continuous Christ’s presence
in her heart was, she lacked the externals, the discontinuity, and in general
all the affective and sensible obstacles that a still carnal soul may present. So
much so that in contrast with the apparitions of the resurrected one to the dis-
ciples, this presence could not re-enter the order of observation and reporting.
Withdrawn from the historical order by its very pre-eminence, Mary’s union
to Christ, like the Assumption, nonetheless, belongs to the “true and very holy
effects of the Resurrection.”
But precisely the truest and holiest of these effects does not reveal itself to
the Christian consciousness as immediately as the more miraculous ones. If in
the becoming proper to each believer’s faith, during the illuminative life, the
spiritual senses remain dependent on the imaginary senses, themselves nour-
ished only be testimonies of the human, historical order, before their relation
is inverted in the unitive way, just as in the becoming faith in the church, it
was not in the early times that the church distinguished Mary’s singular role in
the work of our redemption and clearly understood that, if the Virgin without
sin did not undergo the pains of childbirth in bringing Christ into the world,
she knew them, on the contrary, as Co-Redemptrix in the birth of humanity to
grace. Many centuries were needed still for the church to discern with some
precision the diverse privileges attached to this double maternity, and for the
church to organize them in a body of doctrine, and finally proclaim them as
very holy truths belonging to the deposit of revelation, however tenuous the
historical foundation they may have had in scripture.9
9 Even if, as in the case of the Assumption, such a foundation is completely missing. Shifted
onto the social level where the church’s consciousness develops, the relation of “spiritual
senses” to “imaginary senses” that the Exercises imply could thus perhaps explain the defin-
ability of this dogma that was not only a scandal for Protestants but also raises some new
problems for classical theology (cf. H. Rondet, “La definibilité de l’assomption,” Bulletin de
la Societé française d’Études mariales [1949]: 59–95).—The development of Marian theology,
whose fruit is the definition of the encyclical Munificentissimus Deus, thus appears a particu-
larly clear manifestation of ecclesial consciousness’s unitive life.

via free access
Apart from all rational inquiry, Ignatius takes his place in this great cur-
rent of Christian consciousness by proposing at the beginning of the Fourth
Week, the presence of the resurrected Christ to Mary as the first apparition.
Scripture does not say so; but it is sufficient to have the spiritual senses sharp-
ened enough or to have the intelligence of faith’s coming to be, to be assured
that in this instant Mary becomes the perfect exemplar and the accomplished
model not only of properly contemplative souls, but of those who want “to
soldier under the standard of the Cross” to conquer the world, and themselves
first, for the Freedom of God. In Ignatius’s view, the point is much less to posit
the temporal priority of this apparition than its primacy in the supernatural
order and so to speak its categorial value in relation to all other apparitions by
means of which the growth of the positing of Being is pursued.
Accordingly, its affirmation does not oppose the priority in social and histor-
ical order that Paul attributes to Christ’s apparition to Peter. For, what concerns
the apostle of the gentiles at that point is to acknowledge that the eminent
place of the Chief of the Apostles is confirmed in this way. No more than Paul
intends thereby to deny Mary’s role as mediatrix of all grace, Ignatius for his
part, does not intend to undervalue Peter’s primacy by placing this apparition
to him in the fourth place. Not only after the first to Mary, but after a second
and third to the holy women (numbers 301–302).
By thus lining up these apparitions immediately after the apparition to
Mary, it is possible that Ignatius was still guided by the desire to insist on the
feminine attitude that is, becoming more especially to the soul in the uni-
tive way characteristic of the Fourth Week. But it would be vain to seek a
particular intention in the order then adopted for the Mysteria. Excepting of
course of the apparition to Paul (number 311), that the strictly historical order
indicated in the Novissimo visus est mihi, [“last of all … he was seen by me”]
(I Corinthians 15:8)—and above all of the universal apostolic value of Saul’s
conversion reserved for last place; Ignatius is satisfied with maintaining the
principal manifestations mentioned by Scripture, classifying them according
to a more or less arbitrary order, but whose sense, however, is to show the pro-
gressive extension of Christ’s kingdom.
Nothing is more logical: after the Being of freedom is posited for human-
ity without sin, it posits itself for those who have sinned in the measure in
which they have participated in his Passion and must collaborate in insuring
its empire’s universality.
In the soul that consents to the crucifying conditions of the election, the
feeling of reconciliation, of resurrection after death, also gains from one to

via free access
146 Chapter 6
the next: first manifesting itself at the points most affected by the murder-
ous excision, then extending itself little by little to other points so as to invade
everything.
This progressive invasion is not the only characteristic of this growth of the
Being of freedom. More striking yet is the manner of its apparition: essentially
discontinuous, variable, and independent of all conditions of space and time.
Isn’t an essential property of freedom not to be determined by anything out-
side of it? Also, in the face of nature’s determinism, freedom must appear as a
discontinuous insertion.
The first moment has already made us assist at an apparition of freedom,
presenting the same characteristics; but then it was freedom’s Non-being that
manifested itself in different sins. In ours, the Adamic sin is realized; like that,
the resurrected Christ appears in the different joys that follow our partial
deaths.
As in the third moment, the concrete detail of this growth must be sub-
sumed under categories, special points that make its relation to freedom stand
out. In the Third Week three of them were necessary to express dialectically
the relation of negation that was acting then with Freedom. In the fourth
moment, since there is no longer any negation to be overcome in order to dis-
cover freedom, since, to the contrary, freedom makes itself visible, two will
suffice to bring back concrete details either to the objective being or to the sub-
jective being of this manifested freedom.
1. Objective being—These are the properties of the resurrected body ana-

lyzed above. Quomodo Divinitas, quae videbatur se abscondere in Passione,
apparet et ostendit se nunc tam miraculose, in sanctissima Resurrectione,
per veros et sanctissimos effectus. [“How the Divinity, which seemed to
hide Itself in the Passion, now appears and shows itself so marvel-
ously in the most holy Resurrection by its true and most holy effects”]
(number 223).
2. Subjective being—Speculari officium consolandi quod Christus exer-
cet … [“to consider the office of consoling which Christ our Lord bears”]
(number 224). In the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, Ignatius gave
the complete definition of consolation: Augmentum fidei, spei, et carita-
tis, [“increase of faith, hope, and charity”] (number 316).
Since, after the fourth moment, a special contemplation is again devoted

to charity, and, moreover, since, on the other hand, faith is what had to be

via free access
exercised in the two previous moments, it is evident that this last moment is
consecrated, as we have already deduced it, to a cultivation of hope.
Indeed, if faith is the “substance of things we hope for,” can it not be said
that hope is the “phenomenon of things that we believe”? For sacrifice, which
is essential to the free act, to be possible, it is necessary that the final and
definitive union of virtue and of happiness, of the moral good and of the sen-
sible good, of what ought-to-be and of Being that is and is not, of Being and
of Non-being, should not be only an ideal situated at the infinite, but an ideal
present in the hic et nunc. If it were situated only at the end of indefinite prog-
ress, it would be strictly unattainable for the finite being, which is moved in
the representation. If it were present as the things that we see, we would no
longer have to hope, for “we do not hope for what we see.” Therefore, hope is
the union of these two elements.10 Because it represents what was still inner
and invisible to faith, it increases faith, it perfects faith in some way. And, on
the other hand, because hope leaves its character of ideal, of future to this
present, it inaugurates the kingdom of charity, by preparing the coming of the
spirit of love. Mediatrix.
Augmentum fidei: Since hope is born of a certain reflection of faith upon

itself, the presence it obtains—as is the fact for all reflection—is not that of
an object, but that of a subject. It does not make the object of faith perceived,
which would suppress it, transforming it into an object of science. But it hands
over to us the subject of faith, that is to say what is the bond, the soul of the
objective affirmations of faith. This bond is the risen body of Christ.
To believe, to think, and to affirm a dogma (for example, humanity is
redeemed by Christ’s death), is, to establish the “is” in this judgement or the
negation of sin in humankind—to make an inner call, a borrowing of strength
so to speak, from the double movement by which freedom determines itself
(God incarnates himself, Being becomes image) and by the negation of his
determination (death of Christ) appears as the absolute negation of Non-being
in humanity. It is to make one’s own this movement, at once the historical fact
and the concrete universal truth. Since Christ is in the Universe the one in
quo omnia constant, [“in whom all things consist”] (Colossians 1:17), his resur-
rected body in our representation is the knot of all dogmatic predicates, the
self of all the images where our self objectifies itself purely. For that is why
10 “Hope is a faith in the future as faith is, so to speak, a hope in the past. Because to believe
is to hope that the past, as it is reported, is true” Leibniz, Oeuvres, Editions Foucher de
Careil, 7:29.

via free access
148 Chapter 6
Paul writes: Si Christus non resurrexit, inanis est et praedicatio … et fides. [“If
Christ has not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also …”]
(I Corinthians 15:14). Vain, not only in the sense that there would not in fact
be resurrection of the dead on the last day, but in the vain at present, that is to
say without real content, so much so that our “predicates” are only flatus vocis,
or as Paul says, aes sonans et cymbalum tinniens, [“sounding brass, or a clang-
ing cymbal”] (I Corinthians 13:1): hollow words to which the being of the Spirit
provides neither support, nor matter. But since Christ is risen, therefore not
only will we rise, but also we are resurrected presently; because, in the measure
in which we strip off the old man, we “put on the new man … the Lord Jesus
Christ” (Colossians 3:10, Romans 13:14).
Augmentum spei: Hope makes us touch, not see, the reality of what we
believe: the resurrected body of Christ. Although we never touch more than
his wounds—although sensible consolation never appears except on the edge
of a scar, when the break of negation is still fresh—it is enough for his action
to make itself felt upon our whole affective life that it stabilizes in some way
in a first possession of self. The fullness of immortality that hope hides makes
disappear the unease and the sadness that sin has introduced into the soul and
installs peace and joy in it. Concupiscence has scattered the soul and tore it
apart. Suffering mutilates it and beats it down. On the contrary, the risen body
presents it with the essence of all the things in which it seeks itself, its self, and
at the same stroke eclipses all the ghosts of being; and it discloses to it this self
as the unity and plenitude of all the “selves,” so that the soul, which during its
passion felt itself veluti separatam a Creatore ac Domino suo, (number 317) [“as
if separated from its creator and lord,”] now experiences a peace and tranquil-
ity, a laetitiam internam, that lifts it above all earthly things that it no longer
loves in se ipsis, sed in creatore, “in themselves, but in the creator” (number 316).
Augmentum caritatis: The result of this presence is to ignite the soul with
love, incipit inflamari anima in amore sui creatoris (number 316). The ideal no
longer acts, as it did in faith, by the intermediary of a representation, but now
directly by affecting the will. The taste, the fruitio [enjoyment], that is at the
foundation of hope, becomes the basis of a desire, of a new concupiscence in
the direction opposite to the old concupiscence, but that has the same charac-
teristics. It attracts and calls the soul without its own cooperation: motio inte-
rior … quae vocat et attrahit ad res coelestes (number 316). Indeed, if the soul
already enjoys a presence it is only the presence of a future. The immortal is in
front of it, in it, but the it is not in the immortal. The soul still only loves with a
love of concupiscence that a final reflection must purify.

via free access
3 The Disappearance of the Positing of Being: Ascension
The Risen Jesus is the presence among us of the future resurrection.

Therefore, there is a distance between the resurrection of the Christ—
future who is present enough for us in Jesus for us to desire it—and the
Parousia—total presence that appears only under the characteristics of
the future. And this distance is necessary, for, on the one hand, the future
cannot not be desired by us, and, on the other, it cannot submit itself to
our desire; otherwise it would be proportionate to us, limited. Jesus, then,
disappears from our eyes, because he does not want our presence to lin-
ger at his sensible aspect, but equally because our hope can be content
only with the Infinite and because in a sense it pushes the resurrected
Christ back into the authentic infinite of heaven.
It is the intrinsic insufficiency of hope, which brings back its own negation and
closes the dialectic by an appeal to love.
Whatever the growth of the Being of freedom may be in the course of the
Fourth Moment, it is still the case that this Being remains always a Being pos-
ited in representation: phenomenon of freedom absolutely veridical and trans-
parent, but simply phenomenon that makes its substance to be desired. To be
sure, this Being manifests that it is in itself victorious over Non-being, which it
does not abolish but preserves as a scar that testifies to its origin and its strug-
gles. But this in itself is what is not yet for us: that is to say, the Being that posits
itself in the Fourth Moment still remains a momentary being, summing up
what is true in itself, both the past over which it is victorious and all the future
of which it is the promise, but in spite of everything placed on the same rank as
the other moments of the dialectic and participating with them in Non-being,
particularly in the becoming that is inherent in representation. Although this
Non-being no longer has anything positive in itself, since sin and pain are
definitively eliminated, it still remains no less the case that the lack of fullness
of positive Being is the cause of a desire, of a concupiscence. In the momentary
presence of the future, this future itself is missing, where there will no longer
be distinction between past, present, and future, but where Being will be in a
pure and total present. This distance is properly the one that separates becom-
ing at its highest point, the representation in its most perfect expression, Being
as such. This distance is what a dialectic of representation must surmount in
some way, if our representation is really not an illusion, and if the whole way
traversed so far has a sense. The last step, but more unsurmountable than any
other, since, on the one hand, if the future really and totally becomes pres-
ent, it negates itself as future, and on the other hand, if this future remains

via free access
150 Chapter 6
definitively and necessarily future, the presence that it acquires in the Fourth
Moment remains deceitful.
Paradox of hope: How would it ever keep the promise that is, however, its
very essence?—If Hope aspires to fulfill the promise by really making the
future present, it thereby proves that it was not real presence of the abso-
lute future (but simply of a relative future). If, on the contrary, hope leaves the
future to the inaccessible summit of an indefinite progress, it denies the truth
of the promise it contains.
How can this paradox be resolved? How can the Non-being essential to the
representation be excluded without denying the representation’s reality? How
can the truth of the representation be affirmed and make Being appear in the
Non-being without lowering it by the very fact? All roads are cut off: to decide
oneself for the present, is to abandon the future as a mirage—to decide oneself
for future is to deny the truth of the present.
Let us see how dialectics resolves this problem. To tell the truth it does not
resolve the problem … That a dialectic of Freedom should produce Freedom,
that necessity should engender Freedom, and becoming engender Being,
would be the very negation of its essence. Consequently, it does not posit
being, but it disposes the elements of becoming and of necessity in such a way
as to leave freedom room in which it can posit itself—and that, according to
its habitual rhythm, not by opting for one of the opposites, but by reaffirming
them in their very opposition, in such a way as to appeal to the ultimate and
total reflection that must unite them.
The movement of concupiscence, of the new just as of the old, is to throw
itself directly upon its object as upon a prey, persuaded that, if it seizes the
object, it will be satiated. This is Magdalen’s spontaneous gesture, she who
extends her hands toward her master … It is the more reflective thought of
the apostles, who, finding their leader more glorious and powerful than ever,
see their dreams resuscitate … It is the unfailing tendency of the soul lured by
sensible consolation. Having tasted in the instant true freedom, the soul desire
nothing more than the duration and extension of this consolation to the limit
of the little world for which the soul has sacrificed itself.
At first sight, there is nothing impossible in this desire. The sacrifice that it
has made at the end of the second moment did not have the appearances of
an option between evil and good, but between less good and better. Between
the carnal and spiritual aspect of the kingdom of Israel, the soul has chosen
the spiritual aspect. But what is it that keeps everything good in the carnal
aspect from coming to be added to the spiritual aspect? Between less good and
better, there is no irreducible opposition but a finite momentary void to be

via free access
filled. Since the king has clearly manifested himself first, there remains only a
question of having him acknowledged by the different members of the com-
munity. Since the apparition of freedom is real and perceptible, and since, in
time, it is developed and grows, we therefore have a question of more or less,
a question of time. Domine, si in tempore hoc … And by acting thus, concupis-
cence only follows a movement that does not come from it. Is not the Being in
which it already delights the pledge, the promise, of what it desires? Is it not
he who speaks of an approaching accomplishment of the promise? Praecepit
eis ab Ieroslymis non discederent, sed expectarent promissionem Patris … non
post multos hos dies. [“He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but
to wait for the promise of the Father … not many days hence”] (Acts 1:4–5).
Concupiscence does not imagine that fulfilment that must leave nothing more
to be desired will come from itself.
Accordingly, hope inevitably provokes the dream of a messianic kingdom
of Israel, of a “heaven on earth,” of a future that would be present in the man-
ner of an actual, sensible present of things. But it is in order that concupis-
cence remake here in the state of grace, the experience it made formerly in the
state of sin: in the measure in which it unites itself to its object, it destroys it,
and destroying it, it feels more the void hollowed out at the core of its desire.
The scholar, in the measure in which his intelligence pursues being, sees it
disappear in order that the consciousness of his essential ignorance should
become concrete wisdom. The same goes for the soul here. It does not destroy
its object, because it is indestructible, but the more it tends toward the object,
the more it regresses, and as this regards the human soul and the divine object,
at the first stroke, the object escapes to the infinite …
Magdalen’s gesture, the apostles’ question, the soul’s concupiscence, are all
undertakings of Non-being upon Being that call forth their negation.
Noli me tangere; nondum ascendi ad Patrem. [“Touch me not; for I am not yet
ascended unto the Father”] (John 20:17). As if you ought not to understand him:
it is when you will have lost the hope of touching me that you will embrace me.
Non est vestrum nosse tempora vel momenta, quae Pater posuit … [“It is
not for you to know the time or the moment, which the Father has posited”]
(Acts 1:7). As if you should know know that time has nothing to do with the
issue and that the kingdom of your dreams will build itself up when you will
no longer dream about it!
And the concupiscence of the soul sees itself sent back to the concrete, to
the present that continues to flow in spite of the desires that would like to stop
it. Quid statis aspicientes in coelum? [“Why do you stand staring into heaven?”]
(Acts 1:11).

via free access
152 Chapter 6
At the very moment where the sensible effects of consolation risk changing
the idea of the true nature of Freedom, the dialectic makes them disappear.
At the very moment when the sensible effects of consolation risk putting
us on the wrong scent about the true nature of freedom, the dialectic makes
them disappear.
Therefore, Christ rises then back to heaven, towards his Father … He lifts
himself by himself, as Son of God, drawing us along with him. But as Son of
Man, he lifts himself also pursued, swept away, by surge of human concupis-
cence, which, captive of its representation, develops to the infinite the image
of his kingdom of Israel. He brings and is brought along by those whom he
leads away. Quodam enim mysterio, dum Filius Dei filium hominis sustulit ad coe-
lum, ipsa captivitas portatur et portat. [“With a certain mystery, while the Son
of God bears the son of man to heaven, captivity itself is borne and bears”] (St.
Maxim, Homily 43, 2 for Pentecost, Morning).
The pledge of hope, at the moment of its fulfilling, flees away to the ends of
space and time. He who must be the end, finds himself extended so far that he
returns to his principle, to the Father. End and origin coincide for the represen-
tation, which closes itself in some manner.
And far from losing its value in its movement, hope gains it. First, hope keeps
what is essential of the lost presence: Ecce ego vobiscum sum usque ad consum-
mationem saeculi. [“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”]
(Matthew 27:20). To be sure, this presence is definitively invisible in compari-
son with the sensible that has disappeared, and yet is objective. The Self that
manifested itself as self, even if he disappears afterwards forever, benefits by an
eternal presence.—But above all, the promise of a definitive union of the ideal
and the real that hope contained finds itself expanded to the infinite. Now
that our hope rests in heaven, at the extreme limit of space and time, what it
embraces is no longer only the kingdom of Israel but the kingdom of God. The
void over which it throws a bridge of salvation is no longer what separates the
better from the less good, but the better from the perfect.
Lastly, the proof that hope instead of destroying itself, stabilizes itself and
finishes itself, is that in seeing its pledge flee to the infinite, hope accompa-
nies it and surpasses this limit with it, receiving through the mediation of
the angels, that is to say of the spirit that objectifies itself at the limit of our
spirit, the assurance of a return, of a Parousia: the future, the-is-yet-to-come,
although expanded to the infinite, always remains a real yet to come; It will
come. Therefore, our hope is something completely different than a mirage
that makes an indefinite progress possible.—And on the other hand, this
future will not be this or that future, this or that kingdom of Israel, but that

via free access
which is to come, identical to the beginning, seated at the right hand of the
Father, and who then, after having destroyed all Non-being and having reca-
pitulated in itself all Being, will offer Himself in an eternal present, in order
that God may be all in all.
Just as at the end of the second moment, faith reflected and duplicated itself
to let hope appear, hope in its turn sees objectifying itself and distinguishing
themselves the two elements that compose it: Presence of the Future; it first
affirmed itself presence, by the confidence maintained in the essential union
with Christ and by the anticipated return of what Faith has lost,—then of
the future, by allowing the element of the sensible that it contained to disap-
pear forever.
The ascension splits up hope in order to open it to the measure of the pres-
ence that must reveal itself precisely in it.

via free access
Conclusion
The Contemplatio Ad Amorem Obtinendum
The four weeks of the Exercises then are thus constructed and correctly mea-
sured. But something would be missing if they were not framed. Indeed the
representation has the result of making indefinite what is of itself finite, fin-
ished. In itself the act of freedom is identical to the perfect beyond any division
of time and space. Now, our representation breaks up into bits and spreads
out its perfection into successive moments. In order to correct this indefinite-
ness as much as possible, it is necessary to determine an initial point and a
final point.
The initial point should be any one at all. Let it be point zero, the geome-
trician says, and everyone agrees … Likewise, here it is necessary that this
entrance to the representation require nothing beyond the good will of being
present at the spectacle and also the capacity to understand the action that is
going to make present to the spectator its own image. Such is the Foundation,
a simple exposition of the most general conditions of the free act.
But, just as the initial point must be tame, neutral, indifferent, so also the
final point must be unique, full, and in some manner absolute. For, after hav-
ing traversed the stages of its representation, freedom must still effectuate the
last reflection that is definitively going to empty everything representational in
order to enter into the pure and inexpressible possession of the self that is the
whole. Such is the Contemplatio ad Amorem obtinendum.
Without doubt, as the history of the genesis of the Exercises and the very
terms of this contemplation bear witness, it does not belong to the primitive
core composed at Manresa, In it, quite as much as in the Foundation, the influ-
ence of scholasticism is noticeable. But it is all the more interesting to observe
how Ignatius, always faithful to his dialectic and to the medium of the divi-
sions themselves, inserts tradition into his personal analysis and thereby com-
municates new life to it.
Two observations precede the body of the exercise. Both one and the other
seek to specify the special nuance that love takes on for someone who has
posed the problem to himself: how do I unite my freedom to God’s? Ignatius
first says: Amor debet poni magis in operibus quam in verbis. [“Love ought to be
put more in deeds than in words”] (number 230). This literally recalls St. John’s
exhortation: Non diligamus verbo neque lingua sed opere et veritate. [“Let us

via free access
The Contemplatio Ad Amorem Obtinendum 155
love not in word, neither with the tongue; but in deed and truth”] (I John 3:18).
This expression places the accent on active love directed to the future with an
eye toward a conquering “service,” rather than on the love of union and con-
templation, enjoying the Presence and being satisfied with expressing it.
The second observation means to define love; and again, in this regard,
instead of being satisfied with an academic definition such as “virtue that
unites the soul to God” or “benevolence of the beloved for the lover,” Ignatius
immediately grasps and expresses that the essential thing here is the existen-
tial relation of reciprocity: Amor consistit in communicatione ab utraque parte.
[“Love consists in communication from each.”] He begins by developing the
dialectical movement of this formula: ut det et communicat amans amato … et
sic vicissim amatus amanti, [“in the lover’s giving and communicating to the
beloved … and thus reciprocally by the one loved to the one loving,”] by speci-
fying that the exchange ought to bear not only upon having, but also, since it
is the exchange of two freedoms, upon power: ea quae habet, vel ex iis quae
habet vel potest, [“what he has or out of what he has or can”]. Developed in
this way, Ignatius is not afraid to take it up once more, by mentioning by way
of example, scientiam … honores … divitias, [“knowledge … honors … riches”]
(number 231). Is the list set up randomly? Or rather by thus giving knowledge
first place among the good things that love desires to communicate, would not
Ignatius’s voluntarism reveal itself to be tempered by a sound intellectualism
and drawn from the best sources? To be sure of this, it is enough to observe
that this list takes up in reverse order the degrees of retia et catenas, [“nets and
chains”] (number 142) against which the Two Standards wanted to put us on
guard before the Election. And we should also observe that for Ignatius “sci-
ence,” substituted here for pride, is above all knowledge of the Thou in which
consists eternal life (John 17:3), the specific remedy for the radical pride that is
the fruit of “the tree of knowledge” (number 51).
After these two Observations and the usual preparatory prayer, the First
Prelude fixes as “the composition of place” for this contemplation nothing
less than the whole Mystical body: vide me coram Deo Domino nostro, Angelis
et Sanctis, [“to see myself before God our Lord, the Angels, and the Saints,”]
whose members present themselves as witnesses and mediating agents inter-
pellantibus pro me, [“interceding for me,”]1 of the total reciprocity that I want to
1 It should be noted that the same composition of place seems later to have become, so to
speak, the usual background for Ignatius’s prayers. In his study “Saint Ignatius, mystique
d’après son Journal Spirituel,” Fr. Joseph J. de Guibert points out “the scenario in which the
Most Holy Trinity dominates everything and appears as the center of everything. In the

via free access
156 Conclusion
obtain. Next, the Second Prelude reveals the first condition of this unreserved
communication and makes it the object of a prayer: petere cognitionem inter-
nam tot ac tantorum bonorum acceptorum ut ego integre recognoscens, possim
in omnibus amare et servire divinae suae Majestati, [“to ask for interior knowl-
edge of so great and so many goods received, in order that, being entirely grate-
ful, I may be able in all to love and serve his Divine Majesty”] (number 233).
In this cognition, which calls for recognition, we again see the case Ignatius
makes for intelligence precisely to ground the reciprocity of love; but at the
same time his care to note that this movement of return, as affective as intel-
lectual, must be unimpaired and tend toward a love of service, shows to what
extend the always remains in the line of an existential analysis of the free act.
It is not evident that this analysis, after having governed the plan of the
Exercises’ whole organization, continues to hold in this contemplation that
must crown the Exercises, in as much as its content at first sight seems differ-
ent from what the Exercises have offered us so far. However, the more we look
closely at the text, various indications lead us to suspect a deep analogy under
the genuine differences. In the end, we come to wonder whether the book’s
general structure is not reflected exactly in its conclusion determining not only
its division into four points, but the detail of their expression, to the point of
effecting between them and the four weeks a piece-by-piece correspondence.
Because the correspondence is hidden under opposite appearances, it has
escaped the majority of commentators so far, not to say all of them. And even
after it has been uncovered, we find ourselves doubting it, so unusual is the
power of analysis and synthesis that it supposes in someone who has realized
it, probably without thinking about it … However that may be, the texts are
there. And even if our interpretation were to be disputed, indeed ultimately
rejected, we would not regret having proposed it, in that it offers us material
for reflection.
In order to prepare ourselves to perceive this singular correspondence, it
is first necessary to turn our attention to a fact that initially seems to have no
importance but is undeniable, something, moreover, astonishing if we recall
thanksgiving of March 3, Christ’s humanity and with it the Most Holy Virgin and the saints
appear or make themselves felt in Ignatius’s soul, but always as mediators and intercessors,
having the essential role of leading him to the Trinity and of winning its benevolence toward
him, and of obtaining for him the pardon of the Divine Persons; the two words intercessors
and especially mediators receive many times in these notes” (off-print, 39–40 of an article in
Revue d’ascétique et mystique 19 [1938]: 3–22 and 113–40. The passage is reproduced in Guibert
La spiritualité de la Compagnie de Jésus. Esquisse historique, Rome: Institutum Historicum
Societatis Jesu, 1935, 35).

via free access
the point of departure of our analysis, and that can, in the light of this com-
parison furnish a particularly suggestive and revealing base for our hypothesis.
Therefore, let us represent Ignatius at the moment when, enriched by

his university years, he hastens to order the abundant abstract material that
was almost unknown to him and from which he is going to draw the most
speculative “exercise”2 of his little book, with a view to initiating us into the
highest contemplation, that of the Divine Being, one and three, beyond all rep-
resentation. And let us ask ourselves from where he is going to obtain the prin-
ciple that will enable him to insert the scholastic tradition into his spiritual
experience without reciprocal conflict or even dissonance. The commentators
are unanimous on this point, for Ignatius himself indicated the answer in his
Suscipe: memory, intelligence, and will. These three faculties so often evoked
in the course of the Exercises here again furnish him with the principle neces-
sary to order and divide the whole matter of this contemplation.3 Nothing is
less doubtful. Except that the principle of division gives rise to four points …
2 In truth, the only speculative exercise, since strictly speaking the Foundation is not one.
3 We might be tempted to find this principle of division in the General Examen’s phrase
where Ignatius notes: Perfecti … considerant, meditantur, et contemplantur magis, esse Deum
Dominum nostrum in unaquaque creatura, secundum suam propriam essentiam, praesentiam,
et potentiam. [“The perfect … consider, meditate, and contemplate more that God is in every
creature, according to his own essence, presence, and power”] (no. 39). Notably, this is what
Fr. de Ponlevoy does (Commentaire sur les Exercises spiritueles de saint Ignace [Évreux, 1899],
355). Except that without further ado, he considers that “the first point belongs to a differ-
ent order” (345), then changes the order of the text to make it fit with the Contemplation
ad Amorem. He says: “From there,[we get] three points of view, presence, power, and divine
essence” (Commentaire, 355). The setting aside and the change of order do not seem to fit
into the Ignatian spiritual practices. There is not the slightest doubt that the expression of no.
39 is of Scholastic origin. It enters into the very title of Summa theologiae, part 1, question 8,
article 3 of St. Thomas, who refers it to St. Gregory. In any case, the explanation he gives of it
does not favor Fr. de Ponlevoy’s hypothesis: Deus, St. Thomas says, est in omnibus per poten-
tiam, in quantum omnia ejus potestati subduntur. Est in omnibus per praesentiam, in quantum
omnia nuda est aperta sunt oculis ejus. Est in omnibus per essentiam, in quantum adest omnibus
ut causa essendi. The praesentia defined here is consequently completely different from the
habitat in St. Ignatius’s second point. The same goes for the potentia that operatur et laborat
of the third point. Only essentia can be approximated not to the fourth but to the first point.
From another point of view, it is true, one could maintain that in Ignatius’s eyes, this division
would be of the same kind as that of the three powers: essentia would relate to memoria, as
praesentia to intellectus and potentia to voluntas. In his Theologie der Exerzitien, Fr. Erich
Przywara made this connection (cf. 1:176, note, and 180n4). Next, following St. Augustine,
interpreting memory, intelligence, and will as imago Trinitatis, he very clearly demonstrated
the central place that this dogma has in the structure of the Exercises (cf. 3:383, 391, and 404
notes). But neither on the occasion of his commentary upon number 39 nor on the tenth
annotation, nor even when he comments that “die materiale ‘imago Trinitatis’ sich ausreift

via free access
158 Conclusion
Accordingly, considering the scheme of this last exercise, we again find the
relation that from the outset provoked our reflection in regard to the division
of three ways and four weeks, so that again we may ask, how can three be
superimposed upon four? Let us admit that such an approximation between
the general scheme of the Exercises and that of their conclusion may be purely
fortuitous and that this question, like the one Ignatius posed to himself on
the subject of his four prayers to the Trinity, ought to cause us “little or no
trouble, since it was of little importance.”4 It still invites us to look closely at the
sequence of points of this contemplation and the text of each of them. And if
such attention leads us to recognize with what great rigor the overall structure
controls this sequence and to reflect upon it, we will not have to lament the
insignificance of our point of departure, since it will have allowed us to pen-
etrate the Ignatian dialectic better.
1 First Point
First of all, Ignatius asks memory to recapitulate the benefits received by reas-
sembling them in a double contrasting perspective: those that involve univer-
sal history and are common to all human beings, creation and redemption, and
those, by contrast, that involve my individual history and are particular gifts,
dona particularia, for me. Among the latter and in the forefront are evidently
included the sins of which the First Week has purified me and about which
St. Augustine, commenting on St. Paul, said that they also “turn to the good of
those who love God.” In this regard, how will we not remember that the second
exercise of this First Week had required me trahere in memoriam omnia peccata
vitae meae, [“to bring to memory all the sins of my life”] (number 56), and that
one of its fruits had already been “to have me give thanks to God our Lord for
having kept me alive up to now” (number 61), that is to say, in a condition such
that the transformation of evil into good, of my sin into a gift of God, an object
of gratitude, could be effectuated? Even more, as if this resemblance between
beginning and end were not sufficient, we see that Ignatius now recurs to the
same means in order to make be carry out a similar transition.
Indeed, as soon as this synthesis of God’s blessings that are quantitative in
some way is realized, Ignatius proposes that I appreciate its quality, ponderando
in den inhaltlichen vier Punkte der Uebung von der Liebe” (3:383 note), did he wonder why
a triadic principle could have given birth to a quadruple division, nor how to make the latter
coincide with the former.
4 Ignatius of Loyola, Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 29, 36.

via free access
multum cum affectu, [“pondering with much affection this whole and its ele-
ments”]. It is exactly as in the First Week when, after the processus pecatorum,
I had to ponderare peccata, inspiciendo foeditatem et malitiam, [“ponder the
sins, looking at foulness and malice”] (number 57). At that time, by a series of
comparisons of a material and quasi-spatial nature, all men—all the Angels
and Saints—all the creatures before God—I was invited to “look at who I am,
lessening myself” and “to look at myself as a sore and ulcer” (number 58). Now,
by contrast, to appreciate the quality of God’s gifts Ignatius has recourse to
two relations of a temporal kind in which precisely the fundamental division
of the Exercises is reflected: first, comes the Before or the Past, quantum fecerit
Deus Dominus noster pro me, et quantum mihi dederit ex iis quae habet, [“how
much God Our Lord has done for me, and how much he has given me of what
he has”] (number 234); then the after or the future, et consequenter quantum
Dominus desideret dare seipsum mihi in quantum potest, [“then the same Lord
desires to give me himself as much as he can”] (number 234); a generosity to
come, unforeseeable, but whose measure and only source can be none other
than Divine Freedom juxta suam divinam ordinationem, [“according to the
divine ordination”] (number 234).
Once this global and objective cognition is grasped, it is for the subjective
recognition to deploy itself in the same proportion, for this communicatio ab
utraque parte, in which love consists, to be inaugurated between God and
myself. Also Ignatius orders, Deinde reflectere in me ipsum, [“with this to reflect
on myself”] (number 234). The reflection must, in interrogating itself about
its foundation, reach the rational and moral principle of this reciprocity: con-
siderando quae ego, multa cum ratione et justitia, debeam ex mea parte offerre
et dare suae divinae Majestati, [“considering with much reason and justice,
what I ought on my side to offer and give to his Divine Majesty”] (number 234).
To such a question, the premises posited earlier leave room for just one con-
clusion: dare omnia mea et me ipsum cum illis ut qui offert multo cum affectu,
[“give … everything that is mine, and myself with it, as one who makes an offer-
ing with much feeling”] (number 234). This is the response of the beloved to
the lover that Ignatius formulates in the famous prayer of the Suscipe. Before
examining its terms, let us finish analyzing the other three points.
2 Second Point
We have just seen that the first point exercises the memory; Ignatius himself
tells us so. Although he says nothing about it, it seems logical that the second

via free access
160 Conclusion
should refer to intelligence and indeed its content agrees perfectly with such a
relation. But must the third point still be attributed to intelligence already or
to the will? On the one hand, this is logical, but on the other, it goes badly with
its content, the most speculative of all. To relate the third point to will seems
to agree more with the operatur et laborat, which is the issue, but in this case
must the fourth point be considered as still exercising the same power or as
addressing the intelligence again in a sort of turning back?
Let us remember that the indications in the Tenth Annotation about the
correspondence of the purgative way to the First Week, of the illuminative way
to the Second Week, and that Ignatius’s silence for the rest provoked hesitation
in the authors of the first Directories similar to what we just experienced …
However curious this coincidence may seem, it must not surprise us, since in
one case as in the other it has in its origin the relation of four to three. Hence,
it may be that the solution elaborated to resolve the first case is equally good
for the second. It should be recalled that the solution consisted in observing
that the central cut in the Exercises split their course according to before and
after and consequently also the unity of the illuminative way, which is mid-
way between the purgative and unitive ways. Consequently, why not suppose,
by analogy, that intelligence, a power midway between memory and will, is
divided here and gives rise to the second and third points, the fourth being
reserved to the exercise of the will.
The solution is elegant by reason of the parallelism between the two struc-
tures, that of the Exercises and that of the contemplatio ad Amorem on which
it sheds light, but which will have to be compared with the texts. Even before
this proof, we can wonder: why does intelligence thus split in two rather than
memory or will?
We could already have composed this question once before when we
encountered the splitting of the illuminative way and not that of the purga-
tive or the unitive way. For, quite evidently, the two problems are identical.
But we were satisfied then to record the solution that Ignatius had given it. If
we now manage to dig a little deeper in regard to intelligence, it goes without
saying that any light achieved for the second problem must spill back over the
first and be inconformity with what the general structure of the Exercises has
revealed to us.
Evidently, it would be useless to expect too much from Ignatius in going

more deeply into such an abstract question. He has observed the middle place
of intelligence like that of the illuminative way; in his view that is enough to
legitimate the partition of both of them. But, since we have already seen more

via free access
than one kinship of his dialectic with that of Hegel, nothing prevents us from
looking to the side of this logician for at least some element of a response to
such a question. Now, Hegel sets us on the road to a solution when he remarks
that the proper act of intelligence, judgement, is according to the very etymol-
ogy of the German word Ur-teil, “the original division of the original One.”5
It is true that for Hegel this original One is the concept that of itself divides
itself in judgement;6 whereas, for Ignatius, the original division is rather that of
myself or of human freedom according to the before and the after. Nevertheless,
between the Spanish spiritual thinker and the German philosopher, the dis-
tance might be smaller than it seems. Indeed, for the latter the Concept finds
its existential reality in the self,7 and the power of its universality can be called,
“freedom of love and happiness without limits.”8 All expressions that prove
that the Hegelian concept tends to descend toward Ignatian freedom, at least
in certain relations.9 But, on the other hand, how can we imagine that the lat-
ter freedom can escape the inverse movement, at the moment when Ignatius,
at the end of his reflection, seeks to integrate scholastic speculations into it?
Is not this ascension of the existential toward the logical initiated since from
the moment it defines love as a communication ab utraque parte, this is to say
as an “interaction” about which Hegel says that “it holds fast to the threshold
of concept”?10 Isn’t the interaction pursued further, in his second preamble,
when Hegel posits knowledge as the condition of possibility of “re-cognition”
that must actualize this reciprocity? Hence, isn’t it natural to suppose that such
a movement might also have the result of making the distinction of the before
and the after veer from its temporal sense to its logical sense? The consequence
is really so logical that Ignatius does not even need to ask himself about it as
we are doing. If this were the case, perhaps then we would have, along with
the key to the problem posed by the correspondence of the three potencies to
the four points of this contemplation, also the proof that Ignatius has split the
exercise of intelligence into two points.
5 Hegel, Logik, Lasson edition, 2:267.

6 Hegel, Logik, Lasson edition, 2:266: “Das Urteil ist die Diremption des Begriffs durch sich
selbst.”
7 Hegel, Logik, Lasson edition, 2:220: “Ich ist der reine Begriff selbst, der als Begriff zum
Dasein gekommen ist.”
8 Hegel, Logik, Lasson edition, 2:242: “Das Allgemeine ist die freie Macht … Wie es die frei
Macht genannt worden; so konnte es auch die freie Liebe und schrankenlose Seligkeit
genannt werden …”
9 For such parallels, we evidently do not mean to deny the differences that radically
separate Hegelianism from any spiritual life understood according to the framework of
Catholicism.
10 Hegel, System der Philosophie, section 156, Jub.–Ausg. 8, p. 346.

via free access
162 Conclusion
Therefore, let us go back over the text, keeping in mind that, at the moment
when Ignatius composing the first point, he kept in mind the division of the
before and the after in the temporal sense, and let us ask whether the action of
this division continues to make itself felt in the following points.
The second point, now patently directed itself to intelligence, asks it to atten-
dere quomodo Deus habitat in creaturis, [“to consider how God dwells in crea-
tures,”] and minutely relates the modes of this habitatio in the most classical
way, according to the degrees of being, as the tree of Porphyry presents them:
esse … vegetare … sentire … intelligere. Ignatius’s originality here simply consists
in perceiving in each of them a gift that divine liberality makes me, dans mihi
esse, vivere, sentire, et faciens me intelligere, [“giving me being, giving me sensa-
tion, and making me understand”] (number 234), and in indicating that this
series culminates in the indwelling of grace; item faciens me templum sui, cum
creatus sim ad similitudinem et imaginem suae divinae Majestatis, [“likewise,
making me a temple of himself, since I am created to the likeness and image of
his Divine Majesty”] (number 235).
For its part, point three is not of another texture nor less traditional. It pro-
poses that I considerare quomodo Deus operatur et laborat propter me in omni-
bus rebus creatis super faciem terrae, [“to consider how God works and labors
for me in all things created on the face of the earth”] (point 236), enumerating
again the same degrees of being …
At first sight, nothing in all of that reveals the least influence of this split
between Before and After that we have placed at the center of our explanation
of the Exercises. Nor, likewise, does anything indicate the slightest relation of
the second point with the Second Week or of the third point with the Third
Week. The resemblance we have indicated between the first point and the First
Week would therefore be both isolated and fortuitous and we would have made
the dual mistake of exaggerating it and giving it too much importance. For the
rest, the objection could be raised against us: suppose that Ignatius wanted to
group these two points into one and had written for example, “quommodo Deus
habitat et operatur in creaturis,” [“how God dwells and works in creatures,”] the
problem you have raised on the relation of the three faculties to the four points
would disappear without the sense of its whole contemplation being notably
changed, nor its force being diminished in the slightest. If however, Ignatius
distinguished the two points of view, the reason is doubtless quite simply that
he recalled the scholastic distinction between divine esse and agere. With his
customary clarity of spirit, Ignatius preferred to devote two points to them
in place of one, since classical ontology had taught him that these two terms

via free access
are distinct quoad nos, although they are re idem in God. But we are not to
search further.
Let us admit all that and notably that the distinction of the second and third
points exactly corresponds to that of esse and agere. But, if Ignatius learned
this distinction from the scholastics and its value quoad nos, he could not have
been unaware of the axioms that fix the relations of these two terms: Agere
sequitur esse, or Esse prius est agere.
Hence, how can we fail to see that the problem posed by the relation of
the four points to the three faculties finds its solution here, the doubling of
the exercise of intelligence into these two points being also called for by the
Ignatian division of before and after? Certainly, the priority of esse and the
posteriority of agere are of the logical order, not the temporal order.11 But
between these two senses of before and after, not only does a correspondence
exist, but the passage from one to another is possible. Precisely by means
of the imagination,12 the faculty that is so powerful in Ignatius, not—as we
have noted in regard to “the application of [imaginative] senses—as the fan-
tasy produces rich and intense images, but as “disposing the intelligence to
knowing.”13
Now, it is easy to understand why and how, in faithfulness to himself, at the
moment Ignatius constructed his last contemplation, he had to find again four
points distinguished according to before and after, not in spite of but precisely
because of the three faculties chosen by him as the principle of division. At
the end of the Exercises, Ignatius had to provoke more than ever the “liberality
toward the creator” and the “offering of willing and freedom” (fifth annota-
tion, number 5) that he had required of a person entering into the Exercises, by
assembling the most general themes capable of exciting a “complete gratitude”
toward divine freedom. Now, since his conception of love relied upon a perfect
reciprocity, it was also necessary that these themes be organized so as to give
us an idea of divine freedom that would be, so to speak, the counterpoint of
our own freedom, as he had just analyzed it in the light of Christ’s life. Except
that at this point, there is no way to have recourse to this historical image.
11 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, part 3, question 34, article 2, reply to objection 2: “Esse prius
est natura quam agere, non tamen tempore.”
12 Regarding the time that we represent to ourselves in speaking of creation in time,
St. Thomas noted, Summa contra Gentes, book 2, chapter 36: “Prius quod dicimus anti-
quum tempus esset, non ponit aliquam temporis partem in se, sed solum in imagina-
tione.”—But this observation holds for every natural “prius.”
13 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, part Iª IIªᵉ, question 74, article 4, reply to objection 3:
“Bonitas imaginationis est dispositio ad scientiam.”

via free access
164 Conclusion
The commentators have been astonished at finding no mention of Christ in

the contemplation ad Amorem. They forget that the Christ who ascended into
heaven escaped our sight and that following this same movement, Ignatius
must make an effort, as we have said, to empty out everything representative
that up till then had served him to raise us toward this summit.
Yet, how can we obtain the slightest idea of divine freedom without evoking
in some fashion the change that every decision implies? By turning back toward
the past, memory permits us to obtain a general view of the fundamental liber-
ality of the Creator, who is also our Redeemer. But it is in the present, in the hic
et nunc that is essentially for us union and distinction of an immediate before
and after, where our Creator’s freedom exercises itself and where our intel-
ligence must make an effort to penetrate its secret. Also as well, as if Ignatius
wanted to make us attentive to the first point in relation to the following two,
he first evoked the past, quantum Deus fecerit … et dederit ex iis qui habet, “how
much God Our Lord has done … and given me of what he has” (number 234),
but it is only in relation to the future that he speaks of a gift of self on God’s
part and he presents it as a possible, the object of a “desire” that remains con-
ditioned by freedom: quantum desideret dare seipsum mihi in quantum potest,
juxta divinam suam ordinationem, how much he “desires to give me himself as
much as he can according to his divine ordination” (number 234).
It is, therefore, at the precise moment when Ignatius must grapple with this
Freedom’s hic et nunc, that he returns to the fundamental themes of the divine
esse and agere; also, quite naturally his distinction of the before and the after
leaves the temporal and existential sense that it had until then to turn around
and take the rational and logical sense that alone is compatible with real iden-
tity of being and acting in divine freedom.
The turn is quite spontaneous in Ignatius, but its trace can be found again
in the text of this second point. Indeed, we should notice that Ignatius speaks
here neither about esse, nor inesse, nor about praesentia Dei in creaturis. But
in the autograph version he wrote: Dios habita en las criaturas, [“God dwells in
creatures”]. Why does he use this term of Latin origin? Why if not that, with the
reference to habitus, the term connotates a certain nuance of potentiality that
already differentiates it more from agere and approximates it in the same pro-
portion to the potency of our freedom before its decision. Especially, because
it prepares us to understand that at the summit of the degrees of being, the
“indwelling” of grace is found that transcends them … But once again, why
instead of employing the specifically supernatural technical term, and it seems
called for by the initial habita, “dwells,” does he recur to the much less pre-
cise scriptural symbol of temple? Isn’t it precisely to escape from the abstract
distinctions of philosophy and of theology and to make us perceive that his

via free access
existential reflection at the very moment at which it integrates their content,

surpasses the opposition of nature and grace? In any case, immediately after-
wards, we find this reflection that, recalling with one word the Foundation from
which it started, invokes the principle that is both scriptural and philosophical,
enabling it to turn to the logical and to determine with regard to divine free-
dom by relation to a rational before and after, corresponding to the temporal
before and after of our freedom: the relation of creature to Creator, as it has
been clarified by the historical Image of Christ: ut sim creatus ad imaginem et
similtudinem divinae suae Majestatis, [“as that I be created to the likeness and
image of his Divine Majesty”] (number 235).
After that, is it necessary to stress further to what degree this second point
corresponds to the Second Week? We had already defined the latter as nega-
tion of the Non-being of sin, and shown how the image of God therein raises
the possibility of the Election for my freedom, that is to say, of the choice of
a means that would lead me, as a created being, to my end. Since at the end
of its second point, this sim creatus, “being created,” recalls at the same time
as the Foundation the Preamble to Election, is it not that Ignatius wants to
make me understand that the same relation has first been for divine freedom
the means of an election in which I have become the object of Its Election?
In other words, that by establishing me as “creature in his Image” by the gift
of being, this freedom has at the same time given itself the possibility of an
action transforming my freedom to the likeness of his freedom and making
me his temple. Without doubt, it is a total reversal of perspective, since, from
a creature completely ordered to God, I become that to whom God completely
and entirely orders himself. But is there anything that can open me to the intel-
ligence of the divine liberality, arouse mine, and consequently make me real-
ize, through cognition and recognition, Love as a communio ab utraque parte,
[as “communication from both sides”]?
3 Third Point
If we were not mistaken in attributing to Ignatius such commentary on prior

dilexit nos, the third point will have to confirm more than weaken our interpre-
tation. Accordingly, it will be necessary to reread its text, examining it closely.
Since Ignatius, after the esse, now proposes the divine agere to our inter-
lection, why does he not use this classical term? Why, instead of printing
the term conservando in capital letters, so apt however to express a relation
with time, has he simply wedged it into an enumeration rapidly terminated
by an etcetera? Remembrance from school worthy of mention, but not of

via free access
166 Conclusion
holding our attention. Disdaining agere, relegating conservando to the back-

ground, Ignatius chooses to write Deus operatur et laborat, [“God works and
labors …”] (number 236). That he should have preferred operatur to agere is
easily explained, since this term alludes to the stress that the first observa-
tion places on operatur more than on verbis. But why has he added laborat?
Of course, doublets are frequent in Ignatius’s writings, and not always easily
justified, the second term hardly adding to the first. Must we see a character-
istic proper to Spanish style? Or the price our writer pays for his late literary
formation? This is unimportant in the great majority of cases. But in this one,
the addition of laborat really seems uncalled for because, instead of being a
pure synonym, this term connotes a nuance of toil, thus specifying operatur
in a sense that is not appropriate for the divine agere. For the rest, Ignatius
so clearly perceived this, that he experienced the need to exclude expressly
this nuance by adding at the end of his phrase the explanation, id est se habet
ad modum laborantis, [“that is behaves as one who labors”] (number 236).
Thereby, the first addition of laborat is no longer completely explained at all.
By contenting himself with operatur, Ignatius would have exempted himself at
the same time from this repentance that hardly honors his usual conciseness
and precision.
However, let us be careful not to accuse Ignatius lightly, since critics as dif-
ferent as Fr. de Ponlevoy and Fr. Bremond agree in acknowledging these virtues
in him. The former says, “In the Exercises, everything arrives at its moment,
and everything finds its place.” And the latter has already told us, “Ignatius left
nothing to chance in the completion of his work, that he sifted every word.”
To find the key to this little problem, let us recur to the Autograph version.
Along with the explanation of this doublet, it is going to provide us with the
confirmation that we seek.
Here is what Ignatius wrote: Dios trabaja y labora por mi en todas cosas
creadas sobre la haz de la tierra, id est habet se ad modum laborantis … [“God
works and labors for me in all created things on the face of the earth, that is
he comports himself in the fashion of one who labors …”] Accordingly it is
not the more general term operetur that first comes to his mind as replacing
the divine agere, posterior to the esse that is object of the second point. But he
immediately thought of this agere as trabajar; and if he added to it next not a
synonym but the corresponding Latin word, it is only to prepare the repentant-
correction that is introduced textually in Latin in the middle of the Spanish …
That is what gives us pause for reflection. Certainly, we would wonder
whether, despite his university years, Ignatius continued to think in Spanish
rather than in Latin. It is not simply that scholasticism’s esse and agere should

via free access
be modified in passing through his mind. We have tried to indicate the reason
that justifies the change of the first into habitat. Let us suppose that one or the
other or even all could be judged, if I dare speak thus, as forced and far-fetched.
It still remains to explain how agere, this divine action about which Ignatius
has learned—supposing that his spiritual intuition has not revealed it to him
earlier and much better—that action implies no “passion,” could have immedi-
ately become trabaja, [“works,”] which in Spanish, as in the French travail and
Latin labor carries a nuance of difficulty.
This time the explanation does not need to be forced or far-fetched in the
slightest: it appears by itself. Because Ignatius thinks in the Third Week just
as he earlier thought in the Second and the First, that at the beginning of this
third point, he writes Dios trabaja … [“God works …”] To be sure, this word
is not found in the Third Week: poena et dolores, by contrast are found on
every line. On the other hand, trabaja appears three times in the course of the
Kingdom: first in the king’s speech inviting his faithful vassals to the conquest,
similiter debet laborare ut ego, [“likewise he is to labor as I do”] (number 93);
then in the application of the parable to Christ: qui voluerat venire mecum,
debet laborare mecum, [“whoever would like to come with me is to labor with
me”] (number 95). Except that, in what Ignatius sees as a key contemplation
and one that governs all the rest of the Exercises, it is certain that the evocation
of the future laborare mecum very precisely announces the Third Week. To be
totally sure of that, it is enough to attend to the consecutive that immediately
follows … ut sequens me in poena (in laboribus, Fr. Rootham’s versio litteralis
specifies) etiam sequitur me in gloria, [“that following me in the pain, he may
also follow me in the glory”] (number 95), in which we find an expression of
the connection of the last two weeks with an implicit allusion to its scriptural
foundation (for example, Matthew 16:27).
Consequently, there is no doubt that in Ignatius’s view this third point had
a close relation to the Third Week, and consequently, that the Exercises’s gen-
eral structure is exactly reflected in that of this contemplation, and finally that
such a correspondence supposes that its fundamental division of the before
and the after does not have just existential and temporal meaning, but has just
as much value from the rational, logical standpoint. Let us not insist on the
importance of these last conclusions that will be apparent to us later. However,
let us observe that the first explains at the same time the additions of laborat
to operatur, or more precisely labora to trabaja. Far from having wanted to add
a nuance of sufficiency to a word as general as agere, so as to condemn himself
to contradicting it afterwards, Ignatius immediately envisaged the strong sense
of the word trabaja, and he only adds its Latin synonym, laborare, in order to
be able to set aside the more easily nuance that is incompatible with divine

via free access
168 Conclusion
impassibility. The explanation, id est, se habet ad modum laborantis, is not at

all the repentance of a clumsy writer; it is rather a wise precaution of a man
made prudent by experience, against the punctilious doctors of a Sorbonne
and suspicious judges of the Inquisition, who might not grasp immediately the
sense of the contemplation.
This sense consists in turning end for end our usual perspective on the rela-
tion created–uncreated, in order to make us grasp better “the breadth, height,
and depth” of divine charity. Earlier, in regard to the ut creatus sim, we indi-
cated this reversal. The third point now unfolds its consequences by taking up
again a formula of the Foundation. The latter said, reliqua super faciem terrae,
creata sunt propter hominem, [“the rest of things on the face of the earth are
created for man”] (number 23), with the intention of indicating that man, no
longer having any right to anything other than himself, must use them all solely
according to divine good pleasure, and, while waiting to know him, make him-
self indifferent toward all. Now, on the contrary, Ignatius writes: Deus … laborat
propter me in omnibus rebus creatis super faciem terrae, [“God works and labors
for me in all things created on the face of the earth”] (number 236). It is God’s
turn, as if he had divested himself of any right to benefit from the object of
his creation, divested himself of using all creatures in order to work at each
one’s pleasure, and since he does not ignore this, to show himself through all
things, impassioned to beatify him. Do we exaggerate here in speaking of God
subordinating himself to the “pleasure” of man? But observe, by substituting
his propter me for the Foundation’s propter hominem, Ignatius goes just as far.
What he designates as the object of the divine Election and of the works that
are its consequence according to the axiom agere sequitur esse, is my own free-
dom, my human freedom as it exercises itself in the hic et nunc.
This replacement of the generic concept by the personal pronoun is perfectly
logical. Because, between the Foundation and this Contemplatio ad Amorem,
there is not only the whole interval that in any work separates the introduc-
tion from the conclusion, but to speak like Hegel, there is all the mediation in
it that goes from the simple or immediate universal to the concrete Universal,
in other words the whole road across which man raises himself from the
simple consciousness of self as rational animal and created being to the con-
sciousness of self as personal singularity that is no longer separated from the
Universal Creator except by a distinction that is not one, because posited, it is
immediately suppressed and surpassed—moreover without the participation
in the divine freedom being able to abolish the irreducible distinction between
the self and God. In Hegel’s Logic, the interval between the simple universal
and the singular become concrete universal is called particularity, and it is the
“movement of the concept” that in each instance must posit, suppress, and go

via free access
beyond. But in the existential analysis of Ignatius, this particularity is that of a

historical being split up between a before and an after in order that in the hic et
nunc that ties them, it may choose, and in this choice choose himself united to
God rather than separated from him. And the movement that every time posits
this distance from self to Self, suppresses it and passes beyond it, is the move-
ment of love that Ignatius moreover defines in terms of knowledge: cognitio-
nem internam bonorum acceptorum, et integre recognoscens … in omnibus …
[“internal knowledge of so great goods received, and knowing integrally … in
all things”] (number 233).
Hence, since my freedom in its very choice is the object of a prior divine
choice, why would he be afraid to show me divine freedom as consequent in
its Election to the point of putting all creation at my service and of behav-
ing though all as “working” to accomplish my own good pleasure? What other
vision could be more capable of making me penetrate the unfathomable
dimensions of divine love? What motive could be more powerful to launch in
return the offering of all my freedom for all labors?
4 Fourth Point
After that, this last point calls for only a little explanation. Like all mystics,
Ignatius appears here at the end point of his endeavor, so to speak out of breath,
and obliged to fall back on comparisons and images from scriptures, the best
ones being the poorest and simplest. To shed light on the pure relation of the
participated being to the Uncreated God, he is content to follow James 1:17 to
evoke the idea of the Most High from which all good flows: speculari quomodo
omnia bona et dona descendent desursum, [“to view how all the good things
and gifts descend from above”] (number 237). In the abstract bareness of such
a relation, Ignatian mysticism comes the closest to the intellectualist mysti-
cisms inspired by the Pseudo-Dionysius. Ignatian mysticism does not depart
from that intellectualist mysticism, all the while remaining faithful to itself,
finally evoking two other comparisons as the first terms of an enunciation that
could be stretched: sicut a sole descendent radii, a fonte aqua, etcetera, [“as from
the sun descend the rays, from the fountain the waters, etc.”] (number 237).
The second comparison is specifically Johannine (4:14), but, although the first
does not lack scriptural connections, it stems from Ignatius’s own experience.
Already at Manresa, indeed, he had perceived the creation of the world: “Under
the form of something white with rays stemming from it, God radiating light.”14
14 The Pilgrim’s Narrative, no. 29, 37.

via free access
170 Conclusion
Although this last Point may appear the most speculative of all by the very
fact that it is situated at the climax of a mystical effort, the most speculative of
all, it, however, clearly refers to the will and consequently corresponds accord-
ing to the general plan followed so far, in the Fourth Week. Of the three fac-
ulties, memory, intelligence, will, the last is certainly in the view of Ignatius,
the “power” constitutive of my personality, the closest to freedom, the one
by which the other two are used to prepare affections and decisions. Also, he
names it here under this general term ut mea limitata potentia, [“as my poor
power”] (number 237). Likewise, the four virtues listed next, as examples of the
supernatural gifts descending from the Most High refer to it: Justitia, bonitas,
pietas, misericordia, etc., [“justice, goodness, piety, mercy, etc.”] (number 237).
The beginning of a catalogue where we can easily find an allusion to the vir-
tues St. Paul loves to set up. Justitia and pietas are the first two virtues that
St. Paul recommends to Timothy (I Timothy 6:11); after charitas, come patientia
and mansuetudo that Ignatius combines in misericordia. In Galatians 6:22–23,
bonitas is also named, followed by longanimitas and mansuetudo, a new pair
equivalent to misericordia. As these diverse virtues are the fruits of the Spirit
for Paul, how can we doubt that for his part, Ignatius wants to designate the
fruits of the unitive life through this implicit reference, those that ought to
flower and mature in the climate of the Fourth Week.
5 Suscipe
Lastly, it remains to comment briefly on the prayer that at the end of each
of these points must rise from the heart, multo cum affectu, when it returns
into itself after letting itself be taken over by divine love and enlightened in its
depth. Its structure is evident, besides: reflection of the structure of the exer-
cise that it concludes and the expression of the double, reciprocal movement
that love defines for Ignatius.
Like the prayer at the end of the kingdom, this prayer is essentially offering,
but its tone is clearly less solemn—the heavenly court, although present by
virtue of the composition of place, is not named in it—and above all its pace
is more resolute. It is impossible to doubt now that the Lord has made of me
his object of “election” and wants to “greet” me in the intimacy of his “life”
(number 98).
Sume et suscipe, Domine, [“take, Lord, and receive,”] begins Ignatius, the first
verb signifying the ardent desire for the gift, the second tempering the impera-
tive of this ardor with humble reserve. It is never enough that in an outburst

via free access
of the heart I should say to God: “take.” It is still necessary, because he is always
Lord, that he should want to receive.
… omnem meam libertatem, [“all my liberty”]: the whole substance of the
Exercises is expressed there. We have stated and repeated it often enough; the
only question in them is the union of my freedom to God’s. Their fruit can only
be to render this union as effective and total as possible.
… meam memoriam, meum intellectum et meam voluntatem omnem, [“my
memory, my intellect, and all my will”]. With my freedom are given these three
powers that sustain it, clarify it, and bear it up in each of its decisions, after
they themselves have been disposed by a fourfold consideration to be the
instrument of this perfect gift.
… quidquid habeo et possideo, [“all that I have and possess,”] or as the
Autograph version says, todo mi haber y mi poseer, insisting with this third
todo15 on the gift’s completeness, which after the gift of freedom and of the
powers, now extends to the whole objective domain on which the latter can
be exercised.
After this thrust of the heart, which expresses the gift’s universal scope, the
prayer in turn reflects on itself to achieve consciousness of its foundation, of
its essence, of its limitless extension. After three short phrases that refer again
respectively to the past, to the present and to the future, a fourth and last tran-
scends time and sums up everything.
Tu mihi haec dedisti, [“Thou gavest it to me”]; you-me, two poles, but the
second of them totally derives from the first through “these” gifts: world, pow-
ers, freedom; twice given, first on the grounds of the creation, because I am
creatus ad imaginem Dei; next, on the grounds of the redemption, because, by
Election, I am also similar to the Son, object of the Father’s love.
Tibi, Domine, omnia restituo, [“to thee, Lord, I return all”]; here is recognition
based on knowledge. To you, Lord and Father, I give back everything, not only
by duty, but by pure love, since having “placed myself with the Son,”16 to whom
you “have also given all things” (John 31:35; 13:3, etc.); from me as from him you
want to receive everything in order that You and I—we may be one, as You and
He are one, in the circle of reciprocity that embraces everything and where
“God is all in all” (I Corinthians 15:28).
Omnia tua sunt, dispone pro omni voluntate tua, [“all things are yours, dis-
pose of them according to thy will”]. But as all things are mine by your present,
15 The Versio prima, which may well represent a state of the text prior to the Autograph, even
says totam memoriam, totum intellectum.
16 This is the expression that Ignatius uses in his Journal spirituel (104, line 70), by allusion to
the vision at La Storta.

via free access
172 Conclusion
all are also yours by mine. But as my present, however total I wish it to be,
remains burdened by the indetermination of the future, my recognition can
only be complete by remitting itself, thus incomplete, and all things with it, to
your sovereign freedom, in order that you may dispose of it according to your
pleasure.
Da mihi tuum amorem et gratiam, nam haec mihi sufficit, [“give me thy love
and grace, for this is enough for me”] (number 234). Whatever your future deci-
sions may be, only give me your grace, your love. Your Grace that makes my
freedom similar to yours. Your personal and personalizing love, by which you
are you, Father, for me, as I myself become, son, for you. Through the circle of
reciprocity between you and me will never be able to stop extending itself and
at the same time deepening itself. May my love obtain your love, for me to be
able to give you everything, as I receive everything from you, I do not ask for
anything else, because my sufficiency is in your grace that makes me like you.
This contemplation, the final point of all the Exercises, gathers up in a new,
essentially speculative mode the substance of the diverse themes that the
four weeks have deployed in a historical sequence whose nucleus is the life
of Christ. In relation to this sequence, this final point is at the same time cen-
tral point, contrasting in its infinite simplicity an equally great wealth, to leave
room only for the pure relation of the self to God. This is why the image of
the mediator, of human freedom in total union with divine freedom, no lon-
ger appears in it. But this disappearance must not cause an illusion. Ignatian
mysticism is at the opposite pole from either the intellectualist or the quietist
mysticisms who describe the peak of divine union as a state where the soul
would no longer have need of representation or of taking action. However, just
as much as they do, Ignatius knows that this union consists in the immediacy
of divine contact that reduces human faculties to passivity, and he aims just as
much at making us attain these peaks. It is simply that, because he has placed
time and freedom at the center of his analysis, he does not forget that man
never comes to the highest summit except in the Instant and that the illusion
begins when someone imagines he can maintain himself in it, forgetting the
degrees that have led him to pure love and to believing that there is nothing
more to do in order to remain there.
We have emphasized that the last phrases of his Suscipe still relate to the
past, to the present, and to the future, the third marking the total opening of
the soul to divine freedom. It should be noted that under an affective form,
these are the same disposition and the same framework that the Foundation

via free access
set out in a completely abstract form as the point of departure. It is as though

Ignatius wanted to indicate that the soul that has arrived at the peak of pure
love has no other means of maintaining itself there and of getting warmed up
in it except by resuming the path through which it has passed and to traverse
ever more quickly the stages.
This is the consequence of what can be called perfect circularity of the
Exercises, their final point not only being identified with the central point, but
the latter remitting immediately to the initial point. To apply a similar meta-
phor to them, which seems to transform them onto a spiritual geometry,17 is it
seems, to take the classical commentators’ defect, which Henri Bremond has
so strongly denounced, to the extreme. We will take care to ask ourselves about
this metaphor, and we will notably see that this critic has himself been led,
without realizing it to employ it, when he wanted to express the unity of the
Exercises in his own account.
By contrast, this geometrical image cannot surprise someone who knows
that this pretense of absolute knowing was precisely to construct a system that
would be a circle and even a circle of circles. Before asking about the sense
of such duplication, it is necessary to be sure about someone who adopts the
simple image as applied to the Exercises—above all whether it can even serve
to bring closer Ignatian spirituality and Hegelian reflection.
17 Bremond, May 1929, 86.

via free access
Circularity of the Exercises and Circularity
of Absolute Knowledge: From Ignatius to Hegel
through Hölderlin
At first sight, the idea of this new parallel by means of a metaphor is discon-
certing. All the more so in that the image of circle, when we meet it at the
beginning or especially at the end of the Phenomenology or the Logic, turns out
to be rather deceptive. Taken up again by the commentators, it does not ordi-
narily bring more satisfaction. With and by the comparison, it seems that we
must have definitively reached the “ether” of pure science where it is necessary
that “the consciousness of self should be raised to be able to live in and with
it and in the first place quite simply, to live.” So much so that once arrived at
this summit, as it is said, there is nothing left to do but throw away the ladder.
Except that, as this image is quite precisely the last rung on this ladder that
science must, according to Hegel’s own expression, “extend to the individual to
lift him to the summit and to show it to him in himself,”1 he experiences more
than some vertigo at the very thought of pushing away with his foot the means
that allowed him to climb so high. Lastly, following the example that Hegel at
bottom gives him, he prefers to keep the connection with terra firma, as imagi-
nary as it may be, rather than risk the fall into the ineffable.
Therefore, even before seeing what might be the meaning of this circularity
and its importance for the spiritual life as Ignatius conceives it, it would be use-
ful to observe that this figure employed in such an order as a symbol acquires
a similar characteristic that distinguishes it absolutely from the geometer’s
circle. Our vocabulary and thinking will be clarified in the same proportion.
But above all, the observation will be the occasion for us to bring up a histori-
cal enigma, of little importance in itself and whose explanation is fairly recent,
but which at least will prove that we are neither the only ones nor the first to
have perceived a complete synthesis of opposed traits in Ignatius that genu-
inely deserves to be called dialectical. In this way, we will be more justified for
having had for a long time the audacity to seek out some relation between the
Exercises and the Phenomenology of Spirit, and at the same time in the realm
of the history of ideas, a point will be posited and exactly determined from
which the perspectives upon which our work opens up, however strange they
1 Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Lasson, vol. II 18. [G.W.F. Hegel, Sämtliche Werke, edited
by Georg Lasson, Leipzig: J.H. Hoffmeister, 1911 ff.].

via free access
Circularity of the Exercises and of Absolute Knowledge 175
may be, can reveal themselves to be less aberrant and better grounded than it
seems at first sight.
Let us first specify the singular correctness of the circle of “spiritual geom-
etry” by comparing it to the circle that scientific geometry analyzes. Traced by
a compass, the movement that engenders this circle can be decomposed thus:
starting from the center, a line posits some point outside itself; then comes
back to the center to leave it again in order to posit a second point contigu-
ous to the first, and this shuttle movement repeats itself until the circumfer-
ence is closed. Its circularity therefore depends on a movement of going out
and returning, whose amplitude is determined by the length of the chosen
line, so that the circle forms a perfectly determined figure from the start. If, on
the contrary, we suppose that the line changes size at each going and coming
from the center to the periphery, we get a spiral whose extremities do not meet
nor will they ever meet, as the initial and final point of the circle do. It goes
quite differently in “spiritual geometry.” Of course, the line that leads the end
of the Exercises to their beginning cannot itself either begin or be pursued or
be finished without a shuttle movement between the spiritual principle that,
like a center, engenders it and all the determinations it possesses; but their
circularity is not thereby closed and limited once and for all. On the contrary,
the double moment from which the circle is derived is susceptible of confer-
ring to it, without denying it, both an ever-greater opening and an ever-greater
concentration.
There is a similar oscillation in the principle of the dialectic that gives birth
to absolute knowing. As proof, we cite only one passage among many others,
taken from the preface of the Phenomenology of Spirit. After having defined the
truth of this knowing, “becoming of itself, circle,”2 whose final point returns
to its beginning, Hegel himself seems to experience the need not to allow
this symbol to be confused with the geometer’s figure. For, a few pages far-
ther on, he writes: “The circle that, at rest and closed upon itself, maintains
together its elements in the manner of a thing is an immediate relation that
does not provoke any surprise.” What is prodigious is rather that this circle, so
to speak, bursts open and that the elements of its periphery acquire, by being
projected outward, an existence independent from their connection to the
whole. So much so that the representation (in which the spirit believed that
it found what is true and that it rests in that) is torn, condemned to death. But
precisely deprived of this false satisfaction, the spirit feels the need to over-
come this death, to take itself up again by re-assembling scattered elements
2 Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 13; Hyppolite translation 1:18.

via free access
176 Circularity of the Exercises and of Absolute Knowledge
in a greater concentration. “The life of the spirit is not the life that falls back
in horror before death and keeps itself safe from devastation, but life that
assumes death and maintains itself in it. This spirit conquers its truth only on
the condition of finding itself again in absolute anguish.”3 From that comes
the correspondence between exteriority and interiority that characterizes the
whole Hegelian philosophy and the principle enunciated at the beginning of
this same preface: “The strength of the spirit is only as great as its exterioriza-
tion; its depth is profound only in the measure in which that strength dares to
extend itself and lose itself by dissipating itself.”4
Do we suffer from an illusion in thinking that the circularity of the Exercises,

like that of absolute knowing, has this double correlative movement for the
soul—always greater expansion toward the outside and contraction toward
the inside? We do not believe that it is so for two reasons, equally paradoxical
but equally solid reasons. For on the one hand, this soul of the Exercises that
relates their dialectic to Hegelian dialectic was perceived by the disciples of
Ignatius for nearly two centuries before the apparition of Hegelian dialectic;
and on the other hand, the character of the Ignatian spirit from which this
relatedness has been acknowledged and greeted as such, if not by Hegel him-
self, at least by one who, after having been Hegel’s companion at the Tübingen
seminary and even his roommate along with Schelling during their last year of
studies, would remain his closest friend because of their genius and above all
impulses of the heart: Hölderlin. Certainly, very different careers and doctrines
awaited the two young men who, emerging from their theological studies,
were separated with regard to the rallying cry: Kingdom of God.5 But their

5 Hölderlin wrote to Hegel on July 10, 1794: “I am certain that you have sometime thought of
me after we separated on this rallying cry, Kingdom of God! In this rallying cry, I believe we
acknowledged some sort of metamorphosis in each other. Whatever happens to you, I am
certain that time will never erase this trait. I believe that the same holds for me. Because it
is essentially that trait that we love in each other. We are thus certain of the permanence of
our friendship” (Correspondance complète, trans. D. Naville [Gallimard, 1948], 93). Hölderlin
was not mistaken, it seems, about this friendship and its foundation, since for his part, in a
letter to Schelling at the end of January 1795, Hegel for his part evoked this same expression of
rallying after a paragraph devoted to news about Hölderlin and to excuse his silence toward
Schelling: “May the Kingdom of God come, and may we not remain with arms folded …
Reason and freedom remain our rallying cry, and the Invisible Church our gathering place”
(Briefe von und an Hegel, ed. Hoffmeister, 1:18). Moreover, perhaps this rallying cry had been
adopted by the three friends under the dominant influence of Hegel. For in his papers of
the Tübingen period, we find the outline of a sermon “On the Kingdom of God,” evidently

via free access
correspondence and the first writings of both testify how deep the commu-
nity of thought and sentiment was that had been forged between them in the
course of their years of common formation.
Now, as the inscription of his first work, Hölderlin twice used a terse phrase
that is going to offer us the foundation of the double reason, proving that we
are not the first to have discerned a dialectic in the Exercises and justifying us
in the parallel between Ignatius and Hegel. Once at the head of the Fragment
published in 1794 in Schiller’s periodical Thalia, Hölderlin cites this phrase
incompletely, presenting it as a “saying carved on Ignatius’s tomb.” The second
time as the heading of his novel Hyperion, taken from the sketch of 1794, he
quotes it wholly, but with no indication of its source. Here it is: Non coerceri
maximo, contineri tamen a minimo, divinum est.
This can be translated: Not to be forced by what is greatest; however, to be

contained in what is smallest, is something divine.
Already sibylline in itself, this phrase has long been numbered in the ranks
of the many enigmas that Hölderlin’s work presents to his interpreters. The
enigma is all the more honorable in that Ignatius’s tomb in the church of the
Gesù in Rome was never graced with such an epitaph! Finally, the mystery of
its origin was definitively clarified by Fr. Hugo Rahner, who succeeded in dis-
covering it, after, as he says himself, “laborious research”6 among some one
hundred equally lapidary lines of an Elogium sepulcrale Sancti Ignatii that
appeared in the monumental Imago primi saeculi, edited in Antwerp in 1640 by
the Jesuit Flanders-Belgium province to commemorate the Society of Jesus’s
first centenary.
The first of a series of ten funerary eulogies concerning the first member
of the order, this one celebrates the founder’s virtues, then reports his life,
and finally finishes with a prayer addressed to him. The quotation taken by
Hölderlin is found in the middle of the first part, and as the quotation obvi-
ously sums up the antithesis under study, it offers in an extremely condensed
form the whole sense of the piece. Placed back in this context, its original
given as an oratorical exercise on the second Sunday after the feast of the Trinity in 1793 (Cf.
Dokumente zu Hegels Entwicklung, ed. Hoffmeister, 179–82).
6 Hugo Rahner, S.J., “Die Grabschrift des Loyola,” Stimmen der Zeit (February 1947): 321–39.
We have taken historical data for our own purposes several times from this article, which
certainly deserves to be translated. We limit ourselves to remitting to it those who might still
be concerned with hypotheses formed earlier to explain this quotation’s origin. Let us point
out, however, that E. Tonnelat, in his very well-documented work on the Oeuvre poétique et la
pensée religieuse de Hölderlin (Marcel Didier, 195), still speaks of it as “a Latin aphorism that
Ignatius of Loyola’s admirers had caused to be engraved on his tomb.”

via free access
meaning is not at all doubtful: starting from the contrast between the small-
ness of the tomb where Ignatius’s body now lies, and the grandeur of an apos-
tolic soul whose aims transcend time and space, the author intends to glorify
the saint for having managed to reconcile in his life the most opposite virtues
at the same time as the human and the divine.7
Nowadays, to be sure, such a composition seems to us redolent of the
baroque age in taste, an excruciatingly forced flower of its humanistic culture.
But how can we deny that its author had a deep intuition? Fr. Hugo Rahner
puts it very well: “It was given to the anonymous, young Jesuit who composed
this funeral elegy, to grasp the greatness of Ignatius’s genius in an instant. In
the opposing pairs, spirit–body; heaven–earth; the globe–the tomb, he looks
with a sure gaze upon the mysterious complexity of this life.”8 Let us be still
more precise: Is it not evident that he multiplied and intertwined these antith-
eses, each leaning toward the infinity of greatness and smallness of which
Pascal speaks, only to make more perceptible the double movement of expan-
sion toward the outside, of contraction toward within, a fundamental charac-
teristic of Ignatian holiness in his view? Hence, to re-encounter in the Exercises
the dialectic engendered by such a pulsation is not to innovate, but rather to
renew a tradition as ancient as it is well grounded.
Once we have understood the original sense and value of the aphorism
quoted by Hölderlin, it also becomes evident that through it and thanks to the
very meaning that he attributed to it, a bridge is laid down from the dialectic of
7 On the last page of the present volume will be found the photographic reproduction of this
first part, of which we offer a merely approximate translation:
He whose soul / could not be enclosed in the immense circle of the whole universe; / his
body / is contained in this humble and narrow tomb.
You who esteem great Pompey or Caesar or Alexander, / open your eyes to the truth: /
greater than all those, you will read / IGNATIUS.
Not to be enclosed by what is greatest; however to be contained in what is smallest, that
is what is divine!
For Ignatius / as to valor, the greatest is the submission in the smallest / the circle of the
whole universe contracts / the circle of a single town radiates.
From this city, however, a soul greater than the world, he always desired to transcend the
boundaries of the universe and of times / to unfurl there the works of his love.
From this beyond, judging himself less than the least, he always desired deeper obscurity
than the common grave / to throw the burden of his body into it without burial.
To his soul that hoped for the highest things for the greater glory of God / heaven granted
what is greater than the highest.
To his body that took itself to the lowest things for the greater abjection of self, / may
Rome set the fashion and measure of merit.
8 Hugo Rahner, “Die Grabschrift,” 329.

via free access
the Exercises to the Hegelian dialectic. Hölderlin clearly expressed this mean-
ing in the short foreword of the Fragment in Thalia. Here, to begin, is the
opening:
There are two ideas of our existence: a state of the highest simplicity
(Einfalt) where our needs are harmonized with themselves as well as with
our powers and with everything to which we are linked thanks to the mere
organization of nature, without any intervention (Zutum) on our part;
and a state of the highest culture (Bildung) where the same agreement
would be achieved through multiple needs and powers and infinitely
re-enforced thanks to the organization that we would be in the measure
that we give ourselves to ourselves. In its essential orientations, the path
stretching out from the center (exzentrische Bahn) that man in general
and in particular travels from one point (that of simplicity) to the other
(that of more or less completed culture), would always be the same.
How can one fail to recognize to what degree this problematic of the poet is
related to that of his philosopher friend? For Hegel also, the point is to make
man, both as humanity and individual, pass from the first in-himself, that is
to say from a simple or immediate state, to the final in and for himself, that
is to say a finished culture. And precisely because the “eccentric path” that
leads from one to the other is “always the same in its essential orientation,” the
Phenomenology of Spirit will be able to discover its stages through the differ-
ent figures of consciousness leading to the “total kingdom of the truth of the
spirit,”9 it will be able to define its truth as “becoming of itself, circle,”10 which
in its end finds its beginning. Constituting itself without any instrument but
“the dialectical movement exercised by consciousness upon itself,” by just the
“experiences” that render “superfluous an intervention on our part,” “such a
path toward science will itself already be science,”11 that is to say, comprehen-
sion of the “Kingdom of God” by Absolute Knowledge.
Hölderlin also represents the “Kingdom of God” to himself in a form almost
as intellectual as his friend does. Does not Hyperion, the son of heaven and
earth, who is the poet himself, declare from the first lines of this Fragment
that he has left his native country Ionia to search for the truth? Not an abstract
truth but the one that can give him the complete satisfaction of his desires. For,
9 Hegel, Phäenomenologie des Geistes, 63; Hyppolite translation, 77.

10 Hegel, Phäenomenologie des Geistes, 13; Hyppolite translation, 18.
11 Hegel, Phäenomenologie des Geistes, 60–62; Hyppolite translation, 74–77.

via free access
he adds, “What is not all for me, and eternally all, is nothing for me.”12 For the
rest, here is how the end of the foreword had already defined the two friends’
common ideal, and precisely in function of the quotation whose origin and
original sense we have seen: “Man would wish to be in all things and above
all things, and the aphorism carved on Loyola’s tomb, Non coerceri maximo,
contineri tamen a minimo, can designate just as well the dangerous tendency in
man to possess all and to dominate all as the highest and most beautiful state
that he can attain. It is for his free will to decide in which sense the aphorism
will hold for him.”13
Therefore, in Hölderlin’s eyes, the sense of the aphorism is ambiguous. In
that ambiguity, there is a doubly interesting indication both about the manner
in which it might have become known to him and in the more or less uncon-
scious reasons that might have led him to adopt it as the motto corresponding
to his ideal: “Kingdom of God.”
In all probability, the Imago primi saeculi Societatis Jesu was not unknown at
the Tübingen seminary: this in-folio of more than nine hundred pages entirely
devoted by the Flemish Jesuits to the praise of their order and in a style so
hyperbolic that “today the most enthusiastic friend of the Society can hardly
tolerate,” was soon, remarks Fr. Hugo Rahner,
12 Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Hellingrath (1923), 2:54. It should not be forgotten that the
truth of Hegelian Absolute Knowing must also obtain a perfect Befriedigung. To calibrate
to what point the two friends think and feel the same, it is useful to quote this passage
written for the preface of Hyperion but that was left in the state of a draft: “The blessed
unity, Being, in the unique sense of the word, has been lost for us, and it was necessary
that we should lose it for us to be able to aspire and to conquer it by main force. We
detach ourselves from the peaceful ἐν καὶ πᾶν of the world, in order to re-establish it by
ourselves. We are divided from nature, and that which, as we can believe, was otherwise
united, enters now into conflict, domination and subservience alternately changing sides.
Often it seems to us that it is as if the world were everything and we nothing, often also as
if we were everything and the world nothing. To finish with this eternal struggle between
our self and the world, to restore the peace of all peace that is higher than all reason,
to re-unite ourselves with nature in an infinite whole, that is the goal of all our efforts,
whether we realize it or not … This Being, in the unique sense of the word, is already
there—as Beauty; to speak with Hyperion, a new kingdom awaits us where beauty is
queen” (Sämtliche Werke, 2:545–46). If we compare this passage, from the Fragment in
Thalia or from the first volume of Hyperion, with the Theologische Jugendschriften of the
same years, 1794–97, one is tempted to affirm that Hölderlin possessed a clear vision of
the major dialectical oppositions and a precision of terminology to which Hegel will only
arrive some years later. This furthermore cannot surprise us, if it is true, as Hegel will say
later, that the poet and religious person necessarily go ahead of the philosopher.
13 Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Hellingrath (1923), 2:552.

via free access
for the order’s enemies, the summa of Jesuitical infatuation; and in the
eighteenth century, when the suppression of the despised Society was at
stake, it was the arsenal that all the enemies of the Jesuits mined in their
desire to prove that the Jesuits were brought down by their own pride.14
On the other hand, in all the points disputed by Catholics and Protestants,
since Bellarmine was the paradigmatic adversary whom the Tübingen profes-
sors had to refute, it may be that one or another of them quoted the famous
adversary once or several times to their students, the better to convince them
of the weakness of the Jesuit cardinal’s arguments. In this way, Hölderlin was
able to learn about the non coerceri maximo, contineri tamen a minimo, and it
is very natural that this aphorism may have seemed to him “to designate the
dangerous human inclination to possess all and to dominate all.”
How did it happen that between 1793, the date he left the seminary, and
1794, the year the Fragment appeared in Thalia, this same phrase seems to be
able to mean to him also “the highest and most beautiful state man can attain”?
To be surprised by this, it is necessary to overlook or not factor into consider-
ation the severity with which Hölderlin and his friends judged their professors
at Tübingen and the theology the professors had taught them. The correspon-
dence between Hegel and Schelling from this point of view is highly edifying.15
Although Hölderlin is less rich on this subject, there is no doubt that he shares
the feelings of his former roommates, for in the autumn of 1795, when Hegel
thinks about becoming a teaching assistant or repeater in their old seminary,
this is how Hölderlin answers on November 25:
14 Hugo Rahner, “Die Grabschrift,” 322. From 1656 on, Pascal delved into the Imago primi
saeculi for things about which to deride “the good fathers … spirits of eagle … band
of Phoenix … They have changed the face of Christendom!” (Fifth Provincial Letter,
beginning).
15 On December 24, 1794, Hegel asks Schelling, who is still at the seminary: “How do things
seem at Tübingen? Until a man of the stamp of Reinhold or Fichte gets a chair, nothing
serious will come from there. Nowhere does the old system get transmitted as faithfully
as there, and if it does not exercise more influence on some thick heads, it nonetheless
subsists in the immense majority, in the mechanical brains. It is because of the latter that
the system and the spirit of the professors have enormous importance, because they are
the ones who, for the most part, put this system into circulation and keep it there” (Brief
von und an Hegel, ed. Hoffmeister, 1:11–13). Schelling’s answer of January 5, 1795 is of the
same ink (Brief, 15–16). In the next letter, at the end of January 1795, Hegel speaks of par-
rots repeating prayers (Nachbetern) and of scribes without ideas or higher interests (Brief,
15–16). Cf. P. Asveld, La pensée religieuse du jeune Hegel, which quotes and translates this
exchange of letters in large part, 76–96.

via free access
For you, this [to go there] could be a duty, in as much as you might be able
to busy yourself with awakening the dead of Tübingen; however, be sure
that the assistant undertakers of Tübingen would do everything possible
to harm you.
Imagining that you might work there in vain, I judge that you would
commit authentic treason toward yourself if you wanted to busy yourself
with these wretched people.16
In these conditions, it is not surprising that Hölderlin should have taken the
opposite of the teaching imparted and even that he may have injected some
playfulness. Certainly, in that way, we explain that in his letters from 1794 on,
he names Bellarmine as the silent recipient to whom Hyperion is addressed as
to a friend and confidant. At the same time, Ignatius’s epitaph in Hölderlin’s
eyes still retains a trace of the significance that the Tübingen professors, in
battle against the immeasurable Jesuit pride, attributed to it, but Hölderlin
already adopts it in the completely opposite sense. The latter will be the only
one retained in 1797, the aphorism then being quoted with its two last words,
divinum est, and without any further explanation. Accordingly, as sometimes
happens in seminaries, young Hölderlin has found among the adversaries torn
to pieces by his teachers the very formulas in which to mold the ideal of his
new generation. To find out to what degree Hegel had made this ideal his own,
even before putting the Phenomenology’s dialectic at its service, it is enough to
read the poem Eleusis that he dedicates to Hölderlin in August 1796. In it, Hegel
particularly evokes their joy, when they meet again to “verify that the fidelity to
the old alliance has been affirmed, has even matured, fidelity to the common
trust that no oath has sealed, to live only for the free truth and to never, ever,
make peace with the dogma that rules opinions and feelings,”17 that is to say
with the theology of the Tübingen undertakers’ assistants.
Non coerceri maximo, contineri tamen a minimo, divinum est. If we now

consider this aphorism in the light of the totality of Hölderlin’s output, it is
apparent that it marvelously sums up and synthesizes the mystical aspirations
that run through the poet’s works and animate them by their very contrasts:
aspirations that are carnal and ethereal at the same time, national and univer-
sal, looking no less to transfigure the everyday than to announce the dawn of
paradise rediscovered, finally all impregnated with a pagan naturalism where
16 Briefe von und an Hegel, 1:34; and Hölderlin, Correspondance, 137.

17 Briefs von und an Hegel, 1:38; translated in Hölderlin, Correspondance, Asveld transla-
tion, 114.

via free access
the Greek gods lend their name to the forces of life, but at the same time sus-
tained with an aura of a Christian conception of love and death that after a
short eclipse resurges and finally, before its consciousness collapses, makes
him greet Christ as the unique and invoke him as a reconciler.18
Also, after having resolved the enigma of this quotation, Father Hugo Rahner
is able to draw a double benefit from it: on the one hand, without forcing the
sense of Hölderlin’s work at all, he shows that the dreams, the desire rather—
since according to St. Paul, Aratos and the poets are for the gentiles what Isaiah
or Jeremiah were for the Jews—the presentment and the prophetic announce-
ment of authentic Christian existence, as the saints at least succeeded in living
it. On the other hand, since the life of a saint in fact inspired the expression
that Hölderlin was to make his own after having rediscovered its original
sense, he has still less trouble in proving that Ignatius’s existence, as it appears
through his actions, his writings, and the testimonies of his contemporaries,
achieved in incomparable measure the ideal defined by the double antithesis
of the inscription of Hyperion.
It is useless to re-do a diagnostic developed by its author with certainty of
information and brilliance, known to all who have read his theological and
spiritual studies. It is enough for us that, through Hölderlin and his lyrical
impulses thus put in relation with the Ignatian spirit, the same occurred with
his friend Hegel and the dialectic of the concept that in Hegel was the personal
expression of their common aspiration.
Writing our first essay in 1931, we would never have imagined that the foot-
bridge from the Exercises to the Phenomenology of Spirit, slender but firmly
anchored in both the Imago primi saeculi and the Hyperion, could exist. Later,
perhaps we will be able to use it to penetrate somewhat into the corners of
absolute knowing. But for the moment, it must serve us in the opposite direc-
tion. Without taking up again the themes developed by Father Hugo Rahner,
how are we not to emphasize, in conformity to our personal intention, that
if the aphorism immortalized by Hölderlin perfectly defines the sanctity of
Ignatius, it is because first of all it develops as well the resourcefulness of this
dialectic that we have tried to re-discover all through the Exercises and whose
secret the contemplation ad Amorem has finally given us?
18 Der Einzige and Versöhnender, der du nimmer geglaub, without mentioning the great
hymn entitled “Patmos” and the fragments of a Hymn to the Madonna that remained
unfinished, testify, certainly not to a firm and well-informed understanding of Christian
dogma, but to a sincere and tender attachment to a faith liberated from the narrowness
of Lutheranism. On this subject, see the work cited by E. Tonnelat, especially its two chap-
ters: Reappearance of Christ and Christian Resurgence.

via free access
Non coerceri maximo, contineri tamen a minimo. This double contrary

impulse is the soul present everywhere in the Exercises, because the problem of
my free decision—id quod volo—is its center, as it was at the core of Ignatius’s
concern. Later, in the famous fragment of the Pensées titled Disproportion of
Man, Pascal will use this same device to show us that “man is unto himself the
most prodigious object of nature.” Less speculative, more practical, Ignatius
anticipates him by grasping the mystery of our own being in freedom. Still
deeper than intelligence, isn’t freedom, whatever the extent of its domain may
be, the faculty of the possible, “movement to go beyond,” and negation of lim-
its? Non coerceri maximo. And on the other hand, the further and the more
immense, the more it must, to attain it or only to progress toward it, deter-
mine itself in the more immediate, in the thing closest … Contineri a minimo.
These two contrary movements whose opposition can only grow because, far
from destroying one another, they engender one another; like Pascal, Ignatius
understood immediately that “they touch each other and they come together
by dint of their distance and find each other again in God and only in God.”
Divinum est. He also posits from the beginning and as Foundation that their
unity will only be obtained by the “service of God, that is to say, by ordering our
freedom in conformity with divine freedom” (numbers 21 and 23).
When the problem is posed in this way, the issue is to find its concrete solu-
tion each time. Now, my concrete situation is precisely that of a created free-
dom that always in advance has already refused to let itself be enclosed by the
greatest, even by the always greatest Divine Majesty.19 Non coerceri maximo.
Sin of the pure spirit, sin of humanity, sin of the individual, this negation of
God’s transcendence is also determined in me, the least of God’s creatures. In
order to make me appreciate my extreme smallness and help me “to diminish
myself,” Ignatius calls upon a series of progressive comparisons (number 58),
while on the other hand he invites me to acknowledge the same negation, not
only in each well-determined sin but in the disorder of my operations, uni-
versal disorder by the sole fact of their contact with the world (number 63).
Contineri a minimo. In this way, hell becomes perceptible, that is to say at the
19 Without exaggeration, we can say that Ignatius always thinks of the Divine Majesty as a
function of the comparative (majus) constituting the word’s etymology. This why in his
Theologie der Exerzitien, Fr. Erich Przywara gave as his principal title Deus semper maior,
which he says, “is the Logos peculiar to the Exercises” (1:v). Likewise, with regard to the
lemma Ad maiorem gloriam Dei, Fr. Walter J. Ong rightly remarks: “Because of the focus
of the phrase as a principle of choice, it is the ‘greater’ and not the ‘glory’ that receives the
psychological stress, the glory being in a sense taken for granted” (“A.M.D.G.: Dedication
or Directive?,” 257–64 in Review of Religion [September 15, 1952]).

via free access
same time as the presence in me of a power capable of passing over everything

toward nothingness, the unfathomable distance that separates me from divine
transcendence, unattainable in the immanence of its being. Divinum est. For
the infinite gap thereby finds itself unfolded in its “length, breadth, and depth”
(number 65) in which divine freedom can, in its turn, manifest its power and
actualize its determinations.
Non coerceri maximo. This freedom is also not enclosed by what is greatest,
not even by the unequaled glory of the Holy Trinity. “The three Divine Persons
as on the royal throne or seat of their Divine Majesty, as they look at all the
surface and circuit of the earth and all the peoples” (number 106). The liberty
manifests itself by the movement of condescendence that inclines toward its
sinful creature, quite precisely toward the “little room of Our Lady in Nazareth”
(number 103), to enclose itself, to incarnate itself in a flesh of sin. For this move-
ment, the end is finally the Hoc est corpus meum of Christ, who determines it to
be contained in the smallest. Contineri a minimo. “Sacrifice of the eucharist …
the greatest sign of his love” (number 289). Divinum est.
But this fall where the Son’s majesty is annihilated does not reveal only the
amplitude of divine freedom. It also delivers us from the bonds of sin, rendering
our freedom a horizon worthy of it as much as of God’s transcendence. To be
voluntarily enclosed itself in what is smaller, sign of immensity, Christ under-
goes death and descends into hell. But by his cross he “broke down the wall of
enmity that separated us” (Ephesians 2:14), and by his blood, we are “redeemed
from the curse of the Law, by which we were enclosed” (Galatians 3:13). So
much so that from now on we can aspire, and this time without radical pride,
“to be like God.” Non coerceri maximo.
Risen back from the nothingness where he has thus descended, the Res-
urrected One brings his disciples peace, which is to say the reconciliation of
movements previously divided in the extreme, and joy, which is to say agil-
ity that passes without hesitation or effort from one to the other. If he finally
withdraws himself from their view by rising to the heavens, it is in order that
our freedom, without ceasing to stretch to the limits of the universe and of
duration, may unite itself in everything to divine freedom, recognizing “Christ
who is all in all” (Colossians 3:11) and first “to one of the least of my brethren”
(Matthew 25:40) as the presence of the eternal in the least hic et nunc. Contin-
eri a minimo.
Divinum est. Ignatius is not content with unfolding this divine synthesis of
contraries in the immense synthesis that these four weeks embrace. Even in
the smallest details, his pedagogy is inspired by it, always careful to balance
one by the other and with our infinite impulse toward transcendence and our
no less great need for immanence.

via free access
It suffices to mention a few examples of this.

As soon as Ignatius encountered a pupil with a heart like his, impatient of
limits, as he enters into play, he moderates his ambition (number 14) and even
refrains from excessive curiosity about the way he is entering, asking him to
keep to the present moment and “so to labor in the [moment] to attain what
he is seeking as if he did not hope to find in the [following moments] any
good” (number 11). And the first teaching that he gives the disciple consists
simply in revealing the relation that unites and distinguishes transcendence
and immanence through end and means. The higher the end, the more deeply
freedom must insert itself in the means. From this rule of tantum … quantum
that measures the use of creatures and requires universal indifference to leave
room only for the single desire of the more: unice desiderando et eligendo ea
quae magis conducent ad finem, [“desiring and choosing only what is more
conducive for us to the end”] (number 23). From there must then come the
detailed prescription about methods of election, just as the different prin-
ciples in which two open comparatives open upon the maximally opposite
terms. For example, at the end of the annotations that open the path of the
Exercises like the portico of the stadium: Quanto magis anima nostra se reperit
solum et segregatum [tanto] se reddit aptiorem ad approprinquandum Creatori
et Domino suo …; et quanto magis ita eum attingit, magis se disponit ad susci-
piendas gratias ac dona a sua divina et summa Bonitate, “The more our soul
finds itself alone and isolated, the more apt it makes itself to approach and
to reach its Creator and Lord, and the more it so approaches him, the more it
disposes itself to receive graces and gifts from his divine and sovereign good-
ness” (number 20). Or again, there is the same annotation whose importance
we have seen, placed like a marker in the middle of a race: Cogitet unusquisque
tantum se profectum facturum esse in omnibus rebus spiritualibus, quantum
exiverit a proprio suo amore, a voluntate et utilitate. [“Let each one think that
he will benefit himself in all spiritual things in proportion as he goes out of
his self-love, will, and interest]” (number 189). Without counting the particular
rules built on the same model (for example, numbers 83, 84, 213, 172, etc.) and
above all the group of Rules for the Discernment of Spirits where, as we will see
later, the same tension is presupposed everywhere.
But the nature of this double impulse is nowhere more clearly revealed than
in the contemplation ad Amorem. For, the perspectives of the previous four
weeks are no less enlarged there without limit and condensed to the highest
degree. And in love, insofar as it is communication between divine freedom
and human freedom, that is the “divine thing” that produces and intimately
grounds in Ignatius a mystique of transcendence and a mystique of the incar-
nation. They are opposing tendencies but, far from counteracting each other,

via free access
call each other mutually, balance each other, and re-enforce each other with-
out measure. Because the measure of love is not to have any measure in order
thus to make our existence participate in the very rhythm of the life of Father,
Son, and Spirit.
This palpitation of Trinitarian life never enclosed by what is greatest, always

contained nevertheless in what is smaller, is what the author of Ignatius’s
Elogium sepulcrale perceived in him. It is also what Hölderlin dreamed of
when he took up the aphorism again as the motto of his poetic aspirations.
Finally—let us dare to say—it is what his friend Hegel would try to express
under the form of “movement of the concept” completing itself in the circular-
ity of absolute knowing. The palpitation of the Exercises has no other founda-
tion, and it is not surprising that throughout the Exercises we found this double
movement of always greater expansion and contraction that distinguishes it
from the geometrical figure’s closed and dead circularity. Certainly, thereby a
question arises: how to compose two images as opposed as, on the one hand,
the regular and continuous unfurling of the circumference, which reconnects
the initial and the final point, and on the other hand, the discontinuous and
progressive pulsation, which, like that of an accordion, dilates unceasingly
only to concentrate itself always more. For the moment, let us leave this prob-
lem unsolved. Let us merely invoke the Exercises’ circularity as a symbol illus-
trating the intimate connection that makes an organic totality out of their
Four Weeks, whose frameworks are the Foundation and the contemplation
ad Amorem. And let us simply ask for help to better grasp the sense and scope
of such unity for the spiritual life.
Anyone who has understood or at least felt that in this totality, the different
moments of the act of freedom are intimately welded to each other, will not
commit the error against which the Directories alert the retreatants emerging
from the Exercises, namely to believe oneself definitively established in the
unitive life at the end of the Fourth Week. This would be tantamount to imag-
ining oneself once and for all purified from sin after the First Week. Such illu-
sions are the fruit of a confusion that takes representation for reality. It is true
that emerging from the First Week, I must have renounced all attachment to
sin. Except that, any consciousness that is developed in time cannot obtain at
the first stroke a full vision of itself. A consciousness that believes itself per-
fectly purified after the Meditatio de inferno and the general confession is only
an imperfect incomplete image of myself as I will know myself at the end of
the Second Week, then of the Third, and finally of the Fourth Week. The light
acquired each time has the effect of further clarifying not only my immediate

via free access
past but also the farthest past and of making me discover the new roots of sin
in my most intimate being …
All the more so when the meditation ad Amorem has gathered all these lines
into a single bundle to light in my heart the love of reciprocity and make the
Suscipe burst forth, the more ardent this love will be and the more clearly it will
make me understand the humility of my condition as creature and perceive
how much the fruits of original sin are still alive in me. If, by contrast, I imag-
ine myself as not having or not remembering this condition or not needing
to struggle against these fruits in order to continue to live by pure love, then,
however real and intense this pure love may have been to that time, it begins
to be replaced by its mere representation. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden, I let myself be taken in by the seductions of the Evil One, presenting
me an image of “being-as-God,” which corresponds neither to my condition
as creature nor still less to my sinful nature … A fortiori, in order to extricate
myself, I must then come back to the Foundation, to the triple sin, and retrace
the whole path of the Exercises.
This necessity is the direct consequence of their unity, of their circularity.

Because their four divisions are the temporal representation of the free act,
there is reciprocal immanence and correlation between them as between
the moments of this act. And as long as I live in time, it is impossible for me,
without taking account of this implication, to participate in the revelation
that opens me up to the truth of my past and to the presence of my defini-
tive future. Under pain of losing the benefits of the path completed and of
taking the representation of divine union as its reality, we are then forced to
return continually to the point of departure and to unceasingly go back over
the route finished in order to live always out of pure love ad maiorem laudem
et gloriam Dei.

via free access
Afterword
We can never speak correctly of Ignatius except in dialectical

oppositions.
Hugo Rahner, Stimmen der Zeit, February 1947, 335
∵
The Contemplatio ad Amorem Obtinendum revealed to us such a unity in the
Exercises that the soul who has arrived at this point must necessarily come
back to the Foundation and again retrace all the stages of spiritual ascent. This
is also the clear sign of their universal value: as a method not only for the one-
time choice of a state of life or for the periodic renewal of the soul, but also for
its behavior when faced with daily decisions. For, likewise universal is the law
that requires of life never to progress except by increasingly reproducing the
cycle of its operations.
The life of our spirit does not escape this circularity. No less than any other,
because the intimate life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is its source and perfect
exemplar, whose blessed and glorious circumincession has been communi-
cated to us by Christ, who is in person “the way, the truth, and the life.” Now, is
it not already remarkable that Ignatius should have been favored with visions
of the Holy Trinity, more perhaps than any other mystic? Father de Guibert, a
competent judge, writes:
I believe it would be difficult to find a more complete mystical blossom-

ing of this devotion than the one that is manifested in spiritual notations
of [Ignatius’] Journal.1
A still more singular fact that provokes the astonishment of the same judge,
these visions often assume geometrical form, circular or spherical. On the date
of Thursday, March 6, 1544, Ignatius notes in his Spiritual Journal:
At the Te igitur (in the Mass) I felt and saw, not obscurely, but lumi-
nously and very luminously the very being or the essence of God, under a
1 Joseph de Guibert, S.J., “Saint Ignatius mystique,” 3–32 and 113–40 in Revue d’ascétique et de
mystique 20 (1938): offprint, 35. “La spiritualité de la Companie,” 33.

via free access
190 Afterword
spherical form, slightly larger than the appearance of the sun. And from
this essence the Father seemed to come or flow, in such a way that in say-
ing Te, that is, Pater, the divine essence presented itself to me before the
Father … without distinction or sight of the other persons (27).
After unvesting, in the prayer of thanksgiving, the same being and the
same spherical vision presented itself to my sight. In some way, I was see-
ing the three divine persons, in the same way I had seen the first, that
is, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit came forth and flowed
separately from the divine essence, without going out of the spherical
vision (p. 28).2
The same day at night, while Ignatius writes his notes: “The intelligence sees
something although in very great part not with the same clarity, but as a rather
large spark.”
Only a fragment of this Journal covering a few months in 1544 has been pre-
served for us. It is enough to have some idea of the frequency of these visions.
All the more in that we know, from A Pilgrim’s Journey, that they began very
early, almost always taking on a geometrical form close to a circle.3 Whatever
2 St. Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Journal of St. Ignatius Loyola, February 1544 to 1545, trans-
lated by William J. Young, Woodstock College Press, Woodstock, Maryland, 1958, Kessinger
Legacy Reprints. [Fessard uses Journal spirituel (extraits), trans. Fr. Maurice Giuliani, S.J., in
Christus, number 2, (April 1954). He does not indicate page numbers. See also Ignacio de
Loyola, Journal Spirituel translated by Maurice Giuliani, Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1959.]
Likewise on Tuesday, March 25 we read: “Tears before Mass and after it, many during it, with
a vision of the Divine Essence terminating in the Father. Often in the form of a circle” (38). On
Sunday, March 30: “In these intervals, several times, I had the vision of the Divine Essence in
circular form, as before” (39). On Wednesday, April 2: “At intervals, a vision at different times
of the Divine Being, sometimes terminating in the Father in circular form, with much intel-
lectual light and interior knowledge” (40).
3 The first time Ignatius sees “the Most Holy Trinity under the aspect of three keys on a musi-
cal instrument.” Then, “it was granted to him to understand with great spiritual joy, the way
in which God had created the world. He seemed to see something white, with rays stream-
ing from it, from which God made light” (Pilgrim’s Journey, nos. 28, 29, pp. 36–37). Likewise,
“During prayer, he often, and for an extended period of time, saw with inward eyes the
humanity of Christ, whose form appeared to him as a white body, neither very large nor very
small; nor did he see any differentiation of members. He often saw this in Manresa; and if
he were to say twenty times or forty times, he would not presume to say that he was lying …
He also saw our Lady in similar form, without differentiation of members” (Pilgrim’s Journal,
no. 29, p. 38). Later, on the ship carrying him to the Holy Land, “Our Lord appeared to him
on many occasions … It seemed to him that he saw a large round object, as though it were of
gold …” (Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 44, p. 52). Finally, precisely while dictating his memoirs: “He
often had many visions, especially those that have been mentioned above, of seeing Christ as

via free access
Afterword 191
interpretation such a form may have, to our thinking, its geometrical character
deserves attention and we will come back to it. But even if we knew nothing of
all these visions, the “spiritual knowledge” that accompanies them would suf-
fice to explain that the dialectic of the Exercises, the method to unite oneself
to trinitary life in Ignatius’s view, would obey this law of circumincession. So
that in emerging from the last exercise, its end appears already presupposed in
the beginning, as the unity of the different moments of the process present in
every one of them.
This is what justifies, in some measure, the brilliant paradoxes that Henri
Bremond discharges as arrows against the commentators on the Exercises. One
of the principal representatives of the traditional interpretation, Fr. de Ponlevoy
has written:
In the book, Exercises, under an apparent neglect of the ties both basic
and formal, there is a profound order, quite logical and practical; in real-
ity everything there comes at its time and everything there is found in its
place.4
In this passage Bremond underlines from the word ties to completely logi-
cal and exclaims: “A curious, moving, construction, but if I may dare say, a
bit childish.”5 It is so evident to him that this book is the work of a mystic! If
Fr. de Ponlevoy finds in it a completely logical order, it is because he previously
weighed the terms in “Cartesian scales.” But this logic is impotent to answer the
questions that the composition of the Exercises pose. For example:
Where should the contemplation Ad Amorem be placed? Well, wherever

you please: at the beginning, in the middle at the end; that does not have
the least importance! So it goes with all the problems that the book’s
architecture may raise (92).
a sun” (Pilgrim’s Journal, no. 99, p. 120). Certainly, the image of the circle or the sphere, limited
or infinite, as symbol of divinity, goes back to the most remote tradition and has become the
common property of all intellectualist mystics for reasons easy to understand, before falling
into the hands of simple philosophers. But at Manresa, Ignatius was still uncultured and
must have been quite unaware of this tradition; and even if, during his passage through the
universities, he might have heard it mentioned, it does not explain what he saw of Christ or
Our Lady in the form of a circle, or the Persons of the Trinity as three circles in one …
4 Armand de Ponlevoy, Commentaire sur les Exercises spirituels de saint Ignace (Évreux,
1889), 371.
5 Bremond, “Saint Ignace mystique,” offprint, 84.

via free access
192 Afterword
And quite particularly, about the division and sequence of the four weeks.
The placement of the First is undoubtedly determined. But then, where is this
“progression that continues,” as we are told?
Is the whole mechanism of the election a logical progression upon con-

clusions that the contemplation of the “Kingdom” already imposed upon
a generous and vigorous dialectician? … What do the last two weeks have
to do with that in this mechanism? Why, speaking still as a logician, why
I ask, set the election at the end of the Second Week and not at the Third or
the Fourth? This election that, in the opinion of everyone is the essential
exercise of the whole series and that, consequently, ought it not rather be
its end? It is said that the Second prepares and that the other two confirm
the election. But if it is the case that there is an appreciable difference,
where does it come from? For example, how does the meditation upon
Christ’s suffering seem more appropriate to confirm than to clarify the
choice we must make? I am not asking to contemplate the resurrection
before the nativity, but outside of this chronological progression, I am
waiting for the “deep order” to be developed for us, which is supposed to
be discovered in the Exercises, as in a sort of intellectual drama: “That the
ever increasing stirring from scene to scene …” (87).
There is the same skepticism with regard to the efficacy of this “completely
practical order.” As a Jesuit, in the meantime, Henri Bremond had “done,” as
he himself tells us at the very beginning of his study, “the exercises many times
under the direction of eminent Jesuits, and had himself also given them, as he
had received them or more or less.” This does not keep him from writing:
In most cases, the choice imposes itself of itself: it is already made when
one sets about to make it in the approved way. So much so that we could
say without paradox that the natural result of the Exercises is to render
useless this very complicated work of the election from which, neverthe-
less, the whole machinery hangs … In the first turn of the wheel, so to
speak, the machine has given the essential of what it can give (106).
In truth, Henri Bremond is very far from denying the intellectual and moral
value of the Exercises. Otherwise, how can it be explained that this historian of
“religious feeling” is so interested in their “prodigious career” (103)? Except that
this refined literary man has not reflected to the point of perceiving that he
yields to the very defect that he reproaches in others. He reproaches those who

via free access
Afterword 193
hold “the traditional and in some way official” interpretation (1), with too easily
finding “a learned order, an invincible dialectic” in the Exercises, for having put
it there. “It is,” he says, “like the cup in Benjamin’s pouch.” On the contrary, he
limits himself to piecing together a “labor of pure criticism” (111). As if the com-
pletely impartial and objective historian that he would like to be could strip
himself of his prior formation, of his unconscious prejudices, of his implicit
philosophy, in a word of his own historicity! For the rest, a few lines prior to
the revindication of this critical purity, the philosophy that inspires him shows
more than its earlobe, when he characterizes the two currents between which
quite early the commentators are divided.
Two schools: one that interprets the Exercises in the light of the mystics;
the other for whom the book of Ignatius is only a manual of ascetic hero-
ism. Two philosophies of prayer: one theocentric, for whom prayer has
the essential goal of uniting man to God; the other anthropocentric, for
which prayer has the essential goal of acquiring the virtues (110–11).
Moreover, between the two, the critic loyally refuses to pronounce himself; the
historian perceives correctly that if one can appeal to the mystic of Manresa,
the other would favor more in the founder of the Society of Jesus, in the author
of its constitutions. Despite it all, how do we fail to see that all the sympathies
of the critic go with one side, while he saves all his arrows for the other? Surely
the reaction is historically motivated and healthy on more than one point.
But basically, its inspiration is still Cartesian. At least it is so in continuing to
oppose theocentric and anthropocentric, prayer and action, as logic and prac-
tice. By contrast, Ignatius’s originality is precisely to have been as much the
mystic of Manresa as the General of the Society of Jesus, one accomplishing
what the other had projected, in a continuity without rupture. Also, the task of
the historian or the philosopher who wants to understand such originality can-
not consist in opposing, even a little, these two personages, however different
their ends and their behavior may seem. On the contrary, the task must be to
weld them together as soon as they are distinguished, by discovering the vital
link that, in the single Ignatius, makes the theocentric and the anthropocen-
tric, prayer and action, logic and practice, communicate and maintains them
in constant interaction, in circle.
It is precisely this link that our essay tried to bring out twenty-five years
ago by following the Exercises step by step starting from the problem of the
Election. Against the criticisms of Henri Bremond, perceiving in “logic” only its
formal or abstract and consequently anti-mystical side, we were inspired then

via free access
194 Afterword
by a more concrete perspective taken as much from the Blondelian views on

the Logic of Moral Life6 as from Hegel’s Phenomenology. Since then, Ignatian
exegesis, perhaps partly because of the influence of Henri Bremond, has never
stopped emphasizing the predominant role of mysticism in St. Ignatius. No
one has done so better than Fr. J. de Guibert in a pamphlet whose testimony we
have already invoked. Referring particularly to the Spiritual Diary, his study is
concerned above all to seek out to which current of mysticism, which family of
contemplatives it is possible to attach the spiritual way of Ignatius, where, says
Fr. Guibert, “we are in the presence of an essentially trinitarian and eucharistic
mysticism.” But in passing, he notes “the complete convergence of the favors
freely granted to the founder with the fundamental tendencies of his asceti-
cism, or, more exactly, since these favors in part, at least at Manresa, preceded
any formulation of ascetical principles, the fidelity of the ascetical teaching to
the directions received from God during his life as a contemplative.”7
This is to recognize, in a language different from ours, the seamless continu-
ity about which we spoke earlier between the Manresa mystic constructing
the structure of the Exercises, and the General of the Jesuits favored with the
highest visions of the Trinity.
In the Journal as in the Exercises [Fr. de Guibert continues], with the same
overriding concern to find and embrace God’s will, to find it first through
inner experience, without, however, renouncing in any way the use of
reason enlightened by faith, the same desire for divine confirmation of
decisions taken, there is the same devotion to the Most Holy Trinity and
the same respect for the Divine Majesty, the same feeling of the infinite
distance between God and us in the midst of the liveliest effusions of
love; it is the same very large place given to the mediators and in the
first place, to the humanity of Christ, our leader and model; our advocate
before the Father, under him, to the Virgen and to the saints (recall the
triple colloquies and the grand compositions of place); there is still the
same role, subordinated but consoling and useful given to the imagina-
tion and to sensibility, which do not appear as the born enemy we must
get rid of but as a real aid, although secondary, and to be watched; the
same value awarded to tears; on both sides, an attentive, penetrating
introspection, but no introversion breaking away from the realities of
6 Maurice Blondel, “Logique de la vie morale,” communication to the First Congress of

Philosophy, Paris, 1900.
7 Joseph de Guibert, “Saint Ignace,” separata, 68.

via free access
Afterword 195
daily life in order to lose oneself in the contemplation of God at the cut-
ting edge of the soul.8
Since, in the judgement of this master of spirituality, such is the “parallelism”

between Journal and Exercises, we would like to try to show, by way of con-
clusion, summing up our earlier analyses, how the vital link is presented to
our eyes, which unites mysticism and asceticism in Ignatius from the grotto
of Manresa to the Gesù in Rome. And since “the imagination” in his view must
play a “consoling and useful role,” we will appeal to its “assistance.” Even more,
to render in some measure perceptible the manner in which the principal
connections of the Exercises assure the interaction of the theocentric and the
anthropocentric, of prayer and action, of the logical and the practical around
a mystery that is first Christocentric even before being eucharistic and trinitar-
ian, we will dare to recur to a rigorously geometrical symbolism.
It is a strange effort. But perhaps less foreign to Ignatius’s genius than it
might seem at first sight. Indeed, Henri Bremond could answer Fr. de Ponlevoy,
citing the “apparent carelessness” of the Exercises and affirming that “St. Ignatius
was too serious to employ visual symmetry”:
Along with a number of holy souls, he has a great taste for symmetry
(two standards, binaries, three degrees, three times of election, and so on
and so forth) and even for visual symmetry (the lines for the particular
examination).9
Furthermore, in spite of everything, he retains these lines, from a bad author

whose clumsy style unleashes his instincts of an old humanities professor, and
declares that the last three represent “all the good sense that there is” in his book:
By imagination, Ignatius comes to localize the soul’s movement by situat-

ing a whole drama in space, in agreement with memory that situates it
in time. Ignatius has the genius of topographical imagination, the kind
of imagination that is found sometimes both in the those who handle
armies and in those who construct drama.10
Noël Nougat, Les Exercises spirituels d’Ignace de Loyola, Montauban, 1906, 76
8 De Guibert, “Saint Ignace mystique,” offprint, 69–70.

9 Bremond, “Saint Ignace et les Exercises,” offprint, 84–85.
10 Bremond, “Notes sur les Exercises de saint Ignace,” June 1929, 166–67. Certainly, as
Bremond remarks, to localize and situate in space is the same thing … But despite its clum-
siness, this phrase has the merit of underlining the fundamental agreement between
space and time that characterizes Ignatius’s imagination and justifies the interconnection

via free access
196 Afterword
Even more, he who labels Fr. de Ponlevoy’s “completely logical” order a

“childish construction” and shows himself ready to situate the contempla-
tion ad Amorem anywhere at all, is the first to recognize—certainly without
realizing it and naturally in the form peculiar to his literary acuteness—that
the Exercises show a circular form, and to commend those who know how to
take it into account. As evidence, consider the following lines regarding the
Foundation:
The difficulty that the Foundation presents—not to me but to those who

see an implacable dialectical mechanism in the Exercises, a method of
continual ascent—the difficulty is rather to show that the final end of
this conduct is not attained from the very first hour. Homo creatus est …
even the love of concupiscence appears here only in the second place;
man has been created not first of all to save himself, but first of all to
praise God. Ignatius begins with pure love; a novice dialectician, but
already of great holiness, how could he do otherwise? This is why one of
his most eminent sons, Fr. Paul LeJeune, in his Solitude de dix jours (Paris,
1665), very harmoniously fuses the Foundation and the Contemplatio ad
Amorem, which according to Fr. de Ponlevoy, is the “crowning part of the
work.”11
As if the abc for “the imagination of anyone structuring a drama” like Ignatius,
were not to dispose everything (situations, characters, and exchanges in the
dialogue) so that beginning, climax, and outcome of the action constitute a
whole, unfolding itself in a circle where the last point “crowns the work”! This
requires that this last point be “reached by the first hour,” by the initial point,
and that the circuit from one to the other be carried out thanks to an “impla-
cable dialectic” and through “a continual ascension”!
that he approves of this imagination and that of “those who handle armies” or “those
who construct dramas.” The qualification “topographical” has found approval in his eyes
because it particularly corresponds to the first, but we might prefer typological, which
characterizes better these creators of “types” who are the great dramatists; or even mono-
graphical, which would have the advantage not only of expressing the quality common
to all of imposing the “law” of their creative imagination whether to the terrain where the
adversary is encountered or to personalities whose conflict must set off a typical pres-
ence, but quite particularly for Ignatius, the lawgiver of the “universal code” of a life, at
once struggle unto death and drama … Although perhaps it is not useless in an area still
so little studied to bring out these nuances, we will be satisfied with regard to Ignatius to
speak of his symbolic imagination, because the sense of his images and their coherence
are what especially concerns our project.
11 Bremond, “Notes sur les Exercises de saint Ignace,” 154.

via free access
Afterword 197
Certainly, Ignatius lived his work much more than he constructed it in the
fashion of a “dramatist.” Besides, even after having given it the final touch with
in view of papal approval in 1548, it is probable that he did not worry at all
about reflecting on its sense, as the tradition, his commentators, and we after
them, were to do afterward, As regards the contemplation ad Amorem in par-
ticular, a historian as critical as Fr. Pinard de la Boullaye doubtless is right to
affirm:
… never, because the level of love to which it must lead is achieved after
a long time in the Exercises, presented as he suggests (number 203),
Ignatius never made it the “necessary crowning” of his work. He con-
ceived as something that could be used with great benefit, but as detach-
able (which explains its absence in the Helyar text).12
Indeed, placed between the Fourth Week and the three ways of prayer in the
final redaction, the contemplation certainly can nourish prayer, like them, on
any day or moment of the Exercises—“at the beginning, the middle, or the end,
as you wish,” Henri Bremond was already telling us.
But granted all that, it remains, nonetheless, that the objective content of his
four points really does have some relation to the four weeks, like his Suscipe,
to condense their essence. Hence, doesn’t it pertain to contemplation itself
to be placed at the conclusion of the whole work and not elsewhere? Let us
acknowledge that such an interpretation of this content remains doubtful;
and Ignatius, without worrying either about the riches that he enclosed in his
contemplation or about its “learned form”—“too learned for most people,”
Fr. Pinard says—that he was giving it, saw in it only the means of arousing in
his retreatant a fundamental affective impulse. Without any doubt, from this
viewpoint the contemplation refers in the same way to all and to each of the
themes successively evoked in the various weeks, and by that fact even become
“isolatable” insofar “as usable at every time.” Yet isn’t this to acknowledge that
precisely by reason of this identical relation, the contemplation is the soul and
center of the Exercises? And finally, if with Bremond we want to maintain at all
costs that “pure love” is the “initial, fundamental disposition of the Exercises,
their sine qua non, their point of departure—and not the point of arrival as the
book’s architecture invites us to believe,”13 then we will agree readily. But how
12 Pinard de la Boullaye, Les étapes de la rédaction des Exercises de saint Ignace (Paris:
Beauchesnes, 1950), 35. The text remits to no. 201, a misprint that we correct in function
of a parallel passage, 33.
13 Bremond, “Saint Ignace mystique,” offprint, April, 1929, 21.

via free access
198 Afterword
can we fail to see that between the beginning and the arrival, the intensity of
this “disposition” and the comprehension of “this point of departure” will be
necessarily deepened? Otherwise, what sense, what use, what value would this
“architecture” and its “living and concrete dialectic” retain? Hence, it must be
admitted that, by making this contemplation the necessary crowning of the
Exercises, the tradition has simply and very legitimately fulfilled its task, which
is always to bring out the implicit sense of a work, even if its creator had no
clear consciousness of it.
Our whole ambition is to make this sense a little more explicit by speaking
of circularity and by using a particularly clear symbol to illustrate the value of
such a word applied to Ignatius’s book. Even before disputing the legitimacy
of such an undertaking, some (offended by the mere use of this geometrical
term), will doubtless claim that it can be of no use in appreciating the sense
or the origin of the texts. However, let us make them observe that what this
word means has just enabled us to reconcile the three aspects or functions
of contemplation ad Amorem, in regard to which fidelity to the tradition, the
criticism of historians, and the refinement of interpreters like Bremond are at
odds. Indeed, if it is by its objective content conclusion and culmination of the
Exercises, just as by its affective thrust their soul or their center at the same time
as their initial disposition, the identity of this beginning with the conclusion
does not prevent the latter from differing from the former, at least as to the
intensity of sentiment and the comprehension of concepts. Hence, isn’t there
every advantage and no inconvenience in evoking the image of a circle and of
its center, to unite and at the same time distinguish the triple role of this con-
templation in regard to the Four Weeks.
With regard to this last aspect—the most important one because implies
the other two—we can note again that, far from prohibiting us to speak about
circularity, the most ancient documents rather encourage it. We have seen how
Fr. Pinard explains the “absence” of the contemplation ad Amorem in the ver-
sion of the Exercises that the English humanist John Helyar left us after making
them in 1535–1536. But is it true that the “splendid meditation has left no trace
in their notes”?14 Let us read then the first lines of those notes:
Primo debemus ingredi ad laudem Domini, seu spiritualia exercitia

magno et liberali animo (incipere), ita quod omnia nostra tam inte-
riora quam exteriora, memoriam, intellectum, voluntatem et affectum,
totam denique animam et corpus ac membra ipsius, omnia, et alia bona
14 Pinard, Les étapes, 34.

via free access
Afterword 199
dimittamus in manibus ejus; ut ipse disponat tam de me quam de omni-

bus meis ad suam beneplacitam voluntatem; absque velle, absque nolle
proprio.—Secundo: homo creatus est … [First: We must enter into the
praise of the Lord or (begin) the spiritual exercises with a great and free
soul, so that we relinquish everything, both inner and outer, memory,
intellect, will, and affection, and lastly soul and body and all its mem-
bers, and other good things into his hands; so that he may dispose both of
me and of all my things at his benevolent will, without wanting, without
not wanting of my own.—Second: Man is created …]15 (The text of the
Foundation follows.)
In regard to the first paragraph, the editors indicate in a note: Haec est annotatio
quinta ex viginti primis. “This is the fifth of the first twenty annotations.” And in
fact, a good part of this passage reproduces expressions that are found almost
word for word in the Fifth Annotation,16 as the Autograph and the Versio Prima
preserve it. On the other hand, neither one contains anything that recalls the
long enumeration, underlined by Helyar, in which figures notably the charac-
teristic mention of the three faculties and of freedom: memoriam, intellectum,
voluntatem, et affectum. Moreover, both are in the impersonal mode, whereas
Helyar employs the first person plural, then the singular. Lastly, the latter does
not speak only of “offering,” but which is notably stronger, of “remission,” dim-
ittamus, and he goes well beyond “one’s own willing and freedom,” retained
by the Annotation only in anticipation of the future election, to the totality of
goods, coming back five times to the universality of this abandonment: omnia
nostra … totam denique … membra omnia, et alia bona … de omnibus meis …
Three faculties and freedom, personal style, insistence on abandonment
and on its universality, don’t all these characteristics inevitably evoke the
Suscipe? A number of commentators have already indicated that by its very
substance the Fifth Annotation calls for such a parallel. But the formal similari-
ties with Hylar’s text go so far that we have the right to ask whether this version
of the Exercises, where the ad Amorem in seed is distinguished so little from
the Foundation that the Suscipe appears in the disposition in which some-
one ought to be who is going to meditate on Homo creatus est … Of course,
Helyar’s text represents only the notes of a retreatant, Also, we cannot draw a
15 Monumenta Ignatiana, series 2, 2:624.

16 “… ingredi … magno et liberali animo … ut ipse disponat … de … quam de omnibus … ad
suam beneplacitam voluntatem …”

via free access
200 Afterword
conclusive proof of the identification we propose17 from that text. But in this
sort of thing, it would be vain to look for more than indications. What a case
Bremond would have made of the indications we have just pointed out, had
he noted them! Our goal is not to provide reinforcement to his thesis of ini-
tial “pure love.” But isn’t the mere fact of being able to raise such a question a
sign that speaking of circularity about the Exercises is something very different
from a frivolous metaphor—even in regard to the oldest documents that per-
mit us to catch a glimpse of their elaboration?
Lastly, it is a fact that in Ignatius visions of the Divine Being, the Trinity, the
eucharist, and even of Christ and the Virgin are also presented in geometrical
form. “The images are rather disconcerting,” judges Fr. de Guibert, who rightly
refrains from trying to find out “what theological interpretation they might
admit, in function of this or that theological system on the ‘divine subsis-
tences,’ since Ignatius was never a professional theologian.”18 We will be careful
not to fall into such a twist. But exactly because the images are those of a saint
and not of a theologian, they deserve to receive our attention, all the more so in
that they are frequent and perhaps only seem to us “disconcerting” because of
the mistake of wanting to relate them to speculations alien to Ignatius instead
of trying to connect them to the center of his interest. However that may be,
continuing in the line of our own reflection, we will try to employ “reason illu-
minated by faith” in regard to his images, seeking only of the symbolism that
reason and faith will allow us to construct, to give us a quasi-intuitive view of
the principal connections that our old essay brought out.
With that, it may be hoped that the value of the official interpretation will
be vindicated against the excesses of Fr. Bremond’s criticism of it at the same
time as the appropriateness of his intuitions are integrated. For, it is not only
“the growing upheaval from scene to scene …” of a kind of “intellectual drama”
that will aim at making our scheme stand out, but rather the tragic as well
as the logical order of the human-divine drama of freedom and of Grace. And
even if it must fail to satisfy the expectations of historians and critics like
Fr. Bremond, perhaps it will help more philosophical spirits to better glimpse
the exceptional value of this book for our time, first by reason of its ascetic and
mystical wealth, but also of the rigorous dialectical analysis of the historicity
in which this wealth has been made explicit.
17 Let us acknowledge, moreover, that it was suggested to us in the course of a conversation

by Fr. Giuliani.
18 De Guibert, “Saint Ignace mystique,” 38–39. In La spiritualité de la Compagnie, 34n71.

via free access
Afterword 201
1 Essay on Constructing a Geometrical Scheme of the Exercises
Although the image of the circle characterizes the majority of Ignatius’s visions,
we will not start from it. Firstly, because in Ignatius, the image, like the trinitar-
ian figure is rather to be arrived at. And also because its polyvalent symbolism
would require overly long explanations that would risk “leading astray” spirits
unfamiliar with such a type of speculation.
1.1 Fundamental Images

We will seek our point of departure and our central image from what was the
permanent and unique concern of Ignatius from his conversion to his death.
Let us recall the pilgrim knight on the road to Monserrat, meeting a Moor,
defending Mary’s virginity in partu against him, and after the Moor’s quick
departure, wondering whether or not his duty was to run at him in order to
avenge the honor of our Lady; “tired of examining the course to take,” finally
in order to resolve this problem of the relation of his freedom with divine free-
dom, he finds no other means than to give the mule its head at the next “fork.”19
19 This anecdote is so charming and so revealing that it is worth quoting in its entirety; cf.
A Pilgrim’s Journey, nos. 15–16; Tylenda, 23–24 [we have altered Tylenda here to give the
flavor of Fessard better]: “As he continued on his way, a Moor riding on a mule caught up
with him, and in their conversation they came to speak about Our Lady. The Moor was
admitting that the Virgin had conceived without the intervention of man, but that he
could not believe that in giving birth she remained a virgin. To substantiate his opinion,
he offered the natural reasons that came to his mind. Though the pilgrim countered with
many arguments, he could not bring the Moor to renounce his opinion. Finally, the Moor
then went on ahead in such great haste so that he lost sight of him; being left behind,
he reflected on what had just taken place between him and the Moor. Various emotions
welled up in his soul that disturbed him, because it seemed to him that he had not done
his duty; and they also roused in him some indignation against the Moor, thinking he had
done evil in allowing that a Moor should have such ideas about Our Lady and that he was
obliged to avenge her honor. He then felt the desire to go in search of the Moor and strike
him with a dagger for what he had said; this desire tormented him for a long time, but in
the end he was remained undecided without knowing what he was obliged to do. The
Moor, who had gone ahead, had told him that he was going to a village a bit farther on his
way, quite near the pathway, without the pathway going through it. Tired of trying to fig-
ure out what would be the good thing to do, and unable to come to any definite decision,
he held himself to the following: he would give the mule free rein and let it go by itself
to the point of bifurcation. If the mule took the road to the village, he would then search
out the Moor and use his dagger on him; if the mule took the highway and not the village
road, he would leave the whole affair. He did just as he decided, but the Lord brought
it about that though the village was little more than thirty or forty paces away and the
road leading to it was quite wide and in good condition, the mule took the highway and
bypassed the village road.”

via free access
202 Afterword
Bifurcation in the road, a traditional symbol of choice—think of Hercules

at the crossroads of vice and of virtue—of the election before which we find
ourselves at every instant. In it the horizontal represents the time in which the
human being travels in via and the two divergent paths starting from the hic
et nunc, represent the two opposite possibilities between which freedom must
opt (figure 1).20
This is the same person who wonders in Rome in 1544, having become
General of the Jesuits, whether his professed houses should dispose of income
or not, and for several months he employs all of the resources of his method
of election and of discernment of spirits in this problem; first setting out on
a page with two columns, reasons for to the right and reasons against to the
left,21 in order to “see toward which side reason inclines more” (number 182),
seeking at the same time to “find himself after the fashion of a balance scale”
(number 179), so that “the love of God descending from above should move his
will and make him choose” (number 184), especially praying that God alone
“put in his soul what is more for his praise and glory” (number 180), at the
end awaiting the “confirmation” (number 180) of his choice, the movements
of “consolation that unite the soul to its Creator and give it rest and peace in
Him” (number 316).
Here then we have a new image, that of the balance scale that can oscillate
toward what is high or what is low, but must be first in equilibrium and only be
determined by the weight of the love that draws it upward. Explicitly present
in the Fourth Annotation where it defines the attitude of someone who gives
the Exercises, and in the second point of the First Mode of Election, implicitly
evoked each time that the point is to “weigh” God’s love, the weight of my fail-
ures or the value of the motives of a decision, it in fact underlies the method’s
whole description. As fundamental as the image of the crossroads, it can be
superposed upon it. The horizontal then represents the state of equilibrium of
the two plateaus around the central point of hic et nunc that the vertical axis
crosses, in regard to which they can oscillate. By prolonging the lines of the
previous figure, we can represent the balancing of these two branches at the
same time as the inverse quality of the two possible choices: either the option
downwards represented by a solid line, the dotted line representing then the
arm of the rejected alternative (figure 2) or else the option upward under the
same convention (figure 3).
20 See the figures sketched at the end of the present work.

21 Cf. the manuscript with the description of this election: Monumenta historica Societatis
Jesu. Monumenta Ignatiana, 3, 1, 78n1.

via free access
Afterword 203
Consequently, the vertical line represents the axis along which the contrary
spirits act: the evil spirit or Satan, “the enemy of humankind” drawing freedom
downward; the good spirit, on the contrary, or divine freedom coming from
above to “posit in the soul” the decision that makes it “rise from the good to
the better” and even tends to make it coincide with this axis. This excludes
all oscillation of doubt and all error. Limit case, but one that Ignatius explic-
itly envisages, twice, as we have seen; in the first time of the Election, Deus
ita movet et attrahit voluntatem, ut quin dubitet nec dubitare possit talis anima
devota, sequatur id quod ostensum est; [“God Our Lord so moves and attracts
the will, that without doubting, or being able to doubt, such devout soul fol-
lows what is shown it”] (number 175); then, in the consolatio sine causa prae-
cedente (number 330), of which the Second Rule for Better Discernment of
Spirits speaks, and in regard to which the Eighth Rule insistently recommends
to discernere proprium tempus actualis consolationis a sequenti tempore, “to
look at and discern the time itself of such consolation from the following”
(number 336), the first alone being the instant of the decisions and the gifts
quae dantur immediate a Deo Domino nostro (number 336).
With this characteristic, we can judge the care with which Ignatius keeps
in mind historical actuality, to what point also this hic et nunc, thus deter-
mined by the encounter of the Eternal and the temporal, is at the center of his
thoughts, as of our diagram. And henceforth we can cite this vision at Manresa
that explains how this concern for historical actuality is at the root of Ignatius’s
eucharistic mysticism:
One day, while in town and attending Mass in the church attached to the
above mentioned monastery, he saw with inward eyes, at the time of the
elevation of the body of the Lord, some white rays coming from above.
But after so long a time [The narration was dictated to Fr. Gonçalves da
Câmara around thirty years later.], he is now unable to adequately explain
this; nevertheless, he clearly saw with his understanding how Our Lord
Jesus Christ was present in that most holy sacrament.22
Accordingly, the horizontal axis where temporal duration unfolds, and the ver-
tical axis of the Eternal penetrating time, intersect in the hic et nunc, with the
two contrary superposed positions that human freedom can take under the
opposite attractions, either of the Majesty of the Most High and his angels, or
of Satan and his devils. This is the design, so to speak, that serves as the back-
ground for the totality of the Exercises. Indeed in relation to it, the Foundation
22 Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 29; Tylenda version, 37–38.

via free access
204 Afterword
defines the existential situation of man before the world, medium, and before
God, end of all things, so the necessity of using created things tantum quantum
ipsum juvant ad finem, [“man is to use them as much as they help him on to his
end,”] and while waiting for the Divine determination, the obligation to facere
nos indifferentes … unice desiderando ea quae magis conducent ad finem, “to
make ourselves indifferent to all created things … choosing only what is most
conclusive to the end” (number 23). In relation to the Foundation, not only is
the Examen Generale (numbers 32–42) prescribed in preparing for the General
Confession during the First Week and for the majorem dolorem actualem de
omnibus peccatis et pravitatibus vitae suae, “greater actual sorrow for all the
sins and wickedness of his whole life” (number 44), but also for the double exa-
men particulare, which is repeated every day of the Exercises (numbers 24–31);
in fact, we have already said that by its very etymology, the word examen, arrow
of the balance scale, remits to this fundamental image. Lastly, let us add that
both preparatory prayer for every exercise also refer to it directly, which taken
implicitly from the Foundation makes me ask God ut omnes meae intentio-
nes, actiones et operationes pure ordinatur in servitium ac laudem suae divinae
Majestatis, [“that all my intentions, actions and operations may be directed
purely to the service and praise of his Divine Majesty”] (number 46), and all
the Rules for Discernment of Spirits to which we will return below.
If we reflect carefully on it, this fundamental design composed of two pairs
of perpendicular axes, one mobile, the other immobile, does not constitute
an unprecedented achievement by Ignatius. Rather it is the most natural and
most common image, because it is supposed in the metaphors of language
itself in which every Christian, not to say every human, represents to himself
the existential situation of his freedom in the world, or, to follow Heidegger’s
usage, his being-in-the-world. Who does not distinguish the before and after
of his choice? Who does not contrast the right and the left between which
he chooses. And who does not tie the goodness of his choice to what is above
and, reciprocally, its malice to what is below? Ignatius’s originality is to have
already adopted these universal and fundamental images as the basis of his
analysis and to have rigorously attached to them every one of the elements
that it brings to light. We are going to see that his originality is still more to have
specified and interpreted them in the light of the historical determinations
revealed by Christianity.
1.2 Design of the Four Weeks

This background having been stated, it is easy to see that Ignatius’s four
weeks are projected along the horizontal axis—the first two in the before of
the Election and the last two in the after—and they divide it in four equal

via free access
Afterword 205
segments. Indeed, what determines their mutual linkage and the passage of
each one to the other is not their duration, variable for each retreatant, but
their end, that is their immutable relation to the central Election.
From this fact, it must be noted immediately—the horizontal axis is no lon-
ger the indefinite straight line representing either a natural time or a properly
human time, but a straight line exactly limited a parte ante by the start of the
Exercises, or as the beginning of the reflection on the act of freedom concern-
ing the sin of the angels and of Adam, and a parte post by their completion or
the close of the same reflection upon the Ascension announcing the Parousia.
Building on this remark, in order to simplify, we will henceforth call these two
initial and final points Alpha and Omega. Furthermore, as the content of the
Second and Third Weeks is the properly historical life of Christ, it is clear that
the horizontal can represent not only the inner subjective time of our free acts,
but the historical and objective time of humanity as well.
Also, presumably the design that we will be able to build on these bases will
admit a double meaning; one subjective and existential, consequently refer-
ring to the moments of our least act of freedom; the other objective and uni-
versal, encompassing all human history and analyzing its different periods in
function of Christ, beginning, middle and end of time. Evidently, it is only the
first of these two meanings upon which the process of the Exercises intends
directly to shed light. Let us not make Ignatius into a philosopher or a theolo-
gian of history. Despite everything, the second meaning is no less clearly indi-
cated by both the dogmatic and historical content of the Exercises. From this
viewpoint, it is evident that the vertical axis splits the time of humanity into
two periods, one corresponding to the Old Testament, the other to the New
Testament; in the first, the first segment represents the time that goes from
Adam to the promise made to Abraham, the first the announcement of the
Incarnation; the second represents the time from Abraham to Christ; in the
period of the New Testament, the first segment corresponds to the time since
Christ up to our now; the last to the future that separates us from the Parousia.
Let it suffice here simply to indicate this second interpretation. We will
devote ourselves rather to specifying better the first by taking into account the
content and form of each week.
Entirely dedicated to reflecting sin in its origin, in its process, and finally in
its outcome, the First Week can obviously be symbolized by the two straight
lines of the image of the crossroads, or better still by that of the balance scale
as figure 2 already sketched them in the hypothesis of the evil option. And
since this positing of Non-being is inaugurated by the triple sin of the angels, of
Adam, and of any sinner, it follows automatically that these two lines will start

via free access
206 Afterword
from point Alpha to take the direction on one side toward the Most High and
on the other toward the Infernum. Therefore, let us make the first line dotted
to indicate that this initial possibility of the Good is henceforth no more than
a futurible, the second, on the contrary, as a solid line, since the correlative
possibility of evil since Adam has become reality. However, as the sinner who
goes through the Exercises descends into Hell only by the “application of the
(imaginative) senses,” and since the contrition that this application provokes
makes one rise up to here the call of Being, we can stop the continuous line
at the middle of this descending straight line and be satisfied with a dotted
line to represent the way followed by the imagination, and with two opposite
arrows indicating the direction of the first way followed by the imagination,
then this inverse direction of contrition. Finally, let us note that the two identi-
cal arrows on the two straight lines converging in Alpha can symbolize, on one
side, Creation and the initial call toward the above that it implies, and on the
other, the attraction of Non-being that every sin presupposes (figure 4). Since
we have already seen in figures 2 and 3 in the first hic et nunc, that the contrary
forces come into play along the vertical axis, it is clear that the directions made
explicit by these two groups of arrows represent this same interplay, but as it
begins to unfold in historical time.
The call of Being that opens the Second Week comes from above, from the
Most High, following, so to speak, the dotted line that already connects the
Most High to Alpha. It is the movement of the Incarnation that can be repre-
sented by transforming the dotted line into chopped traits. It touches the con-
trite sinner at the end of the First Week, determining in him a new orientation
in the opposite direction of the one his sinful will had followed until then. Let
us represent it by a continuous line joining the segment representing the First
Week in the hic et nunc. It is already visible that the straight line symbolizing
the choice of the better, towards the higher in the Election, will be found in
the prolongation of this new segment as is in fact the Third Week in that of the
Second Week.
But the latter, negation of the prior positing of Non-being, only makes free-
dom discover a new possibility of Being, denied in fact by its previous sins. This
new possibility presents itself to the will as an image—childhood and public
life of Christ—that comes to meet it to allow it a new choice. We can symbolize
this in joining the line of the Incarnation (in broken lines) to the hic et nunc.
Just as earlier, it is observable that in its prolongation will found the dotted line
toward the less representing the choice of the less good toward the low in the
Election (figure 5).

via free access
Afterword 207
At first this might be surprising. Would the call to Being be capable of revers-
ing itself? In reality, without it reversing itself, by the fact that it raises for free-
dom the possibility of a new choice, it also opens that of a choice not for the
Better but, in the opposite direction, for the Worse and not only for the less
good. The Rules for Discernment of Spirits for the Second Week, especially
four, five, and six, contemplate precisely this eventuality. Indeed they put the
will on guard against the evil angel who “transforms himself into an appear-
ance of angel of light … drawing it little by to his covert deceits and perverse
intentions” (number 332) in order to make “him descend from its spiritual joy
and to lead it to his depraved end” (number 334).
Let us note in passing in regard to these rules that the Ignatian analysis,
applied here to human affectivity in its relation to freedom, appears supremely
existential and dialectical here more than anywhere else in the rest of the
Exercises. So much so that, when we come to analyze the majority of these
rules, we will be able to refer ourselves to figures 2 and 3, the first of which
symbolizes the situation in the First Week, and the second in the Second Week.
The relation of the first two Weeks is therefore represented in figure 5 by

a square whose horizontal is a diagonal On the one hand, the split that sin
produces in freedom is represented by an angle open in the direction of time,
whose apex is at Alpha; on the other hand, the renewal of this split that begins
to effectuate itself under the influence of the Incarnation is depicted by con-
trast, by an angle that is closed in the direction of time, whose apex is the
hic et nunc.
In regard to figure 4, the design of the First Week, we already observed that
the lines connect Alpha on the one hand to the Most High and on the other
to the Infernum, making explicit the contrary movements that unfold along
the vertical line. The unfolding of the creative act goes from the Most High in
Alpha and lets created freedom posit itself as diametrically opposed it, in the
same act in which it wills itself “to be as God.” And in remorse, the good angel
uses the same thing in regard to the sinner’s consciousness in the First Week,
in order that Non-being, materialized by the “imaginary senses” should deny
itself by reduplicating itself. Whereas, the bad angel, in the midst of “apparent
delights” clouds the eyes of sinful freedom in regard to the impotence in which
it finds itself in regard to achieving its “being-as God.” The Second Week makes
explicit a new phase in those movements that are developed along the verti-
cal. In fact, although the sinner’s contrition conditions his awareness of the
call of being, the latter, which is allured by the descent of the Son, nevertheless
dominates the movement of re-ascent that is outlined in sinful freedom. The

via free access
208 Afterword
Immaculate Conception of Mary at the level of grace and her virginal mater-
nity at the level of nature form a connection to permit, the first the continu-
ation of the moment of the Incarnation, the other the continuation of the
re-ascent of the sinful will. Therefore, we could situate them in the two angles,
upper and lower, of the square in figure 5, extremities of the vertical line start-
ing from which the open angle of the First Week changes into the closed angle
of the Second. Two arrows on the vertical indicating the break between these
two Weeks will be enough to mark this connection.
Thus, the close connection between the determinations of the eternal in
regard to the historical and those of the historical in relation to the eternal is
more perceptible than earlier. This connection is the fundamental condition
in order that man should not despair either of salvation or of comprehending
history.
Furthermore, we should note that the break posited by the vertical axis
between the before and after of the Election, also begins to make itself
explicit in the break that exists between the first two Weeks. Indeed, the rela-
tion of these two Weeks is also that of before and after in relation to the Son’s
Incarnation and the sinner’s contribution, both conditioned by an option in
which human freedom unites itself to divine freedom.
Lastly, the relation of these two breaks, represented in figure 5 by the
parallelism of the verticals that mark them, also makes visible, so to speak,
the reason why Ignatius wrote Rules of Discernment of Spirits for the First
and Second Week, but not for the other two. Indeed, since the central break
between before and after is already reflected in the break that exists between
these two weeks, there is not a third kind of existential situation of freedom
to be envisaged. Even more, given that this existential situation of freedom
begins to respond to Being’s call from the start of the Second Week, and by
hypothesis will no longer cease to follow it, we have said everything when the
obstacles and illusions than prevented its doing so are uncovered. Besides, the
design already indicates that in this passage from the second to the First Week,
there is not a change of orientation for freedom. However, if a new one should
arise between the Third and the Fourth Week, then will be the moment to find
out why there is no need for new rules.
In the hic et nunc of the Election, freedom now decides for the better against
the less good (figure 6). Following the conventions already adopted in figure 3,
this choice must be represented by a solid line going up and a dotted line going
down. In figures 2 and 3, this dotted line symbolized only the possible set aside
by the choice, the evil or the good having become futurible. Thereafter, and by
virtue precisely of the determinations brought to light by the preceding weeks,

via free access
Afterword 209
its meaning has been enriched: now it must also depict the disordered tenden-
cies that are henceforth condemned to death by the choice made in the hic et
nunc. Indeed, it should be observed that this line downward is parallel to the
one that in the design of the First Week represents the reality of sin as the open
angle having its peak in the hic et nunc, and is also similar to the one emerging
from Alpha. But the reversal between the dotted line and the solid line that dis-
tinguishes these two angles, represents the contrary value of the two choices
symbolized in this way. This exactly qualifies the analogous relation of the First
and Third Weeks.
Let us go further. This dotted line does not only represent the only disor-
dered tendencies of sinful man. Since it prolongs the cross-hatching line that,
in the Second Week, represents the movement of the image descending to the
encounter of human freedom, it must also symbolize the pursuit of it through
Christ’s choice saying, Hoc est corpus meum.
Accordingly, to indicate this continuity, let us draw another line, not simply
dotted but in cross-hatching or broken up.
Here is what becomes visible in the design constituted thus (figure 6): the
hic et nunc where our freedom chooses upwards in the image of Christ who,
in obedience to the Father, offered himself to death through the Hoc est cor-
pus meum, is also identically the hic et nunc where divine freedom sinit pati
humanitatem Christi, “leaves the most sacred humanity to suffer so very cru-
elly” (number 196) and even in him vult pati … pro peccatis meis, “wants to
suffer … for my sins” (numbers 195–197). In this coincidence of the choice of
Christ, opting for death with the mortification of our disordered tendencies,
we can already perceive an illustration of the Pauline compati cum Christo,
fruit of Ignatius’s Christocentric and eucharistic mysticism. But on the other
hand, is it not singular that the choice of Christ should seem to be identified
with the direction that for our freedom represents and option toward the low?
First of all, let us make our whole figure 6 rotate ninety degrees counter-
clockwise: the horizontal axis becomes the vertical axis, and reciprocally the
Most High takes the place of point Alpha. From that, it appears that the first
movement of the Incarnation is choice toward what is below, as was Adam’s
choice previously. Why should we be surprised? Doesn’t St. Paul say that the
Son was sent by the Father in similitudinem carnis peccati, “in the likeness
of sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3) and even that Christ “was made to be sin on our
behalf ” (2 Corinthians 5:21). But the line in cross-hatching changes direction
at the moment where it meets the dotted line coming from Alpha, which has
now taken the place of Non-being … Let us recall that previously this dot-
ted line represented possibility—the futurible for us—of a sinless human-
ity in Adam. And isn’t this meeting point precisely where the analysis of the

via free access
210 Afterword
relation between the First and Second Week made us situate the Immaculate
Conception? From there, the orientation of the Incarnate Word seems to be
that of rising toward the hic et nunc and even beyond … So much so that the
strangeness of coincidence that just now had detained us earlier disappears:
the choice of Christ, which in relation to our temporal horizontal seems to
coincide with our possible choice downwards, is really, in relation to the verti-
cal of the eternal, a choice for the better, but it takes this appearance for us,
because it conditions our own choice toward the better. After having said,
Christ, “who knew no sin … God made to be sin on our behalf” St. Paul adds, “so
that we might become the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
This is why the Exercises are a rigorous commentary on this phrase, certainly
one of the apostle’s most mysterious and most profound, and why their geo-
metrical design can lend itself to furnishing its no less rigorous illustration.
Let us now reset our figure 5 to its normal original position. It must jump
out at us that if we were able to make the change of axis that gave us this illus-
tration, the reason for that is precisely this connection between the determi-
nations of the eternal represented on the vertical and those of the Historical
represented on the horizontal, already indicated in the context of the two pre-
ceding weeks. The Third Week has just offered us a new example of this, con-
firming the importance of this correspondence.
Exclusion of the Non-being, the Third Week ends with the Triduum Mortis,
characterized as we have seen by the death of Christ and his descent into Hell,
while Mary represents the divinity that keeps united the body and soul of her
Son. Since Christ descends into Hell, we can symbolize this new determina-
tion by lengthening the cross-hatched line representing the movement of the
Incarnation to the Infernum, the last point on the vertical that the sinner has
already reached on an other side in the Meditatio de Inferno. The semetipsum
exinanivit, [“he emptied himself”] (Philippians 2:7), of which Paul speaks in
regard to the Son, first in forma Dei, “in the form of God” and aequalis Deo, “on
an equality with God,” then factus obediens usque ad mortem crucis, “becoming
obedient even unto death … on the cross” (Philippians 2:5 and 8), therefore
finds here a perfect illustration in the cross-hatched line that connects the two
ends of the vertical axis. Besides, if in her compassion, Mary can represent the
divinity that maintains Christ’s body and soul united, it is because her freedom
in her choice approaches the divinity as nearly as a created freedom is able
to do. Now, in regard to figure 3, by relying on the First time of the Election
and on the Eighth Rule of the Discernment of Spirits for the Second Week, we
have observed that the needle of the balance scale tends to coincide with the
vertical, in proportion to the grace that attracts the will toward the Better. The
union of Mary Immaculate, now become Co-Redemptrix with her Son, with

via free access
Afterword 211
the Most High, will therefore be exactly represented by a dotted line and an
arrow reuniting with the end of the line symbolizing the choice toward the
Better at the summit of the vertical axis. Finally, let us mark the break between
Third and Fourth Weeks by a vertical ending in two arrows, as we have previ-
ously done for the limit between First and Second Weeks. Our design will thus
make perceptible the analogy of these two transitions and the privileged role
of Mary, which is its foundation (figure 6).
The Fourth Week remains to be represented; it is defined as positing of the

Being, and its content is the apparitions of the Resurrected Christ; It already
is clear to us that the Fourth Week must be this, by completing, with the lines
converging at Omega, the square half drawn by the lines of the Third Week.
Ignatius’s taste for symmetry might suffice to justify this intuition. Nevertheless,
let us seek more solid reasons that permit us to remain in agreement with the
conventions of our symbolism.
The end of the Fourth Week is not union with God in pure contemplation,
but the confirmation of the Election both as choice of human freedom exercis-
ing itself here below and as choice of divine freedom aiming at the salvation of
humanity by means of the church. This confirmation is obtained by the appari-
tions of the resurrected Christ, whose aim is to unveil the sense of the passion
to the faithful disciples and to impel them to the evangelization of the world.
At the end of the forty days during which he educates them with a view to the
foundation of his church, Christ turns their attention away from the regnum
Israel in hoc tempore and directs it, on the contrary, toward the testimony to
be given to him usque ad ultimum terrae, even to the end of the world, while
awaiting the glorious return of the Parousia, consequently until the end of
time. This new orientation of human freedom can be exactly symbolized by a
continuous line joining choice toward the better to Omega.
Besides, the resurrection of Christ and his apparitions, first to Mary, and
then to the disciples, mark the renewal, by the divine power, of the will’s natu-
ral tendencies previously purified by the death and the descent into hell. As
the mortification of these tendencies has been previously represented by the
cross-hatched line downwards, to symbolize this renewal, it is enough to join
this line to Omega by a dotted line and an arrow. All the more so in that this
renewal is obtained by the reversal of the relation of dependence between
spiritual senses and imaginary senses. Previously and from the outset of the
Second Week, as we explained in regard to the passage from the Third to
the Fourth Week, the first depended on the Second. Now, in consequence
of the passion undergone with Christ and of the incipient participation in his
glory, we have the reverse.

via free access
212 Afterword
Also as well, figure 7 shows this change. For, if the angle with its apex in
Omega is similar to the angle of the Second Week, the relation of the solid
line and the broken line that forms both angles is reversed. The relation makes
equally visible the reason for which Ignatius did not prescribe Rules for the
Discernment of Spirits for this week. In fact, although the orientation of
human freedom is changed in relation to the orientation it presented in the
Second and Third Weeks, this dominance of the spiritual senses that character-
izes the unitive way puts the soul in total dependence upon the Spirit of Christ,
at least in principle, making it invulnerable to the snares of the evil spirit, even
disguised as angel of light. According to the expression of St. Paul, in the mea-
sure in which we are con-sepulti cum Christo, “buried with Christ,” we are also
con-surrecti in Eo, “raised in him” (Colossians 2:12). As the two straight lines
joining the Most High to Alpha and Alpha to the Infernum representing the
movement of creation and of the fall, the lines that connect the Infernum to
Omega and Omega to the Most High illustrate the reverse movement, fruit of
the Incarnation and the Redemption (figure 7).
Now, let us consider figure 7 overall, trying to keep in mind the meanings we
have been led to acknowledge in the principal elements that compose it: first,
the horizontal axis of the Historical intersecting the vertical axis of the eter-
nal, the former uniting the before and the after that the latter distinguishes,
just as the latter itself unites the high and the low that the former separates;
then, in the large square of which these diagonals are the axes and which is
itself divided into four small squares by the perpendiculars crisscrossing in
the hic et nunc, the diverse angles, similar and opposed, which represent the
diverse situations and movements of human freedom and of divine freedom;
finally, through the succession of these moments and situations, the orienta-
tion, indicated by the arrows, of the elements that comprise it … Doesn’t such a
design let us grasp at a glance, along with the subtle relations that connect and
oppose their four weeks, the whole architecture of the Exercises.
First, are we not struck by the double twisted drawing of the two lines that
represent one human freedom circling around the horizontal and the other
divine Freedom that follows a similar path around the vertical? They trace
precisely a swastika! Without having foreseen or sought it at all the two
images of the crossroads and the balance scale—symbols of freedom and of
thought, pensée,23 fundamental attributes of humanity—following Ignatius
we have thus come to re-encounter the ancient emblem of the solar wheel,
23 Which, in the etymological sense of the word, is pesée, weight. Cf. Ernout-Meillet,
Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue Latine: pendo.

via free access
Afterword 213
of becoming, perhaps of fertility. Must we be surprised and scandalized that

it has been sadly honored by Nazism? Or isn’t it better to remember that after
having come from the Far East to the West, our cathedrals accepted it in their
medallions and set it in their lattices of stone sculpted to the glory of Our Lady
and of Christ? And if the Exercises allow us to glimpse the deep sense of a sym-
bol that, for millions if not billions of human beings, was a means of elevating
themselves toward the divine, would it be unworthy of this “fatidical book of
humanity” written to the greater glory of God?
However that may be, let us leave to the ethnologists and psychoanalysts the
freedom and the concern of saying what such an unexpected parallel suggests.
As for us, let us simply observe that this symbol illustrates the rigorous corre-
spondence and close ties of the two freedoms represented by these two inter-
twined mysteries, in short, the mystery of the man-God, center of Ignatius’s
mysticism.
Let us further remark that upon this unity rests the oscillation, the balanc-
ing presented by the succession of weeks, which is so remarkable and so sensi-
tive in more than one way. From the viewpoint of affectivity alone, can we fail
to wonder at how the First and Third Weeks, periods of obscurity and sadness,
alternate with the Second and Fourth Weeks that, on the contrary, are bright
and joyful, each furthermore with its own particular tone? To be sure, the affec-
tivity is always directed and always relative to freedom, or more exactly to the
reciprocal interplay of the two freedoms, human and Divine, which is the fun-
damental theme of each Week.24
24 To become aware of this, it is enough to compare the variations that Ignatius foresees
for the Additions of each week.—In the First Week, the Second Addition asks me to see
myself upon awakening, as, for instance, “if a knight found himself guilty before his king
and all his court or as a great criminal and in chains … and already deserving death in
order to arouse confusion for so many sins” (no. 74). At the same time, the Sixth Addition
forbids me “to want to think of things of pleasure or joy,” and, to the contrary, mandates
“that I want to grieve and feel pain” (no. 78), and to this end the Seventh Addition orders
that I “deprive myself of all light” (no. 79).—In the Second Week, the images of knight and
criminal are replaced by others taken from the mystery to be contemplated and whose
end is “desiring to know more the Eternal Word Incarnate in order to serve and to follow
him better” (no. 130). The Sixth Addition again recommends the frequent recollection
of these same images, and the Seventh Addition leaves the retreatant free “as to keeping
darkness or light, making use of good weather or bad, according as he feels that it can
profit and help him to find what he desires” (no. 130), namely to be better disposed for
the election.—In the Third Week, the images again taken from the mystery to be contem-
plated should lead me “to be sad and grieve over such great grief and such great suffering
of Christ” (no. 206). This time there is no mention of a change to bring to the Seventh
Addition. This is explained by the absence of Rules for the Discernment of Spirits in the
Third Week: the existential situation has not changed, although the retreatant should

via free access
214 Afterword
If, after having observed the care with which Ignatius is concerned to
describe the nuances of this affectivity and to prescribe means to make it vary,
we go back to the notations published in A Pilgrim’s Journey and the Spiritual
Journal, we come to think that it would not be imprudent to represent this
variation and their nuances by colors: black ink for the First Week, luminous
whiteness for the Second; bright red for the Third; gold shining like the sun for
the Fourth.25
then use the clarity and darkness with a different affective end.—Finally, in the Fourth
Week, the point will be “immediately upon awakening … wanting to arouse feeling and
be glad at the great joy and gladness of Christ Our Lord” (no. 226). This time, the Sixth
Addition specifies that the feelings of spiritual joy are to be maintained by the recollec-
tion of the mysteries of the resurrected Christ. Finally, the Seventh Addition prescribes,
as in the First Week but in the reverse sense, “to use light or temporal comforts—as in
summer the coolness and in winter the sun or heat—as far as the soul thinks or conjec-
tures that they can help it to be joyful in its Creator and Redeemer” (no. 229). These are
small details, but they reveal to what point Ignatius understood that affectivity is grasped
as signifying “the totality of the relations of human reality to the world,” as Sartre says
(Esquisse d’un théorie des emotions, 51), following Heidegger. It also reveals to what point
Ignatius concerned himself with the means appropriate to direct this affectivity to lead it
by degrees from the darkness of the First Week to the brilliant light of the Fourth.
25 For the First Week, we have just quoted from the Seventh Addition. It is not surprising
that no indication of this kind is found in the Spiritual Journal; but perhaps we could
also bring in the image of “a deep hole in his cell [at Manresa]” into which, during his
period of scruples, “he was vehemently tempted to throw himself” (Pilgrim’s Journey,
no. 24; Tylenda translation, 33).—For the Second Week, we have already mentioned the
“white rays coming from above” (Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 29; Tylenda translation, 37) after
communion and “making him understand how Our Lord Jesus Christ was present in that
most holy sacrament” (Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 29; Tylenda translation, 38). The same char-
acteristic is found again in the Journal on February 27: “I thought in spirit that I saw just
Jesus, that is his humanity” (Spiritual Journal, no. 26, p. 20; Giuliani translation in Christus,
no. 2).—For the Third Week, on February 18, after a Mass of the Holy Trinity, Ignatius
notes: “I said Mass neither with tears, nor entirely without them, but with a certain warm
devotion, as it were reddish” (Spiritual Journal, no. 17, p. 12). During this whole period
and particularly that day, Ignatius seeks the confirmation of his election concerning the
poverty of the professed houses: and here is how he prays just before going up to the altar:
“Eternal Father, will you not confirm me? … and the same to the Son and to the Holy
Spirit” (Spiritual Journal, no. 18, 13). Now, what is proper to the Third Week is reformata
confirmare.—Finally, for the Fourth Week we recall that on the ship that was conveying
him to Jerusalem, “Our Lord appeared to him on many occasions … It seemed to him that
he saw a large round thing, as though it were of gold” (Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 44, Tylenda
translation, 52); furthermore, in the Contemplatio ad Amorem, at the Fourth Point, the sun
is taken as a comparison; in the Journal, the spherical vision of the Trinity is compared
again on March 9 to the sun. [Translator: in the Young translation, there is no mention
of sun or circles in the March 9 entry but on March 25 Ignatius has a vision of God “in a
circular figure several times” and on March 27 he has a vision of God “in spherical form
as on past occasions” Spiritual Journal, part 2, nos. 9 and 11, p. 38.] On the other hand, in
a “colloquy with the Holy Spirit” on February 11, he seemed to see or feel him “in a dense

via free access
Afterword 215
In any case the relations of similarity and contrast are undoubtable between
the four weeks illustrated by the four angles that crossed by horizontal axis of
our scheme. Between the First and Second Week in the before, there is the
same opposition and same complementarity as between the Third and Fourth
Weeks in the after. Besides, between the First and the Third Weeks there is the
same relation as between the Second and Fourth Weeks: the latter actualizes
what the former prefigured, as the third repairs what the first had destroyed.
Finally, the First and the Fourth Weeks have the maximum opposition—
which the opposition of the angles and their placement in Alpha and Omega
symbolize—while the Second and Third are maximally united. But, on the other
hand, by dint precisely of this maximum opposition—because the extremes
touch each other—the First can be placed in continuity with the Fourth as
is the Third with the Second. Except that the design achieved by this sticking
together is exactly the reverse of what is realized in the Election. Indeed by
this sticking together, the complete line depicting the choice of freedom is ori-
ented downward—which is to re-encounter the existential situation of sinful
consciousness, as figure 2 represents it and as the Rules of Discernment for the
First Week describe it.
If this continuity, imaginable if not thinkable, is changed, as soon as pro-
jected or realized, in the reverse direction, the reason is that the Omega point
has no after. Such a change, therefore, indicates to us that if the positing of
Being analyzed and begun by the Fourth Week is carried out in time, it is not
finished in time. To believe the contrary would be to yield to the millenarian
delusion against which Christ and then his Angels warn the disciples at the
very moment of the Ascension: Non est vestrum nosse tempora vel momenta …
Quid statis aspicientes in coelum? Hic Jesus qui asumptus est … sic veniet que-
madmodum vidistis eum euntem in coelum. “It is not for you to know times or
moments … why stand you looking into heaven?” This Jesus, who was assumed
from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you beheld him going
into heaven” (Act 1:7 and 11). Illusion which is identically the one that, as we
have said, the Directories denounce and that we can express as follows: to
believe that at the end of the Fourth Week, one has arrived at the peak of the
unitive life is to repeat the triple sin …26
brightness or in the color of a flame of fire,” en claridad espesa o en color de flama ignea
(Spiritual Journal, no. 10, p. 4).
Evidently, we have only rather vague indications there, which it would be pointless to
press too hard. Nevertheless, they are characteristic of Ignatius’s spiritual temperament
and certainly have some relation to the analyses of the Exercises.
26 Farther on, commenting upon the Fifth Rule of Discernment of Spirits for the Second
Week, we will also see the trick of Satan, transfigured into an angel of light, is based on
the same illusion.

via free access
216 Afterword
Thus, we can read that the circularity of the Exercises imposes itself upon
the geometrical design composed solely of squares, whether or not we have
understood that their four weeks develop the existential dialectic of human
freedom facing Divine Freedom. But the Contemplatio ad Amorem that crowns
them has as its goal precisely to avoid such a misconception by positing itself
this circularity and by unveiling its sense.
1.3 Design of the Contemplation ad Amorem

As the prelude to the Exercises, by means of two images, crossroads and bal-
ance scale, the Foundation had drawn the backdrop against which the whole
dialectic was to unfold. At the end, the Contemplatio ad Amorem gathers
together and encompasses the whole process in such a way as to uncover the
reciprocal immanence of the different moments and to compose their totality
where both the unity of the whole and the singular attitude of the one who has
handed himself over to this meshing of charity. We can symbolize this general
sense by the circle (figure 8) where the large square is enclosed, as design of
the four weeks (figure 7).
To begin, it is for memory to recapitulate the blessings received; in the first
place those that focus universal history with a line descending from the Most
High by creation down to the Infernum, then rising from there by the redemp-
tion to its point of departure; in the second place, those that fill each instant
of time with particular gifts, as the vertical axis does for the instant hic et nunc.
In agreement with the conventions already employed, we can symbolize the
first of these two recapitulations by the double movement that traces the cir-
cumference: from the summit of the vertical axis to its lowest point, where the
dona creationis, gifts of creation, are deployed then from there, by a movement
of return to the initial point, the Dona Redemptionis are deployed. To depict
the second without excessively complicating our design, let us be satisfied
with drawing some vertical lines inside the angle representing the First Week,
since we have likewise seen the correspondence of this first point with the
First Week. Such a limitation does not prevent the spirit of St. Ignatius from
leading us back to the center of his perspectives and then evoking his initial
image by asking us both to ponderare multo cum affecto, “ponder with great
love,” and to look with regard to each, at the Before, the past, quantum fecerit
Deus pro me … et mihi dederit, [“to ponder how much God did for me … and
gave me,”] as well as the after, the future, quantum idem Dominus desideret dare
seipsum, [how much the same Lord would desire to give himself.]
It is then for the Intelligence to penetrate this content offered by memory.
And since the exercise of this power is divided into two Points, according to
the Before and the After, rational and not temporal, let us represent the quo-
modo Deus habitat in creaturis … faciens me templum suum, [“how God dwells

via free access
Afterword 217
in creatures … making me his temple,”] by two vertical lines outside and above
the angle of the Second Week, and let us represent quomodo Deus operatur et
laborat by vertical lines outside and below those of the Third Week.
It is then, finally, for the will speculari quomodo omnia bona et dona descend-
unt deorsum, [“to view how all good things and gifts descend from above”].
This can be depicted by vertical lines within the angle of the Fourth Week.
Imperfect symbolism, to be sure, since the immobility and externality of space
forces us to separate “exercises” that in reality overlap and compenetrate each
other. Let us correct this imperfection in the measure of the possible by arrows
on the ends of these diverse vertical lines.
It hardly matters. But this is not all. For the Contemplatio ad Amorem each
time indicates a movement of reflection about oneself, the reverse of that of
knowledge, and that determines “recognition,” the meeting of these two move-
ments that gives rise to love. Where should the self be situated in our scheme
and how should its second movement be represented? It is completely evident
that the self is the opposite extreme to the Most High, and, therefore, it is from
the depth of the Infernum that it returns each time to unite itself to the Love of
“God all in all.” But as this movement of cognition and of recognition deepens
and broadens at each instant, it is clear that the circle symbolizing this con-
templation must be known as infinite and not finite. At each instant dilating
itself and concentrating itself always more …
In this way, we re-encounter here, with the double movement of expansion
and concentration that specifies the circularity of “spiritual geometry,” is limit-
less pulsation perceived by the author of the Elogium Sepulcrale of St. Ignatius
and expressed by him in the phrase: Non coerceri maximo, contineri tamen a
minimo, divinum est. The saying, as we have seen, was to seduce Hölderlin and
through his intermediation furnish a point of support for our approximation
between the Ignatian dialectic and the Hegelian.
Before making more clear what this double movement and its relation with
the Four Weeks confer to the infinite circle of the Ignatian mystique, let us try
to symbolize this very infinitude, first by drawing a circle with its broken traits,
as if it were only traced in order to splinter immediately everywhere. Moreover,
let us add the sign of the infinite to the ends of the vertical and horizontal axes,
themselves prolonged beyond the circumference. Lastly, to represent in some
way the double movement that develops on the occasion of the Four Points, let
us terminate with arrows the several verticals representing the content of each
of them. It would still remain to symbolize the infinite concentration of the hic
et nunc, correlative to the limitless expansion of the circle … Let four arrows
on the two axes suffice to indicate the return to the center of the movement
that first issued from it. This is enough to make apparent that the Ignatian

via free access
218 Afterword
mysticism thus returns to the symbol of the circle or the infinite sphere whose
center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.27
1.4 Ignatian Mysticism and Intellectualist Mysticisms

Thereby, Ignatius is situated in the great tradition of intellectualist mystics,
especially in the Christian current whose source is the writings of Pseudo-
Dionysios. In his view, the divine love can present the same form as those of
the Areopagite and of all who, after Dionysios, have used the same symbol.
A perpetual circle that, thanks to Goodness, starting from the Good, at

the very heart of Goodness and in view of the Good, runs through a per-
fect orbit, remaining identical to itself and in conformity with its identity,
never ceasing to progress and nor to remain stable, nor to return to its
first state.28
From the hic et nunc, the center where the movement of the Suscipe leads
back him in each instant there to encounter God, Ignatius could say like the
boldest mystics: Is this you? Is it I? Or define it, as for example someone like
Ruysbroek does:
To know the divine essence and our super-essence, it is necessary to be

in it, out of the spirit, and above our created being, at that eternal point
where all our lines begin and come to end up, where they lose their name
and all distinctions, becoming one with the point itself and this one that
the point is, but nevertheless remaining in themselves lines that come to
an end.29
27 Regarding the origin of this expression remembered now thanks to Pascal, see Dietrich
Mahnke’s fundamental work, Unendliche Sphäre und Allmittelpunkt, Beiträge zur
Genealogie der mathematischen Mystik (Halle/Saale: Niemeyer Verlag, 1937). Nicholas of
Cusa, particularly in Docta ignoratia, frequently recurs to this geometrical symbol in his
metaphysical and theological speculations. Perhaps he is the first to have transposed this
image by applying it to nature, whereas originally it served only as a symbol of God. In
this way, it would by an intermediate link between the medieval tradition and Pascal. On
this question, cf. Maurice de Gandillac, La philosophie de Nicholas de Cues (Aubier, 1941);
and “Sur la sphère infinie de Pascal,” Revue d’histoire de la philosophie et d’histoire générale
de la civilisation (January–March 1943): 32.—In an article on “Pascal et la sphère admi-
rable,” Georges Poulet has just given us an excellent commentary of the whole fragment
of the Pensées where this image appears (Esprit [December 1955]: 1833–49).
28 Les noms divins, 4, 14, 712 D (Oeuvres complètes du Pseudo-Denys, translated by Maurice de
Gandillac (Paris: Aubier, 1941), 108–9).
29 Jan van Ruysbroeck, Le livre des sept degrés d’amour, translated by the Benedictines of
St. Paul of Wisques [Paris: Vromaut, 1920–22], 1:105.

via free access
Afterword 219
But this similarity of the Ignatian mysticism with the intellectualist mys-
tics, which the infinite circle, symbol of the contemplation ad Amorem reveals,
must not make us forget to what point Ignatian mysticism differs from the
intellectualist mysticisms, and, we can say, goes beyond them and perfects
them by the very precision of the process through which it constitutes this
circularity and puts the seal of the infinite upon it. To understand this, let us
return to the symbolism that allowed us to construct figure 7, even before add-
ing the circle and the vertical lines of figure 8 to it. What at first glance seems
excessive, the complexity thus produced, will be able now to be a valuable aid.
Commenting on the maxim: Non coerceri maximo, contineri tamen a minimo,
divinum est, we showed that its double pulsation, soul of the Exercises, par-
ticularly governed the succession of their four Weeks. And in speaking earlier
of opening or closing of the different angles that, in figure 7, symbolize each of
them, we have already suggested their relation with this double movement of
expansion and contraction. Now that these angles, thanks to the large square
of figure 7, have their place inscribed in the circle or better still in the infinite
sphere, we can consider as well so many cones starting from which and thanks
to which is constituted for us this sphere of human existence united to God by
Love: first a cone of expansion of a creation lays itself out through sin itself,
that of the spirit, that of human nature, my own sins finally; next, cone of con-
traction of this same creation called to be regained by my freedom united to
Christ’s freedom; again, cone of expansion but this time of my freedom having
to perfect the Resurrection; finally, cone of contraction where the time of the
universe of the “God all in all” gathers and shows its profile on the horizon
of times. These are so many interconnected viewpoints through which the
Ignatian dialectic makes me pass before acceding to the summit of love.
But, if it is true that this dialectic succeeds in unifying the self and God in the
hic et nunc as well as the Alpha and Omega of the times, the perspective that
we have just developed, cannot be the only one. Another perspective where the
sense of each of the cones that make it up is inverted, must likewise be given.
The previous perspective indeed was completely relative to the historical suc-
cession: creation (sin)—incarnation—redemption—Parousia. However, since
the Self, arrived at the Ignatian Suscipe, exchanges all with God, such a succes-
sion must now appear to it as no longer stating from Alpha but from Omega.
From now on isn’t it about the fact that its union to God is transported to the
end of time? In this new perspective the cone of the Fourth Week becomes
that of the expansion of the nova creatio; the latter in turn appears in the cone
of the Third Week as concentrated in its seed, that is to say the in eucharist,
principle of our hic et nunc of the redemptive act. But, before having such a
form and in order to grasp it, this act demands nothing less than the cone of
the Second Week, which is to say the universal expansion of a first creation

via free access
220 Afterword
whose origin is itself revealed in the cone of the First Week, as being none
other than the infinite contraction of nothingness.
Is this the simple play of an intelligence that lets itself be fascinated by the
symbolism it has created, without even asking itself whether the virtuosity
of its fantasy retains some contact with the texts from which it started and
whether it finds the slightest foundation in them? Or, to the contrary, would
the inversion of perspectives that we have just effectuated be precisely that
to which every consciousness hands itself over, necessarily and most of the
time without being aware of it, when that consciousness, which to understand
some “history” or other—in the most trivial sense of the term—waits to get
from it, as it is said, “the word of the end”? Because only such a word, clarify-
ing the whole narrative, permits consciousness to climb back up step by step
and the succession of events to the beginning, and to find the true sense of
each one at the same time and to link their totality in one intelligible whole.
And is not such an inversion precisely what Hegel intended to do (this time
very consciously and for a history that contains nothing less than the totality
of nature and spirit), a Hegel who, when at the summit of absolute knowing
and believing he had discovered the Logos, claimed first to place himself, so to
speak, in God “as he is in his divine essence before the creation of nature and
of a finite spirit”?30
It should not be at all surprising that we should recur to a comparison

between Ignatius and Hegel here again. It is not only in conformity to our
objective in this whole work, but it imposes itself all the more at the moment
when Hegel can, on several counts,31 be seen as a representative of those intel-
lectualist mysticisms in regard to which we have tried to show the originality
of Ignatian mysticism. Now, precisely in the light of the components that facili-
tate such a comparison, it becomes easy to perceive this originality and first of
all that the inversion of perspectives, pointed out in Ignatius even before being
pointed out in Hegel, are not lacking a solid foundation in the very fabric of
the Exercises.
Let us begin by using our symbolism to distinguish Ignatian mysticism from
Hegelian mysticism. Since the course of the Phenomenology is a circle accord-
ing to Hegel, which, starting from the certainty of the senses returns to it after
having encompassed the different patterns of consciousness and consequently

31 Hegel, no doubt, is closest to Plotinus, but it is known that he mentions Meister Eckhart
favorably and considers himself a little bit as the heir to Rhineland mysticism.

via free access
Afterword 221
“annihilated time,” we can imagine this circumference as the very one that
does not yet appear in our figure 7, but could be inscribed there by starting
from Alpha. Having admitted this, the movement that Hegel effectuates in
transiting from the Phenomenology to the Logic will be exactly represented if
we make the design of figure 7 rotate a quarter of a turn clockwise. After having
closed the circle of the Phenomenology, the philosopher thus takes the place of
the Most High and from there he can unwind the circles of logic, nature, and
the spirit. By contrast, to represent the movement that the Suscipe of Ignatius
achieves at the end of the Exercises, it is necessary to rotate the whole design in
the opposite direction; in such a way that Omega and not Alpha now occupies
the top of the vertical line.
To use the horizontal axis’s mobility in this way does not contradict the con-
ventions of a symbolism based on the image of the balance scale, whose two
contrary positions depict the two opposite orientations of freedom (figures 2
and 3). Therefore, interpreted in the light of the design of the Exercises, it is clear
that the movement from which Hegelian mysticism springs, exactly reproduces
this proud impulse of the spirit that wills itself “to be as God.” In Ignatius’s
view, this flow constitutes the principle of sin and whose true sense and real
direction the whole First Week is intended to reveal. In contrast, the Ignatian
Suscipe performs a movement whose launching is already clearly marked from
the end of this First Week. Haven’t we seen how the Meditatio de Inferno was
related to the Contemplatio ad Amorem? By application of its imaginary senses,
the sinful self took an attitude of humility and, so to speak, already carved out
a place in the heart of nothingness, whose truth and depth will be revealed
to it—all the more deep and true, moreover, than he could imagine—in the
measure that through his spiritual senses more deeply united to the suffering
and risen Christ, he will be more illuminated by the rays of love that comes
from on high. We have found this movement towards the high in the analysis
of the times of Election, as we will re-encounter it at every step in explaining
the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits. But Ignatius always considers that he
is conditioned, accompanied, and followed by a correlative movement of the
self tending to humiliate itself all the more in that it aims higher or that God
calls it to a more intimate union. Furthermore, isn’t such a correlation implied
from the first heading in the symbol of the balance scale? And isn’t it again
the same sense of the same movement that imposed itself on us, when we
wanted to represent the recapitulation of the Dona Creationis and of the Dona
Redemptions by which the Contemplatio ad Amorem is inaugurated?
We have not, therefore, yielded to the superficial game of the imagination
claiming that the cones of the four weeks must be interpreted as well from
Omega as from Alpha. Since, in the Suscipe, Omega comes to coincide with

via free access
222 Afterword
the Most High, this affirms once more the correspondence of the movements
of human freedom and divine freedom, of the horizontal axis and the vertical
axis, that we have already noted in constructing the different angles of the four
weeks. Lastly, if a final proof is needed that Ignatius adopts an inner attitude
equivalent to what we call the coincidence of Omega with the Most High, we
must pay attention to the way in which he formulated the Fourth Point of his
Contemplation ad Amorem: speculari quomodo omnia bona et dona descendunt
desursum, ut mea limitata potentia a sua summa et infinita illa desursum, [“to
look at how all goods and gifts descend from above, so that my poor power
comes from the supreme and infinite power from above”] (number 237). If we
had not proofs besides that convinced us of the step by step correspondence
between the first three points and the three weeks, we would hesitate more to
relate this last point to the Fourth Week, so much so as this proposition seems
speculative and devoid of a direct link to the will, the last of the three faculties
providing the principle of division of these four points. But, to our understand-
ing, such a hesitation is completely eliminated once we notice that this specu-
lari and this double desursum, without counting the subsequent comparison,
sicut a sole radii, very precisely indicates a last passage to the vertical line, in
other words, the coincidence of Omega with the Most High, which at one
stroke, situates me in my initial condition of creature, ut mea limitata potentia,
at the opposite extreme.
We should see from that what distinguishes Ignatian mysticism from intel-
lectualist mysticisms, even orthodox ones, and how Ignatian mysticism per-
fects them. In Ignatian mysticism it is impossible to separate, however slightly,
attaining the greatest union with God or merely the aim at majorem gloriam
Dei, from majorem humilitatem (number 167) required of human freedom. The
most intimate closeness of the self and God in the hic et nunc never suppresses
but on the contrary always increases the infinite distance that separates them
from the beginning. An extreme tension in the double opposition that the
author of the maxim Non coerceri maximo, contineri tamen a minimo, divinum
est, marvelously grasped and expressed. Speculatively, the pulsation inscribed
in such a saying leads straight to the circle, to the infinite sphere of the mys-
tics and of the philosophers. But in Ignatius, even while inspiring almost every
line of the Exercises, the movement and intuition of the infinite sphere reveals
itself as the point of their accomplishment. It is the summit toward which we
must always tend, but where we can never take rest. It is the peak that the soul
never attains in the instant only to leave it in the following instant, and which
it can never approach again, except by re-tracing in however short a lapse of
time, the different stages traversed the length of the four weeks.

via free access
Afterword 223
In short, the existential analysis that is achieved through the different stages
is absolutely essential for the highest intuition of Ignatian mysticism. At its sum-
mit, Ignatian mysticism cannot even be attempted, as the more speculative
mysticisms inevitably are, by rejecting or just forgetting the rungs of the ladder
or the moments of becoming by which Ignatian mysticism raised itself up to
there. For, exactly because it is born out of a rigorous distinction and connec-
tion of these moments, it can only exist by conserving them and including
them in its very unity.
From another side, as this unity is not achieved just by the coincidence of
Omega with the Most High or by the ascent of the human toward the divine,
but by the inverse movement, by the descent of the divine toward the human
through the same rational and temporal moments. Ignatian mysticism does
not let the soul that lives under its grip satisfy itself with a pure inner contem-
plation. On the contrary, Ignatian mysticism orients the soul outward, toward
apostolic action in every domain, theoretical or practical, giving it at once to
sentire cum Ecclesia militante, “to have the true sentiment which we ought to
have in the church militant” (number 352), and an acute sense of the require-
ments of the time in this combat. If it is not unusual to find in Ignatius’s most
eminent disciples an elevated mystical prayer allying itself with the missionary
drive, the political and social activity, or speculative and scientific research,
they owe their efficacy to this double sense, the first animating no less the sec-
ond than it enlightened by it.
Now, as both are rooted in the apperception of the unity of the logical and
the historical that, as we have seen, comes out throughout the Exercises and
explains their dissemination, it seems that the “secret of power” of the Jesuits
is to be sought nowhere else … It is a secret that eludes those who possess it,
in that their “power” is ordinarily lived by them only “in the weakness of the
cross” (2 Corinthians 13:4).
In terms of our symbolism, this double character, speculative and practical,
of Ignatian mysticism, can be expressed as follows; the large inserted square
and the various lines that make up the cones of the four weeks, cannot be
abstracted from the infinite Ignatian circle,32 because they specify its intimate
pulsation, the sense, and the movement.
32
So much so that this design contains and ties together the images of the three move-
ments, rectilinear, helicoidal, and circular, by which the Areopagite designates the differ-
ent modes of the soul’s contemplation (Divine Names, 4, 8–9).
The rectilinear is the aim that limits itself to following the direction of the horizontal
axis, or that directs itself up or down from one point of this axis. “The soul turns itself
toward the realities that surround it and obtains support from the external world, as from

via free access
224 Afterword
In this regard, among the mystics in whom the Rhineland tradition is pro-
longed, Angelus Silesius is clearly the one whose work best reflects the union
of the contemplative peaks with the way that allows approaching them.
Certainly, the distichs of the first books of the Cherubic Wanderer again offer
more than one formula recalling Meister Eckhart.33 Perhaps such ambiguity is
not alien to the tribute that Hegel gives their author.34 In any case, it is thor-
oughly corrected by the overall work, where it is not difficult to recognize the
influence of Ignatian Spirituality.35
a complex assemblage of multiple symbols, to elevate itself to simple and unified con-
templations …”
The helicoidal is the movement described by the broken lines composing the cones of
the different weeks, so that they connect the two branches of the Swastika about which
we spoke above. “Then, divine knowledge illuminates the soul according of its peculiar
mode, of course not by way of intellectual intuition and in unity, but thanks to discursive
reasons and, so to speak by complex, progressive acts.”
Lastly, the circular is the movement of contemplation ad Amorem. “When the soul,
turning into itself, turns away from the exterior world, when it gathers its powers of intel-
lection in a concentration that shields them from all impoverishment, when it detaches
itself from the multiplicity of other objects in order to recollect itself first of all in itself,
then having reached inner unity, having unified perfectly its inner powers, it is led to this
Beautiful-and-Good that transcends all being, that is without beginning and without end”
(De Gandillac translation, 102–3).
On these three movements in St. Thomas, see the note of Fr. Étienne Hugeny, O.P.,
“Circulaire, rectiligne, helicoïdal, les trois degrés de la contemplation,” Revue des sciences
philosophiques et théologiques (1924): 327–31.
33 For example:
I know that without me God cannot live an instant
If I am annihilated, it is completely necessary for him to give up his spirit (1, 8).
For God, I am another he, in me alone he finds
What will be equal to him and similar in eternity (1, 277).
Translated following Hans Ludwig Held’s edition of the Sämtliche poetische Werke.
34 In his Lectures on Esthetics, Hegel mentions him as an example of “the one who has
expressed with the deepest and boldest intuition and feeling the presence of God in
things and the union of the self with God and of God with human subjectivity, in a mar-
velously mystical power of representation” (Werke jubiläumsausgabe 10, 493). Let us note
that in Silesius, Hegel re-encounters his favorite symbol the circle, expanding and con-
tracting itself. Let us cite one example among many:
God is my center, when I enclose him in myself
Then my circumference, when I fuse myself with him (3, 148).
35 In Jean Baruzi’s study of Angelus Silesius, he writes: “Although nothing guarantees that
Scheffler [Silesius] submitted himself to the discipline of the Spiritual Exercises, we can
be certain that he read Ignatius Loyola and, since he was greatly influenced by the Jesuits,
that he came to know, we might wonder whether one of the sources of the sonnet in book
6 is not particularly the Second Prelude to the Fifth Exercise of the First Week, where
the point is to obtain a ‘sensation of the suffering of the damned.’” (Creation religieuse et

via free access
Afterword 225
More than in literary borrowings, the stamp of the Exercises is recognizable

in the way Silesius meditates upon the mysteries of the life of Christ and of
the Virgin. “From the manger to the cross and the ascension, and even in the
annunciation, it is the interiorization of all the minutes of a divine drama.”36
It is also recognized in the insistence with which this converted Protestant
speaks at the same time of the humility of the “self,” of freedom, and of nec-
essary despoiling.37 If “Silesius is, first of all,” as Jean Baruzi again says, “one
who wills according to an essential rhythm,”38 from what other teacher than
Ignatius could he have learned both this and this rhythm? At the spectacle
of the disciple conserving “an aspiration to a sort of immense willing in the
center of a quietness and of a non-willing,”39 we can judge the extent to which
the dialectic of the Exercises is capable of balancing the audacities of negative
theology without restricting them.
It is necessary also to have this dialectic intervene to resolve the literary
problems that Book VI of the Cherubim Traveler poses to Baruzi. If it is full of
bellicose energy and appeals to arms which are astonishing on the part of the
mystic poet revealed in the earlier book, the blame for it is doubtless for many
in the climate of combats and violences in which the Counter-Reformation was
unfolding in Silesia at the time. But as our penetrating critic ends up observing,
Johannes Scheffler’s conversion to Catholicism also made required this con-
templative to take into consideration “the conditions of a visible church,”40 a
church militant, as his priestly ordination, was becoming for him “the source
of a new view of the world.”41
Before continuing our reflection on this relation of Ignatian mysticism with
the analysis that undergirds it, let us depict the geometrical scheme to which
we have thus arrived. Let us set aside, without thereby forgetting them, the
diverse vertical lines by which we have represented the diverse points of the
contemplation ad Amorem. Let us simply frame the figure 7 with the circle
pensée contemplative, 225, note). A distich in book 5 titled “It Is Necessary to Taste Hell”
confirms the hypothesis:
Christian, it still is necessary once to be in the abyss of hell,
If you do not enter there while living, you must do so dead.
Jean Baruzi also mentions other likely allusions to the Exercises (op. cit., 226ff.). But more
than one could be mentioned that has escaped him.
36 Baruzi, Création religieuse, 219.
37 One who loves freedom, loves God; one who submerges himself in God
Who despoils himself of everything; it is to him that God gives it (2, 27).

via free access
226 Afterword
of figure 8. But at the same time, to make our design more eloquent, let us
use the procedure that Ignatius was using when at the very beginning of his
conversion, “he set about writing these things in a book, taking great care and
using red ink for Christ’s words, and blue ink for those of the Virgin.”42 By anal-
ogy, we will trace in red the vertical axis and the lines situated in the upper
hemisphere and trace in in blue the horizontal axis and the lines situated in
the lower hemisphere. We thus symbolize in some measure the distinction
between nature and grace. And to represent in the same manner how the after
unites them differently from the Before, we will draw half in blue, half in red,
the lines symbolizing divine freedom and human freedom, after they have
become united in the hic et nunc (figure 9).
2 Division of the Exercises
Before this design that makes the Exercises’ circularity stand out, we can also
bring ourselves back to our point of departure, to the question that has occu-
pied us in this whole analysis: how are the four weeks of Ignatius to be super-
posed upon the classic division of three ways, purgative, illuminative, and
unitive? At the very beginning we gave a first response by showing that the
positive or negative form in which the ends of the diverse weeks are expressed,
make the cut of the Election disappear and identify the Second and the Third
Weeks and the illuminative way. But we have seen that many Directories recog-
nize a special relation of the Third Week to the unitive way and would willingly
make it fit back in that week. By utilizing the symbol of the circle, so familiar to
the Ignatian imagination, we can now account for this hesitation and perhaps
even, once this apparently very superficial problem is resolved, find some rela-
tion between the structure of the Exercises and the images of the Trinity that
seemed so confusing to Fr. de Guibert.
Let us remark that Jesus’ earthly life constitutes the central core of the
Exercises since it provides the properly historical content of the Second and
Third Weeks that frame the Election. To mark its importance, let us draw a
circle starting from the hic et nunc that encompasses these two Weeks. For
the moment, let us not dwell on the relation of this circle with the infinite
circle that, accompanying the Four Weeks, is concentric to it and is formed by
42 Pilgrim’s Narrative, no. 11, Tylenda edition, 17.

via free access
Afterword 227
a double line. But let us next observe that two identical circles can be drawn by
taking respectively as their center the cut between the First and Second Weeks
and that between the Third and Fourth Weeks.
Now, let us call the three circles drawn by the name of the three ways: the
first is purgative, the middle one illuminative, and the third unitive (figure 10).
It seems that our initial problem thereby gets a complete solution. Not only is
the coincidence of three divisions with four achieved, which had first seemed
impossible, perfectly realized, but, besides, we understand the reasons for the
Directories’ hesitation on the subject of the Third Week’s placement. Indeed, if
the unitive and purgative life are opposed to each other completely as diverg-
ing lines starting at Alpha and converging lines at Omega, the same does not
hold between the illuminative way, which mediates these two opposites and
the unitive way, Although the latter is manifest only with the apparition of
the resurrected Christ, it is prepared and inaugurated from the moment that
human freedom deliberately opted for what is above, toward the better, that
is to say from the Election. The circle that surrounds the whole after symbol-
izes this.
If the same hesitation is not produced in regard to the Second and First
Weeks, even though the circle of the purgative way encompasses the whole
Before in the same way, the reason is surely that Ignatius was first in his Tenth
Annotation to clearly indicate that the first two weeks pertain to those two
ways. And he himself could not hesitate about this attribution, because it was
evident to him that after the contrition produced by the Meditatio de Inferno
and before the call of Being, freedom had radically changed its orientation.
From there comes the opposition already indicated between the Rules of
Discernment of Spirits for the First Week or purgative way and those for the
Second Week or illuminative way.
Will there now be an objection against this circular symbolism, because

Ignatius’s own text and the opposition of these two series of Rules supposes
a clear cut made between these two? This would be to attribute a geometric
spirit lacking in any finesse to the author of the Exercises, rather than a taste for
symmetry. His own experience, even before the experience of directing oth-
ers, had taught that between these two ways, as also between the other two,
despite their opposition, there is no dissolution of continuity. On the contrary,
they encroach upon each other like the circles that symbolize them. For the
rest, if he foresaw the Rules De Scrupulis, that is the best proof that in his view
the purgative way is prolonged, even when the illuminative way has begun.
Didn’t he himself, after his three day confession at Montserrat, have a period of

via free access
228 Afterword
scruples that lasted for several months?43 Reflecting this experience, the text
itself of these rules supposes a situation of the soul where the illuminative and
purgative ways are interpenetrated.
Indeed, there is the issue of an anima bona (number 351), which exhibits the
characteristic posture of the Second Week and of the Rules for Discernment
of Spirits that pertain to the illuminative way. But, on the other hand, the ene-
my’s action does not aim, as the later rules foresee, either at delaying this soul’s
ascent by desolation or in creating illusions in the soul about the better to be
chosen: rather it consists in insinuations, suasiones (number 345), addressing
its intelligence and cunning at disordering its judgement about sinful acts—
generally past rather than present or future—in order to lead it to its initial
state, to its sinful life, either directly if we are dealing with an anima crassa, or
by the detour of discouragement, if we are dealing with a soul that is delicata
(number 349). Ultimately the final result to which Ignatius looks for from the
application of these rules expressly relates to the purgative way: Scrupulum, per
aliquod spatium temporis, non parum prodest animae …; immo magnopere pur-
gat et mundat talem animam, separando illam valde ab omni specie peccati. “But
the second … for some space of time, is of no little profit to the soul … rather
it purifies and cleanses such a soul, greatly separating will from every kind of
sin” (number 348).44 It is impossible to express more clearly that the purgative
43
Pilgrim’s Narrative, nos. 22–26, Tylenda, 31–35.
44
In passing, we note in these Rules De scrupulis the care with which Ignatius distinguishes
the “erroneous judgment” from the “true scruple.” He attributes the former to natural or
abstract freedom, quando ego libere judico … judicet suo proprio judicio, “when I freely
decide … let him decide with his own judgment,” (no. 346) and is no longer interested in
it, since attention and information suffice to correct it. By contrast, the true scruple is “the
enemy’s temptation” and consequently concerns freedom in its existential situation, the
only one (as we have supposed from the beginning) that Ignatius is worried about analyz-
ing. Besides, the scruple is characterized by a sensation of being troubled and uncertain,
sentio turbationem in quantum dubito et in quantum non dubito. Will we not find again
underlying this description the image of the balance scale and of its oscillation? As every
balance scale inclines more or less to the right or left, the soul can also be either crassa
or delicata. The enemy’s game in both cases is to exaggerate the natural defect, reddere
magis delicatam ad extremum usque or else reddere magis crassam, “make it more delicate
in the extreme … [or] to make it more gross” (no. 349). Someone who wants to thwart this
game debet semper procedere modo contrario, “ought always to proceed in the contrary
way,” a general formula that Ignatius takes pains to specify for each case by opposing the
comparatives crassiorem-delicatiorem (no. 350). The geometrical figures then present to
Ignatius’s imagination are so evident that it is useless to draw them. His pen finally evokes
the principle: facere per diametrum contra, “act diametrically against” (no. 351).
It is not until the differences between the texts of the Vulgate and of the Autograph
version (both approved by Ignatius, but only the second corrected) that the images that
haunted him are revealed. Regarding the delicate conscience, that the enemy wants
to make stricter yet, the Vulgate writes relaxet contra, which is in agreement with the

via free access
Afterword 229
way is not ended when the illuminative begins. It can only be finished—and
again just from the viewpoint of reflexive analysis—when the unitive way is
initiated. For, from the practical and existential standpoint, the circularity of
the whole four weeks requires, as we have seen, that, when the soul arrives at
the end, it incessantly re-starts the same course. There we have a sign that the
three circles, added to our general design of the four weeks, have a close rela-
tion to the deepest structures of the Exercises.
We have sketched them only to resolve more completely the problem of

the coincidence between the classical and Ignatian divisions. But seeing the
manner in which they easily embed themselves in the straight lines symbol-
izing the structure and articulation of the diverse weeks, and the evident rela-
tion they have with the circularity of the weeks, they seem to indicate that this
problem, at first blush minimal and superficial, is situated at the core of the
Ignatian dialectic. By delving into it with their help, perhaps we would also
come to understand better the structure of the Exercises and even to put into
relation with it Ignatius’s mystical visions, which astonished Fr. de Guibert,
even if it means finally opening into perspectives no less “puzzling” again than
of the of simply rational order.
Let us confirm this hypothesis and take another step in this direction, by
recalling that our initial problem arose again in connection with the four
points of contemplation ad Amorem and their relation to the three faculties:
memory, intelligence, and will. This time, the issue is no longer, as in the Tenth
Annotation, a division in regard to which Ignatius wanted to show that he
was not departing from tradition. The division of the three powers is found
throughout the Exercises and is linked to what is most intimate in it. Now,
given what we have said in commenting upon this contemplation, it is evident
that the three circles of figure 10 can just as well symbolize the relation of these
three powers to the four points of the contemplation ad Amorem and to the
four weeks themselves, since the former refer to the latter. There is the same
distinction and even continuity, even reciprocal immanence, even circularity
dialectic of the contraries. But Fr. Roothaan correctly indicates that in this case the saint’s
original text does not submit to his dialectic, but writes: anima procuret se solide firmare
in medio, ut omnino quietem se reddat. For this variant, Fr. Roothaan indicates the motive
of this variant: “quis relaxat conscientiam … si ultra medium in ea relaxando se dissolvat,
gravissimum incurrit periculum …” Nothing is more true, But let us also note that the
terms Ignatius again employed there evoke the image of a balance scale in solid and tran-
quil equilibrium in the middle position, in short as if it were only moved by the weight
of divine love. With this example, we can judge to what degree the smallest details are
governed by the most universal vision in Ignatius.

via free access
230 Afterword
among the three faculties as among the three ways, always analogous to that
which the Infinite circle symbolizes.
In insisting so much upon the circularity of the Exercises, let us not forget,
however, that Ignatius’s originality consists first, as we have underlined above,
in having analyzed the act of human freedom in its becoming. If the three cir-
cles drawn upon the horizontal axis of our design can symbolize the classical
three ways and cover Ignatius’s four weeks at the same time, it is that each of
these two divisions attempts to sort out and order the different stages of the
spiritual life, the successive moments of this becoming. Certainly, it is particu-
lar becoming, but it does not escape the universal laws of becoming as such.
Given that then, why could not these three circles symbolize the structure of
becoming most intimate to us, that of temporal and historical existence? In that
case, they must be called past, present, and future. And it stands out that the
relation of these three ecstasies of time is exactly depicted by the three circles.
In fact, past and future exclude each other even as they touch each other in
the hic et nunc, whereas the present includes them partially, being the media-
tor between them. Besides, if it is true that the fundamental division of the
Exercises is that of the before and the after of this hic et nunc of the Election,
and that the cuts between First and Second Weeks on the one hand, and the
Third and Fourth on the other, representing two opposite aspects of this fun-
damental division, it is evident that the saddling of the three circles upon the
four sections of the horizontal axis, brings to light a fundamental characteristic
of the dialectical structure of historical time …
Let us say nothing more for the moment about the perspective opened up
in this way. But let us observe that the vertical axis is equally susceptible of
being divided and covered by three identical circles. Even more, the image of
the balance scale and its oscillations, symbol of freedom for Ignatius, invites
us to note a relation of these new circles with those of the horizontal axis. The
choice toward the above tends to make the circles of the horizontal axis pivot
in such a way as to make the circle of the future coincide with the higher circle,
that of the past with the lower circle; the inverse holds for the choice toward
the below … To top it off, in the First Time of the Election as in the tempus
actuale of the Eighth Rule for the Discernment of Spirits of the Second Week, it
seems that the horizontal axis comes to a perfect coincidence, albeit instan-
taneous, with the vertical axis. Therefore, what can these three vertical circles
really represent? What name should we give them?
Let us venture a hypothesis. By opposition to the temporal horizontal
axis, as we have said, the vertical represents the eternal that penetrates time,
spreading it out, on the one hand, and gathering it together, on the other. This

via free access
Afterword 231
is a double movement that symbolizes under a different form the circularity

earlier acknowledged on the occasion of the dona Creationis et Redemptionis of
the Contemplatio ad Amorem. Hence, isn’t it natural to suppose that these three
circles can represent in some manner the very life of the eternal, its immanent
becoming, as it is revealed to us in time and in function of time by the Christ,
mediator and center of times? Accordingly, the name to be attributed to these
three circles would be that of the very persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, Spirit.
Having reached the threshold of the outermost sphere, Dante had seen the
Trinity under the form of three circles of equal size but of different color.45 But
is it not implausible to attribute a similar vison to Ignatius? The hypothesis
may be as audacious as one would wish, but it is not purely gratuitous. Let us
recall first the passages from Ignatius’s Journal:
March 6 … feeling or seeing, not obscurely but luminous and very lumi-
nous, being itself or the divine essence in a spherical form, a little larger
than the sun appears. And from this essence seemed to come and flow
the Father … I was seeing in some way the three Divine Persons, as I had
seen the First, that is to say, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
were emerging or flowing separately from the divine essence, without
going out of the spherical vision
And, April 2 “… Vision of the divine being often, and sometimes terminating
in the Father in the circular manner—terminándose al Padre en el modo circu-
lar …” According to this last text, it seems that each Person of the Trinity pres-
ents itself as a circle in the interior of the large circle of divinity. From that, how
can we fail to perceive at least some analogy between these visions of Ignatius
and our design of the three vertical circles?
But even outside these mystical intuitions, our hypothesis can ground itself
on an indisputable foundation. Focusing on the commentary on the contem-
plation ad Amorem and wondering about the principle of its division, we indi-
cated that the three powers, memory, intelligence, and will, were certainly for
45
The Paradiso of Dante Alighieri (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1954, originally 1899), canto
33, lines 115–18, 407 (slightly modified to echo Fessard’s translation).
In the profound and shining substance
of the supreme light, appeared to me three circles
of three colors and of one magnitude.
And one by the other, as Iris by Iris
seemed reflected, and the third seemed a fire
breathed equally from one and from the other.

via free access
Figure 11 Schème general et plan des exercices Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8
via free access
Afterword 233
Ignatius as for Augustine, a symbol of the Trinity. In the three volumes of his
Theologie der Exerzitien, Fr. Przywara gave an exhaustive proof of this, one that
cannot be disputed or surpassed. And he also, to illustrate his demonstration,46
did not hesitate to recur to a geometrical design, but with a triangular shape.
Since in our design, the three powers found their symbol in three circles, there
is nothing extraordinary in that the Trinity, whose image they are, should like-
wise be represented by three circles. Therefore let us call those that are situ-
ated on the vertical axis Father, Son, Spirit.
Finally, before saying what perspectives the design established in this way
opens to us, let us reproduce it one last time, by placing in correspondence with
it the outline of the four weeks with their evangelical contents, their principal
exercises, and the different series of rules applying to each one or involving the
passage from one to the other (figure 11). Better than the longest commentary,
such a juxtaposition will be able to help us grasp, along with the structure of
the Exercises, the degree to which the structure is based on a Christocentric,
eucharistic, and Trinitarian mysticism, at the same time as justify, if there is a
need to do so, our geometrical effort.
3 Perspectives
Is it necessary to say that we do not dream for an instant of attributing this geo-
metrical scheme to St. Ignatius? Starting from his most fundamental images
and the clearest indications within the Exercises, we have tried to construct the
scheme step by step by seeking to acquire a synthetic and quasi-intuitive view
of the numerous diverse relations that our analysis made us discover in them.
Moreover, we find that the majority of Ignatius’s imaginative visions, by reason
besides of their very poverty, easily enter into this construction of lines and
circles. We have quoted these texts and emphasized their agreement with our
construction but without pretending in the least to place the responsibility for
them upon the pilgrim of Montserrat or the founder of the Gesù, so evident is it
to us that their mystical life belongs to a different order. Consequently, each of
us is free to estimate that such symbolism adds very little to our analysis, or to
regard it as a mere memory aid to keep the major results present to our minds
easily, or else even to disregard the symbolism, treating it as pure fantasy of an
intellectual with a dominant visual imagination. Unless someone prefers as a
46 Przywara, Exerzitien, 3, 406.

via free access
234 Afterword
psychologist or ethnologist to take interest in it, because he perceives in it an

unexpected reappearance of the ancient Mandala and Swastika…!
Yet, let us admit that this design at which we have arrived, not without much
groping, presents something more valuable to us. Not to appear too sibylline,
let us attempt to indicate quickly why, in our sense, this value is not limited to
symbolizing the ascetic norms and mystical life of Ignatius, more or less well,
but goes beyond this point of departure and, on the condition besides of not
losing sight of this foundation, is capable of clarifying more than one philo-
sophical and theological problem.
While Ignatius’s Trinitarian visions symbolized by our three circles may
offer some kinship with the speculations of the Latin Fathers and especially
the Greek Fathers we are not seeking to make use of this aspect to develop
its symbolic value. Besides, we not have received the understanding of the
Exercises from such an orthodox or even such a directly theological source.
As we said in our Preface, it is after having struggled for many years, without
a guide or a translation, with the Phenomenology of Spirit, that our essay on
the Ignatian dialectic was written. Let us acknowledge without obfuscation,
therefore, that the philosophy that inspired us is much less Cartesian than
Blondelian and Hegelian.
At that moment we had already noted the importance of the circularity of
absolute knowing as well as the frequency of the image of the circle in Hegel
and we were only unaware that the dialectic of this philosopher, originally a
theologian, and even ultimately a mystic (for Marx at least), offered itself as a
universal application of the Trinitarian relations. But we hardly knew Marx yet
and Kierkegaard not at all. Since 1932, we have had many occasions to read and
study these two philosophers—brothers unto truth but also enemies between
themselves as they are of their father Hegel—always we have done so while
trying to understand each of them and their mutual relations in function of
what we had learned about the Exercises thanks to the Phenomenology of Spirit.
Today, as we begin to penetrate better into these three philosophers, as we
believe, who inspire more or less directly and from different angles, almost
everything valuable today in philosophy and even in theology, namely in exe-
gesis from a certain angle, we take the risk of proposing the geometrical sym-
bol that we have just constructed in function of the Exercises, as a prototype
for an Analysis Temporis et Historiae. Consequently, it is one that is capable of
guiding an analysis of the dialectics both phenomenological and logical of the
Hegelian system, following also their inversion in the historical and dialectical
materialism, and finally of the “dialectic of existence” Kierkegaard uses both to
break up the Hegelian circle and to repel the philosophy of “the masses.”

via free access
Afterword 235
Evidently, it is impossible to say with any detail why we believe we can take
such a risk. Nevertheless, let us briefly indicate the reason that suffices to jus-
tify the association of Ignatius’s Exercises with Hegel, Marx, and Kierkegaard,
as unexpected and strange as it might first seem at first.
Despite their divergences, these three philosophers have this in common:
their reflection was concentrated on the problem of truth and historicity with
a view to attaining and achieving Freedom. Moreover, all three searched for
its solution by situating themselves in relation to Christian faith, one attempt-
ing to “comprehend it conceptually,” another “to critique it radically,” and the
third “to affirm it paradoxically.” Ignatius of Loyola surely did not have the least
inkling of all the problems thus raised. Nevertheless, the problem that he put
to himself, how to unite my freedom to the divine freedom, necessarily presup-
posed them, because it is no less theoretical than practical. And since he suc-
ceeded in formulating a set of principles and rules valid not only for him but
for everyone, his method, by reason of its universality, must contain the prin-
ciples for the solution of the intellectual problems posed later by Hegel, Marx
and Kierkegaard, precisely in the measure in which it constitutes a dialectical
and existential analysis of human and at the same time of divine historicity.
Finally, in regard to each of these philosophers, through a few quotations,

let us give a glimpse of the mediating value that our geometrical design can
take to effectuate such an approximation.
For Hegel, as everyone knows—because his interpreters necessarily start

from this image and inevitably end in it—the Truth is a “circle” and the system
of his absolute knowing is a “circle of circles.”
The truth (he writes at the beginning of the preface to the Phenomenology)
is its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its goal and has
it from the start and is effectively real only by the track that executes it
and in its end.
Science (the Logic concludes for its part) is a circle of circles … the
links of this chain are the particular science, each of which has a before
and an after—or more precisely, has only the before and in its very con-
clusion shows its after.47
In his Introduction à la Lecture de Hegel, Alexander Kojève started from the

first of these two definitions to give an interpretation of the Phenomenology of
47 Przywara, Theologie der Exerzitien, 3, 406.

via free access
236 Afterword
Spirit that is both Heideggerian and Marxist. But despite his desire to identify
concept and time, spirit and history, and although all of his interpretations was
founded on the Hegelian analysis of the three ecstasies of time, he failed to see
that the most fundamental symbol of Hegelian dialectic is neither the circle,
nor the circle of circles, but an intermediate image between the simplicity of
one and the other’s limitless complexity: that of “three circles or syllogisms
which make only one.”
Hegel constructed this image by reflecting on the syllogism and the relation
of its diverse figures. Indeed, in his view, “the syllogism is the concept posited
completely,”48 which is to say, as the ground of the judgement into which the
concept is divided and appears there in its function of middle term uniting two
extremes. Also, instead of being represented as a simple circular line curving
back upon itself without revealing the moving center of the movement, the
syllogism is essentially a “middle” where the two opposites are distinguished,
and which then makes them pass one into the other in order to unite them in
itself. Moreover, as the syllogism’s diverse figures display the concept in dif-
ferent moments or determinations, universality, particularity, simplicity, “they
compose a circle of reciprocal presuppositions that, qua whole, connects itself
with itself and gathers itself, as at the central point, in the simple mediation that
precisely thus is immediate.”49 It is the circle of circles or syllogisms that Hegel
finds again everywhere: in the solar system, just as in the static organism,50 in
the chemical process,51 as in that of the living,52 in short in every detail as well
as in the totality of the System. How then can we be surprised that in his view
everything rational is syllogism and that the rational is only the syllogism?53
Consequently, he does not fear to affirm:
All that is rational is set out as a triple syllogism and even in a figure such
that each of its terms also takes as much the place of an extreme as that
of the mediating middle.54
Although the relation of these three circles with the ecstasies of time is every-
where in Hegel, he never makes it the object of explicit reflection and even

49 Hegel, Philosophische Propädeutik, par. 76; Jub.–Ausg, 3, 186. See likewise Logik, 2:327,
where the same idea is taken up in slightly different terms.
50 Hegel, Enzyklopädie, section 198.
53 Hegel, Logik 2:308–9.
54 Hegel, System der Philosophie, par. 187, Zusatz; Jub.–Ausg. 8, 391.

via free access
Afterword 237
does not seem to have clearly perceived it—which explains why it likewise
escaped all of his commentators, even Kojève, despite his point of departure.
Conversely, their relation with the Trinity is so fundamental in his view that
it provides him with the division of his analysis of the Christian religion into
Kingdom of the Father, Kingdom of the Son, and Kingdom of the Spirit. But,
after having acknowledged in the mysteries of Christianity “the three syl-
logisms that constitute the single syllogism of the absolute mediation of the
Spirit with itself,”55 and having also given himself the means of transforming
the religious “representations” into “concepts,” Hegel no longer calls his three
circles Father, Son, and Spirit, but Logic, Nature, and Spirit. And he devotes the
last paragraphs of the Encyclopedia to showing that Philosophy, summit and
totality of the whole System, is itself only one syllogism composed of three syl-
logisms (logic, nature, spirit), where each of the three terms is in turn the mean
between the other two extremes.
Hardly stopping at the images of the Hegelian circle and still less at the
interplay of the three syllogisms, of which he has hardly retained more than
the first figure—besides the only one set out by Hegel in the Encyclopedia—
Marx has equally sought to apply the dialectics of the Phenomenology of Spirit
to the understanding of time and of history. Also, in the confrontation with
Hegel’s absolute idealism, Marx’s historical materialism leads him to determin-
ing some “first principles or facts of history” on the one hand, namely “labor,”
whose double appropriation that labor provokes is at the origin of all natural
and human developing; and on the other hand to affirm the necessity of a “class
struggle” to end in communism, which, as the “authentic end of the struggle of
man with man and of man with nature” was to resolve for him the mystery of
history.56 In the course of this effort, Marx projects the three Hegelian circles
on the horizontal line of time, passing without noticing it from the first figure
of the Hegelian system to the second, because he was changing their names at
the same time as the order was becoming nature, man, society for him.
Later, reflecting on the method that had guided him in the elaboration of
Capital, Marx was led to recognize that in fact he had gone much further, to
the point of “completely turning the dialectic around,” which “in Hegel had
walked on its head.” For Hegel, indeed, Logic was the highest circle or, “under
the name of Idea,” as Marx says, “an autonomous subject, demiurge of real-
ity” whereas Nature, “fall of the Idea”57 was the lower, with Spirit occupying
the middle place to unite the two extremes. For Marx, on the contrary, Nature

56 Marx–Engels, Gesamt Ausgabe, Iste Abt, Bd 3, 114.

via free access
238 Afterword
takes the place of Logic and vice versa, since “ideas are nothing but material
things transposed and translated into the head of human beings,”58 with com-
munist society having to reunite these two opposites and accomplish thereby
the unity of man and nature. Except that, by inverting the order of the Hegelian
circles, while “openly proclaiming himself the great thinker’s disciple,”59 Marx
had no doubt about the destiny to which his historical materialism, which had
become “dialectical” in addition, was to be given over. His friend Engels was
not to delay in realizing it in his Dialectic of Nature, where Marx’s circles, like
Hegel’s, dissolve themselves in benefit of the “eternal return” of the Greeks,
which radically negates all historicity and at the same stroke reduces the com-
munist “dialectic” to being no longer anything but an “absolute sophistry that
posits itself as legislature and measure of good and evil at its whim,”60—in
fact at the whim of a Leviathan-state that crowns its hypocrisy by periodically
announcing its wasting away.
For Kierkegaard, such a philosophy can only be the deed of “their cowardly,
blind, and mediocre individuals uniting to abandon themselves and to be,
with the aid of a generation, something en masse.”61 A solitary thinker who
was almost completely unaware of the socialist movement and its roots, both
philosophical and economic, he makes Hegel, the author of the “historical
world system.” responsible for this renunciation of personal life. Hegel, who,
“notwithstanding all his discourses of process, understood the world, not in its
becoming, but with the aid of the illusion of the past in a closed system from
which all becoming is excluded.”62 In Hegel’s sense, if there can be a logical
system, there cannot be a system of existence.63 Because “to be a system and to
be closed correspond to each other, but existence is precisely the opposite,”64
interval, discrimen, “crossroads,” all requiring choice as much with regard to
the past as to the future …
Nevertheless, like Hegel, Kierkegaard also distinguishes these circles or
“spheres of existence: aesthetic, ethical, and religious.”65 But on his view, far
from overlapping or being intertwined, however little, these spheres exclude
58 Marx, Capital, afterword to second German edition, Roy translation, 1:29–30.

59 Marx, Capital, 1:29–30.
60 Hegel, Rechtsphilosophie, par. 140, Zusatz; Jub.–Ausg. 7, 220.
61 Kierkegaard, postscript to Miettes philosophiques [Philosophical fragments], translated by
P. Petit, 233.
62 Kierkegaard, postscript to Miettes philosophiques, 205, note.
63 Kierkegaard, postscript to Miettes philosophiques, 72.

via free access
Afterword 239
each other and cannot be confused. Besides, for Kierkegaard, as for the
Hegelian circles for Marx, they relate to history, no longer to define its begin-
ning, middle, or end, but because they characterize the different attitudes of
the Greek, of the Jew, and of the Christian before the anguish, sin, and above
all, the relation of the eternal to time. Paradoxical relation that in the view of
the Christian, reveals itself as absolute in “the instant around which everything
turns,”66 because it is “alone reconciler of contradictories, being the eternaliza-
tion of the historic and the historicization of eternity.”67 Also, the entire work
of this “poet of the religious” is devoted to the problem of faith, understood not
as the fact of being Christian, but as the requirement of becoming Christian.
There is no need to insist that the perspectives thus opened by Hegel, Marx
and Kierkegaard about the problem of historicity and of Truth are those upon
which the reflection of contemporary philosophers and theologians is in great
measure deeply engaged, so evident is it.
Will it be objected that the geometrical symbols that we have put forward
are themselves out of fashion, and that after the Bergsonian criticism of spa-
tialized time, to attribute a preponderant role or even attribute some influence
to them would be to go off on the wrong track? We think that the objection
has less force than it seems and that it does not stand up under an attentive
observation. For the metaphors inherent in the language that speaks of time
and of history always refer to these simple figures such as lines and circles; and
their action upon thought is all the more great and risks being all the more
pernicious insofar as the reflection believes itself freed and neglects to objec-
tify them. Furthermore, it is a fact that in his Vorlesungen Zur Phänomenologie
des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, edited by Heidegger, Husserl, for one, was not
afraid to recur to geometrical designs that subsequently have been taken up
by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception.68 Let us be satisfied
with mentioning these. But let us reproduce (figure 12) the design that Yvonne
Picard employed in her study Le Temps chez Husserl et chez Heidegger, because
its kinship with ours is plainly visible even before any commentary.69
66 Kierkegaard, Miettes philosophiques, 119.

67 Kierkegaard, Miettes philosophiques, 138.
68 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie de la perception, 477.
69 Moreover, here is the explanation that goes with this figure: “Two lines represent the
dimensions of future and past, converging upon the limit point of the instant, engen-
dering in their repetition a continuous horizontal line toward which they rest and along
which it seems that the instant displaces itself—therefore a three dimensional design—
cut on time, direct stamp of time’s polydimensional character. It belongs to the a priori
structure of time to be thus in three terms, or as Heidegger says, to entail three ecstasies,

via free access
240 Afterword
Figure 12
Let us add also that Jaspers has been willing to recur to geometrical design
to give an intuitive view of his Philosophy and of his conception of Truth.70
As for the Bergsonian critique, it did not prevent a scholar like Fr. Teilhard de
Chardin, who was familiar with Bergson’s Creative Evolution, from developing
the perspectives that the study of paleontology and in general of the “human
Phenomenon” suggested to him, by evoking the image of the cone of time71
inside of which Matter-Energy, the Biosphere, and the Noosphere converge,
displayed by degrees, toward the Omega Point.
The fact is that in problems where history, philosophy, and theology inter-
act, the use of such designs is required to the degree that trying to do without
them or failing to reflect upon them can only harm the clarity and rigor of
and, however, at each instant, to form only one ‘ecstatic temporal unity’ (Heidegger, Sein
und Zeit, 345) and only one single horizon susceptible of being represented by a ‘horizon-
tal design that repeats itself identically, always the same and always other,’ as Heidegger
says again.” Deucalion 1, 103–4, 1946.
70 Jaspers, Von der Warheit, 142.
71 Teilhard de Chardin, Psyche, November and December 1946, 23–27 and 171–79.

via free access
Afterword 241
thought. Let us cite just one final example taken from exegesis, a realm where
the Kierkegaardian analyses currently have profound influence.
It is known that Rudolf Bultmann, basing himself on these analyses and

applying to Scripture the categories of Heidegger’s ontological hermeneutic
insisted on the need for “demythologizing” the Gospel Message in a lecture
that made a great stir after its appearance and has continued to be the object of
controversy among Protestant theologians and exegetes.72 One of them, Oscar
Cullmann, in order to refute Bultmann’s theses, thinks that he can do no bet-
ter than to take the difference that the image of time assumes among Greeks,
Jews, and Christians, as the base and connecting thread of a work devoted to
studying the relations between Christ and Time. When translated into French,
the book was favorably received in Catholic circles, certain theologians more-
over having found in it, so to speak, the revelation of the central importance of
the Incarnation and the Resurrection in history.
For the Greeks, Cullmann substantially says, time is a circle whose center
is constituted of immobile eternity. For the Jews and Christians by contrast,
time and eternity form a continuous line in which two divisions are inserted:
creation and Parousia. The difference between the two is this: whereas for the
Jews, Parousia is the “center” or the middle that gives its sense to all the rest
of history, for Christians, by reason of their faith in the incarnation and the
importance that they attribute to the death and the resurrection of Christ, this
72
Cf. the diverse volumes that appeared under the title Kerygma und Mythos.—In this con-
nection, let us indicate two recent works: one by René Marlé, Bultmann et l’interpretation
du Nouveau Testament (Aubier, 1956, Collection “Théologie”), which constitutes an excel-
lent introduction to the Marburg theologian’s overall thinking and output. The other, by
Heinrich Ott, Geschichte und Heilsgeschichte in der Theologie Rudolf Bultmanns (Tübingen:
Mohr, 1955). This last author also uses a certain number of geometrical designs to illus-
trate the diverse concepts of history that Bultmann’s theology employs: for example,
the relation of Heilgeschichte and of Weltgeschichte, of primäre Geschichtlichkeit and
the gegenständlich-historische Realität (22–23); also that of Natur, as gegandständliche
Historie with the profangeschichtliche Wirklichkeit, and eschatologisch-heilgeschictliche
Wirklichkeit (55); again that of eschatological Nunc with the old and the new Eon (122); also
that of comprehension of self and of the historical self (152, 156, 158), etc. If Heinrich Ott
had taken pains to unify his different designs before any confrontation with Bultmann—
which would have entailed a more thorough analysis of historicity according to its differ-
ent senses and sectors—his already valuable analyses and criticisms would have gained
in clarity and depth. And it seems that he would have ended up with a general design
rather close to ours.
This does not imply that he would have had to give a completely identical interpreta-
tion of it. For we will observe below, citing Hegel, one thing is the figure or the symbol,
another the conceptual value that it should represent.

via free access
242 Afterword
Figure 13 Judaïsme et Christianisme
center is displaced itself to be situated no longer in the future but in the past.
From that comes the double design by which Cullmann sums up his analysis
and represents this difference,73 the center being represented each time by the
intersection of two perpendiculars in the form of X.
There again, it is superfluous to underline the relationship of this design
with ours. It is enough to curve the two exterior segments to properly historical
time, one downwards, the other upwards, so that they meet again to obtain a
representation of eternity, the reverse of that of the Greeks, the embryo of the
design about which we pointed out above that it could have a double sense,
universal and historical, as well as temporal and existential. Unfortunately,
Cullmann hardly distinguishes these two senses and has almost stopped at the
first alone. More still, at the moment when he intended to refute Kierkegaard
and his disciple Bultmann, he does not seem to have noticed that in arguing
about the difference between the Greek, Jewish, and Christian times, he was
coming back to the very same thing as the author of the Fragments and of
the Concept of Anxiety, when in his struggle against Hegel, he was analyzing
the structure of the historical and of the Instant in function of his “spheres of
existence.” If, despite the excellence of this basic intuition, and furthermore,
despite a rich, profound exegesis, Cullmann was not able to develop its fruits,
the fault is in the poverty of the design he took as his guide, and, above all, in
the correlative absence of a properly philosophical reflection on history. These
two causes have rather ensnared him in serious incoherence in the dogmatic
and historical area, that the last part of his. Saint Peter, Disciple and Martyr and
his little book on The Tradition clearly exhibit.
73 Ott, Geschichte und Heilsgeschichte, 58.

via free access
Afterword 243
Evidently, to defend the value of the images that Bultmann calls “mythical,”
it is not enough to oppose him with a geometrical figure where, for example,
it appears that the three stages of the Cosmos, celestial, earthly, and infernal,
are in close connection with the three ecstasies of time. Likewise, to establish
against Cullmann that the primacy of the Roman Pontiff is based, not on a
“vicious circle” or “petition of principle,” but on the circle that is principle and
condition of all historical intelligibility, it is still too little to develop the sim-
plicity of his design into another more complex one. Similarly, however rich a
geometrical symbol may be, it will never be able to clarify the arcane features
of the Hegelian system, nor its relations with Marx and Kierkegaard. All the
more in that the use of such figures has its dangers. Indeed, as Hegel is first
to warn us, it always risks being reduced to being only “an external procedure
employed by philosophical impotence,”74 “nothing more than a facile way of
excusing oneself from the trouble of grasping, indicating, and justifying the
concept’s determinations.” Also, it is necessary, “before everything else to show
their philosophical significance, that is to say, their determination in relation
to the concept.”75
Faithful to this advice, we will need to remake for Hegel, Marx, and
Kierkegaard a number of rigorous, detailed analyses analogous to those to
which we have submitted the text of the Exercises. For it is only thanks to them
that the lines and circles can get life and meaning and then offer us the dia-
gram of representation pertinent to each of these philosophers, the means
to compare their thoughts, to criticize, one by the other, their partialities and
74
Hegel, Logik, 1:211–12.
75
In truth, we change a formal prohibition into advice. Let us quote in its entirety the
passage where Hegel intends to condemn, rather than Pythagoras, his former friend
Schelling: “If one intends to use numbers, powers, the mathematical infinite, and other
similar things, not as symbols but qua forms of philosophical determinations and conse-
quently qua philosophical forms as such, then it would be necessary before all to show
their philosophical significance, that is to say their determination in relation to the con-
cept. If we succeed at that, all these symbols themselves become superfluous designa-
tions; the determination of the concept designates itself, and its designation is the only
one that is correct and that is suitable. Also, the use of these forms is only an easy way
to spare oneself the trouble of grasping, indicting, and justifying the determinations of
the concept” (Logik, 1:335). If it is true that the determination of the concept by language
suffices to designate it completely, Hegel is the first to have violated his own prohibition.
Because why then use so often and in such different ways the image of the circle to desig-
nate “the movement of the concept”?
This observation alone and the way in which we have transformed the prohibition
into advice suffices to show that one point at least—but a central one for the system and
its consequence because it involves the relation of the concept to the representation and to
language, we are not Hegelian but as anti-Hegelian as can be.

via free access
244 Afterword
finally to go beyond them if it is possible, by uniting their truths in the light of

teachings drawn from the Ignatian analysis.
In the face of such a project, doubtless many will think that we really attri-
bute too much value both to the drawing of purely imaginary lines and to the
mysticism of a man who was far from foreseeing today’s philosophical difficul-
ties and still farther from worrying about resolving them by means of such
symbols. However, if, as Heidegger, says, it is true that “transcendental imagi-
nation forms time in itself”76 with its three ecstasies and that “the interpreta-
tion of Dasein as temporality is the end of fundamental ontology,”77 perhaps it
is not presumptuous to utilize an imaginative design as the guide for our inves-
tigations, one that has appeared to us to symbolize not only the problematic of
temporal being and historical as such, but its solution in an exceptional man
and moreover a saint. And since it is by becoming acquainted with the works
of Hegel, Marx, and Kierkegaard that we came to extract from the Spiritual
Exercises of Ignatius this model of existential analysis of time and history, can’t
we hope that through a reciprocity as legitimate as it is natural, the saint’s mys-
ticism is capable of projecting some light on these works and through them on
the problems of our times?
Is this grounded hope or unreasonable ambition? This can only be decided

in the perspective of a new effort that will try to explore the relations between
Theology and History according to the perspectives evoked in the instant.
In the meantime, since the perspectives are born out of long acquaintance
with Ignatius’s written work and with his living order, we only hope that the
announcement of such a project grafted onto an already ancient labor, should
appear on the occasion of the fourth Centenary of his death, as a small tribute
of filial recognition.
76 Heidegger, Kant et le problème de la métaphysique, translation by A. de Waelens and
W. Biemel, 242.
77 Heidegger, Kant et le problème, 295.

via free access
Appendix
Rules for the Discernment of Spirits
Let us prevent a possible misunderstanding.

It would be completely wrong to conclude that, because we relegate the commen-
tary upon these rules to an appendix at the end of a book, they are only a kind of
subsidiary growth upon the body of the Exercises. That is completely mistaken. Beside
constituting the original center from which the analysis emerges that unfolds through-
out the four weeks, they are, as much as the latter, an essential aspect of Ignatius’s
method. It is self-evident for anyone who makes or gives the Exercises, that the expla-
nation for these Rules should be included in the same time to which the rules refer.
Nevertheless, given our objective, we preferred to change the order for three reasons
that are easy to understand: first, in order not to interrupt the commentary upon the
four weeks which obviously form a homogeneous whole; second, because once the
structure and interconnection of these four Moments is uncovered, the interpretation
of the rules becomes easier; third, in order to employ here the elements of the geo-
metrical pattern elaborated in the course of our Afterword, and to confirm its symbolic
value by the very application.
For the rest, Ignatius was the first, without concern about being misunderstood, to
banish these rules, as well as several others, to the end of his booklet. The only con-
nection of the group formed in this way is the common purpose of these different
prescriptions, all of whose goal is to facilitate the application to particular situations of
the general method set out during the Four Weeks. But some, like the Rules on Scruples
and the Rules for Distributing Alms, have to do with particular situations that very
well may not present themselves after the change of state, whereas others to the con-
trary, directly regard the preparation and carrying out of the Election. Even the Rules
to Have the True Sentiment in the Church belong to this group. Clearly, Ignatius only
wrote them in the last phase after having encountered, during his studies in Paris, the
controversies provoked by the incipient Reformation and having observed the trouble
the controversies provoked around him among actual or possible disciples. It is also
true that, given what soon became Ignatius’s mission in the midst of this world in
tumult, the rules express the directives according to which the Society of Jesus cor-
poratively ought to orient its choices in disputed issues. In short, the rules undisput-
edly regard social action and ecclesial advantage rather than strictly individual choice.
Nevertheless, since they recommend an attitude of obedience in all things toward the
authentic Bride of Christ, who is our Holy Mother the hierarchical church (number 353
and also 170), it is clear that the rules also concern the conduct of those who make the

via free access
246 Appendix
Exercises in the measure in which their existence in time is already socially guided by
the church’s decisions and directions.
By contrast, the Rules for Discernment of Spirits represent the kernel, so to speak,
of the Exercises. Ignatius himself told Fr. González how the problem they attempt to
resolve forced itself upon him during his convalescence by fantasies occasioned by
his reading, which was divided between the life of Christ or the saints and stories of
chivalry. He stated:
There was this difference, however. When he thought of worldly matters he found
much delight, but after growing weary and dismissing them he found that he was
dry and unhappy. But when he thought of going barefoot to Jerusalem and of
eating nothing but vegetables and of imitating the saints in all the austerities
they performed, he not only found consolation in these thoughts but even after
they had left him he remained happy and joyful. He did not consider not did he
stop to examine this difference until one day his eyes were partially opened and
he began to wonder at this difference and to reflect upon it. From experience he
knew that some thoughts left him said while others made him happy, and little
by little he came to perceive the different spirits that were moving him; one com-
ing from the devil, the other from God. These were the first reflections he made
upon the things of God, and when he made the Exercises, that is where he began
to get some light about the diversity of spirits.1
In this confidence, Ignatius’s imaginative temperament is depicted wonderfully, as is

the reflective bent of a person who is amazed at the flux of his different states of soul
and thereafter will not cease to devote himself to the problem they pose to him. After
his conversion, this difference will assume all the more importance in that the devil’s
attractions and the divine favors increased; simultaneously their connection with the
peculiarly Ignatian question become more precise: how to decide each time in agree-
ment with the divine will.
As the Rules are presented in the definitive edition, their relation with the Election
is patent. By that very fact, so is their relation to the genesis of the free act through
the temporal expanse of the four weeks. Precisely by reason of its objectivity, the rep-
resentation of this genesis contains a formal aspect in regard to individual freedom
that seeks a particular determination through such a framework. The question is posed
about how to apply this universal format to the particular situation of each self. In
1 Ignatius of Loyola, Pilgrim’s Journey, Tylenda translation, section 8, 14–15. [The sentence in
parenthesis is from section 9 of the French version and does not appear in Tylenda.]

via free access
Rules for the Discernment of Spirits 247
what involves the fundamental choice envisaged by the Exercises, that of a state of life,
a general response is already given at the end of the Second Week by the consideration
dealing directly with Election, its different times and its methods, which we discussed
under the heading Passage from Before to After. However, this macro-decision is not
engendered abruptly. A certain time elapses before it is elaborated fully. Also, a certain
time is necessary for it to mature and become capable of being carried out. During
this double internal, meditation and contemplation inevitably provoke movements,
tendencies, and different projects in the self, leading to a multitude of micro-decisions
in which the outcome of the particular choice is first outlined and its final design is
specified. Evidently, it is important that these anticipations or consequences of the
Election should themselves be checked and ordered from the start in the direction
defined by the overall method.
The Rules for Discernment of Spirits have the goal of assuring this control and ori-
entation and precisely thereby to permit the application of the general design of free-
dom to each free act in every moment. In the Rules we again meet the elements that
the four weeks spread out in temporal development and in their universal aspect. But
the rules present them in such a way as to make them converge upon the particular
self and at the same time to clarify their special process. In the geometrical scheme
where we symbolized the dialectic of the Exercises, the four weeks follow each other
on a horizontal line where the Election occupies a central point, but solely that point.
By contrast, the rules concern all and each of the instants of this extended develop-
ment and group under the vertical line the elements formally distinguished according
to temporal development. We have already noted more than once, especially in regard
to the Elections and to the Contemplation to Gain Love (ad Amorem), that this cor-
respondence between the before and the after on the one hand, and the high and low,
on the other, was characteristic of the Ignatian dialectic and of the circularity that it
acknowledges in the existence of human freedom in relation with divine freedom. The
commentary upon these rules will confirm and illustrate this correspondence again,
and it will be able to be all the more brief, in that we will be able to refer to this outline
of the Afterword that it brought to light.
Although these rules have the goal of assuring the application of the method after
as well as before the Election, Ignatius has no formulas that correspond to the last
two weeks. We have already given the reasons for that. It should suffice to recall that
the break between the First and Second Weeks responds to the break between before
and after, and that in the first the self is directed toward what is below but toward
what is above in the Second Week. In these two opposed existential situations, the self
must inevitably encounter difficulties that are not the same. From there, along with
the necessity to distinguish Rules suitable pro Prima Hebdomada and other Rules pro
Secunda Hebdomada, also comes the impossibility of prescribing a third or fourth kind,
since freedom always has only the choice between the two terms of an alternative.

via free access
248 Appendix
Despite their opposition, these two situations are in continuity just as the weeks to
which they relate. From the latter to the former, the self progresses regularly toward
the central goal of Election. The distinction of the rules corresponding to these two
moments is not absolute but only relative.
The first ones are magis propriae, more pertinent to the self that is in the First Week.
The second lead rather, magis conducent, someone in the Second Week. The former
looks first to make the self become aware of the diversity of spiritual moments to
which it is submitted (Ignatius recalls that at the beginning he himself had not noticed
them) and then “to feeling and knowing in some measure,” ad sentiendum et cogno-
scendo aliquo modo. The knowledge should at least be sufficient to make the self dis-
tinguish the spiritual moments that favor the expansion of freedom from those which,
on the contrary, limit it, in order to be able to accept the first and reject the others, ut
suscipiantur bonae et rejiciantur malae (number 313), that the good may be accepted
and the bad rejected. The Rules pro Secunda Hebdomada, for the second week, do not
set themselves a different goal, but they seek to obtain a more precise knowledge of
these impulses, which permits more complete discernment of the spirits that cause
them (number 328). There is enough difference between these two groups of rules,
which have the same content and the same goal, for Ignatius to be able to recom-
mend that the retreat director only give them using himself discernment about the
necessity that he perceives in the person who receives the Exercises ( juxta necessita-
tem quem senserit in eo qui accipit Exercitia—number 8). Ignatius even recommends
that the retreat director be satisfied with explaining only the first rules if the person
making the retreat declares that he is “not versed in spiritual things, and is tempted
grossly and openly—having suggested to him obstacles to going on in the service of
God our Lord such as labors, shames, and fear for the honor of the world … As much
as [the rules] of the First Week will be helpful, those of the second will be harmful to
him, as being a matter too subtle and too high for him to understand” (number 9). In
the subsequent annotation, Ignatius further specifies that the second group of rules
is intended to protect souls that are “assaulted and tempted under the appearance of
good” (number 10). Therefore, this group is reserved to those generous souls ready to
give themselves without haggling about their difficulties or their reputations, whom
Ignatius hopes to makes his disciples, directors of consciences, suited to teach others
his method after being formed by it.
The care with which Ignatius in this way distinguishes the area of application of
these two series of rules does not respond to any desire for esotericism in him. But he
warns us that he is perfectly aware that he touches upon the most delicate matters of
spiritual life, while starting from the most elementary principles that are within the
reach of everyone. Here again, the peculiar mark of Ignatius’s genius appears to us to
be the union of common sense with the highest mysticism. More than everywhere else

via free access
in the Exercises, we will see that temporal determinations are the essential factors of
this unity.
In briefly commenting upon these two series of rules, we are less concerned with
explaining an already well-known text that offers no serious difficulties, than in
shedding light upon the existential dialectic that inspires them and that links them
to the analysis of the four weeks. We may hope thus to come to penetrate the secret
of Ignatius a little better, at the same time as to confirm the standpoint according to
which we have studied it and the perspective to which the method seems to lead.
1 Rules for the First Week (Numbers 313–327)
Fourteen in number, the rules are grouped according to a simple, logical plan. The first
two describe the two existential situations of freedom and the tactic of those who find
themselves in the two situations. From the fourth to the eighth, Ignatius indicates the
conduct to follow in the time of desolation, for which he enumerates three causes in
Rule 10. The next two suffice to trace the same line in the time of consolation. Finally,
the last three rules discover the devil’s general tactics.
From the start of our essay, even before explaining the sequence of the four weeks,
we realized that in the first place they are distinguished in pairs as before and after
Election, and then one from another within this before and this after. In our Afterword,
the images of crossroads and of scales allowed us to illustrate this double contrast by a
diagram that is both linear and circular, where the crossing of horizontal and vertical
axes suffices to picture the unity and difference of these four moments.
Even before defining the essential object that the rules must discern (the move-
ments of consolation and desolation), Ignatius characterizes the two situations that
can occupy the freedom that they affect, by a double contrast that crisscrosses inex-
actly the same way. All the rules, for both the Second and First Week, are going to be
defined, ordered, and unified in relation to the fundamental pattern, already repre-
sented by figures 2 and 3, where the affective state of the self and the movement it
undergoes or ought to make, are experienced in terms of tension and contrariety. This
is an unquestionable sign that a single, unique dialectical structure here governs the
radiant unfolding of these rules as the linear segmentation of the four weeks there.
1.1 Rules 1 and 2: The Double Existential Situation of the Self (Numbers
314 and 315)
In relation to the end, to authentic freedom that the self wants to attain by enter-
ing into the Exercises, the self can find itself in two diametrically opposed attitudes.
Either it turns away from this End, falling a peccato mortali in peccatum mortale [“from

via free access
250 Appendix
mortal sin into mortal sin”]. Or else renouncing sin and vice, it turns toward the end
and strides bravely toward it ascendo de bono in bonum, [rising from good to better].
In them, the diagram of scale permitted us to represent the situation of the sinful self
during the First Week, committing itself in the Second Week in the illuminative way.
Given the two opposing orientations of subjective freedom, it is evident that the sense
and nature of the spiritual movements that increase or decrease its separation or
approximation to the end must be revealed by contrast, modo contrario.
For the self that turns away from it, the growing absence of the end is distinguished
under apparent pleasures and images of delectationes et voluptates sensuales [“sen-
sual delights and pleasures”]. To uncover the falsity of these affections, it suffices to
contrast the direction in which they tend to the essential End. The distancing will be
immediately felt and known as progressive at the same time as the goal of the enemy,
the devil will be discovered quo magis illos conservat et adaugeat in suis vitiis et pec-
catis, as he [“holds them more and make them grow in their vices and sins”]. However,
the growing presence of the end is indicated, modo contrario pungendo illis et remor-
dendo illis conscientiam per synderesim rationis [prodding them in the opposite direc-
tion and “biting their consciences through the process of reason”] (number 314). Don’t
we know that after the Meditatio de Inferno [Mediation on Hell], the remorse achieved
by the application of the senses is changed into negation of Non-being and into the
call of Being.
This double relation is inverted for the self that intense procedit [“is going on
intensely”] toward Freedom. Mordere, tristitia afficere et ponere impedimenta, inqui-
etam reddendo animam per falsas rationes [“to bite, sadden, and put obstacles sad-
dening the soul by false reasons”] are so many means by which the spirit of evil tends
to obscure the presence of the end. But the falseness of these reasons and affects is
always made clear by the same comparison: ne pergat ulterius [“that one may go no fur-
ther”]. Whereas dare animam et vires … et quietem, facilia reddendo omnia et removendo
omnia impedimenta [“to give courage and strength … and quiet, easing and removing
all impediments”] signals that the soul nears its end, the authenticity of these signs
is always revealed by their orientation toward the end, ut in bene operando procedat
ulterius [so that it may “go on in well doing”] (number 315).
The two situations analyzed in this way can be represented by figures 14 and 15
that make their similarity and difference stand out. Derived from figures 2 and 3 their
meaning is clear enough to need no commentary. Let us simply observe that the delay-
ing or hastening action of the good or evil spirit is symbolized by the circular arc, repre-
senting so to speak the field of forces that weigh upon the scale’s arm and tend to bring
it closer or further from the vertical, in pointing up or down, according to the initial
state of the self and the kind of spirit that acts upon it.

via free access
1.2 Rules 2 and 3: Definition of Consolation and Desolation (Numbers 315

and 316)
Once this framework is posited and the double intertwined opposition that makes up
its internal structure is defined, we can characterize more clearly as the end, freedom
that is reflected by such different effects. If we take the classical terms of spiritual-
ity, consolation and desolation them according to common usage, they designate very
different states of mind that are stable in themselves Ignatius, on the other hand, in
describing them according to his central framework defines them as fluid realities
capable of passing into each other, in short, “dialectical” in the Hegelian sense of
the term. All the renowned perceptiveness of his psychology, such as the universally
acknowledged power of his spiritual tactics, consists first in analyzing this dialectical
moment and then in opposing an equally dialectical action to it. Is it not habitually
summed up by a perfectly characteristic word taken from the Contemplation of the
Kingdom: agendo contra [“acting against”]? (number 97).
St. Ignatius does not fail to indicate the tears and effusions of love, or in the other
direction, the shadows and pain, which characterize consolation and desolation. But
he immediately defines the essence of all these affective phenomena by identifying
their sense (nowadays we would say their intentionality), in relation to the End pur-
sued by the Exercises, Freedom identical to Love. Different phenomena take on the
aspect of contrary tensions, whether increase of theological virtues by which subjec-
tive freedom is united to divine Freedom, “the increase of faith, hope, and charity”
(augmentum fidei, spei et caritatis) in the case of consolation, or the decrease of these
virtues in the case of desolation, “moving the soul to want of confidence, without
hope, without love” (moventem animam ad diffidentiam, sine spe, sine amore). Thereby
peace and joy or unease and darkness, along with all the sense phenomena that can
accompany these fundamental sentiments, are rigorously qualified by their direc-
tion opposed to the orientation of the vertical axis, mentioned here in its own terms.
Consolation “calls and attracts to heavenly things” (Consolatio … vocat et attrahit ad res
coelestes, number 316); desolation is “movement to things low and earthly” (desolatio …
motionem ad res infimas et terrenas, number 317).
1.3 Rules 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9: Tactic to Follow in Desolation

After defining the axis along which the self can be moved in opposite directions, it is
easy to deduce immediately the tactic to be adopted. A dialectic, it essentially consists
in taking the contrary to the effort by which Non-being opposes the development of
freedom. As we have said, the tradition quite correctly has summed it up in the expres-
sion acting against, agendo contra. But we must further note that Ignatius, always in
agreement with his fundamental analysis, specifies this “contrary action” in function of
the before and the after through which our freedom is determined …

via free access
252 Appendix
In the time of desolation, he says, the self absolutely ought to refrain from going
back over previous decisions, taken, by hypothesis, in an opposite state of mind. On
the contrary, it must remain “firm and constant in the resolutions and determinations
[taken] in the preceding consolation” (nunquam mutatio facienda sed standum firmiter
et constanter … in determinatione in qua erat in praecedente consolatione). He gives an
evident reason for this, referring to his core framework: sicut in consolatione nos magis
ducit … spiritus bonus, ita in desolatione malus [“as in consolation it is rather the good
spirit who guides … so in desolation it is the bad”]. Consequently, “with [the bad spir-
it’s] counsels, we cannot take a course to decide rightly” (number 318).
But it is not enough to remain in place without falling back. As a soldier, Ignatius
wants the self, as soon as the first attacks are repelled, to make a counter-attack, to try
to revise the current, to change oneself (mutare se) through an action directly aimed
against the ipsam desolationem [desolation itself]. He indicates three modalities, so
to speak, of sweeping away the horizon of the self. First the elevation toward what is
above, “insisting more on prayer (insistendo magis orationi); next, thanks to the light
acquired in this way, the circular case of reflection on the present; multum examinando
[“on much examination”], by using in the spirit of the Sixth Annotation, the many com-
ments of the Additions and the Particular Examination; finally, the decision of a vigor-
ous and rational attack upon what is low, against the flesh, where the consequences
of the position of Non-being persists extendendo magis in aliquo conveniente modo
faciendi poententiam, [“by giving ourselves more scope in some suitable way of doing
penance”] (number 319).
By the effect of such behavior desolation is changed into a means permitting the
self to attain immediately in some measure the different goals that the four weeks
envisage successively. Indeed, it offers the self the occasion to become aware of its
original weakness in the face of Non-being (First Week), quomodo Dominus ipsum rel-
iquit probationis gratia, in suis potentiis naturalibus, ut resistat variis agitationibus et
tentationibus inimici [“as the Lord has left him in trial in his natural powers, in order
to resist the different agitations and temptations of the enemy”]. Then, desolation
requires an act of faith that denies this Non-being (Second Week): potest enim [resist-
ere] cum auxilio divino … licet aperte illud non sentiat … manente tamen ipsa gratia quae
sufficiat ad salutem aeternam [“he can [resist] with divine help … although he does
not clearly perceive it, notwithstanding that it remains that the same grace is enough
for eternal salvation”] (number 320). Finally, since desolation requires patience and
perseverance in a thankless task (Third Week), one qui laborat ut persistat in patentia,
quae est contraria vexationibus [“who labors to persist in patience, which is contrary to
the vexations”], it provokes an act of hope that Being will soon be posited and present.
Cogitet se cito esse consolandum [“Let him think he will soon be consoled”] (Fourth
Week, number 321).
Based on faith and fortified by hope, this realization reveals to the self three prin-
cipal causes of desolation. Its particular origin is in the positing (not just natural and

via free access
original but temporal and personal) of the Non-being, by my fault (ob culpas meas).
Next, its reason for being is to make us experience the scant value of our subjective
freedom, so that it proves to us “how much we are and how much we let ourselves out”
(ut probet nos quantum valeamus et quousque procedamus). Understood in this way,
according to its beginning and its end, desolation is changed into particular knowl-
edge, that is intimate and felt as well as true, a real awareness and knowledge by which
we feel intimately (veram notitiam et cognitionem qua intime sentimus), first, our radi-
cal impotence to attain the freedom that is the pure position of the self by the Self,
“that it is not ours to get or keep … intense love … or any other spiritual consolation”
(non esse ex nobis acquirere vel retinere amorem neque ullam consolationem), but also
of complete liberality of this Freedom that in everything and everywhere fills us with
these gifts, totum esse donum et gratiam Dei Domini nostri [“that all is the gift and grace
of God our Lord”] (number 322).
As we finish our journey around the horizon, which made us review the goals of
the four weeks, this reference to the double movement on which contemplation ad
Amorem is based, doesn’t the allusion show to what point the Ignatian dialectic is
always inspired by the same pattern to unite the most particular detail with the most
universal vision?
1.4 Rules 10 and 11: Tactic to Follow in Consolation

While five rather long and detailed rules have just been devoted to desolation, two
much shorter rules are enough to deal with consolation. Why is there such disparity?
Two different reasons, it seems, explain it.
Let us first note that from the psychological point alone, consolation, unlike desola-
tion, poses no problems for the self in the First Week. Completely occupied in cleans-
ing itself from its sins and becoming aware of the disordered affections that are their
root, the question of Election does not yet appear for the self. It will be completely
different in the Second Week. At that moment, since by hypothesis, the self will have
overcome the difficulties that arose from the fact of desolation, it will be open to illu-
sions that can spring from consolation. The Rules for the Second Week are particularly
directed to dispel these illusions at the same time as to define the essence of conso-
lation. This reestablishes the proportion or rather reverses it with regard to desola-
tion, a formidable obstacle especially for the beginner. What is most to be feared for
someone who commits himself to the long road of the Exercises is discouragement,
unease, difficulty, and things capable of stopping him prematurely or even at the point
of departure. Hence, Ignatius’s care to clarify for his retreatant the nature and benefits
of desolation. Desolation is so much the center of interest in the Rules for the First
Week that in Rules 10 and 11, not only does Ignatius consider consolation less in itself
than in function of its opposite, but in order to conclude, he finds the way to return to
desolation.

via free access
254 Appendix
Cogitet ille, qui est in desolatione, se posse multum cum gratia quae sufficit ad resis-
tendum omnibus suis inimicis, summendo vires in Creatore ac Domino suo. [“Let him
who is in desolation think he can do much with the grace sufficient to resist all his
enemies, taking strength in his Creator and Lord]” (number 324). In other words, for
the self in the First Week, the interest of consolation is to increase faith in the power
of grace, so that his own work is reduced to being a means to overcome desolation.
If desolation monopolizes Ignatius’s attention so greatly, we can find another,

deeper, and truly existential reason. When the self is attracted by divine freedom
toward what is above, it has only to let itself by carried along. At that moment no dia-
lectical action is to be suggested or even possible since God himself acts. At first this
seems to contract our whole interpretation of the Exercises, but it really confirms it.
What in fact is the goal of Ignatius’s method? It is to achieve the unity of human
freedom and divine freedom. Pursued through the development of the four weeks this
unity is called Election. By contrast, when it happens at any instant of the develop-
ment, it is consolation. In the measure in which this unity is effectively attained in
one form or another, it is certainly true that Ignatius’s method is eliminated. Like any
authentic dialectic, its goal is not to perpetuate itself, but to make itself useless by
overcoming the contradictions that make it necessary. In the First Time for Making
Election, there is no choice properly so-called. Nor is their discernment in the “consola-
tion without cause,” because no deceit is possible there. Likewise, the micro-decisions
taken under the influence of different consolations must not be put in question by
later desolations.
Through these different examples, we see that Ignatius always views this meeting
of human freedom and divine freedom from an existential rather than psychological
viewpoint, as the instant, the unity of temporal and eternal, and not as an affective
state that has duration. It is not that he is unaware of ravishment, ecstasy, and so on,
all of them states of consolation that are prolonged for a greater or lesser time. Unlike
treatises on mysticism, he neglects the external and extraordinary detail of these phe-
nomena in order to characterize its exact nature. It is only in the measure in which
time intervenes as a factor of degradation of consolation (so to speak) or of the exten-
sion of the Instant, that the problem of discernment is posed again.
We will see with what care he is going to make this distinction in the Rules of the
Second Week between the instant and the “following time.” But here in the First Week,
he is content with an elementary description. By referring to our diagram, we can say
that while defining consolation as a movement toward Above, he does not yet view it
as pure vertical, but as a simple straight line combining with duration, in which the
attraction of Non-being is manifested in the inverse direction. That is why, in this state
that lasts, a dialectical action becomes possible again. Its end would be not to stop
the upward movement of the self, but on the contrary, to liberate it by being exercised

via free access
against the opposing force that holds it back from allowing itself to be carried to the
vertical and even threatens to reverse the direction.
In fact, in relation to time, Ignatius, like a good meteorologist of the soul, asks the
self that is in consolation to exercise a dual action, one regarding the future, the other
the past. On the one hand, it is necessary to foresee that the time of desolation will
not delay in returning and to see how the self will behave in it (quomodo se habebit
in tempore desolationis quae postea superveniet). By forming this project under the
influence of divine freedom that currently attracts the self upwards, it prepares new
strength better to resist the assaults of Non-being, which in times of desolation pull
it downwards, sumendo novas vires pro illo tempore [“taking new strength for then”]
(number 323).
However, if upward pressures favor the ascension of the self and the projects of
resistance to future down-turns, they also risk its entertaining some illusion about its
strength. It must at the same time turn its gaze toward the past to remember quam
parum valeat in tempore desolationis [“how little [it] is able in the time of desolation”].
In this way, the mirages of presumptuousness will be avoided. The combination of this
dual movement toward past and future will have the effect of re-enforcing the move-
ment of consolation and prolonging its benefit. Indeed, it tends on the one hand humi-
lare sese et deprimere [“to humble the self and lower its self-confidence”], and thirdly it
disproves the self to receive from the divine freedom all the power it needs to resist the
enemy’s assaults; se multum posse cum gratia ad resistendum [“it can do much with the
grace sufficient to resist”] (number 324).
Accordingly, if there is not dialectical action in the face of consolation when conso-
lation is defined according to its essence as ascension to the vertical, it is precisely that
this Instant is identified with the end itself. By contrast, once it is considered as a state
that lasts, it gives rise to an action diametrically opposed to what must be exercised
in the face of desolation. Ignatius’s tactic, as simple as it is profound, essentially con-
sists in compensating by a seesaw the oscillation of affectivity by appealing to reflec-
tion in order to analyze the sense of the impulses upon freedom each time according
to before and after. Consequently, here we meet again the fundamental image of the
scale starting from which we were able to design the diagram of the four weeks. The
symbol of desolation was already prepared in figure 2; that of consolation in figure 3.
But the inverse position of the arrows now must no longer represent the orientation
of freedom but that of affectivity. To compensate desolation’s downward inclination
by recalling the consolation’s upward elevation, and reciprocally to moderate and
re-enforce the latter by the memory of the former is to pursue the same goal under
two forms. It is to prepare human freedom to recognize that divine freedom comes
from above and attract human freedom toward itself. This recognition can be achieved
either through the twists and turns of past variations, as the “Second Time” of Election
supposes, or stating from the “tranquil time” and by means of the “two manners” of

via free access
256 Appendix
Election anticipated for the “third time.” In every time as in every case the issue for the
self is simply to be disposed to accept the Divine Instant in order to coincide uniquely
with its verticality if we may put it thus.
Figures 16 and 17 can illustrate the double tactic to follow in the time of desolation
or consolation.
As a consequence of sin in us and as the fruit of the evil spirit’s action, desolation is
symbolized by a downward line according to figure 14. The tactic that we sum up with
three words, prayer, examination, penance (oratio, examen, poenitentia), tends to rec-
reate consolation by itself. Its development through the analysis of the different goals
peculiar to the four weeks is represented by a curve depicting the effort to reverse the
affective situation.
In the opposite sense, as fruit of grace and anticipation of freedom, consolation is
symbolized by an upward line according to figure 15. The curve representing the tactic
to follow has the same meaning as in the previous diagram. But it begins by turning to
the opposed future and then the past and tends in both directions to make the ascen-
dant diagonal coincide with the vertical axis.
1.5 Rules 12, 13, and 14: The Devil’s Tactic (Numbers 325, 326, and 327)
The comparisons, which we developed to the point of forming little parables that con-
stitute these three rules, are enough to make the rules a separate group. Fr. de Ponlevoy
has also correctly seen that in place of relating to different “times” or affective situa-
tions of the self, they characterize in a global manner the attitude freedom ought to
have toward the devil. He writes:
We can call them complementary, because they have a permanent application in

the observance of all the others. After having studied the devil’s character thor-
oughly, Ignatius depicts him vividly, so that we may know what he is and how
we ought to be.2
However, while labeling this depiction “revelation of great interest and immense
scope” this very skilled commentator is satisfied to sum up briefly declaring:
There is nothing to add to the text here. It is so clear and complete that it is
explained by its own declaration.3
2 De Ponlevoy, Commentaire sur les Exercises spirituels, 397.

3 De Ponlevoy, Commentaire sur les Exercises spirituels, 397.

via free access
This is absolutely true if we are willing to take it literally. But, having perceived
throughout the Exercises up to now an extremely precise dialectic of Freedom, we may
wonder why Ignatius, who is habitually so precise, limits his comparisons and why he
limits the precisely to that of man and woman and that of a military leader.
Quite evidently, Ignatius’s experience of life and the military acquired before his
conversion is connected to such choices. Yet, without denying that whatever the psy-
chological origin of these comparisons, we can also notice that they have a much
deeper link to the duality of Freedom set out in the four weeks as well as in the rules.
The relation of man and woman, on the one hand, and of war or struggle to the death,
on the other, are indeed to fundamental situations that directly refer to the genesis
of freedom and permit us to analyze its different moments. It is not important to
prove this claim here. Let us be satisfied to note that elsewhere we have shown how
the Hegelian dialectic of life and death struggle, from which the master–slave rela-
tion arises, has as its indispensable complement, a dialectic of man and woman, both
constituting a double aspect of the genesis of human reality.4 If we further recall that
our Afterword lets us glimpse the relationship of the Ignatian dialectic to that of Hegel
and Marx, we think it will be difficult to dispute that the comparisons of our last three
rules have their deepest origin in this analysis of time and historicity that we found
again in the Exercises.
Is it necessary to insist that we do not attribute the slightest awareness of these
subtle relationships to Ignatius? Outside of the perception of an exact correspondence
between his intuitions and the expressions he used, he perceived none of this. It is
just as La Fontaine did not explicitly desire the thousand immeasurable nuances that
a slightly astute literary analysis discovers in the least of the fables. The characteristic
of genius is to reach what is essential, fundamental, and perfect. But then our task is
to work back from the expression to the intuition, in order to account for their perfect
correspondence and thereby for the mental acuity revealed. We have less to fear from
pushing too far than from stopping our analysis too soon.
For the rest, to guide the instinct that made him choose these comparisons, didn’t
Ignatius find Scripture, which, in order to symbolize humankind’s relations with God
also speaks of struggle and uses the relation of man and woman in a thousand ways.
Many others before him employed these images. Many others after him, notably Hegel
and Marx, recurred to them again, because they reflect profoundly and clearly human
reality in what is most intimate and most universal. But the manner in which Ignatius
in his turn appropriates them reveals once more the involvement of the dialectic that
is at the center of his intuition.
4 Cf. our presentation at the International Congress of Philosophy, Rome, 1961, on “Dialectical
Materialism and the Master–Slave Dialectic,” Atti del congresso, 1:57–58, and “Le mystère de
la Société,” in Recherches de science religieuse 1–2 (1948).

via free access
258 Appendix
At first glance, Ignatius seems to want only “to depict the devil’s character,” says
Fr. de Ponlevoy. In reality through this depiction, he reveals a triple feature of human
freedom in the course of its genesis, which is at the same time a struggle against
Non-being. First of all, in relation to freedom, which begins to posit itself, Non-being is
like a woman (ut femina). In the measure in which this positing is essential, efficacious
of itself, Non-being lacks this efficacy. It is debelis quoad vim [“weak as to vigor”]. But as
human freedom is only achieved through a struggle during which Non-being does not
cease to oppose this freedom’s progress, Non-being is, on the contrary and in an exactly
inverse proportion to its radical weakness, strong through the constancy of its nega-
tive will ( fortis quoad voluntatem), Furthermore, let us not forget that Adam is always
tempted by Non-being through Eve. Eve, Adam’s issue in order to be his companion, is
the figure of the senses and of animal nature in contest with reason that grounds their
human value and cannot do without their cooperation to become what it ought to
be. This is why body and soul, or reason and sense, while being opposed as being and
non-being, find their ideal relationship symbolized in the original union of Adam and
Eve. But also, every time that, forgetting this fundamental order, freedom fails to show
the senses the dauntless face (os inpavidum) of reason, and begins to allow itself to be
dominated by them, and starts to flee by losing its mind (incipit fugere perdendo ani-
mum), man then experiences the unleashing of Non-being through his lower nature:
“wrath, revenge, and ferocity of the woman is very great and so without bounds” (ira,
vindicta, et ferocia feminae valde magna et prorsus sine mensura). This gets to the point
where Non-being is then revealed in the pursuit of its perverse goal. “There is no beast
so wild on the face of the earth … in following out his damnable intention with so great
malice” (non est bestia adeo afferata super faciem terrae … in prosecutione finis cum
adeo magna malitia).
This analysis indicates to the self the model of diabolical action by which it
must prepare the genesis of its freedom at each instant. Against all temptations of
Non-being, it should oppose the attitude of a man attacked by a woman who puts her
to flight merely by his “bold front” (os impavidum). Let him prove his virility by “doing
diametrically the opposite” ( facendo oppositum e diametro) of what his senses sug-
gest to his reason. He will find then in the lower part of his being the handmaid and
spouse that he needs. If, on the contrary (e contrario), he “commences to have fear
and lose heart” (si incipit temere et perdere animum), his freedom becomes woman
and servant instead of being manly, and he will undergo the domination of Non-being
as that of the paradigmatic “enemy of human nature” (ut inimcus naturae humanae,
number 325).
By starting with the attribution of masculine strength to me, Ignatius pays homage
“to the image of his Divine Majesty,” essentially powerful and manly in me, which is
the mark of “how God dwells” (number 235), the first gift of Being, making me object

via free access
of his Election and capable of a relation of love with him. By contrast, by attributing
feminine weakness to Non-being, he simultaneous reveals fundamental impotence to
me. But inasmuch as it is important that I never forget the radical disproportion that
makes such a contrast stand out, it is necessary that I have no illusion about the origin
of my power and the conditions of its exercise. In order to teach us about it, Ignatius
keeps the same comparison, but completely reverses its terms.
If at the beginning of freedom’s genesis, it must show itself to be manly in the face
of Non-being, which despite its formidable appearance is weak like a woman, things
are completely different in the process that follows. By the constancy of its negative
will, Non-being turns out to be powerful as man in the face of a self whose incon-
stancy now equals woman’s. On the other hand, always lacking the efficacy proper
to being, Non-being must find in the self an ally to make up for its radical weakness.
It does not have far to look. The very femininity of human freedom supplies the ally.
The self’s inconstancy is not only relative to the duration and negative persistence of
Non-being that is exhibited in it. Simply in regard to its peculiar evil, of freedom that
is absolute positing of self, even before the enemy’s intervention, its inconstancy is
authentically ontological, an inconstancy that according to the etymology of the word,
literally makes it impossible for it to hold onto itself in existence. Disposing of an ally
like that, Non-being immediately sees how to form ties with it and makes it produce
the fruit Non-being expects. The lie that gives being to what does not have it is the
essential meaning of harmonizing their two weakness and of dissimulating them one
to the other at the same time as its own to each. So much so that the necessary and
sufficient condition for Non-being to abort the birth of human freedom, is that the
double impotence that characterizes the latter to the former, vult secretus esse et non
detegi [“wants to be received and kept in secret”].
Far from assuming a dreadful appearance as previously, now Non-being insinuates
itself ut vanus amator [“as a seducer”], into the good graces and familiarity of human
freedom. Hiding its evil goal under seductive words (loquens ad malum finem), it
cajoles freedom as Don Juan allicit filiam aliquam boni patris, vel uxorem boni mariti
[“cajoles a daughter of a good father or a wife of a good husband”]. In fact, isn’t this
precisely at the mid-point of the double relation that Christ, image of freedom, is
going to reveal to the self during the last three weeks, and the ontological relation
that grounds being in Divine Paternity, and the human event (the espousals of the
Word and humanity) that liberates it from Non-being to raise it up to the freedom that
is identical to love? With this double image, Ignatius designates the two fundamen-
tal truths that Non-being’s lie must hide. The first implies the unveiling of the crea-
ture’s peculiar nothing; the second announces that the total victory of the kingdom of
freedom over the Non-being is posited in existence. To refute this announcement and
prevent this revelation, the Non-being needs only a single thing: to achieve that the

via free access
260 Appendix
freedom seduced by its promise should keep secret its “words and persuasions” (vult
ut verba sua et suasiones sint secretae). If freedom agrees to use trickery and dissimula-
tion, paradigmatic feminine weapons, to remain secret and keep the secret of the false
promises, it is compromised by that and suddenly becomes the promised prey of its
seducer. However, if the frank daughter or faithful wife reveals these things to father or
husband, the seducer facile coligit fore ut non possit inceptum ad finem perducere [“eas-
ily sees that he will not be able to succeed with the wickedness begun”], however well
it may have been begun.
There again the analysis of the situation mandates dialectical action to the self,
action that it must oppose against Non-being during the whole course of its free
act. Since the double fickleness (temporal and ontological) of its freedom makes it
a woman exposed to the seductive enterprise of Non-being whom the perseverance
of its negative will make masculine, it is enough for the self to oppose these deceitful
suggestions ( fraudes et suasiones) and distinguish them from his correct ambitions
(animae justae), so that he may adopt the feminine attitude that is going to seek help,
counsel, and protection for the other, like the daughter or wife in the presence of father
or spouse. The prudent confessor or spiritual director can make the self take advan-
tage of its own knowledge of Non-being’s tricks and lies. Even more, as experience
shows and St. Ignatius makes clear, just the opening of conscience suffices to enlighten
the soul about the temptations against it. In this recourse to another, who represents
Father or Spouse to it, freedom accepts the truth of its feminine condition in the face
of absolute Freedom. There is the fundamental double trait that Non-being’s lie had
the goal of hiding from it. The other appears here as the witness of good conscience
and true freedom. It is the mirror before which it suffices for the self to objectify the
thought in which the deceits of Non-being are mixed, for those deceptions to be “dis-
covered” (cum detectae sunt fraudes suae manifestivae). However astute these tricks
may be, they cannot deceive freedom that opens itself in this way. Non-being “will
not be able to succeed with his wickedness begun” (ut non possit malitiam suam quam
inchoerat perficere, number 326).
Virile in its intrepid confidence at the moment of beginning, and then feminine in
its mistrust of self and its opening to the other as long as its genesis lasts, freedom must
combine this double attitude at every instant, in order to be assured of not falling back
into the slavery of sin and to be able to progress to the End. Following the adage Fas est
ab hoste doceri, [“It is right to be taught by the enemy”], Ignatius reveals to the self that
this synthesis is accepted by its “enemy,” the prince of this world himself ut belli dux, ad
vincendum depraedendum id quod desiderat, [“who behaves like a military leader, bent
on conquering and robbing what he desires”].
The march toward Freedom is war and struggle to death, not against flesh and blood,
but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world
against spiritual weakness (Ephesians 6:12). By alluding to the scriptural description of

via free access
this adversary the devil as a roaring lion, [who] walks about seeking whom he may devour
(I Peter 5:8), St. Ignatius warns the self that it must always consider itself a besieged
citadel that the enemy circumiens explorat ex omni parte [“roaming about looks in turn
at all sides”] and impugat ex parte debiliori [“attacks … on its weakest side”]. In other
words, I must use the same prudent and energetic tactic, behaving inwardly as does the
leader of the army that attacks me from without.
Instead of going to sleep in mistaken security at each instant I must be on the alert
and watch for the integrity of my position on all sides: first of all, at the center, no mat-
ter what the cost to hold the keep of the theological virtues that directly link me to
my end, but also to guard the cardinal and moral virtues, the defensive perimeter that
dominate the means to attain the end. Above all, I must know the weak points within
this fortified system and reinforce them. “There [Non-being] attacks us and aims at
taking us” (qua parte nos ipugnet et procurat nos expugnare). For Ignatius, as for St. Paul
and even already for Job, life of human beings, particularly of the Christian, because it
is temporal, is a combat whose stake is eternity, and the combat does not cease until
eternity is attained.
Intrepid faith, radical humility, constant vigilance—these are the counsels Ignatius
directs to is retreatants to close these Rules for the First Week. It is unnecessary to
emphasize their psychological and spiritual value. Certainly, it is largely independent
from the triple comparison we have first analyzed. But isn’t it remarkable that this com-
parison rests on the distinction of before and after and their synthesis in a present that
lasts? Indeed, si … incipit is repeated twice in Rule 12; in Rule 13 the idea also appears
twice of a thing begun that must be prevented from reaching its end; as for Rule 14, all
its verbs are in the present. It is as if, Ignatius wanted to signify under what condition
the time of Christian existence can be inaugurated, into which the self has entered by
penetrating into the First Week, and under what condition it can also, without risk of
turning back or of a fatal interruption, can be extended in a “time of salvation” exactly
determined by the Exercises. Isn’t it still more admirable that to cover the thread of the
existence spread out in this way, the relation man–woman is posited, then reversed,
and finally combined under the image of two belligerent leaders?
Let us imagine for an instant that Ignatius wanted to make us understand the fol-
lowing affirmation: God created man in his image … male and female [Genesis 1:27].
Our historical existence cannot have a more fundamental determination than the rela-
tion man–woman. Consequently, only starting from there is it possible to establish an
exact analysis of the struggle to the death that constitutes the daily lot of this existence
in the form of both inner and outer warfare. Even more, “I myself am,” as Hegel says
repeating St. Paul,5 it constitutes the daily lot of this existence. Consequently, in the
5 “Ich bin der Kampf … Ich bin nicht einer der im Kampfe Begriffenen, ich bin beide Kämpfende,
ich bin der Kampf selbst” (Begriff der Religion, Lasson edition, 241).—In this passage, Hegel

via free access
262 Appendix
multiple conflicts in which I am engaged (world wars, class struggle, process, or simple
controversies), I must despair of ending in an Election as Ignatius suggests, if I do not
begin by breaking down the elements of my situation according to the scheme that
he indicates to me, that is to say, re-encountering the terms of master–slave dialectic,
based on the man–woman dialectic.6 Let us grant all that. Could Ignatius have chosen
other terms of comparison, I do not say better but equally suited, in order to make
us understand to what degree Christian duty not only of Kierkegaard’s “subjective
thinker,” but also of humanity called to form a single body in which “God is all in All,” is
conditioned by the unique dialectical structure that the Exercises reveal?
Once again, evidently, Ignatius was not thinking about all of this, at least not in the
form in which we express it. But how can we doubt that by employing the relation
between men and women to describe two radically opposed powers and impotencies,
he was guided by the prototype of man and woman, I mean Christ and the Virgin,
who in all the rest of his Exercises are going to become the image of the two com-
plimentary aspects of authentic freedom and authentic existence? How can we fail
to see that, in the form of a struggle to death between two military leaders, Ignatius
prepares his retreatant to hear the call of the Kingdom as well as the teaching of the
Two Standards? To souls who have not been “versed in spiritual things,” who according
to his recommendation (number 9) should not go beyond the First Week, it evidently
is enough for him to teach the obligation to constantly be on guard in their militant
Christian life to balance salutary confidence and distrust by these comparisons, with
the duality of human freedom, always participating in the divine power but, on the
other hand, radically impotent to do so alone. However, would those who enter into
the Exercises “with great courage and will toward [their] Creator and Lord offering him
all [their] will and liberty” (number 5), be consistent if they did not also want to intro-
duce more profoundly that content in the form pictured by these three rules, through
an analysis of human and divine historicity that these three later weeks will complete?
To be certain of that, it is enough to recall the geometrical patterns by which we

pictured the general structure of this analysis and to compare it to the one we get if
we want to symbolize the teaching of the last three rules according to the pattern. We
represented the prior rules devoted to the discernment of consolation and desolation
wants to define religion as “speculative” unity of finite and infinite. Thereby we see that the
Hegelian “false” or “bad infinite” actually corresponds in St. Ignatius to Satan, “the enemy of
human nature,” which is called to participate in the divine nature … Evidently, this does not
mean that there is not the vast difference between the analyses of Ignatius and of Hegel that
our afterword indicates.
6 For the reader who would like to find out what the method attributed here to Ignatius
can produce in a simple controversy, we permit ourselves to indicate our exchange with
J.-J. Mayoux in Comprendre 5–6 (1952): 221–51, the journal of the European Cultural Society.

via free access
and to the tactic to follow in each of these times, by figures 14–17 where the intersect-
ing axes represent the tensions and oppositions that define the different situations
and the conduct to follow in each of them. As in figure 11, the principal role is placed
by the Now (Nunc) insofar as distinction and passage from before to after, but neither
the latter nor the former are considered in abstraction from this Now. It is completely
different in these last three rules. Such a Now, insofar as place of these different ten-
sions and oppositions, no longer plays any role. On the contrary, it is the opening to a
duration that must be pursued and where freedom must posit the conditions favorably
for its genesis, which we now try to represent.
We emphasized above that Ignatius distinguishes beginning, then thing begun that
must not end in the way the Evil One wants, and finally the synthesis of the two in a
present characterized by fundamental opposition. In addition to its intersecting axes,
our general figure contains circles that can illustrate this aspect of Ignatius’s analysis:
the circle of before and the circle of after, the circle of the high and of the low, each
of these uniting two previous ones on either side of the horizontal line of time. Since
these Rules, as Fr. de Ponlevoy correctly saw, have “permanent application,” we draw
these four circles in figure 18. Unlike figures 11 or 28, let us lengthen the horizontal line
of time beyond the two circles of before and after, in order to recall that here we are
dealing with any “before” and “after” distinguishable on the temporal axis. We thus rep-
resent the thread of “time of salvation,” the duration of Christian becoming as defined
by these three rules.
But this space is filled, as we have seen by the double inverted contrast of the rela-
tion man–woman. We can represent this by placing the terms of each of the pairs at
the point of intersection of the circles of before and after by the two circles of above
and below (figure 19). To catch the eye better and use a procedure already employed,
let us write the initials of each of these terms in red or blue ink according to whether
they are situated above or below the horizontal. We can further represent the internal
opposition at each moment by a dotted line ending in an arrow. To indicate the inver-
sion that takes place between the pairs of opposites, let us join the ends by a continu-
ous stroke. Finally, let us symbolize “the leaders of war” by the centers of the circle of
high and low, by uniting each by a hatched line to each of the elements of the pair
whose synthesis they are. Now, it suffices to call these two circles Being and Non-being
for the agreement of this figure with our general diagram (figure 11 or 28) to be obvious.
Certainly, there are some differences among them. Figure 19 has no central circle.
The absence is not surprising, because these rules hold for a present that lasts but
it not total. Besides, whereas the perpendiculars cross “here and now” (hic et nunc)
representing the different tensions in figures 14–17—which requires that they should
be movable like the arrow of a scale—here, they simply describe formal opposition
between the pairs of before and after, and consequently are fixed. These differences,
based on the differences of the analyses that these two diagrams symbolize, confirm

via free access
264 Appendix
rather than invalidate their relationship. Furthermore, the relationship evidently

springs from what is common to them: the double opposition of high and low and of
before and after, and the central place and symbolic value of the vertical axis, along
which is opposed the “good and bad spirits,” and above all Christ, summus Dux bono-
rum [“the supreme Commander-in-chief of the good”] (number 138) and Lucifer …
caput omnium inimicorum, [“Lucifer, chief of the enemy”] (numbers 137–140). Besides,
no one has ever doubted that these rules are in the same vein as those of the Exercises.
Still, perhaps it would be useful to show by a diagram to what point their very precise
determinations and comparisons harmonize with a general structure whose signifi-
cance we have stressed as analysis of time and history.
2 Rules for the Second Week (Numbers 328–336)
The rules seek the same result as the previous ones (ad eumdem effectum), to apply
the general scheme of the Exercises to each moment and each free act. Therefore, they
suppose the same original situation of the self in the face of spiritual movements that
affect it, and the same type of dialectical action. But in describing the situation and the
action further, they make it possible to apply criteria already discovered more precisely
and thereby to better discern the inner movements (cum majore discretione spiritum).
During the whole Second Week, the self must learn about Christ, image of divine
freedom, how to situate itself to make amends for its sins or negate its prior position
of Non-being. Accordingly, it is also important for it to discern more clearly what sepa-
rates these two positions. Obviously, for the retreatant who has made the offering of
the kingdom, the issue is no longer to return back or to choose between good and evil.
As we saw at its moment, such opposition only defines the scheme of free choice that
in particular is always the choice of a good, real or apparent. For the self in the Second
Week, the issue is only to opt between the better and the less good. Ignatius is no lon-
ger concerned about the temptation where freedom is taken prisoner by the attraction
of evil or stopped by the difficulty of good. He is concerned only with describing the
form that true freedom takes and denouncing the illusion into which the self may fall
in its quest for the better.
Under this apparent disorder, these rules constitute a profound treatise on con-
solation. Rule 1 defines consolation by reference to its two possible sources, God and
the good angels, and, by opposition, to the action of the evil angels. Rule 2 character-
izes the consolation that comes directly from God and occupies a unique place. The
consolations that do not come directly from God, Rule 3 says, can be the act not only
of good but also of bad angels. This last is the case of false consolation, which Rule 4
describes. Rule 5 indicates a double criterion to discern that, which is specified by the

via free access
following two rules. Finally, Rule 8, without at all denying the privileges of consolation
that comes directly from God, indicates how it too can be evaluated by the criterion
and conduct indicated earlier.
As in the rules for the First Week, here again the Ignatian analysis is completely
based upon the notion of opposition and on the tension that the form of time implies.
Consequently, it would right to acknowledge its customary dialectic and the applica-
tion of its general structure.
2.1 Rule 1: Specifications about Consolation (Number 329)

Ignatius begins by returning to the fundamental opposition between consolation and
desolation, already described in Rules 3 and 4 of the First Week. But in agreement with
his present goal, he looks at the opposition only from the standpoint of consolation,
which is always the presence of the End and the Freedom that is placed in the affective
movements of the self. “It is proper to God and his Holy Angels in their movements to
give …” (Proprium est Dei et Angelorum ejus in suis motionibus dare …). The gift of this
presence, says Ignatius, is veram laetitiam et gaudium spirituale [“true spiritual glad-
ness and joy”].
These four words suffice to sum up the long description given in Rule 3 of the First
Week. Since they attempt to specify it at the same time, we ought to give careful atten-
tion to what they designate. But if we keep to Fr. Roothaan’s Versio Literalis, the word
laetitia cannot contribute anything new for the good reason that it already figures in
the Rule. It is different if we refer to the Autógrofo, since in the First Week Ignatius
certainly writes: toda leticia interna que llama y atraha a las cosas celestias. Now he
uses the simple word allegria, gladness. Even by virtue of its etymology, alacer, lively
full of ardor or enthusiasm, this word is also “united by popular sentiment” (according
to the Ernout-Meillet Dictionnaire) to acer, sharp, pointed. It designates an impetus in
life directed toward what is above. Furthermore, we speak about bounding gladness.
To sum up, or even to make specific, a description where Ignatius has mentioned faith,
hope, and charity, he finds nothing better to speak of than “gladness.” The word is per-
fectly suited to designate the action of divine freedom at the same time as this pointed
reaching of the instant, where the self’s liberty responds by bounding vertically. If we
did not know the importance of geometrical determination for Ignatius’s imagination
we might doubt that the word gladness involves such a nuance. But other indications
of the same order confirm our interpretation.
The other noun used by Ignatius to define consolation, gaudium/gozo characterizes
the fruit and the end of the Fourth Week, and therefore the last moment in the genesis
of freedom. It designates the joy, qua enjoyment that expands the self and fulfills it in all
directions penetrating and filing all its faculties in the manner of abundant lard—this
is the original meaning of laetitia/leticia. Therefore, the idea of plenitude and totality
that we saw in reference to contemplation ad Amorem (which Ignatius presents in the

via free access
266 Appendix
form of a circle), is therefore kept by him here in order to complete the idea of impulse
toward above and thereby to describe the essential nature of consolation.
Next in order to characterize the truth of this gladness and the spiritual quality of
this joy Ignatius contrasts them with the action of Non-being, observing that they com-
pletely exclude “all sadness and disturbance which the enemy brings on” (removendo
omnem tristitiam et turbationem quem inimicus inducit). The dejection and depression
characteristic of sadness, on the one hand, and the division and dejection character-
istic of distress, on the other, are two characteristics that directly contradict, one glad-
ness, the other joy, as we have just described them. The importance of such a precise
description of the opposition is again underlined by the fact that, in making this idea
of plenitude explicit, Ignatius declares that this exclusion is total.
Here we directly grasp what makes this description precise. Ignatius does not pro-
ceed by an accumulation of characteristic that goes around their object without pen-
etrating into it. Rather, as an artistic genius delineates a form and gives it density and
life. Ignatius determines consolation as a luminous sphere full of joy that the self feels
irradiating around it when the divine instant touches the summit of the spirit. This
is still a completely intellectual analysis, but one where the concept is no longer the
intemporal essence of an immutable object but the very sense of affectivity and exis-
tence through which freedom is achieved. Far from remaining outside the essence like
an undetermined tension, this sense includes and clarifies it. This is why Ignatius can
immediately note that the distress and sadness with which Non-being fights gladness
and joy of the self are manifested then by rationes apparentes, subtilitates, et assiduas
falacias [“apparent reasons, subtleties, and continual fallacies”] (number 329). It will
be the object of the following rules to discover them immediately.
2.2 Rule 2: Consolation without Prior Cause (Number 330)

Before setting out the duplicity of these attacks of Non-being and in order to facili-
tate discernment, Ignatius again devotes a rule to consolation. In the previous one, he
envisaged consolation in general, whether coming from God or the good angels, and
defined its meaning in opposition to the bad angels’ negative action. Now Ignatius
considers it in its maximum purity and indicates the signs by which we can recognize
the consolation that comes from God alone. It then is without preceding cause. Solius
est Dei Domini nostri dare consolationem animae sine causa praecedente.
A number of commentators have assumed a “psychological” standpoint and thought
that Ignatius was satisfied with indicating a particularly remarkable case here, belong-
ing to the extraordinary, mystical way, but without much interest for application in the
ordinary course of the spiritual life. To our thinking, this attributes to Ignatius con-
cerns he does not have and above all fails to do justice to his objective, as he carried
it out. Here as elsewhere, Ignatius is not worried about distinguishing the ordinary

via free access
and extraordinary ways, or between ascetics and mysticism. He is even less concerned
with sampling cases of each. His constant method is to extract the essence of spiritual
phenomena in function of a sense whose degrees and greater or lesser purity he then
indicates.
Analyzing the different Times of Election, we have already indicated the analogy of
the first time to the “consolation without preceding cause” and shown how the two oth-
ers depend on it; their different rules and methods of election have no other end but
to prepare the soul in the best degree possible for an intervention of divine freedom.
The same goes for the different affective phenomena with which Ignatius is concerned
here. Consolation without preceding cause is the paradigmatic type in which all the
others find their measure. Therefore, in our geometrical diagram of the Exercises, the
vertical axis represents as much this divine action upon our affectivity as upon our
freedom. Since the other consolations are conveyed by good angels, they have prior
causes and are therefore projected on the horizontal line, representing our direction in
the Before of the moment when they are perceived. This by itself poses a problem for
reflection and for freedom: what is their relation to the end? How should we use them
to grow nearer to the end? A question of this kind is impossible in consolation without
cause. Because it comes immediately from God, it is pure relation to the vertical that
totalizes the horizontal genesis of the free act and binds the particular duration of the
self to its end. It is a divine moment that we can define with Kierkegaard as the Instant
where the eternal is temporalized and where the temporal is eternalized.
Yet the nature of the duration that affects the self is such that this sort of moment
necessarily poses two problems: the first looks to the future, the time following this con-
solation; the other, by contrast, looks to the past, the time that proceeded it. Ignatius
will deal with the first in the last rule, and we will see that in this relation, consolation
falls under the criterion that he will soon draw from his present description. Here, he is
content to deal in a few words with the question that this irruption of the divine must
necessarily pose for the self. Since our consciousness is always connection of the pres-
ent to the past as well as projection of the future, how can it ever isolate this instant
enough to be assured that it has no preceding cause and to verify in some way from the
outside the verticality of the presence that imposes itself upon consciousness then?
To be sure, the soul that is under divine influence, patiens divina, does not pose this
question, or at least not in the moment when it undergoes the divine influence. Only
after the fact can such questioning arise for it, at the same time as for the director to
whom the soul entrusts its experience. To resolve this doubt, Ignatius limits himself
to defining the absence of prior cause by a relation of incommensurability between
the effect produced by this consolation and the cause through which the reflection
would like to explain them. When human freedom arises in nature’s becoming, it adds
a new dimension to it in such a way that to attempt to reduce its act to the objective

via free access
268 Appendix
factors that have conditioned it is really to suppress it. Likewise, here the self that
reflects upon the intervention of divine freedom must perceive that the determina-
tion it has received is not measurable in the way sentiments or knowledge that at this
moment occupy its intelligence or affect its will. Without being at all empty, its con-
sciousness contains nothing capable of giving birth to such a disproportionate effect.
Consequently, “without cause” means that this consolation appears sine ulla praevio
sensu vel cognitione alicujus objecti, per quod illa talis consolatio adveniat animae per
ejus actus intellectus et voluntatis, [“without any previous sense or knowledge of any
object though which such a consolation would come upon the soul through its acts or
intellect and will”].
Ignatius depicts this eruption of divine freedom in human duration with the sim-
plest words, which still raise some difficulty. To start, he says that proprium est Creatoris
animam intrare, egredi … [“it is the peculiar to the Creator to enter and go out of the
soul”]. In the face of such enigmatic terms Fr. Roothaan indicates that in Rule 7 the
same image reappears to explain that in the soul to which it is granted, the good or bad
spirit “enters in silence as into its own abode whose door is open to it.” The comparison
is perfectly adapted to it in this case but applied to our text clarifies almost nothing.
Since Ignatius here intends to describe what is “peculiar to the Creator” and conse-
quently not to the angels, it is not helpful to explain these terms by recurring to what
he says about angels’ mode of acting. Isn’t this to cheapen what ought to be “peculiar
to the Creator” and consequently to not pertain to the angels? Moreover, if the term
“enter” can apply to both, there would be no question of leaving in Rule 7. The conjunc-
tion of these two verbs with no explanation is at the very best odd. In the absence of
a better interpretation, we are inclined to think that Ignatius wanted to indicate the
movement of coming and going that is developed starting from the love that “descends
from on high,” affects the self, and immediately goes back up to its source. Besides,
only this going and instantaneous return explains the discontinuity of this consola-
tion without clause, this characteristic that is so important to Ignatius and to which
he devotes Rule 8.
The vertical axis of our diagram, tying the Most High to the hinc et nunc [here and
now] offers a very simple illustration of this consolation. We can add that its upper
circle presents as developed the moment of going and coming on the vertical axis. But
the whole difficulty is not yet overcome. We may wonder to what exactly this egredi
corresponds and whether God, by going out of the soul after having entered into it,
leaves it always subject to its horizontal duration, or on the contrary, if he modifies its
belonging to time and in what this modification consists.
It seems to us that, on the one hand, Rule 8 answers this doubt, as does the con-
tinuation of the text from which we have quoted only the opening words. As instanta-
neous, the consolation without cause does not substantially modify the consciousness
that is its beneficiary. This is why the consciousness will have to distinguish carefully

via free access
its divine instant from the “following time.” On the other hand, the divine action does
not exit from the soul without determining in it a motion that Ignatius describes pre-
cisely when he adds facere motum in illa, trahendo illam totam in amorem suae divinae
Majestatis [“to cause movements in the soul”] by bringing it all into the love of his
Divine Majesty. Very evidently, the grace of this consolation coming immediately from
God “enters into the soul to change it, attract it, and convert it completely into his love.”
The vulgate version of the Exercises translates this passage suppressing the egredi,
which arrested us. This supposition has the advantage of making the thought com-
pletely transparent. But perhaps it lets slip a nuance of Ignatius’s expression, which it
would be useful to try to restore.
Let us try to do so by guiding ourselves with the geometrical diagram that has been
so helpful. In studying contemplation ad Amorem, we saw that Ignatius views this
reciprocal love in in the form of total circularity that includes time and unites it to eter-
nity (figure 8). In the expression ingredi-egredi that defines the instantaneousness of
this immediate consolation, we have re-centered the movement of coming and going
along the vertical line that itself is represented by the circularity of the upper vertical
circle. Furthermore, let us recall that the same term egredi or salir in Spanish [go out
of] is found again in number 189, which seemed so important for the explanation of
the general structure and universal value of the Exercises. There, Ignatius enunciates
his fundamental principle in this form: Cogitet enim unusquisque tantum se profectum
facturum esse in omnibus rebus spiritualibus quantum exiverit—salir—a proprio sui
amore, a voluntate et utilitate. [“Let each one think that he will benefit himself in all
spiritual things in proportion as he goes out [salir] from his own self-love, will and
interest.”]
How can we doubt that Love’s “going out from [its] own self, will, and benefit” must
be put in relation to this other “going out” of divine Grace, immediately after it has
“entered” the soul…? But, as we have seen, “love’s going out of itself” that conditions
the “progress” and the “entrance” into the law of God is the soul’s appropriation of
the movement that the Son first accomplished in the exinanivit of the Incarnation.
Accordingly, the Creator’s peculiar grace, and therefore the Father’s, “goes out” of “self-
love” as the Son has done and by that very fact enters and benefits more in the love
of God. But this love, as contemplation ad Amorem, has shown, is the very life of the
Trinity, including all of its gifts, dwelling in everything, working in everything, so that
living things should appear as the effusion of its power and its grace, in a word, that
“God is all in all.”
In this ingredi-egredi that first looks to the consolation without cause in its instant,
we seem to be able to see an allusion to the Trinitarian movement that the Exercises
represent along the vertical axis as the principle of analysis and synthesis of time and
eternity, achieved during the four weeks. So much so that by figure 20 we can illustrate

via free access
270 Appendix
the central place of this “consolation without cause” and sum up the connection that
its analysis helped us bring to light. Having sprung from the Most High in the First
Week, the movement of grace across the circle enters into the soul in the hic et nunc
leading it in the Second Week to go out of itself, to “take up the sentiments of Christ,”
to reproduce in itself the movement of the Son who made himself nothing; from there
its progress in the Third Week, during which nevertheless the Father’s movement has
gone out from the soul to come back in the Fourth Week to its beginning. But this
double movement has the result of attracting the soul entirely into the love of the Father
and of the Son, symbolized by the central circle.
Lastly, let us indicate that in the first Latin translation of the Exercises, referred to
as Versio Prima, Ignatius added here three references to St. Thomas to justify his analy-
sis: Hoc probat Beatus Thomas. “St. Thomas proves this,” Summa Theologiae, Iª–IIªᵉ,
question 9, articles 1 and 6, and question 10, article 4.
The first passage only touches remotely on the matter dealt with in Rule 2. St. Thomas
asks: Utrum voluntas moveatur ab intellecto? [Whether will is moved by the intellect?]
He invokes Aristotle, De Anima I, III, chapter 10, numbers 6 and 7; appetibile intellec-
tum est movens non motum, voluntas autem est movens motum; [“the thing understood
as attractive is a mover that is not moved, will, however, is a moved mover.”] He than
answers in essence that the intellect moves the will insofar as it specifies the object,
not insofar as it commands acts. Aquinas’s characteristic intellectualism is visible in
the response. Does Ignatius, a man of action always concerned with that which I want,
id quod volo, also turn out to be an intellectualist rather than voluntarist? The problem
could be debated at great length.
But we believe that the reasons for and against must lead to the acknowledgement
that Ignatius belongs to a different period of philosophical reflection than the one in
which Scotist and Thomist opposed each other. If he recurs to a fundamental Thomist
thesis here, the obvious reason is simply that in elaborating a rather new analysis of
the free act, he had the feeling of and the desire to remain within the great Scholastic
tradition.
By contrast, in article 6 of the same question Ignatius found explicit confirmation

of what he had advanced: Solius est Dei … facere motionem in anima. [“It belongs to
God alone … to make a movement in the soul.”] There, St. Thomas proves: “God alone
can move the will, qua external cause.” An angel can only influence the soul by propos-
ing an object to intelligence. Ignatius will study this mediate causality in the rules that
follow.
Lastly, article 4 of question 10 shows that the will, even when God moves it immedi-
ately, is not moved necessarily but in complete freedom, because God moves all beings

via free access
according to their nature. The body of the article limits itself to explaining this doc-
trine for the movement of the will considered in general as aspiration to the supreme
good. But the response to objection 3 maintains the same solution when God moves
the will to something, ad aliquid.
In this regard, we can measure the degree to which the particular direction of
Ignatian thought differs from Thomism. In Ignatius’s own century, the problem of the
determination of the will to something, ad aliquid, would engender the theory of pre-
determination, Molinism, and the quarrels to which the famous Congregations De
Auxiliis put an end after nine years of discussion, without managing to really break
off the debate. In our view, the Jesuit elaboration of the theory of “middle science”
(in order to reconcile human freedom with the efficaciousness of divine willing) sig-
nals the importance that the analysis of free acts developed in the Exercises had in
their eyes.7 Yet, this theological construction also shows that the sons of St. Ignatius
were willing to objectify their Father’s analysis in an intellectualist manner instead of
understanding it existentially. This explains the endless conflict between Bañezians
and Molinists. The conflict continues still and is always driven by this passage, inserted
here by Ignatius, which Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange calls “famous.”8
Without wanting to enter into such a thorny question, we may observe that the
dialectic of freedom, as it emerges from the exercises, implies a reflection on the his-
torical present, not recognized as such either by Molinists or their adversaries. Starting
there, it might be possible to re-formulate this theological problem, along with several
others, in a new perspective and resolve it insofar as that is possible … However, that
may be, these remarks on the references by the Exercises to the Summa Theologiae
are enough to show to what point their dialectic as original as it is, intends to remain
within the line of traditional theology.
2.3 Rule 3: Consolation Caused by Spirits (Number 331)

After defining consolation in its pure state, as the immediate effect of divine action
stretching the horizontal duration of the self to the vertical, Ignatius then considers it
as it is presented most often, namely mediated by an antecedent cause. Its author may
be “as well the good as the bad angel,” aeque Angelus bonus quam malus. To discern
true consolation from false then, he immediately adds that it is enough to pay atten-
tion to their contrary goals, ad fines contrarios. True consolation tends to make the self
progress, to make it grow in grace and “rise from good to better,” ad profectum animae,
7 This is also the feeling of Fr. H. Rondet, Gratia Christi (Beauchesne, 1948), 298, in the essay
where he traces the history of the development of the theology of grace. After recalling the
object of these questions and their solutions, he remarks: “If we go to the heart of the mat-
ter, we soon perceive that in this issue the theologians of the Society of Jesus sought less a
Scholastic thesis than a practical attitude. At play was their whole method of spiritual direc-
tion, the entire ascetic of the Exercises.”
8 Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, “Prémotion physique,” col. 53.

via free access
272 Appendix
ut crescat de bono ad melius. False consolation acts in the opposite direction and con-
sequently first slows down the self in its ascent and then drags it down “to draw it to
his damnable intentions and wickedness,” ad contrarium et deinceps ut trahat illam ad
perversam suam intentionem et malitiam (number 331).
It is clear that the criterion indicated here is identical to what Rule 12 for Week One
had already set out, and that Ignatius is always guided by the same scheme. It is enough
for us to remit to the diagram designed for this occasion (figure 16). Nevertheless, it is
necessary to observe that Rule 2 now insists more on the affective side of desolation or
consolation. Since were only dealing with the latter here, it follows that the relation to
the end becomes more important. Likewise, the self of week two is completely turned
toward Election and the future, whereas the self of week one was still completely occu-
pied in ridding itself of the bonds of sin. The difference in stress placed here upon the
intellectual side follows from that. But as we shall see, Ignatius does not forget the
affective side.
2.4 Rule 4: False Consolation (Number 332)

Before showing how the criterion set out in the previous rule is applied, Ignatius begins
to analyze false consolation more closely. To act in this way upon the self that rises
“from good to better,” Non-being disguises itself, taking on the appearance of Being.
We have already seen a similar phenomenon occur in the self that “goes from mortal
sin to mortal sin.” But at that moment Non-being manifests itself to the self’s affectivity
through apparent pleasures, delicias apparentes (number 314). By contrast, since the
self is now detached from sin and by that very fact even safe from such temptations,
the devil addresses its intelligence, transforming himself into angel of light; se trans-
figurat in angelum lucis. Initially, he adopts the direction of the self that progresses
upwards, in order “to enter with the devout soul,” intrare cum anima devota. But this is
so that the devote soul “will go out with himself,” exire secum ipso. In other words, he
brings “good and holy thoughts, conformable to such a just soul in its present disposi-
tions,” inducere cogitationes bonos ac sanctos, conformiter animae justae. However, by
imperceptible degrees, he then disposes himself so as to achieve his goal, “drawing the
soul to his covert deceits and perverse intentions,” dein paulatim procurat pervenire ad
suum finem, trahendo animam in suas fraudes occultas et perversas intentiones. Finally,
the incautious soul makes a total reversal and comes to identify with Non-being’s
direction to “go out with” it as Ignatius says (number 332).
Intrare-exire, entrar-salir, [“enter-go out”], we find this same pair of terms again to
describe this ruse of Non-being transformed into Angel of light, which a moment ago
described the exact nature of divine action in consolation without cause. There, in
order to symbolize Love’s coming and going, descending from on high and returning
to its sources, we presumed that it could be represented by the upper vertical circle,
approximating the action of the Creator, exire a proprio suo amor, “as he goes out of his

via free access
self-love,” which according to number 189, is the condition of “spiritual progress” we

have depicted by the lower vertical circle, thus taking position of the self by the Son’s
action. Here it appears that our supposition had some basis.
The intrare and exire by which Ignatius describes the trickery of the devil trans-
formed into angel of light obviously suppose and image of curvature imperceptibly,
paulatim, reversing the self’s direction from for to against, which is to say, the image of
a circle. With that we can already judge that our interpretation of number 330’s intrare-
exiri is confirmed. On the other hand, it seems that this lower circle, labeled circle
of the Son in the previous figure, tends to become the circle of Non-being’s action
here. What good is it to recur to these geometrical figures if they encourage so much
confusion?
The answer to this objection is obvious. The confusion is precisely what is produced
between true and false consolation, which we must sort out. Temptation did not spare
Christ the Son of Man, and since this Son of God without sin, could be submitted to
the attraction of delicias apparentes that seduce the self of the First Week, it is clear
that Satan is also disguised as an angel of light presenting “good and holy thoughts
conforming to such a just soul” with a view to leading Christ to Satan’s “perverse inten-
tions.” We know from The Gospel that Christ was victorious over this three-pronged
attack by recurring each time to Holy Scripture, that is to say, to the historical revela-
tion by which the Father announced the sending of the Son and the gift of the Spirit.
To be sure, Ignatius makes no reference to this Temptation of Christ in these rules.
But how can we doubt that it was present to his mind when he composed them? This
scene from the Gospel figures among the Mysteries of the Life of Christ, whose fea-
tures Ignatius carefully details (number 274). He explicitly proposes it as a theme to
complete for the sixth day of the Second Week (number 161), exactly at the center of
the period that prepares Election, where the soul needs more than ever to be on guard
against the “hidden snares” of false consolation.
Referring to this paradigmatic example, we must now see the criterion Ignatius pro-
poses to foil these snares, and how the circle of Non-being is also distinguished from
the circle of the Son in our geometrical representation.
2.5 Rule 5: Discernment of False Consolation (Number 333)

In Rule 13 for the First Week, Ignatius already envisages Non-being’s “wiles and persua-
sions,” and he advises the soul to adopt a feminine attitude, and to open itself to the
confessor or some spiritual person. When Satan’s seduction is brought to light by this
opening of conscience, it becomes evident, and “wiles” that are now “manifest” are no
longer dangerous. But this weapon, though always necessary, no longer suffices for the
self in the Second Week. Since it will surely be called to some form of apostolic life, it
must learn to detect these wiles of Non-being within itself, in order to be able thus to
become a director in its turn for those who later will open themselves to it.

via free access
274 Appendix
The criterion indicated here by Ignatius to distinguish between true and false con-
solation is the simple development of what Rule 3 enunciated, advising us to pay atten-
tion to their “contrary ends.” But we will see that the criterion is split into an intellectual
and an affective criterion, complementing each other. We will also see that to apply
them carefully it is necessary to pay careful attention to distinctions of time.
Called to take the place of the other relation to himself, the self shows us in advance
that true and false consolations must be distinguished by their opposite ends. Yet, how-
ever evident this opposition is when we consider the movement directed to these ends
at its point of arrival or at least after a considerable trajectory, it is imperceptible and
really infinitesimal when we try to grasp their point of divergence hic et nunc, when
thoughts and affections present themselves and must be distinguished. The contrast
of crossed axes, one directed down, the other up, as they are represented in figures 14
and 15, leaves no room for doubt. But here the problem is to discern movements that
begin by coinciding and whose divergence at their origin is as small as possible, even if
they will soon be diametrically opposed. In contrast to figures 14 and 15, and by analogy
with the previous figure, we can represent the problem Ignatius poses by figure 21. Two
semi-circles, each drawn half in unbroken lines, half in points, represent the meander-
ing course of thoughts that ultimately are in absolute opposition but that in the Nunc
(where the self grasps them and wonders about them) are identical, and their initial
divergence at the beginning is infinitesimal.
In the hypothesis of consolation through an intermediary, for the self in the Second
Week, we see that it is always a matter of free choice, but no longer in the form of a
crossroad, but of a minute change of direction. Starting from point where it was puri-
fied by the First Week and summoned by the Incarnate Word, its thoughts are directed
to what is above and are situated in the hic et nunc in the presence of two paths that
in the next instant diverge imperceptibly. This point of divergence is what must be
grasped as close as possible to its origin. Ignatius tells us in Rule 4 that Non-being
knows how to suggest good and holy thoughts in agreement with the ascending course
followed by just soul thus far. But this is in order to take advantage this slight diver-
gence and thereby to lead the soul toward to his perverse intentions.
In this way, we measure how precisely Ignatius dialectic develops its analysis. At
first the Exercises seem only to be interested in the choices that govern a person’s
whole life. However, Ignatius knows that these major decisions, before acquiring their
exceptional importance in regard to history, are elaborated and foreshadowed during
the time that precedes them in the many orientations that the self has impressed upon
them in the winding course of its thoughts, day after day and even hour after hour or
minute after minute. The orientations are so tiny that they are almost unconscious,
but the sum of them has exercised a fundamental action upon the will at the decisive
moment.

via free access
This is why Ignatius recommends to the self that seeks to discern true and false
consolation that it should give the greatest attention to the cause and “course of the
thoughts,” valde debemus attendere ad discursum cogitationum. The very direction that
this discourse takes under the influence of contrary spirits constitutes the criterion that
allows us to distinguish them. “If the beginning, middle, and end is all good, inclined
to all good, it is a sign of the good angel.” Si principium medium, et finis sint omnia
bona, tendentia ad omne bonum, signum est boni Angeli. In reality, as Fr. Roothaan has
correctly seen, though without explaining it sufficiently, the sign enunciated here by
Ignatius in a single phrase is double. On the one hand, he distinguishes the three ele-
ments by reference to which the sense of all the thoughts can be broken down. On the
other hand, he looks at the totality of this sense.
Let us say first that it is not by chance that Ignatius speaks of principium, medium,
and finis in regard to the smallest sequence of thoughts that can occupy or even touch
the self. Certainly, we could translate these words as beginning, middle, and end.
Any discourse can be explained in function of this completely external framework.
However, we know Ignatius well enough to be sure that his thought does not stop at
such a superficial division. From the start of our examination of the Exercises, we have
acknowledged that their originality (in contrast with the classical division of the three
ways) consists in an analysis of the spiritual life according to the intimate rules that
govern its genesis and guarantee its coherence. This whole analysis is developed in
function of the triad principium, medium, finis. Since the Foundation, the triad defines
its design and internal structure. After serving to measure the disorder of sin and of
worldly affection, it reappears in the Three Classes and above all in the Preamble to
Election, so as to be the fundamental rule that must preside over the rectitude of choice;
“not ordering or bringing the end to the means but the means to the end”; non ordi-
nando, neque traendo finem ad medium, sed medium ad finem (number 169). Once the
Third Week has shown how the means must be sacrificed to the end, and the Fourth
Week how the end sums up the means, then the reciprocal love of contemplation ad
Amorem manifests to what perfect coherence with oneself and to what intimate union
with God this triad can lead freedom that allows itself to be guided by it. Thereafter in
recommending that we pay attention to beginning, middle, and end of inner discourse
and that we examine whether all its components are good, Ignatius asks nothing less
of us than to remind ourselves in this regard of the general scheme of the Exercises and
to measure the rectitude of our least thoughts in the linear development of the Fourth
Week. Such is the coherence of the Ignatian method that the smallest component can
only find its measure and its rule in the whole, because the perfection of its being only
consists in reproducing this whole within it.
But it is not enough that “beginning, middle, and end” of this sequence of thoughts
“should all be good.” In addition, Ignatius adds, they must tend to all good, which is to

via free access
276 Appendix
say, Fr. Roothaan adds in parentheses within his translation ad id quod omnino bonum
sit, [“to that which is altogether good”]. In other words, to be sure that an inner dis-
course comes from the good angel, it is not yet enough to perceive no trace of moral
disorder in it several elements. Their goodness or rectitude in this case could remain
abstract and constitute an evasion for the soul satisfied with it, or as the continuation
says, a “distraction” or even just the failure to win, characteristic of the lesser good.
Moreover, the sense of this discourse must look explicitly toward the supreme good
and enter into communication with the love on high “and see how all the good things
and gifts descend from above” (number 237). So, in the abstract form of this tendentia
ad omne bonum [“tendency to all good”], there is a transparent allusion to the contem-
plation ad Amorem, which corroborates the importance we have given from the start
to the triad principium, medium, et finis.
If this is the case, figure 21 (which illustrates the situation of the problem posed by
discernment between true and false consolation) can now be used to represent the
intellectual criterion enunciated by the beginning of Rule 5. In this figure, the semi-
circle with a continuous line below the horizontal represents the train of thoughts in
which Non-being “entering” into the soul can insinuate itself in order to attempt to
make the soul “go out with it,” which means follow the dotted line of the lower semi-
circle instead of taking hic et nunc the semi-circle with dashes vertically above the
horizontal.
Accordingly, the first part of the advice given by Ignatius can be represented by the
straight line depicting the trajectory of freedom in its passage from the Second
to the Third Week. It becomes evident that the triad principium, medium, finis refers to
the general outline of the Four Weeks. As for the second part, concerning the supreme
good in particular, that is to say, “love descending from on high,” we can represent it by
an arrow indicating that the straight line ought to tend to coincide with the vertical-
ity of the central axis, which (as we have seen in regard to Rule 2) defines immediate
consolation with no possible deceit (figure 22).
The illustration is very simple but it manifests better than long explanations the
rhythm to which the Ignatian method remains faithful. The illustration begins by con-
trasting the phenomenon (that appears fleeting, instantaneous, and because of that
indiscernible) to the totality of the moments of existential time that necessarily con-
stitutes the internal structure of the phenomenon, however short-lived it may be. Next,
in order that this comparison not remain abstract, the illustration recalls in a word
that the truth of the existential moments distributed over the horizontal line of time
is only guaranteed by their circularity or, if we prefer, by their totality in function of
the two axes, vertical and horizontal, defining the relations of principium and finis, or
Alpha and Omega, with the Most High and his opposite. This rhythm is exactly what

via free access
we tried to show by the construction of our geometrical design as based both upon the
circumsession of the triune life and on the existential analysis of time.
There can be no question that our interpretation of this intellectual criterion and
even this illustration proposed for it correspond to Ignatius’s thinking, when, in the
next phase, we see the description of the sign of the bad spirit’s influence. As always,
Ignatius’s description (of the characteristics capable of denouncing the action of
Non-being in the series of thoughts being presented to the conscience) proceeds in the
name of a quasi-geometrical opposition (per diametrum contra). Non-being betrays
itself when the trajectory of thoughts tends toward something bad or simply distract-
ing or just less good than what the self had previously proposed to do. Sed in discursu
cogitationum quas suggerit, desinat in rem aliquam malam, vel distractivam, vel minus
bonam, quam ea quae anima prius sibi proposuerat facienda … signum est procedere a
malo spiritu. In this progression that goes from “bad” to “distracting” and finally to “less
good,” don’t we feel the need to determine with ever greater precision the exact point
where Non-being’s influence (that has “entered” into the self under the appearance of
thoughts in conformity with its “good dispositions”) is capable of seducing the self?
Once more, the simplest way for us to illustrate this concern of Ignatius is by a
diagram (figure 23) adjusted previous figure. The discourse orienting itself by “some
bad thing” is exactly represented by a dotted semi-circle below the horizontal axis,
while that which goes to simply “distracting” is represented by the horizontal neutral
between above and below, which is between good and bad, and a pure symbol of what
flows by without benefit. That which ends only in “less good” can be represented by a
curve ascending again but that no longer satisfies the tendency ad omne bonum, effort
of the perfect rectitude in principium, medium, et finis previously supposed. This is why
we represent it by a dotted curve with a greater radius than the semi-circle and with
a full line, and underline with an arrow in the opposite direction to the arrow in the
previous figure that the curve departs from the vertical.
In relation to the discourse inspired by the good angel, the discourse of false con-
solation is manifested by a divergence that Ignatius measures by three angles whose
aperture becomes narrower. The first two angles can be evaluated by simple contrast
with the goodness of the discourse’s principium, medium, et finis. But this kind of cri-
terion is no longer sufficient to detect the last angle, which although minus bonum,
nonetheless possesses the same rectitude. We understand then why Ignatius asked fur-
thermore directly that this trio should tend ad omne bonum. It is only in regard to such
a tendency that the divergence of minus bonum can become apparent. Moreover, this
no longer supposes the recourse to abstract, objective rules that divide good and evil
by the limit of what is indifferent. Rather, as Ignatius points out, it offers a completely
intimate, concrete comparison between the After where the better is projected for the
self in continuity with the previously ascending movement tending to the Supreme

via free access
278 Appendix
Good (quae prius sibi proposuerat facienda), and on the contrary, the after descending
in relation to this better, where Non-being’s suggestions propose the minus bonum.
But Ignatius has enough experience of spiritual life to be aware of the difficulty
that the self encounters in practice, when it tries to discern the “better” and the “less
good” with the help of a purely intellectual criterion. This is why he hastens to indicate
another criterion based on the affective side of the developing consciousness, which
will permit it to eliminate this difficulty. Supposing that, with intelligence alone, con-
sciousness does not manage to see clearly the exact point where “less good” diverges
from “better,” it will not help at all to pursue an examination in which consciousness
can only become mired in excessive rigor. Let consciousness stop scrutinizing the ori-
entation of its thoughts to consider instead the intimate sensation that their discourse
produces within it. Non-being’s action and the moment at which it is inserted into this
discourse are revealed to the self under one of the following forms, the action “weak-
ens it or disquiets or disturbs the soul, taking away its peace tranquility or quiet, which
it had before” (vel debilitet, vel inquietam reddat, vel conturbet animam, auferendo illi
suam pacem, tranquillitatem et quietam quam prius habebat). That is enough to recog-
nize that the whole discourse “proceeds from the evil spirit, enemy of our profit and
eternal salvation”; signum est procedere a malo spiritu, inimico nostro profectus et salutis
aeternae (number 333).
Such is Rule 5 in its simplicity, luminous and profound. Devoted to resolving one of
the most difficult problems of interior life, the discernment of false consolation, it is
unquestionably one of the paragraphs of the Exercises that best marks the equilibrium
of Ignatian spirituality. We will seek the reasons why Ignatius here adds an affective
criterion to his intellectual criterion and will see how their unity, functioning on the
basis of a comparison between Before and After guarantees the doctrine’s characteris-
tic balance. Before that, however, we must indicate the central place of such an analy-
sis and its coherence with the rules that precede and follow it.
Rule 1 defined consolation in general as “true spiritual gladness and joy, taking away
all sadness and disturbance.” In this opposition, without distinguishing the true crite-
ria detailed by Rule 5, Rule 1 contains them. Next, Rule 2 describes the same consola-
tion in this pure state. The movement “enter, go out” comes from God alone. After
Rule 3 recalls the opposition of actions performed by Good and Bad Angels on the
self in the Second Week, who “rise[s] from good to better,” Rule 4 posed the problem
of false consolation by describing it too as a movement of “enter, go out,” whose seat
is the intelligence and whose means are “good and holy thoughts.” We have just seen
that to discern the falsehood of Satan transfigured into an angel of light, it is necessary
to recur first to an intellectual criterion or even to an affective criterion in the most
difficult cases. The two following rules indicate the importance of this distinction,
with Rule 6 prescribing that we use the experience acquired as soon as the intellectual

via free access
criterion provides a result, while Rule 7 concerns itself with facilitating the application
of the affective criterion and specifying the mode of action of the contrary spirits. As
for the eighth and last Rule, we have already said that it shows how, through the slope
of time, consolation without cause can be judged by this group of rules.
In Rule 5 we are at the hub of Ignatian doctrine, at a point that is certainly as sensi-
tive and as vital as Election, since we have also observed that in discerning true and
false consolation the issue is to prepare and even sketch it. While explaining the two
Manners of Making Election, we saw that in the third time, where the soul is left to
the play of its natural faculties (especially its intelligence, since we are dealing with
choice), Ignatius leads the soul in such a way that it finds itself back in the climate of
the second time and even orients itself in function of the first.
Here, we are no longer dealing directly with a choice, but with a simple evaluation
bearing upon the sense of a discourse of thoughts. It certainly seems that the recourse
to the affective criterion, after asking of the intellectual criterion everything it could
give, proceeds from the same fundamental method. If it were possible to show, as we
did for the relation of the Second Time to the First, that this recourse also tends to
lead the soul toward consolation without cause and to dispose the soul for that, all
our interpretation of the dialectic of the Exercises would be confirmed, as well as the
extraordinary unity of Ignatian doctrine would be better clarified.
2.5.1 Why the Double Criterion?

Let us carefully examine the reasons why Ignatius is not satisfied with a purely intellec-
tual criterion at the moment of discerning the sense of a simple discourse of thought
(although the criterion seems quite sufficient and the only one adapted to the task),
but rather invites us to complete it with an affective criterion.
The first reason is purely psychological, one that the simplest experience of interior
life soon manifests. The self that, in the course of its thoughts, perseveres somewhat
in an effort to distinguish “the better” from the “less good” will soon be hampered by
refinements from which it can no longer rid itself. It is as if, by dint of forcing the web
of its inner discourses to separate their threads, the eye of conscience rapidly over-
reached its power of acclimation; everything is confused for it; finally, what he first
believed he had distinguished clearly becomes blurred, and it takes the “less good” for
the “better” and vice versa. This is the simple, natural result of an examination that is
too driven, but upon which the deceit of Non-being, which pushes everything to this
extreme, can also graft itself in order that the self, discouraged by such a check, gives
up in despair. Doesn’t this wile in particular correspond exactly to those “apparent
reasons,” those “subtleties,” rationes apparentes, subtilitates, that Ignatius denounced
in Rule 1?
These difficulties that inevitably stem from the search for the better with the help
of a purely intellectual criterion are completely analogous to the scruples that Ignatius

via free access
280 Appendix
defines as Non-being’s “suggestions,” consequently directing themselves to persuade

our intelligence, (suasiones inimici nostri). In the rules that Ignatius formulated on
the subject, he describes the devil’s tactic according to whether the soul is delicate
or crude, making the latter still more careless, but by contrast leading the former to
“make out sin, where there is not sin … to disturb and embarrass [the soul] more”
(number 349). For the self of the Second Week, which by hypothesis is in progress and
consequently being purified and turned toward the future election, the same kind of
suggestion produces “subtleties” concerning the better or less good quality of the proj-
ect to be formed and produces the same state of bewilderment and discouragement.
Then Ignatius recommends to the conscience that was delicate to the point of scrupu-
losity “to proceed in the contrary way” to that of Non-being and consequently not to
allow “the enemy to draw it out to extreme fineness,” where Non-being pushes it, but to
try to “establish itself in the mean in order to quiet itself in everything” (number 350).
In a very condensed form, Ignatius calls for an action of intelligence in order to temper
excessive delicacy, and he notes the importance of the affective result to be achieved.
In the face of “apparent reasons, subtleties, and continual fallacies” under which the
devil transfigures himself into an angel of light, Ignatius recommends the same tactic
in further development: that the conscience caught up in such nets immediately cut
short its inner debates and rather seek from the affective side the answer that the most
driven intellectual examination cannot provide.
Such an explanation shows clearly how consistent Ignatius is, but it hardly goes
beyond the psychological level. Because of just that, it certainly fails to make what is
most important stand out. We have confirmed many times that if Ignatius’s psychol-
ogy is so lauded by his commentators, it is because it is founded upon a dialectic of
freedom, which is the peculiar mark of his genius. We believe that here again it is pos-
sible to recognize this fundamental intuition and to reveal how, on this most acute
and difficult point, his dialectic has determined the close connection between what
is affective and what is intellectual, which gives his spiritual doctrine its certainty and
its precision.
2.5.2 Impotence of the Intellectual Criterion

To clarify our intellectual journey, let us note at once that while Ignatius appeals to
sentiment to decide about the “better” in the last resort, because, after beginning with
an extremely rigorous analysis of the power of intelligence, he also recognized intel-
ligence’s impotence when it aspires to be the exclusive criterion of perfection. This
dialectical turn is expressed by the proverb, “The better is often enemy of the good.”
On their side, spiritual people agree in denouncing it when they say that the search
for perfection for its own sake runs the risk of running into a subtle search for oneself.
Precisely to avoid such a perversion in the effect of Non-being’s ruse in making itself
pass for Being, Ignatius appeals to affectivity and thereby transforms the traps set by

via free access
Satan for the soul into means that permit the soul to achieve the highest perfection
with complete security.
Let us see that in greater detail.
Ignatius certainly does not deny that the consciousness that distinguishes good
and evil can also discern their different degrees and consequently the less good from
the better. In principle, nothing prevents consciousness from carrying out the same
discernment when it reflects upon projects to formulate or to reject, which a train of
thought organizes. However, Ignatian theory never stays in the abstract. It always looks
toward enlightening the self in particular situations. This is why it explicitly prescribes
introducing the consideration of time into its reflection. Let us note that our earlier
psychological explanation did not involve this factor at all. Nor did the Rules about
Scruples, where we find the sketch of a text whose depth we now propose to scrutinize.
By contrast, Rule 5 takes care to indicate twice, some lines apart, the relations of ante-
riority and posterity implied in the comparison it recommends, first from the intel-
lectual point of view: minus bonam quam ea quae anima prius sibi proposuerat [“less
good than those things that the soul had previously proposed”]; then from the affective
point of view, auferendo quietem quam prius habebat [“taking away its peace … which
it had before”].
Accordingly, let us consider the form that such a comparison takes when it is made
against a background of temporal relations. Of the two mutually contradictory proj-
ects that the self’s inner discourse makes arise before the self at each instant, “to do”
and “not to do,” our problem is to recognize which is less good and which is the better.
Both are presented as future to the self that compares them and in principle wants
to make the better pass to the state of the real and to have the less good in the state
of a contingent future or futurible. Is it enough for the self to consider their objective
content impartially to be able to appreciate the relative value of these two projects
before deciding oneself in conformity to its principle? Evidently not. If one of the two
contained within itself elements qualifying it as absolutely-what-should-be-done, the
other would necessarily appear as absolutely-should-not-be-done. Then they would
be opposed as good and evil. This is to go beyond the hypothesis in question in which
I ask myself not whether I should pay my debts or not, but if it is better or less good,
for example, to think of embracing real poverty rather than remaining detached from
my goods simply “in spirit.”
Thus, it is impossible to decide on the less good or the better in itself. I must rec-
ognize the quality of these two projects in relation to me, for me. I am led from the
future in which they are delineated to the present at the same time as to—to myself,
whose present is constituted precisely by the course of thoughts from which these two
possibilities have sprung and the question of their relative value. In this falling back
from the future to the present, reflection also determines retrospectively the course of

via free access
282 Appendix
thoughts making the same distinction of less good and better appear in the past imme-
diately prior to the separation of the two projects but reversed precisely by virtue of
this returning. Although I may not have perceived it formerly, the thoughts of poverty
whether real or only spiritual already live in me, but I did not imagine separating them
or evaluating them as projects for me. Now that has happened thanks to the ebb and
flow of my conscience, which shows me that if I recognize one as better in the future, it
is automatically opposed to the other as less good in the past, and correspondingly that
this other acknowledged as less good in the future is opposed in the same way to the
first as better in the past. Supposing that I judge real poverty better for me, simple “spir-
itual” detachment appears as a state of fact less good where I have been so far and from
which I want to depart. If, on the contrary, I chose to remain in this state that I now
judge less good, I would have to renounce the esteem in which I so far held real poverty,
which would be at the same time an inner decadence for me. In a word, the alterna-
tive with which I am faced no longer assumes the appearance of a choice between two
objects that may be esteemed in themselves as less good and better but between two
directions, one of which goes from the previous less good to the future better, and the
other from the previous better to the future less good.
That is the form this discernment takes in interior discourse, when temporal rela-
tions are brought in as the comparatives and verbs of Rule 5 require: In discursu cogi-
tationum quae suggerit [“If in the course of the thoughts which he (the good or bad
angel) brings it ends in something bad, of a distracting tendency or less good then
what the soul had previously proposed to do …”] (although this verb is in present tense
because it bears upon the entire diabolical suggestion), “the course of the thoughts”
introduced takes on the value of past here in relation to the issue it envisages imme-
diately after the following proposition] desinat (present tense) in rem … minus bonam
( faciendam is understood, therefore future), quam anima prius sibi proposuerat (past)
faciendam (future). In figure 23, with which we illustrated the three cases contem-
plated by Ignatius, the res minus bona, even more than the distractiva and the mala,
is distinguished from the better, prius facienda, [“what is to be done first”] only by an
infinitesimal angle. But since we only consider the first of these cases here, the most
delicate of all, it is not surprising that we meet again the usual scheme of two perpen-
dicular axes that, as we have seen echoes the images of the crossroads and the balance
scale. This problem, the most delicate and most difficult of those that can be posed
to an inward-looking soul, is the same as what concerns Ignatius after the start of his
conversion.
After reading the Life of the Saints in between two novels of chivalry, Ignatius
observed the diversity of his sentiments. On the road to Montserrat, not knowing how
to decide whether he had to fall upon the Moor who had denied the virginity of Mary
or rather leave him alone, he entrusted his mule with the problem of choosing the

via free access
better path. The self is always faced with this bifurcation, as much in the course of
its thoughts as on the highway of life. If Rule 5 now gives the only solution that this
problem admits and also the only one that matches all the analyses of the Exercises, it
would be implausible that Ignatius should have found it without a secret reference to
his personal dialectic.
Equally dialectical is the difficulty that the search for the “better” and the “less good”
engenders by means of the form where the bifurcation characteristic of the future is
thrown back into the past. The intellectual criterion has value. But here Non-being’s
trick consists of exaggerating its power and in letting the self believe that it can cut
this Gordian knot simply by the resources of this intelligence. This pushes it to an
act of self-determination, which contradicts in the most radical way imaginable the
whole inner attitude that the totality of the Exercises and especially their Rules for the
Discernment of Spirits advocate as the ideal for subjective freedom.
Completely related to the before and after that distinguish the course of thoughts
and of time, this evaluation of “less good” and “better” requires that the self go back
to a point in the past. There its freedom begins to spring out into existence and to be
temporalized in a future and a past that belong only to freedom and whose only con-
nection is freedom. At this point, any attempt at evaluation is negated dialectically,
and freedom no longer finds any foundation for its decision other than the affirma-
tion of its own transcendence. Supposing that it then wishes to avoid positing its own
self-sufficiency at all costs, it must seek, no matter where else, a reason for its choice,
even in the instinct of his mule … This is the first response found by the pilgrim to
Montserrat in the moment when a supernatural instinct guided him, upon which he
later would reflect and which he codified in Rule 5.
By analyzing what specifies the comparison between the “less good” and the “bet-
ter,” we have already seen that it must no longer be based on objective content or on
conflicting projects in themselves, like the comparison of good and evil, but on the
sense for me of the movement I carry out in regard to them. This analysis must be taken
further.
Desirous of the greatest perfection, I am ready to choose either actual poverty or

simple poverty “of spirit” not for the value they have in themselves, but for the spiritual
progress they can give me. Consequently, their objective content becomes a simple
means in relation to the good I envisage, and from this fact I achieve fundamental
indifference, the condition for any Election according to Ignatius. Therefore, it seems
that the path I have taken is sure and that I have nothing to fear from the wiles of Satan.
But we should not forget that the issue here is not (strictly speaking) the determina-
tion to be taken, but to discern an inner discourse that prepares the Election. To be
even more precise, it is to discern an inner discourse that achieves it in detail. In prac-
tice the dialectical difficulty that the search for the better produces will present itself

via free access
284 Appendix
ordinarily less to the beginner in spiritual life than to someone who has been engaged
for some time in the perfect way and looks toward the summits by denying himself any
imperfections. Ascetics and mystics agree in indicating the danger of a pursuit of per-
fection taken to excess and that it changes into pursuit of oneself, which can only be
the effect of the trick of Non-being against which Ignatius wants to warn us. Therefore,
it is necessary to see how initial indifference is perverted and what is the nature of this
“self” under the mask of perfection.
For the consciousness directed to such an end, the objective content of thoughts,
already reduced to the state of means by their fundamental indifference is reduced
more and more to a kind of amorphous matter; but the desire for the direction in
which it advances (the search of the better for the better), takes on an importance
that disappears to yield its place to the other, and the determination of “the better” in
preference to the “less good” is referred to its pure freedom, which by this fact sees it
immediately change into its opposite.
In this extreme tension, the self can only take as its ideal its pure causality, which
appears to it precisely as the projection of “the better” future and revival of the “less
good” past, the passage of the latter to the former assuring that consciousness will
overcome the division of time and will regain unity. In other words, with that the self
aspires to posit itself, at least in its inner discourse, as causa sui … But the consequence
of this search for “self” that such an effort implies, once the “better” is objectified and
determined by this pure causality, the reflection of pride that gushes out over it, makes
it “less good.” It is less good than the completely simple and completely straight direc-
tion to which the conscience following the natural course of its thoughts was going
to commit itself before falling back on itself to rise toward the better. Correlatively,
this “less good” passes to the rank of “better,” because it is spontaneous and free of
self-seeking, … Therefore, it is what consciousness, faithful to its desire for perfection,
must acknowledge as such. However, it is no longer the same as before. Along with the
course of its thoughts, the charm of its first innocence has been shattered. When the
self tries to return to it in order to prefer it, this preference surrounds it with a proud
halo, while the charm of which it is thus dispossessed gushes out upon the “better”
instantly abandoned … From that come subtleties that make the inner eye blind and
from which consciousness cannot emerge. At that point, it is better for the self who
wanted to act like an angel to entrust himself to the decision of a mule.
On a similar occasion, Ignatius’s spiritual inexperience got out of trouble by an
equally radical means. It was a beginner’s solution that went past the goal but looked
in the right direction. In an elementary form, it affirms that the animal component
of the human condition should keep the self from yielding to the wiles of Satan that
tend to make a bow to the Luciferian act, the act of transcendence of Being. To be
sure, the act is still completely interior since the issue is only discernment of a course
of thought. It is even possible that the act almost completely escapes the conscience

via free access
that yields to it. Since up to this point, “intense progress” has oriented consciousness
in the opposite direction, it will not pass in one stroke to the opposite extreme. Nemo
fit subito malus, [“No one becomes bad suddenly”]. Nevertheless, a single act is enough
to plant a seed. If it is retained instead of being immediately destroyed, it will develop
and bear fruit. Ignatius could see the seeds of such fruits grow and mature among the
alumbrados of his time. Since he was sometimes accused of yielding to their errors, it
is understandable that he took care, first, to preserve himself from them and then to
teach his disciples how to oppose such spiritual deviations from the start.
After passing through the school of Manresa, Ignatius reflected on his own experi-
ence. Earlier, his mule’s instinct kept him from getting lost in the “apparent reasons,
subtleties, and continual fallacies” (number 328) that Satan uses to let the self believe
that determination of the better is ultimately handed over to its pure will. In this exam-
ple, like many others, he recognized that divine freedom, the only ultimate source of
such a determination, is manifested by consciousness not only by the light of intel-
ligence, but also in the obscurity of the vital impulse from which the discourse of our
thoughts partly surges. To save the self from self-seeking, Ignatius consequently pre-
scribes that the self should seek the solution through affectivity.
On the other hand, he is aware that Non-being, after leading the soul to determine
itself to be the principle of the better, knows how to side-track it by persuading it to
take the sentimental impulses as immediate divine inspiration. Knowing that our inti-
mate dispositions are also subject to as much to Satan’s influence as to God’s, Ignatius
will not renounce the attempt to clarify them by the lights of intelligence. Intelligence
is impotent when it attempts to find the better with its own resources. Nevertheless,
it alone is capable of submitting feeling to reason in order to discern what within it
comes from above, from divine freedom, as against what comes from below, from car-
nal sensual love.
After eliminating intellectual pride by an appeal to affectivity, Ignatius makes intel-
ligence reappear in order to remove affectivity from Non-being’s influence and leave
it completely open to the influence of Being. Here again, involving the form of time
guarantees the functioning of the dual intellectual and affective criterion indicated by
Rule 5. Despite their diversity of nature and object, that form is common to both and
makes them mutually complementary and achieves an interaction between them that
controls their results and increases them, grounding at the same time the doctrine’s
unity and balance.
2.5.3 Interaction of the Two Criteria Thanks to the Form of Time

To understand better the scope of this affective criterion and the major role of interac-
tion guaranteed by the form of time, let us return to the example that helped us ana-
lyze the intellectual criterion.

via free access
286 Appendix
The course of my thoughts makes the project of real poverty come before me, as
opposed to merely spiritual poverty. I ask myself about this and reflect upon the mat-
ter, as we have indicated already. Deceived by Satan disguised as an angel of light, I give
my inner assent to this project as being “the better” whereas (by hypothesis)9 it is the
less good for me. If I persevere after committing myself to this path, I might believe
I progress toward perfection with giant steps. In fact, I have admitted into myself the
germ of illusions that can lead to the worse spiritual perversions. By contrast, if recall-
ing the affective criterion indicated by Ignatius, I want to recur to it in order to check
my path, here is what should happen. By hypothesis, under the influence of Satan, my
search for perfection has gone past the critical point where it mutates into a search
for self. Therefore, it is necessary that there was a variation in my affectivity at the
moment corresponding to that crossing. Until that point, I was at the disposition of
divine inspiration, open to the call from above. From then on, however, without my
noticing, I began to withdraw and to shut myself up under pretense of tending to a
“better” that in fact is less good for me. Like the initial slippage due to the exclusive use
of intellectual criterion, the resulting drop in tension may be infinitesimal and initially
escape consciousness. But already, the mere fact of recurring to the affective criterion
tends to make this affective variation perceptible. Such an effort is going to directly
counter act both Satan’s trick and what it produces.
Besides, to apply such a criterion my reflection ought to lead me to the state prior to
my false shift by introspection similar to what the intellectual criterion first required.
At that time, we supposed my reflection made a mistake about the road to take or
more precisely about the qualifications “better” or “less good” to attribute to the double
project that arose from my inner discourse. In fact, I was deceived by Satan. Now, it is
no longer the same. My consciousness no longer has to evaluate future projects with a
view to choosing, but simply to observe a different affective level between its present
and a still very proximate past. To evaluate the “better” just as to choose it, it is neces-
sary to be active. However, a variation in sentiment is undergone, and it is only neces-
sary to pay attention to perceive it.
If I observe some “weakening,” disturbance, and uneasiness taking away my previ-
ous peace, tranquility, and serenity, precisely that invites my intelligence to re-start
its examination. Perhaps, failing to immediately discern Non-being’s ruse, I am still
inclined to take the same route. Or else I might be gripped again by the “subtleties”
where “less good” and “better” exchange their respective positions without my recog-
nizing their deceitful dialectic in this sign. That is unimportant, because time passes
during this examination. To be sure, I no longer use it to go astray on the wrong path,
9 By hypothesis, God does not call me to the state of perfection. Evidently, if God is calling me
to it, there are no grounds for speaking about “Satan’s ruse,” and I follow a divine inspiration
by responding to the call to the perfect life.

via free access
but I waste it by not committing myself to the right path. If I persist in comparing my
affective state, whose tension becomes still lower during this time, with the state in
which I was before giving myself to the examination, I must soon perceive that the
course of my thoughts follows a road that is no longer simply less “good,” but “a dis-
traction” in regard to the end that my spiritual progress aimed at earlier. It is enough
so that, settled in some fashion in the passivity in which I was and wanted to be then,
I escape Non-being’s suggestions by recognizing them as such long before it is able to
drag me from “distracted” to “evil” as his “perverse intentions” contemplated.
This example shows what refinement and precision the affective criterion can
achieve. But the passivity of the previous state toward which it leads me acts not only
act as a safety catch that keeps intelligence from error by means of reflection. It also
invites me to adopt a diametrically opposed attitude to the one Non-being was mak-
ing me adopt, when earlier it led me astray under the appearance of the “better.” The
invitation is discrete and may remain unnoticed by the consciousness that receives
it but is no less real and efficacious. The invitation of Satan proposed an act of self-
determination, giving the self the illusion of being causa sui. Now we must see that act
that, on the contrary, makes me sketch this reflection on affectivity through the form
of time.
When, by correcting myself thanks to this criterion, I come to observe that in the
state prior to my choice of the illusory better, I had more peace and quiet, I have a
feeling similar to someone who goes into a warm room after having gone out of it into
the cold for an instant. This feeling does not only let me perceive that, while believ-
ing I progressed from good to best, in fact I headed in the opposite direction. It fur-
thermore invites me to reflect on the past where by definition I wanted to rise from
the good to the best. Certainly, that wish was real, since Satan, in order to seduce me,
must first adapt himself to the ascending direction of my journey. However, if he was
able to succeed even to the slightest degree and make me judge “better” that which
is really “less good” for me, it is because my will for the best was not yet as pure as
I imagined and because the search for “self” was still considerably mixed up with my
search for God.
This reflection initially invites me to greater humility in relation to my past bet-
ter. This orientation to what is above, this disposition for the choice of the better that
characterizes the self of the Second Week, is something I must attribute to God’s grace
more than to my good will. But the reflection also beckons me to greater availability
looking toward my future, to renunciation that must extend to the form and degree
of what appears to me as “spiritual progress.” If Satan was able to deceive me at the
moment when I directed myself to real poverty as being “the better,” it is not that
I should judge that state not to be better in itself than mere spiritual poverty. My error

via free access
288 Appendix
was to forget that it pertains to God alone and not to my freedom, however good it
may be, to determine what is “the better” for me. Ignatius has made us understand
through the contemplation ad Amorem, that the perfection of human freedom con-
sists essentially in being received completely from God and in entrusting oneself, just
as completely, to His good pleasure.
Accordingly, this application of the affective criterion tends to make me adopt a

diametrically opposed attitude to that which the intellectual criterion, used exclu-
sively, inspires in me. The latter pushes me to take as my ideal freedom exalted as causa
sui. The former, on the other hand, makes me perceive the reality and truth of my
freedom in the acknowledgement of divine freedom as the only causa sui and mei. As
this acknowledgement follows (to take it up again, as an underpinning and to fulfill
it) the activity of freedom that is doubly exercised, first by tending toward the “better,”
then by rectifying the error of its first plan, it achieves the synthesis of human activ-
ity carried to the maximum with the reverse disposition, passivity in regard to divine
freedom taken to its maximum. The act is superlatively dialectical. In it are activated
the unity of the most distant contraries imaginable, human causality changing into
divine passivity and in return, divine passivity enabling human causality to produce
the authentic better.
By interpreting the double criterion of Rule 5 in this way, it seems that we reach
the core of Ignatius’s most original intuition as the famous maxim expresses it, tra-
ditionally placed as number 2 in the catalogue entitled Selectae Sancti Patris Nostri
Ignatii Sententiae:10 Haec prima sit agendorum regula: sic Deo fide, quasi rerum succssus
omnis a te, nihil a Deo penderet; ita tamen iis operam omnem admove, quasi tu nihil,
Deus omnia solus sit facturus. [“So trust in God, as if the whole success depended on
you, nothing on God, but so approach every work, as if you were to do nothing and God
alone everything.”]11
Is it necessary to underline to what point the whole dialectic of the Exercises is
condensed in the double opposition that this rule of action invites at the same time
as it takes it to the extreme? It first prescribes faith in God, and therefore passivity and
dependence in regard to divine freedom, but does so in the persuasion that divine
freedom wills above all that human freedom and activity be exhibited in all human
10 Thesaurus spiritualis Societatis Jesu, first edition, 1845. Intended for the members of the
Jesuit order, this book gathered thirty-seven selected statements that tradition attributes
to Ignatius.
11 A Further Study will be found below devoted to the examination of this maxim’s origin,
structure, and value.

via free access
endeavors, as if success depended in everything on me and in nothing upon God.

Doesn’t this first faith in God legitimate “faith in human beings” like that which the
most radical atheism might imagine, logical to the extreme of situating itself “beyond
good and evil” and of proclaiming, “If God exists, human beings do not”? Divine free-
dom dares to run the risk that human activity, taken to the extreme in the search for
the better, lets itself be so bewitched again by the spirit of Lucifer that it re-enacts the
deed of him who wants “to be as God” and finds itself again in the nudity and dejection
of Adam, seduced, sinner, and condemned to death.
But, on the other hand, at the same time the rule runs this risk, it adds the way to
overcome it. The rule recalls to the self, engaged in headlong pursuit of its pure causal-
ity, that at the very moment when it puts everything into practice to succeed, it must
still wait for success to come as if it had to come from God alone in everything and from
me in nothing. This is to prescribe the passivity of faith in God as the supreme achieve-
ment for human activity. The end rejoins the beginning, embracing all human activity
after having permitted it to unfold to the maximum. The recourse to the affective cri-
terion of Rule 5 (as in the Rules of Discernment for the First Week) is what assures this
return that leads the self’s freedom to its origin and foundation after having impelled
it to the conquest of self and world. As before, the shift to the feminine attitude in the
face of Non-being’s ruses replaces the initial masculine attitude toward its undertak-
ing. In a form simply imagined here, afterwards through the closest analysis, and fully
in this rule of action where God and the self are all and nothing in alternation, the
Ignatian dialectic condenses in short expressions the totality of results that the four
weeks of the Exercises have arranged, each in its place.
Once we perceive the unity that governs the extremely concise remarks we have
just commented upon or recalled and the general process of Ignatius’s little book,
we can only admire the power of the analytic and synthetic genius expressed in the
book and notes. Obviously, like the founder of the Society of Jesus, all great teachers of
spiritual and apostolic life have drawn the principles of their fecundity from the life of
Christ. Ignatius is not the first or last who had to resolve extremely delicate problems
that spiritual life and the search for the better present. Think for example of Charles
Foucauld asking himself whether his vocation was not to leave the Trappists to live a
more austere life. Among them all, it seems to us, Ignatius’s originality and incompa-
rable greatness is having managed to codify around the life of Christ as it is present in
the four weeks, the collection and the detail of Rules that govern the solution of the
most difficult problems of interior life.
In the pages we just devoted to Rule 5, we underlined the importance of temporal
relations that the Rule invokes to discern between true and false consolation. Before
carrying out the commentary on the following three rules, we would like to recur once

via free access
290 Appendix
more to figures derived from our geometrical diagrams, in order to show still better
how the interplay of the subtlest notes upon this rule agree with the general structure
of the Exercises.
2.5.4 Rule 5 and the Structure of the Exercises

In figure 23, intended to illustrate the intellectual criterion, we represented the three
degrees of abandonment through which Satan, transformed into an angel of light,
works to lead the just soul to Satan’s “perverse intentions.” Now we want to study the
application of this criterion to the most delicate case, the discernment of the better
and of the less good offered by a train of thought we can take as our diagram the figure
derived from the image of the scale that represents the passage from the Second to the
Third Week, namely two crossed axes, one a complete line going from good to best, the
other a line of dots indicating the opposite direction from the best to less good.
To use the intellectual criterion by means of the form of time requires that I apply
this fundamental scheme to the problems posed by the evaluation of the direction that
my inner discourse takes. This discourse presents real poverty as better than simple
spiritual poverty. We can represent this first moment by writing the initials RP and SP
at the ends of the straight lines directed one upwards and the other downwards. As
we explained, this form of the future retrospectively makes real poverty and spiritual
poverty appear to occupy opposite positions in the before (figure 24).
But by hypothesis, Satan’s trickery is what made real poverty appear as “better” for
me. Since God does not call me to this state of perfection, at least not yet, I am yielding
not to God’s inspiration but to Non-being’s in following this course of thought, and in
fact, I orient myself toward the real “less good,” while believing that I rise toward an
apparent “better.” We can represent the second moment, first by changing the respec-
tive position of RP and SP in the after (which requires the corresponding changes in
the Before), in extending the right line, this time as a solid line, and finally, in adding to
the figure of the preceding moment the semi-circle of Non-being under whose influ-
ence this change takes place (figure 25).
The comparison between these two figures makes it apparent the deceit of
Non-being aims at removing the self from the influence of grace from on high and
succeeds in turning it in upon itself, toward the “self” that in its opposition to the Most
High, attempts to determine its values, the better, and the less good in total autonomy.
The “subtleties” in which the self is entangled come from there. Their effect, which we
have called the inner eye’s blinking, can be symbolized as oscillation between the dia-
grams of the first two moments, when the self does not succeed in deciding whether
for him RP and SP are the better and less good for him as in figure 24 or the reverse is
true as in figure 25.

via free access
Before specifying further what can be read in these two figures, notably in the differ-
ent angles α, β, γ, and ι, let us see how it is possible to represent the affective criterion
and the result we obtain.
This criterion consists in a reflection that makes me aware of the drop in affective
tension, necessary consequence of the error in which Satan’s ruse has involved me.
“Peace, tranquility, calm,” in short, the affective state I enjoyed before straying, is sym-
bolized by the before in figure 24, where angle β characterizes the self’s orientation
“that progresses intensely from the good to the best” under the influence of Christ’s
call. By recurring to the affective criterion, the reflection ought to perceive at the same
time that such a before no longer corresponds to the Nunc and the after of the second
moment, which itself is characterized by angle α of figure 25. The affective drop that
my straying has just unconsciously produced requires, once I become aware of it, a
completely different depiction. In figure 24, the straight line towards above, symbol of
progress toward the good, was a continuous line. The downward line toward the less
good was dotted. Since, despite my aim at the better, the last step taken in my think-
ing has unleashed an affective decline, now I just represent the before of that step in
exactly the opposite way: the straight upward line becomes dotted; the downward line
becomes continuous (figure 26). Let us recall that after our commenting on the Rules
for the First Week, desolation was already represented in this fashion (figure 16), and
as indeed was the existential situation of the self, falling a peccato mortali in peccatum
mortali (figure 14).
As soon as the self with good will becomes aware of its error thanks to this com-
parison and perceives the reversal with which it is threatened, it evidently wants to be
loosened from the Satanic snare and to re-encounter its previous situation by re-taking
the way of the genuinely better. Already stopped on the path to less good by this return
to the affective criterion, its reflection makes it retrace its path and tends to put it back
into the consolation that comes from above. In agreement with the symbol of this
consolation in the pure state (figure 20) and in opposition to figure 25 of the second
moment, we could represent this recovered influence by sketching the upper semi-
circle of ingredi-exgredi. As the self now is oriented toward the genuinely better and no
longer toward the less good, this difference will be exactly depicted by representing the
upward line toward the better by a continuous line, and by contrast the downward line
toward the less good by a dotted line. Finally, since by hypothesis in the fourth moment
only spiritual poverty and not real poverty is desired by God for me in agreement with
figure 25 we can write RP and SP at the ends of these different straight lines (figure 27).
If we now compare the two groups of figures we have assembled, the figures of
the first and third moments are exactly contrary to those of the second and fourth

via free access
292 Appendix
moments. At the very beginning, when the self poses the problem of discernment of
false consolation, it is, by definition, in progress from the good to the best (figure 24).
When it recurs to the affective criterion (figure 26), it has descended from the better to
the less good. Likewise, if it is satisfied with the intellectual criterion, it risks remaining
caught in Satan’s snares and it closes upon itself, becoming impermeable to consola-
tion from on high (figure 25). Lastly and inversely, after the affective criterion has made
the self discern the diabolical wiles, it maximally opens the self up to this consolation
(figure 27).
Is this kind of symmetry of contraries mere chance? Or rather do these different
moments have some intimate relation with the structure of the Exercises, where we
have already found similar correspondence? To facilitate our investigation, we should
not be satisfied to take in these four figures at a glance. In the middle of them, let us
reproduce the general scheme of this structure (figure 28), recalling what we suggested
then: the angles or cones that characterize each of the four weeks are paired: The first
with the third (both expanding cones) and the second with the fourth, both with two
contracting cones (although in these two contradictory pairs, each differs from the
other by the relations of complete or dotted lines). Lastly, if we are careful to label
the identical angles with the same letter, both in the general diagram and in the four
figures that surround it, this is what must appear.
First, the angles β and γ that characterize the transition from the Second to the
Third Week in the central diagram are found identically in figure 24 to symbolize the
Before and After of the first moment. This is totally logical, because the point of depar-
ture of the whole analysis contained in Rule 5 can only be the self’s situation in the hic
et nunc. It is just the same for angle γ, characteristic of the Third Week, which is found
again in figure 27 to symbolize the after of the fourth moment. When the affective
criterion is applied, it should result in the self’s being returned to its normal situation
within the general process of the Exercises.
By contrast, at first sight it seems surprising that the angle α presented by the after
of the second moment (figure 25) should be identical to that of the Fourth Week. In
reality, however, this double identity is profoundly logical, and it is easy to perceive
how they both agree perfectly with the Ignatian analyses.
In this hic et nunc, Satan always seeks to prevent the self of the Second Week from
taking the determination, following Christ’s example, to accept the labors of the
Passion in order to participate in the glory of the resurrection. Therefore, the “appar-
ent reasons, subtleties, and continual fallacies” that Satan proposes to the soul must
ultimately result in making it another Adam, victim of Satan’s lies. It is therefore, no
surprise if in the after of the second moment (figure 25), we found not angle γ but
angle α or the peculiar cone from the First Week (figure 28).
The same goes for the second identity. The self seduced by Non-being is deceived
for an instant or even a long time. But it perceives itself and opens itself again to the

via free access
love from on high. It must not think that its progress from good to best, prior to its
error in orientations, has become merely illusory by that fact and reduced to nothing.
It is true that in the first instant, the figures 27 and 25 suggest this pessimistic con-
clusion. The ascending continuous straight line that joins RP by to the hic et nunc in
the before of the second moment becomes a mere dotted line in figure 27. Moreover,
figure 27 retains no trace of figure 25’s circle symbolizing previous development or
the course of good thoughts wedded to Satan’s ruse. Once the trial is overcome, noth-
ing remains of this development. But surely this is not Ignatius’s thinking. The proof
of that is already in the maxim that tradition gives. Qui se errase comperit, non cadat
animo; etiam errores prosunt ad sanitatem. [“One who finds he has erred should not
decay in spirit; even errors benefit health.”]12
But we can say more or at least find out why Ignatius does not want this self to
despair, even about this past. This bitter experience must be the occasion of another
experience where the self understands clearly that everything that was and remains
real in his progress before the brief straying is the effect not of his will but of the grace
of the Resurrected One. The grace is such that after having recovered self’s natural
tendencies by letting it will the better, Grace crowns its liberality by discovering to
the self by this very error that the achievement of this better has already come from
above, and even more that “all is the gift and everything is the grace of God Our Lord”
(number 322), and consequently the means of the communicatio ab utraque parte in
which love consists according to Ignatius.
If we correctly interpret the contrast between figures 25 and 27, which earlier
seemed to be an objection, this is confirmed fully.
Indeed, in the before of the second moment, the continuous lines (the ascending
straight line of RP to the hic et nunc and the corresponding quarter circle) symbolize
the reality of the will in progress. The SP’s dotted straight line descending to the hic
et nunc only represents Christ call in contrast as the condition of possibility of this
good will. The Self, before its decision, should certainly consider its relation to grace
thus. After, it is no longer the same. To be exact, the relation is reversed in figure 27’s
Before, where continuous lines (SP’s straight downward line to the hic et nunc and the
corresponding quarter circle) signify that the whole reality of this antecedent must be
attributed to Christ’s grace; whereas RP’s upward straight line to the hic et nunc repre-
sents the self’s good will as simple condition of this grace’s manifestation.
Such a reversal of value symbolizes nothing less than the efficacy of Christ’s medi-
ation, which is at the center of the Ignatian analysis of liberty and binds up all its
articulations. As soon as this knot is grasped, the presence in figure 27 of angle δ (or
of the Fourth Week) prior to angle γ (or of the Third Week) is confirmed as no longer
12 Thesaurus spiritualis Societatis Jesu, Selectae Sancti Patris Nostri sententiae, no. 21, 296f.

via free access
294 Appendix
odd and not merely justified but full of meaning. This presence does not simply mean
that all grace received has the goal of enlightening and fortifying the soul with a view
to a future passion. It also symbolizes the feeling often noted by mystics: to perceive
after the event that God was present in this inner trial in the dark passage of an intel-
ligence habitually turned toward him without having been able to find his presence at
the time.
Waking from the dream where he had seen a ladder upon which the angels of God
ascended and descended between heaven and hearth, Jacob cried: Surely the Lord is in
this place; and I knew it not [Genesis 28:16]. Guided by his vivid understanding of the
spiritual meaning of scripture, St. Augustine transposed this astonished observation
from space to time. It is as if he were saying, “The Lord showed himself then, and I did
not know him. Because the Lord is not in a place.”13 After Jacob and Augustine, all souls
with any inner life must have exclaimed on some occasion: “God was there, and I did
not know him.” Let us offer just one testimony, but how precious, in each of the driest
deductions of our “spiritual geometry,” since he raises such an experience to the level
of a law of spiritual life. Newman says in one of his sermons:
God’s presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards,
when we look back upon what is gone and over.14
Sensitive as Ignatius was to the determination of time, he must have loved this law
more than anyone else, even if he did not express it as clearly as the English cardinal.
This law is what inspired him to prescribe in the Exercises as the first point of their
many Examens: “To give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits received” (number 43).
Ignatius turns back so frequently that in the five daily exercises there are two or even
three repetitions, since the application of the senses only differs from this law by their
more pronounced affective character. His Spiritual Journal proves how much he spon-
taneously conformed to this law. Fr. M. Giuliani notices it and very perceptively and
correctly recognizes the correspondence of the individual experience with the experi-
ence of the church:
Spiritual “memories” are among the most vivid graces of this Journal. In the exer-
cises memory can be employed not only as a natural faculty but as mystical expe-
rience. This experience of remembering plunges us back into the mystery of the
13 Augustine, St., Quaestiones et locutiones in Pentateuchum, book 1, no. 104, Patrologia

Latina, 34:col. 494.
14 We take this quotation from Henri de Lubac, Nouveaux paradoxes, 97. [Translator: See
John Henry Newman, Plain and Parochial Sermons, in one volume edition (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press 1997), 4:sermon 17, 897.]

via free access
church, which like the Virgin Mary [Luke 2:51] remembers Jesus, especially in the
eucharist: in mei memoriam.15
This in brief is the teaching about double identity that we have just we explained: each
time I fall into the snares of Satan, I find myself again at the edge of time, at the point
we called Alpha. By contrast I am already at point Omega, at the end of time, when
the Redeemer’s grace lets me escape Satan’s “perverse intensions.” The same two fig-
ures, 25 and 27, confirm these perspectives with their very striking opposition, whose
sense it remains for us to indicate, namely the sense of the semi-circles or of the angles
where ι and ε are inscribed. It is obvious that the contrary character symbolizes the
oppositions of two attitudes, which it takes to the maximum, and that Rule 5 made us
discern the constant oscillation of our spiritual life between these two attitudes, those
of the “first” and “last Adam.” Opened downwards, the angle ι corresponds to the angle
I emanating from the Infernum or from Non-being, just as angle ε upwards, by contrast,
responds to angle E that springs from Being or from the Most High.
There can be no doubt. There is perfect correspondence between the different
moments or determinations of this Rule 5 and the structure of the Exercises. Ultimately.
this correspondence permits us to remove a doubt that arose even before we began to
explain this rule.
We had announced that the temptation of Christ would guide our commentary,
and that our commentary would show how the circle of Non-being in our geometric
pattern runs no risk of being confused with the circle of the Son. It seems that we have
made no reference to this mystery of the life of Christ nor said anything that is capable
of forestalling that confusion.
Reality must seem quite different, if we appreciate appropriately the correspon-
dence that our several figures have brought out. We have shown that the application
of the double criterion, intellectual and affective, supposes constant reference to the
relations that unite and distinguish the four weeks. We first indicated this in regard
to the trio principium, medium, and finis, which is illustrated by figure 22. The second
time we indicated this by bringing together the angles of figures 24 through 27 with
15 Christus, 2, Journal spirituel (extracts), 88n1. What Fr. Giuliani says about the Virgin applies
equally well to the apostles and to John in particular (cf. Xavier Léon-Dufour, “Actualité
du quatrième Évangile,” Nouvelle revue théologique [May 1954]: 449–68). It should be
understood that we limit ourselves here to emphasizing the correspondence of the social
to the individual in the context of a simple question of angles, if we recall what was said
when commenting upon the general design of the Exercises. It not only holds for time
and the subjective history of each of our acts but for universal history, interpreted in the
same light. In other words, of the well-known law, ontogenesis reproduces phylogenesis,
remains a heuristic hypothesis when it is applied to the comprehension of natural his-
tory, it is by contrast, a fundamental principle for the comprehension of supernatural
historicity.

via free access
296 Appendix
those of figure 28. If it is true that the tempted Christ already thwarted Satan’s tricks by
recurring to holy scripture, that is to the historical revelation of which he is the center,
it is evident that under the form of a veiled reference to the four weeks, the double
criterion of Ignatius prescribes an attitude identical to that of Jesus, whose scriptural
foundation is just as great and just as solid.
As for the circle of Non-being, the sought for elements of the distinction have been
given as well. We have only to assemble them to perceive that we need fear no confu-
sion. The circle that Non-being outlines and seems to want to substitute for the Son’s
circle is rather the negation of any circularity, insofar as circularity is the principle of
all historical intelligibility.
To prove that, it is enough to pose the following question: Supposing that I let myself
be taken in by Satan’s trick and have come to wed his “perverse intentions,” what will
my existential situation be now? How could I represent it, supposing that I wanted to
reflect upon it? Ignatius himself gives the answer at the beginning of Rule 1 for the First
Week for those qui eunt a peccato mortali in peccatum mortale [“persons who go from
mortal sin to mortal sin”] (number 314). We illustrated it in figure 14, which is identical
to figure 26.
Alone among the figures we have just analyzed, figure 26, symbol of Non-being
that refuses Christ’s mediation, is presented as the junction of angles δ and α, that
is, as the unity of the ends of time. To be sure the unity is purely apparent. If δ and
α can be joined this way, Α and Ω cease to be distinguished in what they are and are
confused between themselves and with any other moment of time. Consequently, not
only does the historical structure revealed by Christ disappear, but human temporality
is no longer distinguished at all from simple natural temporality. As the latter, a simple
indefinite horizontal line must represent human temporality, where we can obviously
distinguish before and after in relation to any instant, but not find the slightest ground
to locate a middle, beginning, or end of time.
After this, if we still seek any intelligibility in history, we will allow ourselves, without
ever noticing, to attribute some imaginary curvature to this straight line, by hypothesis
still indefinite. Nothing would keep us from presenting the straight line as a totality or
circle and it movement as “eternal return.” But, by the same token, all historicity would
be denied, not only supernatural, but simply human as well.16
16 From there, it is easy to understand the emptiness of the Nietzschean Superman and
amor fati, as well as Marx’s so-called historical dialectic. When Marx presents the classless
society as the “real end” of “prehistory,” replaced by the “struggle of man with man and
with nature,” and declares at the same time that it inaugurates a new history, free from
this double struggle, he very precisely comes to affirm the continuity of angles delta and
Alpha. Engels immediately drew the consequence, writing in Dialectic of Nature, “Either

via free access
Consequently, there is no danger of confusing Non-being’s circle with the Son’s.17

For the rest, the first only appears to be a circle and only assumes that appearance to
oppose and negate the second’s movement. We have seen this notably when Non-being
opposes the opening that characterizes the “time of salvation” (figure 19). But even
when this seducer makes his apparent circularity glisten in the eyes of the soul, daugh-
ter of the Father and Spouse of the Spirit, if the soul recurs to the double criterion of
Rule 5, the seducer cannot disguise “his serpent’s tail,” as Ignatius will soon tell us, or as
we have said in Hegelian language, he cannot hide that his false infinity, whose symbol
is the indefinite straight line,18 is not redeemed but rather definitively condemned by
the circularity of “eternal return,” and is capable only of perpetuating the inhumanity
of the struggle to death and the master–slave relations.
Studying the preamble to Election, we were struck by Ignatius’s insistence, repeated
four times, that we must choose, “not ordering or bringing the end to the means, but
the means to the end” (number 169). In the face of this opposition, which seems to us
similar to what Hegel finds between true and false infinite, we asked ourselves whether
it could not provide us with a conceptual clarification that is still more suited to dis-
cerning authentic unity of the logical and historical from its deceptive counterfeits. We
have just obtained the answer to this question.
In Rule 5 we are no longer dealing with an election, but with the most fleeting expres-
sion of ideas. Ignatius has just indicated to us how we can recognize and respect the
order beginning-middle rather than be deceived by the irrational sequence beginning-
end-middle. Thanks to the analysis of the figures that allowed us to re-encounter the
structure of the Exercises by the words of this rule, in the cases of contiguous angles
δ and α, we saw that the structure denounces as illusory the sequence beginning-end
and lets us glimpse how this sequence has the inevitable consequence of denying the
Incarnate Word and his mediating role in history, the disappearance of all genuine
historicity.
Ignatius’s perceptiveness, breadth, and depth are admirable. He not only man-
ages to delve into the soul’s most delicate moments so as to find there the lines of
force that govern all history. At the moment when he concentrates on the most fleet-
ing hic et nunc, his field of vision is still broad enough to embrace the whole distance
we recur to a Creator or else we are obliged to conclude … the succession of eternally

repeated rules in infinite time” (translated by E. Bottigelli, 44–45).
17 That is, provided that we do not isolate the figure from the meaning that specifies it, after
having presided over its construction as a determined form and over its constitution as a
symbol of one particular sense and not another. It is all too clear that two identical circles
posited in isolation can be called indifferently Non-being or Son and are indistinguish-
able except by this arbitrary designation.

via free access
298 Appendix
that separates the end of time from its beginning as Being from Non-being. This is so
true that the mind that animates this vision is confirmed by such power that at every
instant it manages to keep united, without confusing them, both extremes and the
interconnected situations where the operation unfolds and is resolved.
When we began to explain these two groups of rules for the discernment of spirits,
we said that the Exercises’ whole structure controls and is reflected in them. The best
proof of this initial affirmation is the precision with which the figures constructed to
illustrate these rules agree with the symbols representing this structure, without men-
tion the new light such agreement casts upon well-known texts. However burdensome
understanding this geometrical symbolism may appear (not to mention putting it into
practice), the use of such a method is well justified by this result, even if it were to be
the only one: to make the most of and to make intuitive the depth and rigor of the
dialectic that inspires and sustains all Ignatian analyses, the most detailed just as the
most comprehensive.
2.6 Rule 6: After the Discernment of False Consolation (Number 334)

After answering the most difficult question of spiritual life with the subtlest analysis,
Ignatius completes his response by notations that consider the process, whose internal
mechanism he has just set out, from the outside now.
Faithful to his practice of following the course of time, his optimism supposes
the objective difficulty finished, overcome, and left in the past. He now recommends
that the self ponder the steps through which it has been able to overcome the trial
provoked by Non-Being’s deception. We have commented on those stages at enough
length for it to be sufficient to underline how much the expression used by Ignatius
confirm our interpretations. In the first place, we have the relation to the past, recalling
the double criterion: Quando inimicus humanae naturae fuerit deprehensus et cogitus
(sentido y cognoscido in the Autograph version, which marks the union and distinction
of affective apprehension and intellectual knowledge more clearly than Fr. Roothaan’s
version). This connection is habitual in Ignatius, and here it is especially appropriate
since we have seen the necessity of this double criterion. Furthermore, the placement
of sentido before cognoscido indicates that we were right in making the diagnostic per-
mitted by Rule 5 culminate in a recognition of the link that unbreakably unites human
activity and passivity in regard to divine action. In this Rule, Ignatius first desires to
state the benefit that intellect can derive from this trial and recalls that the effect of
such reception is to recognize Satan’s deception “by his serpent’s tail,” which is the bad
end toward which the deception tends: ex cauda sua serpentina et fine malo ad quem
inducit.
The reference to the serpent obviously refers to the beginning of Genesis and con-
firms at the same time the interpretation we proposed of the “subtleties” to which

via free access
the application of the intellectual criterion gives rise. We can probably also see in it a
reminiscence of one of Ignatius’s first visions after his arrival at Manresa:
[I]t many times happened that in full daylight he saw a form in the air near him,
and this form gave him much consolation because it was exceedingly beautiful.
He did not understand what it really was, but it somehow seemed to have the
shape of a serpent and many things that shone like eyes but were not eyes. He
received much delight and consolation from gazing upon this object and the
more he looked upon it, the more his consolation increased, but when the object
vanished he became disconsolate.19
This is a typical example of false consolation that, Ignatius admits, “lasted for days”
before he recognized it as such. Yet he notes that accompanying this vision, “the dif-
ficulty of his life was represented as if someone within him was saying, How can you
keep up this life during the seventy years you have to live?” Ignatius immediately
rejected this diabolic suggestion, seeing clearly that it pushed him “toward a thing less
good than what he had previously proposed to do,” but he did not yet perceive the
connection with this apparition in the form of a serpent. It was only after the vision at
the Cardoner River that he was enlightened about its origin. There, “as he knelt before
a cross to give thanks to God,” the serpent appeared to him again, but he saw clearly,
before the cross as he was, that this thing did not have its usual beautiful color. He had
very clear knowledge, with full conformity of his will, that it was the devil. It is as if, in
the eyes of Ignatius (who has just received more things than he will ever learn again,
something in the highest degree and without any doubt the germ of the structure of
his Exercises), the presence and very form of the cross where the Eternal is united to
time and purchases it suffice to make the beauty of diabolical attraction fade and
definitively reveal its nature to him.20
But why does Ignatius speak of the serpent’s tail? Possibly, it is more or less con-
scious reference to the proverb, In cauda venenum [poison in the tail]. Although
it applies better to the scorpion than to the serpent, symbolic imagination can get
beyond this defect.
In our ignorance of its exact origin (it perhaps is difficult to clarify from then his-
torical point of view) we can ask whether this image may have some relation with the
19 Ignatius of Loyola, Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 19, Tylenda, 29.

20 It is remarkable that the vision did not disappear but no longer bothered Ignatius, who
limited himself to confront it with “untroubled mien” as his Rule 12 (no. 325) says. Ignatius
of Loyola, Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 31, Tylenda, 39: “Many times later, it continued to appear
to him, but as a mark of his disdain for it, he drove it away with the pilgrim’s staff he
always had in his hand.”

via free access
300 Appendix
serpent that bites its tale. The symbol recurs frequently in ethnology. In a passage where
Hegel cautions his readers about the ambiguity of such images,21 he relates the circle to
eternity and interprets as a repeating reflection the absolute power of division that sup-
presses itself. Ignatius, to be sure, simply speaks of “form of serpent” without telling us
whether it was immobile or not, unfolding and stretching out or rolling up upon itself.
However, several indications let us suppose that this apparition is related to the image
where Jung’s disciples will easily see the archetype of the collective unconscious.
In the first place, in fact most of Ignatius’s visions have circular form. Since he
declares its form “extremely beautiful” without further specification about this form,
it is possible that the form of the serpent takes on the same appearance for him, at
least from time to time. The hypothesis becomes plausible if we imagine that this form
“had all sorts of things that shone like eyes without being eyes.”22 The radiant burst of
each eye certainly implies the circular form. It is a short step from there to admit that
their totality also appears in circular form. Moreover, can these “eyes that are not eyes”
symbolize anything but the bad infinity of deceptive reflection? Lastly, is it by chance
that the falsehood of the vision in which the demoniacal intelligence is disclosed to
Ignatius “before the cross,” which is in opposition to the tearing apart of the perpen-
dicular axes? In those axes, according to the symbolism of our scheme of the Exercises,
the movements of divine Freedom and of human freedom are developed by being dis-
tinguished, and their unity constitutes the circle of genuine infinity. The circle is open
to others and to the whole, whereas the circle of Non-being or of bad infinity and its
deceitful reflection tends to close upon itself and to dissolve at the same time, as we
have just recalled.
Whatever the value of such a hypothesis, and even if all these indications seem
uninteresting, there is something indisputable. Ignatius recommends that as soon as
the temptation is overcome, to consider how utile est ei, qui fuit ab eo tentatus, consid-
erare post discursum bonarum cogitationum quas sibi suggessit [“it helps the person
who was tempted … to look immediately at the course of good thoughts which he
brought him at their beginning”]. Ignatius then expresses himself exactly as if, in the
twisting course of our thoughts, the process to be discovered takes the form of a circle
developing from below upwards, as figures 23 and 25 suppose. First, it is necessary to
acknowledge the source of these good thoughts, principium illarum, since Satan has
“entered into contact with the devout soul,” with the self of the Second Week who “may
rise … from good to better” (number 331); Satan “suggest[s] good and holy thoughts
conformable to such just soul” (number 332). It is certain that Ignatius represents this
21 “We can say that eternity is a circle, the serpent that bites its tale” ( Jubilaeum-Ausgabe,
17, 121).
22 Henri Bremond represents this vision as “a living scarf, a flexible snake, made of phospho-
rescent peacock feathers” (article cited, April 1929, 33).

via free access
beginning as an upward line. The line is not straight but curved since these sugges-
tions are meant to change the soul’s orientations little by little. Precisely what must be
observed most is the manner in which the line of our thoughts, under the influence of
Satan “how little by little he aimed at making him descend from the spiritual sweetness
and joy in which he was, so far as to bring him to his depraved intention,” quomodo
paulatim procuraverit ut ipsum descendere faceret a suavitate et laetitia spirituali, in qua
erat, donec illum deduceret ad depravatam suam intentionem.
Let us note that in the previous rule, Ignatius carefully distinguishes the projects
for “the better” or the “less good” and the preceding affective state. Here, he no longer
mentions he latter. This is a new proof of how much attention he gives to the affective
criterion. In his view, if the self succeeds in uniting itself to divine freedom, it is not
through its thoughts, however, excellent they are. Certainly, they are indispensable to
the exercise and maximum, development of human activities. But there very excel-
lence ultimately should serve to make the uselessness of human activity luminously
clear in relation to divine liberality. Taking over those impotent projects as their under-
pinning, divine liberality crowns them with success, once the self completely oriented
toward the better at the same time as it is convinced of its nullity, expects “nothing of
itself but everything from God” who has inspired it in the project in order to make the
self always more similar to Him.
But in the very moment in which Ignatius bypasses the role of human activity to
affirm the priority of divine passivity, he wants the experience of temptation through
which the soul has passed to be next (luego as the Autograph version says) or still better
immediately, completely utilized with a view to the future, and to this end not only
comprehended but noted. In this way, the soul “may be able to guard for the future
against [Non-Being’s] usual deceits,” ut istius modi experientia cognita et notata, caveat
sibi in posterum ab ejus consuetis fraudibus (number 334). This, therefore, is a return
to the initial phase of the “first rule of action,” to begin “as if success depended com-
pletely upon me, and on God in nothing.”
2.7 Rule 7: Contrary Modes of Action of the Spirits (Number 335)

The first benefit from such an experience is to clarify understanding. It is still more
important to use it to whet the soul’s spiritual senses in a way that, without elimi-
nating the intellectual criterion, unites it so intimately to the affective criterion that
their interplay comes to be produced habitually and almost instinctively. The shaping
of a child’s sensibility and that of an artist’s tastes obey the same laws: analysis and
reflection have their part in it by always with a view to discerning higher affectivity
from lower and to render the former capable of almost immediate and, so to speak,
co-natural perception.
To foment this education of spiritual persons, Ignatius now indicates the diversity
of modes of action of good and bad spirits according to the disposition of the soul with

via free access
302 Appendix
which they enter into contact. He quite naturally again characterizes this encounter
in terms of the double existential situation, improving or declining, set out in Rules 1
and 2 for the First Week. Consequently, it is not surprising that the design of the two
perpendicular axes should reappear here, crossed in the hic et nunc, one symboliz-
ing the dispositions of those who go from good to better, iis qui precedent de bono in
melius, the other the dispositions of those who go from bad to worse, qui precedent
de malo in pejus. The latter come first in the Rules for the First Week but here they
are in second place. This is logical, since the Rules for the Second Week are directed
above all to the self that progresses. What concerns the opposite dispositions simply
appears as a confirmation in contrast to the teaching that is of direct interest. Let us
further observe that if the diagram of crossed axes constitutes the background upon
which Ignatius bases himself, the comparisons he employs to sharpen the sense of the
spiritual person are closer to the circles with which we were led to illustrate the Rules
for the Second Week (figures 20ff.). This is a new sign of the link uniting these two
geometrical forms insofar as they bring out our outline of the Exercises, and then the
different figures symbolizing these rules.
Intended to characterize the diversity in this contact with the good or bad angel, the
comparisons are taken from the natural order. This is not at all surprising. All educa-
tion, even that of the spiritual sense, can only proceed from examples taken from what
is directly given. Besides, as there is a correspondence between the natural world and
the world where the spiritual person must grow, the metaphors will clarify all the more
in proportion to their simplicity and to their capacity to connect with fundamental
images where the sense of our historical existence and its different possibilities is pro-
claimed. By themselves, Ignatius’s comparisons will be superposed upon the geometri-
cal scheme that we have gotten out of the symbols of the crossroads and the balance
and will confirm their value by a new slant.
According to St. Ignatius opposite traits mark the actions of good and bad angels.
“The Good Angel touches soul [who go from good toward the better] sweetly, lightly,
and gently like a drop of rain that enters a sponge.” (Bonus Angelus tangit talem ani-
mam dulciter, leviter et suaviter, ut gutta aquae intrat in spongiam.) “[Non-being]
touches it sharply and with noise and disquiet, as when a drop of water falls on the
stone.” (Malus tangit acute, et cum sonitu et inquietudine, ut quum aquae gutta decidit
super petram.) Without bothering to repeat the comparison by reversing it, Ignatius
adds that the good and bad spirits touch those who go from bad to worse in opposite
ways. The comparison shows to what degree dialectical opposition is essential. The
images that are added to it only have the purpose of covering the opposition with a
garment whose symbolism is transparent. As the spirit is wind or breath, water is a
fluid but more visible and more tangible. The effect produced by contact with it ought
to be more perceptible. The effect is manifested all the more differently in proportion

via free access
as the objects touched by water more or less resemble its fluidity. The sponge takes
in the drop of water and expands at its touch without anything noticeable, whereas
the same drop tends to hollow out the stone on which it rests, makes noise, and is
dispersed in splashes.
This time Ignatius takes the trouble to extricate, along with the significant relation
contained in these metaphors, the reason for being of such opposition. He concludes
his analysis by returning to a comparison whose agreement with the general symbol-
ism of his dialectic we have already seen.
This double opposition, says Ignatius, comes from the fact that “the disposition of
the soul is contrary or like to the said angels.” (Cujus rei causa est quod dispositio ani-
mae sit dictis Angelis contraria vel similis.) This “disposition of the soul” is properly the
situation of the self always dis-tended between past and future. In the Nunc it is pos-
ited either as seeking to take up this distention by itself and consequently directing
itself downward until it adapts itself to Non-Being’s circularity; or else, to the contrary,
awaiting this renewal from divine freedom and consequently opening itself to what
it is above, it is ready to received uncaused consolation or mediated consolation that
prepares for it. In other words, and to return to images derived from our fundamental
symbolism, which have already helped us design previous figures, the self that pro-
gresses presents us with a concave surface that is somehow sponge-like toward Being’s
action that comes from above and tends to make it ascend, convex on the contrary and
as it were petrified toward Non-being’s action, which comes from below and tends to
make the self descend in order for it to be lost in Non-being’s bad infinity. The relation
is inverted for the self that goes from bad to worse. This can be represented by figure 29.
After this explanation, Ignatius draws a conclusion as if it were self-evident: “when
the soul’s disposition is contrary [to the Angels], they enter perceptibly with clatter
and noise, and when it is alike, they enter with silence as into their own house, through
the open door” (Quando enim est contaria, intrant cum strepitu et sensationibus, ita ut
percipi facili possit; quando autem est similis, intrat cum silentio, tanquami in propriam
domum, et aperta porta) (number 335).
There is no need to indicate how similar this conclusion is to the prescription of
Rules 1 and 2 for the First Week or the evident relation of these descriptions to the
strokes with which Ignatius depicts Lucifer in the Meditation on the Two standards.
Lucifer, on the one hand is enthroned “in some way on a seat of fire and smoke with
a horrible and frightful appearance” (number 140), while “Our Lord puts himself … in
lowly place, beautiful and attractive” (number 144). But it is more useful to stress the
less obvious relations of the double contact described here by the last Rules for the
First Week. This is all the more true in that the relation explains, we feel, the apparition
of the comparison with which this rule ends.
As hidden as this relation is, it appears clearly if we take the trouble to superpose
figure 19 (where we have summed up and symbolized the relation set out in Rules 12,

via free access
304 Appendix
13, and 14) to figure 29. The double attitude (masculine and feminine prescribed for
the self and correspondingly attributed to the devil) is synthesized, as we have seen, in
the opposition between the “two leaders in war.” The issue is certainly still of war and
struggle between the soul and the devil, when the devil uses the ruse that transfigures
him into an angel of light. When the devil is initially repelled by the soul’s manly atti-
tude, which from the start has opposed a “untroubled mien” to the devil’s first assaults,
the deception is the feminine weapon the devil uses to take his revenge. Identifying
with the devout soul’s thought process, as Rule 4 for the Second Week describes, the
devil is transformed into the seductive lover of whom Rule 13 speaks, when he his
suggestions find favorable reception. His goal, his “perverse intention,” is the master’s
domination over the slave and not the unity of the relation man–woman.
The same correspondence exists between the double criterion of Rule 5 for the
Second Week and the initially masculine but then feminine attitude prescribed by
Rules 12 and 13. To use its intelligence initially to thwart Non-being’s snares supposes a
manly confidence in the self that jumps into action “as if success depended in every-
thing on it, in nothing on God,” because the confidence is based on faith in God who
has created human beings in his image and likeness. But this initial attitude must be
reversed, when the self passes over into action and strives to achieve the better. The
feminine attitude, which like the daughter or wife of whom Rule 13 speaks, is open to
another as to a father or a spouse; or recurs to the affective criterion that tends to make
it passive in regard to divine consolation. It can dispose the self to accomplish the “bet-
ter,” because it makes the self wait for it as coming “in nothing from him, in everything
from God alone.”
The synthesis of this double attitude and the application of this double criterion
prepares the soul for the divine visit that Ignatius ultimately describes as entrance into
one’s “own house though the open door.” The same occurs, but in the opposite sense,
with the devil in the conscience of someone who lacks this synthesis or neglects this
application. There is a spiritual image for both cases: Christ makes the unclean spirit,
who had passed through unclean places seeking rest and found it not, say: I will return to
my house whence I came out (Matthew 12:43–44). But it is evident that, for purposes of
signifying the relations of the sinful soul with devil, the comparison only serves as an
antithesis preparing us to understand the intimacy of God’s “dwelling” in the just soul.
By this image that closes Rule 7, Ignatius implicitly remits us to how “God dwells in
his creatures” (number 235), which he has made the second moment of the reciprocal
love between God and the self, analyzed by Ignatius’s contemplation ad Amorem. We
have tried to demonstrate (and as it seems to us that the superposition of the figures
makes evident) that this last comparison also implies the unity of the masculine and
feminine elements as well as of intelligence and affectivity in the self who is beloved
by God and loves him, just as on the other hand it implies the division of these same
elements and faculties in Non-being’s slave self. If that is perceived, one can only

via free access
admire the coherence of Ignatius’s spiritual doctrine and the depth of its dogmatic
foundations.
The decisive proof of the worth of our interpretation of the Exercises is certainly
not, either overall and still less in its detail, that this coherence and depth appear by
means of and thanks to the diagram constructed in function of an analysis of temporal
and historical analysis. But it is at least an undeniable sign of the importance that the
form of time and its different determinations have in Ignatius’s eyes.
2.8 Rule 8: The Time That Follows Consolation without Cause

(Number 336)
If, in spite of everything, the reader is unconvinced of this importance, it seems that
the last Rule offers a demonstration that might suffice even in the absence of any other
proof. After having analyzed true and false consolation with the care and precision we
have seen, Ignatius, it seems, goes back to the consolation without prior cause, but it is
to distinguish it from any other, precisely in function of time and to show how, in this
relation, it too remains governed by the group of prescriptions set out by the previous
Rules.
This consolation without prior cause, this Instant where the self and God are imme-
diately united as the Eternal and the temporal, is the immovable center of Ignatius’s
perspective, as we have said for a long time and repeatedly. For Ignatius, all spiritual
life has the meaning and goal of disposing the soul to take advantage of this Instant,
prolonging its salutary effects, and removing the obstacles that would prevent a return,
which Ignatius suggests should be frequent to the point of being comparable (as he
has just made us understand) to the relationship of loving “dwelling together.” From
the Pilgrim’s Journey and the Spiritual Journal, we know the extraordinary degree to
which Ignatius himself was favored with divine visits. Far from diminishing his vigi-
lance in regard to possible illusions, such favors rather redoubled it. In this last rule, he
takes care to come back to this consolation without cause in order to distinguish it as
precisely as possible from everything else.
Certainly, by its very nature, such an Instant is sheltered from any insidious decep-
tion of the devil, since it marks the outpouring of divine freedom itself “as being from
God our Lord alone”: quando consolation est sine causa, licet ei non insit fraus, cum a
solo Deo Domino nostro precedat … Ignatius insists: “Still the spiritual person to whom
God gives such consolation, ought with much vigilance and attention to look at and
distinguish the time itself of such consolation from the following, in which the soul
remains warm and favored with the favor and remnants of the consolation past.”
(Tamen persona spiritualis cui dat Deus talem consolationem, debet multa cum vigilan-
tia et attentione considerare ac discernere proprium tempus actualis ejusmodi consola-
tionis a sequenti in quo anima remaneat fervens, et favorem et reliquias consolationis
praeteritae etiamnum sentit.)

via free access
306 Appendix
It would be difficult to mark more precisely this Instant’s character of exact pres-
ence and indicate more strongly the need to distinguish it from anything else. Nouns,
adjectives, verbs, adverbs, most of the words of this sentence are devoted to making
its originality stand out: proprium tempus actualis … sequenti … remanet … praeteritae
etiamnum sentit. Ignatius, however, is aware that what we call “present” or nunc, is not
a point or is only one in regard to an abstraction that divides it from the past that it
still retains as well as from the future toward which it already tends. But he rightly does
not conceive the Divine Instant of consolation without cause on this model. More pre-
cisely, because the Instant of itself is total synthesis of this ecstasy of time, it is the
model in Ignatius’s eyes, the perfect example of the partial synthesis achieved by our
“present.” Ignatius also wants to put us on guard against the reversal of such a rule and
the result confusion to understand this divine instant within in our time and to lower
it to the rank of a simply human present.
It is not that Ignatius wants to deny that Divine Freedom can ravish consciousness
during an ecstasy that lasts for what is a longer or shorter lapse of time for others.
By his own experience he knows these raptures of the spirit about which mystics tell
us and that psychologists can study from the outside like other psychic phenomena.
Swept up to the third heaven St. Paul declares, whether in the body or apart from the
body, I know not, God knows (II Corinthians 12:43). This affirms that the normal aware-
ness of time is suppressed then, and that such an experience has no common measure
with those that fill the course of our existence. Ignatius repeats an equivalent affir-
mation, saying that to the self that is the subject of this divine action, from within it
can only appear as an instant. This instant is necessarily a point (“to enter” and “go
out” as Rule 2, number 330, says) for the consciousness that returns to it, that reflects
upon it again, and by its temporalizing reflection necessarily encloses it in a Before and
an After. Under this form that agrees with his whole analysis based on the dialectic
of temporal relation, Ignatius, like St. Paul, tries to bring out the divine present that
awaits the soul in the instant and prevents it from confusing the instant with a present
that is not It and perhaps comes not from it but from the enemy.
Also, without ceasing to affirm the authenticity above all suspicion of uncaused
consolation, he wants the self to distinguish it as carefully as possible from the “fol-
lowing time” and not to attribute to it something that comes out of a past or a future
and does not offer the same guarantees. Although this divine instant stamps a specific
determination on consciousness, it nevertheless is necessarily mixed with representa-
tions that already occupied the self along with those that later are going to fill the flow
of its inner life. Ignatius explains: Saepe in hoc secondo tempore per suum proprium dis-
cursum ex habitibus et ex consequentiis conceptuum et judiciorum, sive per bonum spiri-
tum sive per malum format varia proposita et consilia que non dantur immediate a Deo
Domino nostro. [“Often in this second time through one’s own course of habits and the
consequences of the concepts and judgements, or through the good spirit of the bad,

via free access
(the self) forms various resolutions and opinions which are not given immediately by
God our Lord.”] Consequently, it is evident that in these projects and resolutions of
human origin, Non-being’s deceit can introduce itself. To protect ourselves against the
deceit and uncover it if necessary, “therefore they have need to be very well examined
before entire credit is given them, or they are put into effect”; proinde valde bene dis-
cutiantur necesse est, antequam iis integer assensus tribuatur et deducantur ad effectum
(number 336). This in practice means that they should be subjected to the criteria set
out in previous Rules.
At the end of the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits this last and insistent recom-
mendation deserves to be stressed. It again testifies to Ignatius’s concern, of which
we have found many other proofs throughout the Exercises and particularly in their
conclusion. This is so true that it again sheds light on the originality of his genius, the
foundation upon which the security and balance of his spiritual doctrine rest.
Let us briefly and concisely recall the essential points. Just as the four weeks are
centered on Election, whose type and ideal is that of the first time, these rules have as
their summit and center uncaused consolation. The single goal of Ignatius is to prepare
to soul to make itself passive toward divine action, whether in the option involving an
entire future or in the many choices and orientations that prepare or accomplish it. It
is his method’s only reason for being. We now know how detailed and reflective the
method is expounded in a dialectic extending from Genesis to the Parousia, but also
in short notations where the same structure clarifies the smallest moments and move-
ments of interior life.
Let us form a hypothesis here, one that is certainly not impossible and that histori-
ans may plausibly offer as verified in this or that particular case. Suppose that Ignatius
encountered a soul whose life was determined by an Election in the first time.23 Would
Ignatius have hesitated to suggest to him to enter into his Exercises, judging that such
a soul no longer had anything to get out of his method? Or, on the contrary, would he
have been all the more resolved that he should enter into the school of Manresa for
thirty days?
If we have doubts about the answer, it is enough to re-read this last rule and its final
recommendation. Ignatius loudly proclaims that uncaused consolation makes the soul
safe from any error or deviation. Nevertheless, he wants the soul, far from abandoning
itself to its fervor after the divine visit, to take control of itself and devote itself to a
careful discussion of the consequences that it believes itself able to draw from this visit
but that perhaps come less from God than itself, if not from the devil.
23 This seems to have occurred in Fr. Martín Olave’s vocation to the Society of Jesus. Cf.
A. Astrain, Historia de la Compañía de Jesús, 1:book 2, chapter 17n13.

via free access
308 Appendix
Accordingly, it is at the moment when Ignatius’s method has achieved its goal, unit-
ing human freedom with divine freedom and becomes superfluous and is eliminated,
that he insists on the need to beware, certainly not of the immediate decision that
comes from above, but of all the human and even diabolical elements that can slip in.
Precisely for this, he introduces an examination that tends to nothing less than mak-
ing the individual begin the whole process again up to the point where he has arrived.
Is this to slow down the self in its ascent toward God? Not at all. It is simply to avoid
the danger that increases in proportion to one’s ascent and to give the means to avoid
it. The goal sought remains the higher affectivity of the consciousness that becomes
patiens divina. But it is reached only discontinuously. The authenticity of such a pas-
sion can only be recognized by the exercise of reason that takes its point of departure
in the horizontal dimension of time and employs temporal relations that crisscross
there to look back and to keep oneself from any wandering.
It seems to us that with this there is a reconciliation of the two tendencies (not
deeply opposed in any case) into which the interpreters of the Exercises are divided;
those who would make the essential thing the choice of a state of life and those who
think it is the sanctification of the soul. In an article that we have already quoted,
Fr. de Grandmaison declares:
Their end is to direct the likely candidate to the apostolate by a sure path …
toward the freedom of soul … the docility to grace, which are the ideal con-
ditions to make, as must be done, his “election” in order “to seek and find the
divine will in the disposition (which at the beginning of the Exercises, therefore,
remains to be discovered) of his life” (First Annotation) … To use the Exercises to
amend one’s life within an already known and accepted vocation … is to depart
from the original hypothesis.24
Against this opinion, Fr. Peeters writes in his book, Vers l’Union divine par les Exercises
de Saint Ignace:
The choice of state of life does not seem to us to be the primary object of the
Exercises. However important we suppose it to be, it is secondary to effective
sanctification in the state embraced. Two distinguished examples proclaim this
eloquently … Neither Ignatius nor Francis Xavier made a vocational retreat,
properly speaking.25
24 De Grandmaison, Recherches de science religieuse (1920), 400–1.

25 Peeters, Vers l’union divine par les Exercises de saint Ignace, 98–99.

via free access
To reduce this opposition to a mere difference of two perspectives, we believe a

simple observation suffices, which, in a way, sums up our whole undertaking: Ignatius
never envisages “sanctification” as the objective state that theology considers, defining
an analyzing the soul’s participation in the divine nature by means of grace. Rather, he
cautions, “We ought not to speak with so much insistence on grace that the poison of
discarding liberty be engendered” (number 369). For Ignatius, sanctification is rather
the genesis of this state, becoming-Christian, through which human freedom, exer-
cised in particular choices, is united to divine freedom. It follows that this genesis can
be considered either from the standpoint of its principle and on its human side or else
from the standpoint of its end and on its divine side. Each perspective supposes and
requires the other.
Content with the first, Fr. de Grandmaison rightly affirms the central importance
of choice of state of life, because such a choice morally implies the adoption of a set
of human means that determine and assure the development of this state of sanctifi-
cation. Taking the other perspective, Fr. Peeters is no less right to say that this results
matters more than the choice of state of life or of the different human means suited to
promote the union with God, since the end must command all and each of the move-
ments of the process. Fr. de Grandmaison is far from denying that. He brings out the
importance of the “disposition of life” as being the principal means to assure it. For his
part, Fr. Peeters, speaking of “effective sanctification in the state embraced,” supposes
that the condition of such an effect is an election that “disposes the life” within the
state embraced. Accordingly, if we manage even slightly to keep in mind what makes
the Exercises original, the differences among their interpreters, far from being exclu-
sive, presuppose each other and mutually call on each other to be completed.
In regard to the contemplation ad Amorem, we saw that at the peak where the
method reveals the unity and circularity of the four weeks, it nevertheless preserves
their distinction and their linear stages, each time requiring the self to re-take the path
followed in order to climb higher and approach Divine Transcendence even more. In a
different feature, in regard to the vertical axis at whose extremes are situated the most
high divine majesty and Satan, the instantaneous character of consolation without
cause also manifests an immanence of God and the self that excludes any influence of
Non-Being. But it is in order to reveal to the fervent soul that as a creature of nothing-
ness it is infinitely far from God and always vulnerable to the blows of the “enemy of
human nature.”
In both cases, the Ignatian method is reaffirmed all the more in being suppressed.
With that it manifests in its own being the characteristic that permits it to contrast
the extremes to unite them more and to unite them without ever ceasing to contrast
them more and more. We think we have shown that the method owes this rigor to an
analysis of human existence illuminated by Christ’s revelation. In the end, if, thanks to

via free access
310 Appendix
the spatio-temporal determinations that the analysis takes from revelation and from
historical existence, we were able to attempt to illustrate the dialectic by geometrical
symbolism, doesn’t this prove that Ignatius understood, even more deeply than Hegel,
the truth of the latter’s comment, precisely about the Incarnation: “The lowest is at the
same time the highest; what manifests itself by emergence right at the surface is the
most profound precisely by that”?26
26 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, second Lasson edition, 488–89.

via free access
Further Study of the Ignatian Maxim
Haec sit prima agendorum regula: sic Deo fide, quasi rerum successus
omnis a te, nihil a Deo penderet; ita tamen iis omnem operam admove,
quasi tu nihil, Deus omnia solus sit facturus
Since this study requires the frequent comparison of several different texts, we repro-
duce them here one after the other in order to facilitate the reader’s task, highlighting
their differences by bold type:
Formula A (traditional maxim number 2, due to Gábor Hevenesi):
Sic Deo fide,

quasi rerum successus omnis a te, nihil a Deo penderet;
ita tamen iis operam omnem admove,
quasi tu nihil, Deus omnia solus sit facturus.
[So trust in God,

as if the whole success depended on you, nothing on God,
but so approach every work,
as if you were to do nothing and God alone everything.]
Formula B (proposed by Father J. de Lapparent)
Sic Deo fide

quasi tu nihil, Deus omnia solus sit facturus
ita tamen iis operam omnem admove
quasi rerum successus omnis a te, nihil a Deo penderet.
[So trust in God,

as if you were to do nothing and God alone everything,
as if the whole success depended on you and nothing on God.]
Formula C (adopted by the Thesaurus Santander edition, 1933)
Sic fide Deo,

quasi rerum successus omnis sit ab illo, nihil a te penderet;
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004504738_017 Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

via free access
312 Further Study of the Ignatian Maxim
ita tamen iis operam omnem admove,

quasi Deus nihil, omnia tu solus sit facturus.
[So trust in God,

as if the whole success of things were from him, and nothing depended on you;
as if God were to do nothing and you everything.]
Formula D (translation of Hevenesi’s formula by Father Kieckens)
Que la première régle de vos actions soit d’agir,

comme si le succès dépendait de vous et non de Dieu;
et de vos abandonner à Dieu,
comme s’il devait tout faire à votre place.
[May the first rule of your actions be to act,

As if success depended on you and not on God;
And to abandon yourself to God,
As if he had to do everything in your place.]
In 1947, when we compared this maxim with the fifth rule for the Second Week, we did
not doubt either its authentic Ignatian status or its perfect intelligibility. Both points
were the combined object of a serious study by Fr. J. de Lapparent, editor of Varietés
sinologiques. After setting out his reasons in several issues of a Shanghai missionary
publication, he made it the object of a report concluding that the traditional formula-
tion of the maxim was faulty and needed to be corrected.
This report was sent to Rome and examined. It appeared compelling enough for the
general of the Society of Jesus to side, in a letter of February 8, 1951, with Fr. de Lapparent’s
opinion expressed in Nouvelles de la mission, September 15, 1944, October 30, 1947, and
December 30, 1948, as well as with an older article by Fr. C.A. Kneller, “Ein Wort des
hl. Ignatius von Loyola” (Zeitschrift für Aszese und Mystik, 1928: 253–57). The general’s
reply further indicates that the Spanish edition of the Thesaurus (Santander, 1935) had
already “rightly corrected the passage in this way: Haec sit prima agendorum regula: sic
Deo fide, quasi rerum successus omnis ab illo, nihil a te penderet; ita tamen iis operam
admove, quasi Deus nihil, omnia tu solus sis facturus.”1 Nevertheless, at the end of his
letter, the general was careful to note that the traditional maxim, without reporting the
1 Acta Romana Societatis Iesu, 12:137–38.—We observe that the references of September 15, 1944,
as reported by Acta Romana, do not refer to Nouvelles de la mission but to no. 1280 of another
collection, Pour la mission. Fr. de Lapparent is responsible for this error in no. 1306 of

via free access
exact words of St. Ignatius, “expresses in compact terms and in a terse way his thinking
known elsewhere.”
Given this conclusion, and also because the general’s private reply has not been
followed by any obligatory decision concerning the version of this maxim in future edi-
tions of the Thesaurus, an examination of the judgement passed upon the traditional
maxim is not a recourse to the authority but rather takes notice and keeps the judge-
ment in mind as it goes back step by step in the examination of the verdict upon the
traditional maxim. At the end of a long reflection upon the Exercises, having perceived
in that authority a support for our interpretation, we may hope that the authority in
turn will be further clarified. Perhaps such an examination will provide some point of
information if the authority must ever decide this point in the last resort. Although it is
not very important at first sight, it seems to us, upon closer scrutiny, to lie at the heart
of Ignatian doctrine.
In the light of the publications that cite this letter of February 8, 1951, we will first
inquire whether the maxim in its traditional form exactly represents the best and old-
est sources. Then, to set off its structure, we will attempt to analyze it in itself as well as
in function of the expressions preferred for it. Discussing the arguments opposed to it,
we will try to discover their hidden origin. Let us say immediately that to our percep-
tion they are decisive and that, if the Santander Thesaurus’s expression seems easier to
grasp, it obtains this advantage only by sacrificing the nerve of the Ignatian dialectic,
whose richness and power we have tried to show.
Section 1: Sources of the Traditional Maxim
As we already indicated, this maxim appears as number 2 in the Selectae Sancti Patris
Nostri Ignatii sententiae in the Thesaurus spiritualis Societatis Jesu, a work given to every
member of the Society of Jesus, and whose first edition, according to Fr. de Lapparent,
was that of Avignon, 1845. In his book Saint Ignace, directeur d’âmes, Fr. Pinard de la
Boullaye devoted a special chapter to the different collections of “selected maxims” of
St. Ignatius. Fr. Pinard first remarks with regard to the thirty-seven maxims collected
in the Thesaurus that “their inclusion in this work confers a kind of official status on
them.” He indicates next that with three exceptions, “all of them are taken literally”
from the Scintillae Ignatianae, a collection of Ignatian maxims for every day of the
year published in 1705 by the Hungarian Jesuit Gábor Hevenesi. But, although he pro-
poses to indicate Hevenesi’s immediate sources of each of the thirty-seven maxims,
as well as their oldest sources, for the second he only indicates a letter of St. Ignatius
October 15, 1944 of Nouvelles de la mission—a reference that the Acta Romana, on their part,
have not indicated.

via free access
to St. Francisco de Borja of September 17, 1555, containing indeed the same thought,
but rather loosely expressed and far from having the bite and sharpness of Hevenesi’s
expression. We will meet the text again, now following Fr. C.A. Kneller.
When Fr. Kneller was questioned in 1928 about maxim number 2, he had tracked
down its origin. To complete his documentation, an indication that Fr. Pinard provided
Fr. de Lapparent will suffice. In his Scintillae Ignatianae, Hevenesi himself indicated
his source: “Ign. Ap. Nolarc.,” which designates Nolarci, Vita del patriarca sant’Ignatio
published in Venice in 1680, 1682, 1687, and thereafter. Nolarci is the anagram of
Virgilio Carnoli, a Jesuit from Bologna, who died in 1693. To be sure, we do not find
Hevenesi’s formula word for word in this work, but an anecdote is told in chapter 26
about Ignatius’s faith and hope, which is certainly the oldest source. It is as follows:
one day toward the end of 1555 or the beginning of 1556, accompanied by Ribadeneyra,
Ignatius visited the marquis of Sarriá, Spanish ambassador in Rome, who received
them rather coldly, despite his friendship with the Society of Jesus. Ignatius searched
for the motive of his coldness and believed he could guess it. Perhaps the ambassador
thought that the Society of Jesus gave little importance to his influence upon the pope,
because it did not recur to his good offices more often. Regarding this, Ignatius declares
to Ribadeneyra that he was at the point of telling him that thirty years ago Our Lord gave
him to understand that in everything regarding his holy service, he [Ignatius] must use all
possible licit means, but then trust in God and not in those means. He would explain to
the ambassador that if he wanted to be one of those means himself, the Society would
value him as such, but that he must know that this Society’s hope is not based upon
him or any creature on earth, but on God alone.2
Carnoli could have read this charming anecdote in Ribadeneyra, who recounts it
on three different occasions; reporting it verbatim in his Vita Ignatii Loyolae, book 5,
chapter 9; in third person in De actis Sancti Ignatii, and in the Dichos y hechos de Nuestro
Padre Ignacio.3 Even if Hevenesi did not have access to the last two works, which were
2 Here is the passage from De actis Sancti Ignatii: “En tiempo que el marqués de Sarriá estava
por embaxador en Roma, hauiéndo ydo á hablar nuestro Padre la primera uez, no le hizo el
acogimiento que fuera razón, ó por no conocerle, ó por no aduertir en ello; y sospechando
nuestro Padre que la causa era porque la Compañía no hazía más caudal dél, ayudándose
de su favor como protector principal, me dixo que pensava dezi(r)le que havía 36 años que
nuestro Señor le hauía dado á entender que en las cosas de su santo seruicio deuía usar todos
los medios honestos possibles, pero después tener su confiança en Dios, y no en los medios;
y que si entre ellos quería ser uno su señoría, que la Compañía le abraçaría por tal, pero de
manera que supiese que la esperanza della no estrebaría en el medio, sino en Dios, al cual
estaua arrimada.”—Monumenta Ignatiana, series 4, 1:391, 400; see also Fontes narrativi de
Sancto Ignatio de Loyola, 2:no. 108, 391. The date indicated here is a slip of the pen. Cf. 3n2.
3 These are the titles of two short works resembling memoirs and recollections, which
Ribadeneyra used as materials for his biography of Ignatius.

via free access
still in manuscript in his lifetime, he could have consulted the first, whose editio prin-
ceps dates from 1572.
Father Kneller is not satisfied with this thrice-repeated testimony. In order to show
that maxim number 2 is in agreement with Ignatius’s thinking, even if Hevenesi alone
is responsible for its form, he quotes at great length Ignatius’s letter to Francisco de
Borja, which Fr. Picard simply mentions. We translate this passage:
Seeing God in all things, as it pleases him that I should do, and considering it a
mistake to trust and hope in some means or efforts, whatever they are, and also
not regarding it a sure path to confide in God in everything without wanting to
get help for what he has given me, because it seems to me in Our Lord that I must
use all means, desiring in all things his greatest praise and glory, and absolutely
nothing else, I decided …4
This is a long explanation, Fr. Kneller remarks, for what we would like to read in a
short, compact form closer to Hevenesi’s. Ribadeneyra again satisfies this desire. This
witness of Ignatius, evidently recalling the confidence he received after the visit to
the Spanish ambassador and perhaps other similar anecdotes, wrote in his De ratione
Sancti Ignatii in gubernando:
In the things he undertook for Our Lord’s service, he employed all human means
in order to succeed and all possible care and efficacy, as if the success depended
on him, and in the same way, he confided in God and abandoned himself to his
Divine Providence, as if all other human means he employed were of no effect.5
The similarity of this sentence to maxim number 2 is so striking that it is hard to doubt
that the great collector of Ignatian maxims, Hevenesi, was not inspired by it. Fr. Kneller
does not even raise the question, although the De ratione gubernandi remained
4 Monumenta Ignatiana, series 1, vol. 9, 626, September 17, 1555: “Mirando á Dios Nuestro
Señor en todas las cosas, como le place que yo haga, y teniendo por error confiar y esperar
en medios algunos ó industrias en sí solas; y también no teniendo por vía segura confiar el
todo en Dios Nuestro Señor, sin quererme ayudar de lo que me ha dado, por parezerme, en el
Señor Nuestro que devo usar de todas las partes, deseando en todas cosas su mayor alabança
y gloria, y ninguna otra cosa, ordené …”
5 Monumenta Ignatiana, series 4, chapter 1, 466: “En las cosas del seruicio de Nuestro Señor
que emprendía usaua de todos los medios humanos para salir con ellas, con tanto cuydado y
eficacia, como si dellos dependiera el buen suceso; y de tal manera confiaua en Dios estaua
pendiente de su diuina prouidencia, como si todos los otros medios humanos que tomaua no
fueran de algún efe[c]to.”

via free access
in manuscript form until 1878.6 But let us take the worst case and assume that the
Hungarian Jesuit was not familiar with this treatise of Ribadeneyra. Despite that, he
might have recovered the essential point from a passage of the Vita del Patriarca sant’
Ignatio that Fr. Kneller does not cite, but that Fr. Pinard de la Boullaye indicated to
Fr. Lapparent. Carnoli/Nolarci writes: “Just as, on the one hand, Ignatius acted entirely
as if he had to do everything by himself alone; so, on the other hand, he abandoned
himself to God, as if his judgement and his action had no value.”7
Thus, except in the terms for dependence and success, in this passage taken from an
author whom Hevenesi cites, he found everything he needed and notably the two as if,
in order to construct his maxim. If he was unfamiliar with Ribadeneyra, he is only the
more original, since on his own, he would have recovered and set in the same place the
terms for success and dependence.
Let us set this hypothesis aside. Like Fr. Kneller, we have no doubt that Hevenesi had
De ratione gubernandi on his writing table. This passage is the intermediate link that
connects maxim number 2 with Ignatius’s confidence to Ribadeneyra himself after the
visit to the marquis of Sarriá. Accordingly, it is enough to compare this maxim to those
two fundamental documents to perceive immediately the measure in which it agrees
with its sources. But the matter is more difficult than it seems at first glance. First,
Hevenesi’s expression is one of the most complex. Next, because when his adversaries
accuse him of having “reversed the two components of the sentence” and propose to
return to the original order, they do not always speak very precisely, nor do they agree
on what revision would restore that order. To get a little clarity in the debate, a gram-
matical and logical analysis is in order.
From this angle, Hevenesi’s expression consists of two sentences, each composed
of a principal clause in the imperative governing a subordinate cause that begins with
quasi, as if. As indicated, the two sentences are opposed by tamen, however. By virtue
of the so (sic and ita) that connects them, the second imperative depends on the first.
Furthermore, within each sentence, each subordinate clause is opposed to its impera-
tive, duplicating the opposition of the two principal clauses. Finally, in each subor-
dinate clause, two pairs of contraries are intertwined, forming what rhetoric terms a
chiasmus: omnis a te—nihil a Deo (everything by you—nothing by God) in the first; tu
nihil—Deus omnia (you nothing—God everything) in the second. It is definitely not
the double chiasmus that causes trouble for those like Fr. Lapparent, who want only to
6 To abbreviate, we will henceforth cite De ratione Sancti Ignatii in gubernado as De ratione

gubernandi.
7 Nolarci, Vita (Venice, 1680), chapter 31, 388: “Si come da una parte (Sant’ Ignatio) si adoper-
aua tutto quasi havesse a fare ogni cosa egli solo; così dall’altra si abbandonava in Deo non
altrimenti che se’l pensar suo, e’l suo fare valesse nulla.”

via free access
invert the components of the sentence. Likewise, whatever change they make, they are
quite clear in preserving the crisp form.
Rather, what seems to them obscure and incoherent in Hevenesi is the relation of
each subordinate clause to its imperative. It seems to become clear and intelligible
once the subordinates or simply the inner chiasmus in each one are interchanged—
which amount to almost the same in relation to meaning.
For the moment, we would ask simply whether the order of Hevenesi’s two subordi-
nate clauses is in conformity with the two major sources just quoted. In the following
arrangement, we place one underneath the other, in different kinds of type, passages
from Ribadeneyra and Hevenesi’s formulas, so as to make the connections stand out
and to perceive immediately in what way their propositions or even their expressions
correspond or differ.
OUR LORD MAKES IGNATIUS UNDERSTAND WHAT IS DUE IN HIS SERVICE

Ignatius on things in God’s service
Sic Deo Fide
USE ALL LICIT MEANS POSSIBLE
Take human means, as if success
depended on them
quasi rerum successus omnis a te penderet
nihil a Deo
BUT THEN TRUST IN GOD NOT IN THESE MEANS

Likewise, Ignatius trusted in God as if these means were nothing.
Ita iis opera quasi tu nihil sit facturus.
admove
solus Deus omnia.
Confronted by these three texts, now easily comparable, it would seem that we have
here the way the relation of the first two must be understood and how the genesis of
the third must be represented stating from these sources.
1. One day, Ignatius received a personal order from the Lord prescribing two opposite
but related attitudes. How? When we know the importance of temporal determina-
tions for Ignatius’s thinking, we become certain that the key word here is next—after.
Governing the second term of the opposition, the word supposes that the first depends
itself on an implicit before. Accordingly, the content of Christ’s order is inseparably
linked to a succession, to an order of content; first use the means … next trust in God …
However, this succession is not purely temporal. Otherwise, there would no longer be

via free access
any question of the first attitude once it is past and exceeded. Rather, in the second
term, the attitude reappears with the words “and not in these means.” Consequently,
we are dealing with two possibilities that are always present to the freedom of Ignatius,
between which, by order of the Lord, he must make a certain hierarchy rule.
2. By these words stamped in his memory, after Ignatius’s death, Ribadeneyra intends
to extract a double benefit: explain the saint’s habitual way of acting and present it
as a model for his disciples, notably for the superiors. So, out of Ignatius’s single sen-
tence, Ribadeneyra makes two, where the subordinated infinitives become principal
verbs in the imperfect, each commanding an as if, which underlines the parallelism
of Ignatius’s two activities and their complementary opposition. At the same time,
Ribadeneyra changes “licit” into “human”—which has the advantage of extending the
opposition and of suggesting that it involves the relation of humans to God. He speci-
fies “possible means” upon which “success depends” so as to show that we are certainly
dealing with an attitude of freedom and not with some technical skill. In this transfor-
mation, Ignatius’s confidence is enlarged into a model of action for the superiors and
even into a valuable rule for us. Except that, the relation to the singular command-
ment received by Ignatius is passed over in silence, although it has not completely
disappeared, since the issue is his behavior in the things he undertakes for the service
of God.
3. Disposing of the three texts and, as is plausible, comparing them, Hevenesi too must
have noticed this semi-disappearance; he must have lamented all the more that the
editions of Nolarci make the importance of Ignatius’s confidence stand out by the use
of italics. Furthermore, as Ribadeneyra’s Life of Ignatius reproduces the confidence as
a direct quote, this lover of maxims must have immediately perceived that he had a
way of remedying this defect. Combining these two passages in one and putting them
in the mouth of Christ addressing Ignatius combines the rule’s universality with the
singularity of the confidence, and by the same stroke enriches the Scintillae Ignatianae
with their most beautiful jewel.
At first sight, nothing is simpler. It suffices to change Ribadeneyra’s imperfects into
imperatives; then to find the place for the you to whom they are addressed; and finally,
to perfect the opposition already in germ with the two as if of De ratione gubernandi.
Infatuated with dialectic no less than with maxims, Hevenesi does not take long to
see that in the first as if, “dependence on success” calls for the “you” capable in the
same way of replacing the “means” in the second, since Ignatius first had evoked the
universality of “all” these means, in order to push it away next with a simple “no,” and
since Ribadeneyra had begun by showing behind the opposition of these two attitudes
of Ignatius, the opposition of the “human” to “God,” it was certainly easy for Hevenesi,
a baroque-era Jesuit, to end in the double chiasmus of his subordinate clauses: omnis

via free access
a te—nihil a Deo; tu nihil—Deus omnia. The jeweler could be content with his work:
in the polishing of its faces, the diamond shone with a thousand fires replicating each
other ad infinitum.
However, his satisfaction was not complete upon his rereading his maxim in this
form: Take all means, as if success depended completely on you and not at all on God;
however, trust in God as if God alone had to do everything and you nothing. He must
have felt a certain inner discomfort, hard to define, mixed with the delight in the task
accomplished. Was he afraid of being misunderstood? Or of having translated the
Lord’s message to Ignatius badly? In any case, he is the one who submits his handwork
to the test.
He must have tried different possible combinations of the four propositions in his
maxim. In the course of these trials, the odds are that he very quickly perceived that
the order of his subordinate clauses could not be reversed without contradicting the
commandment given to Ignatius … But how much time did he need to realize that,
by contrast, nothing prevented the reversal of its imperatives? We do not know. But
the fact is there: by dint of reflecting upon this little problem, one day the light burst
forth and the solution was presented to him. By omitting the prefix of the verb “trust in
God,” he could make an imperative governing the first quasi. Indeed, this fide Deo first
of all expressed obedience to the faith required by every utterance of Christ; but con-
sequently did not exclude but rather anticipated the end, total confidence, expansion
of faith that defined the chiasmus of the second quasi. After this discovery, “take all
the means” came naturally to be installed as the imperative of the second subordinate
clause. In its turn, operam omnem admove indicated the tension of an action looking
toward the fulfillment of the faith that inspired it, but no longer excluded it; rather it
recalled that this action had to begin by “trusting in God” in order to respond to the
ideal that the chiasmus of the first quasi proposes.
With that, Hevenesi accomplishes a double feat. While Ribadeneyra, his immediate
model, felt the need to insist on “the care and efficacy” of Ignatius “in employing all
means” as well as adding to “confidence in God” abandonment to Divine Providence,
Hevenesi manages to say as much and with immensely more power, without a single
word directly related to “adopting the means” in the first sentence or “confidence in
God” in the second. This first exploit only succeeds thanks to another equally astonish-
ing one: a new chiasmus with scope and penetration that captures the imagination.
Now, each imperative stands opposite to the subordinate clause of the other through
the intermediary of the chiasmus of its own subordinate clause. Lastly, to express so
much and such subtle relations, Hevenesi limits himself—with consummate art—to
two three-letter words: sic and ita.
Henceforth, through all the words of this maxim where we are dealing with only
three terms, God, myself, and other things, a thread runs that is subtle and invisible. Its
cutting precision divides the maxim twice both in length and depth. This way, its four

via free access
parts, the four propositions, not only are intertwined but also face each other in pairs;
one to the other in each direction. Simultaneously by its unbreakable flexibility, the
same thread sews up what it has divided so well that it makes it a continuous whole
without the least fissure or seam, palpating with life at the same time as transparent
like a crystal ball, but also dazzling because of its clarity, as if the incandescence of an
intelligible fire, with the heat of a heart of flesh, shone forth from its radiant center …
But let us moderate this admiration based only on a superficial historical and almost
purely grammatical examination. The goal of this examination is to measure the agree-
ment of the traditional maxim with its sources, notably as regards the order of its two
subordinate clauses. A comparison as precise as possible has just shown not only that
this order is exactly that of the two attitudes mandated by Christ to Ignatius; it is also
that of Ribadeneyra’s subordinate clauses. Furthermore, all the secondary elements
that enter into the maxim are obtained either in the confidence of the first or in the
text of the second. Moreover, it seems that all the resources of grammar and style have
been employed by this linguistic virtuoso in order to manifest that this order (first,
use all the means … then total confidence …) is the essence of Christ’s commandment
and binds up its verbal architecture so well that we can no longer change anything or
destroy one without the other.
To reach this result, Hevenesi has made an inversion: not now that of the subordi-
nates in which his critics are interested, but of Ribadeneyra’s principal verbs, which
he has turned into imperatives. But who talks about this double change? Who dares
to reproach Hevenesi for it? Who would want to go back? It is evident that the form
of this maxim is doubly valuable because it represents well the word of Christ making
Ignatius understand the rule of action he has to follow and also the word of Ignatius
transmitting the same principle to his sons and through them to all Christendom. Is
not this one of the reasons why tradition has retained and consecrated it?
Consequently, in its general tenor, the traditional maxim conforms to the oldest
documents of which Hevenesi could dispose and which are available to us today. But
does this maxim agree as well with Ignatius’s doctrine as it is known otherwise?
The father general affirms this agreement in his letter. We could, it seems, be satis-
fied with such a guarantee. But, as the same letter earlier seems to endorse the criticism
of those who doubt this agreement and to approve the complete or partial inversion
of the two subordinate clauses that they propose, it is appropriate to look at this more
closely.
Without searching for unpublished documentation, let us examine the open-

ing of the letter to Francisco de Borja that we have cited above. Ignatius begins by
recalling that he “sees God in all things as it pleases him that I should.” This opening
corresponds perfectly to the initial sic Deo fide of Hevenesi’s expression. That phrase

via free access
recalls an anecdote from the end of 1555 or beginning of 1556 where Ignatius spoke of
a particular illumination going back thirty years. In the letter of September 17, 1555, he
simply refers to the fundamental principle of his spirituality. The agreement between
the principle and the illumination is evident. We can suggest no better guarantee for
Hevenesi. After this, Ignatius rejects a double error in the name of his principle: first,
the presumption that trusts in human means alone; then the lazy confidence in God
that does not seek the assistance of these means. Lastly, he insists on the use of all
these means, basing this duty on a reminder of his peculiar grace: desiring in all things
the greatest praise and glory of God and absolutely nothing else.
We now know very well that this return from the end to the beginning characterizes
Ignatius’s eminently dialectical thought and the circularity of his Exercises. It is found
again identically in Hevenesi’s formula, where confidence in God, who alone is to do all
things, omnia solus sit facturus, connects with the initial sic Deo fide. Between the two,
and without taking the trouble to speak about the presumption excluded by its very
beginning, this formula insists on the need to employ all human means and presents
it as the condition preliminary to the total abandonment that excludes a lazy confi-
dence in Providence. In an analogous way, by making the rejection of this double error
explicit, Ignatius’s letter highlights the same obligation based on a personal vocation.
Father Pinard underlines that this is certainly the sense of this text, because after
summing it up, he adds: “This conviction decided him, for example, to draw up the
Constitution: ‘Although the law of love and charity that the Holy Spirit has the custom
of writing and inscribing in hearts must contribute to the flourishing of the Society
more than the external Constitution’ (preface of the Constitution).”8
For his part, Fr. Kneller attributes the same meaning to the particular illumination
of which Ignatius spoke after his visit to the Spanish ambassador. Basing himself on
the date to which the saint attributes this grace—“more than thirty years earlier”9—
Fr. Kneller forms the following hypothesis: situating himself around 1524 or 1525 and
consequently at the time Ignatius returned from Jerusalem, when he “kept wondering
what he ought to do,” quid agendum, it is very possible that this illumination was the
impulse by which “he was inclined toward spending some time in studies in order to
help souls.”10 This was a key decision for the rest of his life. At this moment, it did not
seem very difficult to carry out. Given that until then, his apostolate, which was already
8 Nolarci, Vita, 299.

9 Ribadeneyra says in the Spanish edition of his life of Ignatius: “Ha mas de treinta annos.”
This forces us to consider that the figure of thirty-six indicated by the Dichos y hechos is a
slip of the pen and to read 30 in De actis, where the curl of the 0 is not completely closed.
Cf. Fontes narrativi, 2, 391, note.
10 Ignatius of Loyola, A Pilgrim’s Journey, no. 50, Tylenda, 59.

via free access
very productive, was not based on theological knowledge but on the graces of infused
contemplation, in particular upon the Exercises, Fr. Kneller correctly says:
It was not completely self-evident that Ignatius ought to employ the natural
means of study. On the contrary, to undertake that means and carry it out with
all its difficulties, he needed a clear, powerful illumination. The result makes
manifest that effectively it was the Spirit of God who directed his choice: despite
all his natural gifts, without studies, Ignatius would never have been able to
become what he was. During the rest of his life, he shows himself to be as he was
in that decision to study. The emphasis on natural means, as he understood it,
remained an original characteristic that he bequeathed to his order.
Illuminated by this hypothesis, Fr. Kneller concludes that the peculiar grace, about
which Ignatius confided to Ribadeneyra, refers immediately to the principle of use
of creatures enunciated in the Foundation.11 Let us add that maxim number 2, which
Hevenesi derived by way of the confidence, also touches the totality of the Exercises
closely at their core. Is not the only point of the Four Weeks and the method of election
to dispose us to receive each time the particular grace that we need in order to apply
the Foundation?
Let us conclude this rapid examination of sources and of the meaning of Hevenesi’s
formula: it seems to us that it agrees as much with the nucleus of Ignatian doctrine as
with the most trustworthy documents.
Section 2: Structure of Maxim Number 2
2.1 Point of Departure of the Objections

First of all, it must be observed that after maxim number 2 entered into circulation,
in 1705, generations of Jesuits accepted and meditated upon it without suspecting
that it was “faulty.” Perhaps they had some difficulty understanding it and penetrat-
ing into its complete depth, but they were not suspicious either about its historical
origin or its authentically Ignatian character. No one attacked it. Everyone defended
it. The suspicion with which some regard it today, at least to our knowledge, only goes
back to a recent period. Moreover, the study of sources is not what provokes this lack
of mistrust. The main complaint they direct against it is that it lacks clarity and intel-
ligibility because of its “convoluted form.” The study of sources only follows in second
place in order to confirm this reproach and justify an inversion that would remedy
the defect. So much so, that we might wonder, especially after the result of our first
11 Kneller, “Ein Wort des hl. Ignatius,” 256–57.

via free access
examination, whether this study and this inversion do not simply come from a lack of
comprehension.
Even if those who criticize Hevenesi’s formula have the best of reasons, it cer-
tainly seems that such was the origin of Fr. Lapparent’s notes scattered through Pour
la Mission seule and Nouvelles de la mission de Shanghai. Immediately after quoting
maxim number 2, he writes: “Several persons have observed that this text is difficult
to explain, incoherent, and a little paradoxical.” Among them, he immediately names
Fr. Mazoyer, translator of A. O’Rahilly’s Life of Fr. W. Doyle. Fr. Mazoyer declares in a
note to the book, “The version in the Thesaurus is certainly defective and does not
make much sense” (71). Fr. Lapparent improves on this: “In other words and briefly,
‘Trust in God as if God did nothing, and act as if your acts were useless.’”12
2.2 Incoherent Propositions or Dialectical Propositions?

It is impossible to express more clearly that the point of departure of criticism is the
impression produced by the traditional text. “Hard to explain,” “incoherent,” “paradoxi-
cal,” are some of the phrases expressing the unusual obstacle and inner paralysis (in
Hegelian expressions) that a “natural consciousness” expresses when it encounters a
“speculative” proposition and tries to comprehend it in the normal manner of “reason-
ing thought.” With Fr. Mazoyer, Fr. de Lapparent declares that at least in this case he
too remains in a state of understanding that unites and separates subjects and predi-
cates as “fixed things,” without imagining that speculative reason could, on the con-
trary, make them fluid and perceive them as “passing from one to the other” in order
to reveal themselves in their true unity. But by suppressing one of the terms of the
opposition in each member of a sentence, its brevity has at least the merit of effecting
a reduction that, first, allows us to make the dialectical maxim stand out, and, then,
penetrate its structure further.
“Trust in God as if God did nothing” seems absurd to the understanding. In the face
of a proposition like this, Faith in God is (or implies) God’s non-activity, as Hegel says:
… representative thought is stopped in its tracks and undergoes an impulse in

the opposite direction, to imagine it thus. The thought starts from the subject
as if it remained at the foundation, but then, as the predicate is rather the sub-
stance, thought finds that the subject has passed into the predicate and there-
fore is suppressed.
Thought can immediately “refute and reduce it to nothing, but to see just what the con-
tent is not, that is only the negative there.” In the face of this nothing, Fathers Mazoyer
and de Lapparent declare that sentence number 2 “does not have much sense,” or in
12 Pour la mission seule, September 15, 1944, no. 1280.

via free access
Hegelian terms, “that its content is vain.” But this kind of declaration “again expresses
that such a manner of examining is also vain, because it is the negative that does not
perceive the positive in itself.” In order to perceive this positive, it is necessary to give
up the way of thinking with which we have thus far been satisfied and make an effort to
genuinely think the “content” or “substance” of the so-called “incoherent” proposition;
in other words, to achieve its deep meaning.
The proposition, “My faith in God is God’s inactivity,” made me experience (as Hegel
says) that its subject has passed into the predicate so much so that in my eyes the
latter is now identical with my liberty, which (in the proposition’s subject) has just
affirmed my faith in him. Faced with the fusion of these two terms (namely the free
positing of my judgement and God’s non-activity), I find myself in the presence of a
“total and independent mass; my thought can no longer wander; it is retained by this
weight” of Ignatian thought, which alerts it by this very pressure to “the requirement to
be immersed in it,” that is to say, “to identify with the content” of this maxim, instead
of “returning to the interior of my consciousness to decide by reasoning if this or that
predicate corresponds to the subject of the proposition.”
What is the meaning of the requirement, of which Hegel again says that to satisfy
it, it is important first of all to “take upon oneself the stress of the concept” or to give
it “concentrated attention,” because “it constitutes the differentiated content and also
the movement of the content”?13
Nothing but what is extremely simple and of which no disciple of Ignatius is

unaware. What is the content of “my faith in God” or of this sic Deo fide that begins
maxim number 2? Nothing but the very clear propositions of the Foundation, provided
that I do not interpret them by separating them from contemplation to gain love (ad
Amorem) and that I comprehend that they concern the deployment of my freedom
hic et nunc, here and now. Moreover, isn’t this what Fr. Kneller recognized when, ask-
ing himself about the meaning of Ignatius’s particular illumination, he expressed the
hypothesis reported above? Accordingly, as we develop the content of this sic Deo of
our 1947 commentary:
It prescribes faith in God, therefore passivity and dependence in regard to divine

freedom by the very phrase, but being persuaded that the latter wills above all
that human freedom and activity should be deployed in all these enterprises, as
if success depended in everything on me and in nothing on God.
13 All of the passage’s Hegelian expressions are taken from the well-known passages of the
preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit, on the speculative proposition and conceiving
thought. Lasson, 2nd ed., 39–44, Hyppolite translation, 1, 51–55.

via free access
Grasping the meaning of the first part of maxim number 2 or passing beyond the
incoherence of “Trust in God as if God did nothing,” and thereby becoming “the nega-
tive that perceives the positive in itself,” it is quite simply to comprehend that faith in
the supernatural destiny to which God calls me by love depends first on my wishing on
each occasion to use my intelligence and my freedom, in order to develop the potenti-
alities of my individuality in particular and of human nature in general. According to
the account of Fr. Kneller, this is the peculiarly Ignatian heritage.
It is useless to give the same treatment to the second proposition: “Act as if your
acts were useless.” Transformed into the proposition “My human action is useless,” it is
clear that it is amenable to the same analysis. In order that the positive in this negative
may appear, it is enough that I should perceive that this uselessness is relative not to
the simple natural order of my activity, but to the supernatural order where God alone
does everything and I nothing. As we wrote in 1947, this is to prescribe as the supreme
achievement of human activity, passivity of faith in God.14
In this way, each of the two incoherent phrases that Fr. de Lapparent gives us recov-
ers a profound meaning. Evidently, the meaning will be deepened further if we seek to
understand their relation, their unity. Each is dialectical on its own. How would they
not be so between them, since at bottom they have the same terms, the predicate of
the first becoming the subject of the second, as the predicate of the latter becomes
the subject of the first? In other words, my faith in God passes into human activity, as
human activity passes into absolute confidence in God. But is it necessary to dig so
deep? Since the first member of maxim number 2 appeared to have as its content the
Foundation insofar as oriented toward the contemplation ad Amorem, it seems that we
can also say that the second has nothing other than the Suscipe insofar as it remits to
the Foundation. At the same time, it appears that Hevenesi’s expression concentrated
the whole substance of the Exercises in this diversity in order to follow their moment
and re-encounter their circularity.
Will such a perspective be reproached as only being open to someone who risks
himself to “taking upon himself the effort of the concept that constitutes the differen-
tiated content and its movement”? But this strange language must not frighten us. It is
easy to know that Hegel found his idea of “mediation” or of “movement of the concept”
by reflecting upon the death of Christ the Mediator, in order to see in its terms only a
transposition of the exhortation that Paul addressed to the Philippians:
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of
God … made himself of no reputation … and become obedient to the point of
death, even to the death of the cross. Therefore, God also has highly exalted him
14 See above, pp. 288–89.

via free access
and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those
under the earth.
Philippians 2:5–10
Besides, there is no need to be familiar with Hegel in order to let this mind be in you
which was also in Christ Jesus, nor in order to glimpse the depth of the Ignatian maxim.
Evidently, it is better to do and re-do the Exercises that develop the maxim and are
thereby the best schola affectus, school of love, in which the Christian heart can learn
them.
If it is true that the two components of Hevenesi’s formula correspond to the

Foundation and the Suscipe, it seems that we are already freed from examining the
arguments of those who want to change their order. What son of the Society of Jesus
could admit such a reversal in the founder’s work, without immediately perceiving it
as a subversion? Yet in fact this does not seem to have been perceived by those who
extol or accept this change of order,15 so let us not take as established a perspective
that excludes the change so radically and whose origin may seem suspicious. Let us
return to Fr. de Lapparent, ready to accept in all their force the reasons he offers in
favor of his opinion.
2.3 Formula B and the Kieckens Translation

Confirmed by the obvious incoherence to which its brevity reduces the traditional
text, Fr. de Lapparent immediately proposes to replace formula A by another, B, “which
simply reverses the clauses without changing a single word”: B. Haec prima sit agendo-
rum regula: sic Deo fide quasi tu nihil, Deus omnia solus sit facturus; tamen iis operam
omnem admove quasi rerum successus omnis a te, nihil a Deo, penderet.
We have something clear and logical here, he continues: “May the first rule of our
actions be to act as if the success depended only on you and not on God; and to aban-
don yourself to God as if he had to do everything in your place” (Kieckens translation
of Hevenesi, Scintillae, Brussels, 1903, 6).
Let us admit that formula B and even Hevenesi’s translation are more “clear” and
“logical” than formula A. But what is less so in our view is that Kieckens seems to con-
sider these first two texts as equivalent, if not identical, and to find in the second text
15 Such as, for example, the editors of the Fontes narrativi, who, in connection with Ignatius’s
comment to Ribadeneyra, quote the Ignatian maxim but in the form of the Santander
Thesaurus, giving a reference to Hevenesi’s work and Fr. Kneller’s article (2:391–92n140),
without ever letting the reader suspect that the formula of the Scintillae Ignatianae is
reversed and that Fr. Kneller’s historical arguments favor the Hungarian Jesuit’s version.

via free access
this reversal of the two clauses, or more exactly of the two subordinates, that he him-
self performed in the first formula. A brief examination is enough to recognize that
Kieckens, while translating his model rather carelessly, at least respects the order of
the two subordinates in Hevenesi: first, “as if success depended only upon you”; and
then, “as if God had to do everything.” It is still true that this translator effects a rever-
sal, not of the two subordinates as Fr. de Lapparent seems to think, but of the two
imperatives, sic Deo fide and operam admove, which in exchanging their placement
become “to act” and “to abandon”—two infinitives.
Haven’t we already encountered a similar rearrangement during our historical
and grammatical analysis? Then Hevenesi makes the infinitives of Ignatius’s confi-
dence pass through Ribadeneyra’s imperfects to the imperative. Here, by contrast, it
is Hevenesi’s translator who brings his imperatives to the infinitive mood and to their
original place. So that the meaning does not change, Kieckens claims to have correctly
translated Hevenesi’s: “May the first rule of your actions be to act as if …” and “to aban-
don yourself to God as if …”
But then, why does Fr. de Lapparent not have the right to consider his formula B as
equivalent to this translation by Kieckens? Isn’t he more faithful to Hevenesi, since his
formula conserves the principal verbs in the imperative and in their place? If he does
not have this right, how did he not perceive it and why did B and Kieckens-Hevenesi
seem equivalent to him?
It is easy to give a preliminary answer to the last question. But disentangling the
snarl in the attempt to keep Hevenesi’s imperatives in their place by reversing the sub-
ordinate clauses would require more time. Nevertheless, it would be worth the trouble
to undertake it. For only by this effort will we understand why the traditional maxim,
in the form that at first sight is incoherent and distorted, possesses (beside its rigor-
ous orthodoxy) a second, less frequent merit: that of obliging the mind that wants
to penetrate its meaning to perceive the inner connection of the content; and to see
why, on the other hand, the formulas that try to make it easy to grasp by reversing the
subordinate clauses conceal some defect, slight in itself but rather dangerous, since it
escapes many of the best readers.
Let us take the chance.
Formula B and the Kieckens translation seem equivalent to Fr. de Lapparent. He
is not totally wrong. If they are not equivalent from the perspective of their content
and doctrinal value, they are both “clear and logical” for someone happy with a quick
superficial reading. The reason is quite simply that both have lost the paradoxical turn,
or better put the dialectical form, by virtue of which each imperative seems denied by
the negative contained in its subordinate clause: fide Deo by nihil a Deo, just as operam
admove by tu nihil. From there comes the “unusual braking or interior stoppage” that
makes it seem to Fr. de Lapparent (quite wrongly as we have seen) that Hevenesi’s two
phrases are meaningless.

via free access
Formula B and Kiekens’s text are alike in lacking this dialectical form. But they have
very different content. The second retains the essence or substance of the double dia-
lectical movement of the traditional maxim. Although the grammatical form no longer
makes it evident, this movement is there. It acts and only asks to reappear when in the
search for its meaning, however slightly, we scratch the verbal crusts that obstruct it.
By contrast, formula B has displaced and distorted this movement, destroying its soul,
so that the two phrases no longer cling together, are isolated, and come to engender
chimeras. The best thing that could happen, when we become aware of the danger and
want to remedy it, is that each should appear as useless as the other and that the rule
that assembles them should reveal its nullity in this way.
Why is there such difference when they seem so similar? For just one reason: for-
mula B has switched the subordinate clauses. The Kieckens translation has retained
them in the order found in Ribadeneyra and Hevenesi. Therefore, the order must not
depend merely on a formal dialectic but upon what is most essential there to faith and
human action, which these different formulas aspire to balance and reconcile.
To discover along with this essential characteristic the whole importance of this
order of the subordinate clauses, we cannot avoid taking up again the analysis of the
traditional maxim, not now at the grammatical level but on the strictly dialectical
one. By grasping how and why the negations that flow back over each of the impera-
tives through the quasi of their subordinate clauses not only do not destroy them but,
to the contrary, reinforce one by the other by revealing their inseparable reciprocity,
we will better understand the dialectical structure of this maxim and the secret rea-
son why the formulas that reverse the subordinate clauses lack both its strength and
its truth.
2.4 Dialectical Structure and the Role of Quasi

Every proposition introduced by if enunciates a hypothesis, which is to say etymologi-
cally that it posits a base with a view to further construction or a relation of condition-
ing to conditioned. André Lalande’s Philosophical Vocabulary says that this proposition
is then received without regard to the question of knowing whether it is true or false,
but only as a principle such that a set of conclusions can be deduced from it. For physi-
cists, a hypothesis is rather a “doubtful but plausible conjecture by which the imagi-
nation encroaches on knowledge and which is destined to be verified subsequently
either by direct observation or by agreement of all its consequences with observation.”
Although here we are dealing neither with mathematics nor physics, the as if in
Hevenesi’s maxim plays no less of an analogous role. The as preceding the if notifies
us that the hypothesis stated must be taken in part as true and real and in part as false
and unreal. Conjugating imagination and intelligence in this way, the hypothesis is
first of all “a principle of action, a heuristic tool” that permits the anticipation of mind

via free access
over experience, provoking the mind to discover relations with realities that otherwise
would escape it. After the discovery, the hypothesis gives mind the means “to inter-
pret and coordinate” the acquired results in order to set up “a systematic summary of
experience,”16 which can become in turn the basis for new anticipations.
In other, more Hegelian terms (which will become clearer little by little), we can
say that each of Hevenesi’s two uses of quasi posits identity just as much as difference
between the terms that he sets in relation: on the one hand, my faith in God and the
use of all possible means with an eye to success, and on the other, human action and
the efficacy of divine action.
Acknowledging that, let us see how everything is articulated in this maxim.
The identity posited by the first quasi has as its effect opening the field of the pos-
sible before my freedom. Thus, by virtue of my faith in God, my will is summoned to
conceive the grandest projects just as my imagination is summoned to employ its inge-
nuity to discover the best means to make them come to pass. But exactly by inviting me
to identify my freedom with that of God, this same word retains a capital difference that
forbids me, even in a burst of exaltation, to delude myself about my real power. I am
told that the success of my undertaking in the service of God depends in everything on
me, in nothing on God, but as a merely hypothetical affirmation, not at all a categorical
one. As hypothetical, it is partly fictitious, which is to say that by positing my freedom
and its maximum deployment as a base, the affirmation presupposes just as much,
on the other hand, that success depends in reality on God. Posited in the categorical
mood, the same assertion would exclude this truth. But how could such an exclusion
be pronounced in the name of the imperative fide Deo?
At this point, I might be tempted to ask in what measure, therefore, does success
depend on God and in what measure does it depend on me. How should I delimit their
respective parts in the future result? But this temptation within the reflection is imme-
diately eliminated by the reality of the hypothesis that it poses in the name of faith:
success depends in everything on you, in nothing on God. However interesting the
question raised might have appeared in the first instant, it can only prevent me from
acting and seeking the means for an efficacious action. Consequently, it is automati-
cally eliminated by faith, which has made my liberty the principle of action and made
its maximum deployment the heuristic means.
16 These last quotations are also from the article “Hypothesis” in Lalande’s Philosophical
Vocabuary [Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, prepared by the members
and correspondents of the Société française de philosophie and published with correc-
tions and observations by André Lalande, 2 vols. Paris: Alcan, 1927, and republished fre-
quently thereafter].

via free access
But then, if I truly ought to believe that success depends on me in everything and on
God in nothing, without even seeking to determine the part of each one, how does the
reaction of this nihil a Deo not entail the radical negation of the fide Deo that posited
it? It is precisely that this nihil a Deo only turns back upon the imperative through the
quasi that first served to posit it as hypothetical and does not perform the function of
a filter separating the true from the false, letting the true pass through and retaining
and neutralizing the false. What this quasi retains, in fact, is the affirmation “success
depends on you in everything on God in nothing,” insofar as the affirmation tends to
be posed as categorical. It neutralizes the affirmation by the presupposition of the
hypothesis: on the one hand, success depends on God, but it lets pass the reality of the
hypothesis that is compatible with this presupposition. After the latter has opened up
the area of the possible to my freedom and stimulated my imagination in its search for
efficacious means, it is no more than a fiction. But this fiction still has enormous truth,
certainly not to shake however slightly the fide Deo, which has imagined it, but well
enough to rid my faith of the illusion that threatens it, in its turn, to believe that it can
confide in God and abandon itself totally to him, without my freedom first seeking to
do all possible to it and before it has done so.
So, here is the subtle interaction that is developed through this first quasi, between
freedom in search of success and my faith in God. The latter takes away any barrier to
the impulse of the former without, however, allowing it to yield to the slightest pre-
sumptuous illusion about its real power. Reciprocally, when my freedom turns back
toward my faith it can only render homage to the initiative of God who has liberated
it, despite, or rather because of the very ignorance in which it remains in regard to its
powers. My freedom, in its turn, prevents my faith from dosing off in lazy quietism. In
short, divine faith and human freedom buttress each other for the greater firmness of
the first and the greater expansion of the second.
Having carefully chosen the point of application of my effort, I set myself to the
task, using all possible means. It is then that my freedom in exercise meets the second
quasi. It is clear that this second quasi is going to play the same double role as the first.
But here, unlike earlier in the Before, the point is no longer to estimate the chances of
success, nor to make a project ready and appreciate its worth. Now, in the After, I am
confronted with reality with its good and bad fortune, and the point is to pursue my
faith without letting myself be beaten down by the one or become bloated with pride
by the other.
After having been “principle of action and heuristic means,” the hypothesis is now
situated at “the end of the movement,” and becomes principle of “interpretation” of
the real and the means of “coordination after the fact” for the results, with a view to
furnishing a “synthetic summary of experience.” As previously, but in this new perspec-
tive, the hypothesis therefore posits the identity and the difference between human

via free access
action’s and divine action’s total efficacy. By positing this identity right away, this sec-
ond quasi redoubles my impetus and amplifies my hope without limits. What may
I not attain, since my effort is supported upon God’s all-powerful will? But at the same
time, it prevents me from being carried away by the first gains achieved by my initia-
tive. For if God alone must do everything in the future, all the glory for what is already
gained also reverts to him alone.
This Deus solus omnia facturus, however, is not isolated. Its correlative is tu nihil,
which now, by contrast, posits an infinite distance, an incommensurable difference,
between divine action and mine. In fact, if my first impulses have led to some suc-
cess, they are far from corresponding to my desires. The more ambitious they were, the
more disappointing the initial results seem to me, the more formidable the obstacles
to be overcome in order to advance on the same road, the more torturous the troubles
I must undergo merely not to fall back. What good is it to wear myself out in sterile
suffering? It is better to be free of useless labor in expectation of God’s hour, since he
alone must do everything and I nothing.
There too, the categorical form under which this proposition presents itself and
becomes a factor of discouragement and laziness is immediately contradicted by the
quasi, which in the name of the command to action founded upon faith in God con-
tained in the Before, presupposes to the contrary: You too, you must do everything with
God and, to start, undergo sufferings and obstacles that are no less his than yours.
Retrieved under the negative mode, the identification of my freedom’s passion with
that of divine freedom no longer leaves any room for the temptation of laziness or
pride, because Deus solus omnia sit facturus subsists as a promise of resurrection.
The tu nihil can then flow back upon the imperative omnem operam admove, with-
out annulling it. For, the second quasi, functioning like the first in the manner of a fil-
ter, will retain the function of a divine action that would be exercised without human
consent and would render human effort useless. But, by contrast, it does allow the
truth of divine freedom’s sovereign efficacy to pass. In the exact measure in which,
by appropriating this same truth, I would unite my freedom to that of God, my action
will no longer be either stopped by discouragement or thwarted by any return of pride
about its own merits. Still less will it risk deviating into the search for some illusory
perfection.
On the contrary, stretched to the maximum toward the achievement of the divine
work, it will not cease to use all possible means to further it. Also, the faith that is its
principle will then be able to be fulfilled in absolute confidence in the victory of the
God-Man over all adversity, even death. Without even awaiting this final triumph, this
confidence will let it taste in the smallest joy in the essence of the Love for which “all is
grace” and to draw from it the impetus and strength necessary for new action …
If we are not mistaken, this is the articulation of the affirmations and negations
interconnected in the maxim, which give it a structure like that of the Exercises. The

via free access
reciprocal play of its dialectical opposition is so well connected and combined that any
change disrupts its order, undermining however slightly its power if the issue is only
(as in Kieckens) the placement of the two imperatives, but destroying it completely if
the two subordinate clauses are reversed. Once the role of the two occurrences of quasi
is understood, that is easy to show.
2.5 Critique of Formula B: Role of Sic and Ita

If formula B seems easily understandable to Fr. de Lapparent, it is because the two
imperatives appear in it, no longer negated but reaffirmed and even taken to the abso-
lute by their two subordinate clauses. “Trust in God as if he alone had to do everything
and you nothing.” That indeed is clear and logical. However, such a proposition in no
way excludes (on the contrary it appeals to) the quietist danger that threatens perfect
abandon. Obviously, the second part has to provide the necessary correction. “Act,” it
says, “as if success depended completely on you, not at all on God.” Yet, the correction
is only obtained at the cost of a new and equal danger: the Pelagianism of an action
presuming to reach its goals by one’s own powers!
It will be said that this double change is hardly threatening. It is all the less so in that
one must necessarily annul the other, since formula B’s two sentences, like formula A’s,
are still connected by sic and ita. Let us grant the slightness of the threat, but for a
completely different reason, strictly psychological and social, not logical. The reason is
that it is rare for us to take the trouble to think the substance of such maxims genuinely.
Moreover, they draw their practical value and their vital sense less from the words
they connect than their literary context and above all from the social milieu in which
they are received and transmitted. The Thesaurus on the one hand and the life of the
Society of Jesus on the other—not to mention the life of the church—contain a thou-
sand means, each of which suffices to neutralize effectively the error carried in a few
badly assembled words.
But if we wish, as we should, to hold to the meaning of these words and to their
logical values, things are different. In formula B, sic and ita no longer have the scope
they had in Hevenesi’s formula. In the latter, they mean an unbreakable bond of the
whole content according to a Before and an After, both rational and temporal. In the
former, to the contrary, they no longer mark anything but a temporal succession and
an external link between two sentences. Also, in practice they are easily separated, and
consequently, just as it is difficult to annul the danger of the first by the second, so also
it is easy to concede one to the other. In other words, given the internal dislocation that
results from the inversion of the subordinate clauses, nothing in formula B any longer
opposes what we invoked, either its sic Deo fide to cover our laziness, or its ita operam
admove to justify our presumption, or even both in succession according to the neces-
sities of our situation.

via free access
There is no similar danger with Hevenesi’s formula. His two imperatives (opposed
but complementary from a double standpoint) are joined to avoid the least danger
either of Pelagianism or of quietism. The first orients all faith in God toward the blos-
soming of human freedom, without lessening in anything the dependence of our ini-
tiatives upon grace; whereas the second subordinates all the mass of human action to
divine freedom, while making the full use of those means the condition of absolute
confidence in divine freedom.
Accordingly, it is true that formula B cannot be accused of heterodoxy. Since it

retains in its subordinate clauses, despite their reversal, the reciprocal opposition of
its two sets of contraries, it admits an interpretation that leaves it exempt from any
reproach. But at a great cost! Such a charitable reading supposes that, keeping in mind
this intertwining of opposites, we mentally reestablish the fundamental order indi-
cated by Ignatius—first, use of all means … then, absolute confidence in God—and do
so, although the two imperatives by their identical placement in both formulas seem
to indicate the contrary order. For those who already experience so many difficulties in
understanding Hevenesi’s maxim, this is no easy feat.
The simplest way to achieve this restoration will also allow them, better than long
analyses, to grasp the weakness of formula B, in the following way:
In order to eliminate cheaply and easily the danger hidden in formula B’s two sen-
tences, the shortest way is to contrast each one with its contradictory.
After saying:
“Trust God as if God had to do everything and you nothing,”
let us think:
“Do not trust God as if …”
Likewise, after saying:

“Act as if success depended on you in everything and on God in nothing,”
let us think:
“Do not act as if …”
These negative phrases are not erroneous in themselves, and it is clear that the danger
of quietism is removed from the first imperative by their negation, as is the danger of
Pelagianism from the second. But how can the paired phrases be both equally true,
although they contradict each other? There is only one explanation for this phenom-
enon: the subordinate clauses introduced by quasi are capable of having a double
meaning that reflects back upon the principal clauses. It is not that either of these
pairs is ambiguous. But the quasi reveals a relation of analogy between the terms it

via free access
relates. By virtue of that relation, they are posited as partly the same, partly different,
partim idem, partim diversum. Consequently, the verbs that command let appear the
identity between faith in God and absolute confidence as well as the identity between
the initiatives of human freedom and efficacy, without denying the difference that sep-
arates these terms. On the contrary, the verbs of prohibition highlight this difference,
without denying further the correlative identity. The four terms resulting from splitting
the two infinitives now lie beside each other like the pieces of a puzzle taken apart.
Let us recall the way in which Hevenesi’s formula had managed to enclose one
member of the pairs in the other. We saw that in his formula, each subordinate clause
contains a presupposition that, as the inverse of the hypothesis that it enunciates, pre-
vents the hypothesis from being posited in the categorical or absolute mood. “On the
one hand, success depends on God,” denies in the same measure “it depends on me
in everything, on God in nothing.” The same holds for, “You too must do everything
with God,” in relation to, “God alone must do everything, and I nothing.” This second
negation, acting as a blotter, limits each time the first negation and manifests the sub-
ordination, preventing Deo fide from being destroyed by nihil a Deo in the first, just as
operam admove by the nihil in the second. Thanks to the negation of the negation, each
imperative is only limited so as to be able and to need to be joined to the otherwise
unbreakable unity. The faith in God that must lead to the initiative of freedom and
that needs human action in order to be transformed into absolute confidence runs no
danger of quietism. Likewise, the free action that depends on faith and is only accom-
plished by being united to divine freedom runs no risk of yielding to Pelagianism. The
sic and the ita that shape and direct this double mediation obtain their full meaning.
Why therefore did they lose it in formula B? Why, when its subordinate clauses
remain identical to those of Hevenesi, does the negation of the negation no longer
pursue its role?
2.6 Placement of the Imperative and Order of the Subordinate Clause

Such a question calls for a double answer: the first and obvious one makes a case for
the placement of the imperatives in relation to the subordinate clauses. We will show
its insufficiency by examining the Kieckens formula. It will become clear that the order
of the subordinate clauses is very important and why it is. In this way, we will discover
the essential point that we have sought from the outset.
If the quasi no longer fulfills its role in each phrase of formula B, it is because the
subordinate clauses are no longer opposed to the imperative that ought to correspond
to them. The negation of the negation can no longer function either within each sen-
tence to balance it, or between the two in order to connect them. In the first, quasi Deus
omnia solus sit facturus transmits to the infinite the faith/confidence in God posited by

via free access
the imperative fide Deo. Tu nihil can only confirm the human you’s effacement before
God. The presupposition itself, “You also must do everything with God,” is impotent by
itself to give it back any activity. For, at this initial moment, the “do” cannot supply any-
thing but “do confidently.” Isn’t that already what the quietist I does and what makes
it quietist?—The same holds for human action in the second sentence where a Deo
nihil can only constitute the exaltation of freedom. As for the presupposition “On the
one hand success depends on God,” how could it be opposed to that? For the Pelagian
self, this “God’s part” is precisely the radical autonomy of freedom. This is why, in both
cases, the negation included in the presupposition can only recuperate strength, life,
and reason for being through the contradiction that comes from the outside. “Do not
trust in God …” “Do not do …” In short, instead of being internal as in formula A, in the
absence of the imperative that corresponds to it, it must remain external.
However, formula B’s defect has a deeper root than this non-correspondence. Once
we invert the two sentences without changing anything in them, the internal negation
finds its role again. Act as if success depended in everything on you and in nothing on
God. Likewise trust in God, as if God had to do everything, and you nothing.
We thus re-encounter the model that Hevenesi must have envisaged when he imag-
ines drawing a maxim from Ignatius’s confidence and Ribadeneyra’s text. Kieckens
translating Hevenesi also achieves that in an impersonal form. The dialectical move-
ment loses its form then, but it is not destroyed. When we look even a little beneath
the verbal shell for the meaning, the dialectic revives with it. Evidently, since the sub-
ordinate clause seems to reaffirm the principal verb rather than deny it, it seems at
first glance to oppose its contradictory to it. But, in order to see that there is really no
need for this, it suffices to ask oneself, to what action does this “act” (or Kieckens’s “it
is necessary to act”) connect me. Obviously, it is to an undertaking in God’s service,
in other words to an action inspired by faith in God. Accordingly, Hevenesi’s fide Deo
reappears, upon which the internal negation can play once more. The same occurs in
the “trust in God” or in Kieckens’s “it is necessary … that you abandon.” Given that the
issue in the whole rule is an action, and that from the beginning the latter is posited as
human free initiative,17 this “trust” or “abandon” supposes that the action lasts, even if
it takes the form of a passion. Consequently, operam admove reappears, returning its
value to the internal negation of its subordinate clause and thereby to the sic and the
ita that bind the two sentences.
With that, it becomes evident that the order of the subordinate clauses matters
much more than that of the imperatives “act” or “trust in God.” The latter are such that
17 This is the whole difference with formula B, which, although it too is a “rule of action,”
only makes this free initiative intervene in the second place, in the After.

via free access
they mutually presuppose each other, provided that the former respect the order of
temporal and rational movements that are common to human action and to faith in God.
An action is necessarily the initiative of freedom, choice of means, and a project before
being an execution brought about by the means, and before being an accomplishment
of the project. Likewise, faith is also human obedience to God before being able to be
accomplished in total trust. To the temporal Before and After through which human
freedom is deployed correspond the rational Before and After, according to which
faith’s “reasonable service” can increase, faith that makes our “bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1).
If this order is respected by the subordinate clause, the dialectical movement is
unimportant, except for the form that must express it, that “act” precedes “trust in
God.” This action in God’s service presupposes that it depends on faith as the “total
confidence” that the action should persist. In this case, the dialectical expression
(which gives so much force to Hevenesi’s maxim because it makes perceptible the
interdependence of human action and faith in God) disappears. But what is essential
remains: the movement by which faith provokes the initiative of freedom, and through
the mediation of action is itself perfected by uniting human freedom to divine free-
dom. Thus provoked, directed, sustained, and accompanied by faith, human action
is governed by divine grace from beginning to end. But there is not a single step in its
progress from beginning to end that does not serve and even in a sense is not indis-
pensable to the manifestation of the greater glory of God.
If, on the other hand, the subordinate clauses are transposed, the faith that attempts
to reach absolute confidence at one stroke does not simply risk being deluded about
itself. Since no internal bond ties it to the action any more, the action for its part is also
threatened by a similar danger. Instead of being joined in order to be supported and
amplified by each other, divine grace and human freedom tend to be isolated and sepa-
rated, to fall back on themselves in two superposed orders or realms, without internal
communication or an organic relation. No doubt the absolute primacy of faith will
be greatly exalted, but will it thereby become more effective? Should we not fear that
freedom, satisfied by the proclamation, may abuse the radical autonomy that is the
necessary response of nominal sovereignty in every order?
In short, because the connection and distinction of before and after is the necessary
temporal and rational foundation upon which divine grace and human freedom are born,
since attracting one another and joining so both progress and may be mutually fulfilled,
the order of subordinate clauses of the traditional maxim is as immutable as this founda-
tion. It is impossible to displace them without losing at the same time the content of
the order that Christ “made (Ignatius) understand”: use all licit means possible, but then
trust in God and not in these means. It is also impossible, without departing from this
temporal succession, to establish the rational priority and posteriority between the two
imperatives. This priority and posteriority are required by the sic and the ita but that

via free access
transcend time and transform their duality and that of their subordinate clauses into a
perfect, simultaneous whole, where the infinite life of the eternal is reflected.
Accordingly, since such a commandment touches upon the connection between
human and divine freedom at its most intimate point, the order of the content and the
content of the order are one and the same.
In particular, the danger of quietism and Pelagianism that formula B conceals is

infinitesimal for its defender. Admittedly, we seldom think through the words we utter
or read. If, however, recalling the Fifth Rule for the Better Discernment of Spirits, the
defender is concerned about that infinitesimal, he will have no recourse, in order to
reduce it, but to present a dual and identical protection to its two imperatives. In this
way, formula B will be rendered inoffensive. But won’t it also have become useless?
What help, what light is found in a “rule of action” whose imperatives are precise
enough so that each one calls up a prohibition that is just as important as the impera-
tive? In the face of this void, won’t “the inversion’s” defender begin, in the absence of
any reason, to be suspicious of what first seemed to render the incoherent and para-
doxical clear and logical?
2.7 Formula C and the Meaning of Subordinate Clauses

The pieces of Hevenesi’s maxim now lie before him, scattered like a disassembled puz-
zle, but also each retaining its clear outline and indelible meaning. One might try some
other less radical combination. Instead of manipulating the two subordinate clauses,
one might be content with reversing the place of “God” and “you” in the pairs of con-
traries and with changing sit [may he] into sis [may you be]. We then get this formula:
Haec sit prima agendorum regula: sic Deo fide, quasi rerum successus omnis ab illo, nihil
a te penderet; ita tamen iis operam omnem admove, quasi Deus nihil, omnia tu solus sis
facturus. This is the version that the 1935 Santander Thesaurus adopts. Fr. Brou adopted
it in his Xaverius of 1930, where Fr. Lapparent finds it in 1944. He immediately labels it
formula C, and declares it “elegant, equivalent to B.”18
Nothing could be truer. Despite its elegance and its consecration by the Santander
Thesaurus, formula C has exactly the same value as B. However slight the change was
this time, nonetheless it immediately creates the same danger in each of its sentences,
whether of quietism or of Pelagianism. In order to polish it, the advocate of inversion
will again have to apply the negation to each of the imperatives, so much so that he will
soon have to confess to himself that rule C is as useless as B!
After this miscarried attempt, that partisan will surely be more disposed to give up
any inversion. Nevertheless, so that his attempt may not be completely without inter-
est, he might first make an observation that is of some interest.
18 Pour la mission, no. 1280, September 15, 1944.

via free access
Although the inversion only affects two words in C and not the two subordinate
clauses as B does, it nevertheless has greater consequences. The meaning of the other
words that comprise these propositions is changed in C, while in B it remains the same
as in Hevenesi’s formula. In the latter, the words rerum successus penderet naturally
meant the future success of your projects in God’s service. The arrangement of C, on
the other hand, with some distortion of the natural sense of the words, evokes the
course of events, past or future, depending or not on your will. The same thing happens
to omnia solus facturus but in the opposite sense. In Hevenesi and in B, it means the
course of all the events having to be done by God alone, whereas in C it must (with some
effort again) take on the meaning of future success of all the projects having to be done
by you alone.
The same constraint, similar exchanges among terms that however stay the same,
reveals an odd plasticity in them. The phenomenon is strange but certain. Without this
quality, would it have been possible to combine the handful of words of this maxim
so differently and each time find an acceptable meaning in the arrangement reached?
Without it, how is this fact to be explained? The verbs and nouns that in B serve as a
support of a sentence inclining toward Pelagianism, in C fulfill the same role for a sen-
tence that favors quietism. Reciprocally, how do the words in C that direct the mind
toward Pelagianism, in B, by contrast, direct it toward quietism? It certainly must be
that the errors opposed among themselves polarize the words that carry them in the
opposite direction. Besides, as both involve the relations of grace and freedom, one
concerning their beginning, the other their ending, this strange-seeming malleability
is explained if we link it to the interruption of the meaning of the imperatives that
we have seen above as carried out upon the order of Before and After, both temporal
and rational.
Because by nature language is a mediator, not only between human beings but also
and first of all between God and humanity, all words can be polarized in two opposite
senses, as we have just seen in two examples. This all the more so, because they more
closely concern freedom and time themselves. In the service of human freedom but
first of all of divine freedom, the logic of language also bears witness to the rectitude
or against the inexactitude of propositions concerning faith and human action. It is
not surprising that an expression initially conceived to signify the always-uncertain
vision of the future by human freedom cannot represent the whole enterprise of
divine omnipotence upon the course of time without some constraint. The distortion
is much more glaring when the maxim orders me to act quasi Deus nihil, tu solus omnia
sis facturus.
It is not at all surprising either that we are led to reflect upon the relation of lan-
guage to time and freedom in studying the different forms of an Ignatian maxim. First
of all, it is obviously important to examine them in function of possible sources as

via free access
we have done that for Hevenesi. But once a statement’s faithfulness and its historical
authority in the usual sense of the word are established, we can judge whether it is
necessary to choose between several possible versions. At that point, the way in which
each version harmonizes time and freedom so as to be or fail to be the basis for authen-
tic historicity is a sufficient criterion to decide among them. If, in addition, only one
adds logical perfection and fullness of meaning to this authenticity of the historical,
such a combination will leave no room for doubt. We have already indicated more than
once that the characteristic that among all others distinguishes Ignatian spirituality is
precisely this unity of the logical and the historical.
In noting, as we just did, the change of meaning that the terms of formula C have
undergone, the defender of formula C will certainly better understand the importance
of this unity. Perhaps he will begin to perceive why the good relations the traditional
maxim had established between grace and freedom cease in formula C and in the pre-
vious one. Also, he may begin to understand why he must forbid himself any inversion,
however slight it may be, because it risks breaking the unity of the temporal and ratio-
nal according to Before and After.
2.8 Formula A and the Proof by Negativity

If our defender now wants to re-make something fully intelligible, a whole without
defect from these always disunited fragments that in a sense have become uncertain,
he will doubtless resolve to reunite them as the eighteenth-century Jesuit did first and
probably with less reflection. But perhaps, awakened by the way the double nega-
tion’s application to the imperatives of formulas B and C shows its uselessness, his
conscience will not be overcome so easily. Now, he will have to apply the same proof
to the traditional text.
Let us try this experiment:
After saying
Sic Deo fide, quasi rerum successus omnis a te, nihil a Deo penderet;
let us try thinking,
Do not trust in God as if success depended in everything on you, in nothing on
God.
Similarly, after
Ita tamen iis operam admove, quasi tu nihil, Deus omnia solus sit facturus;
let us try thinking,
However, do not try to act in everything as if God alone had to do everything, and
you nothing.

via free access
At first sight, these two negative expressions also seem to have an acceptable mean-
ing. Hevenesi’s formula, therefore, would not resist the collision with negativity better
than those of his critics. By employing such a procedure, we would have taken a false
road, and the whole problem of inversion would need to be reconsidered.
Accordingly, let us take seriously the objection of this meaning that is acceptable
at first sight. If we manage to dispel this appearance or at least to account for it, more
light still will flow from it upon the traditional maxim, and our confidence in its ability
to withstand any challenge will be definitively established.
In reality, the appearance stems only from the malleability that the examination of
formula C forced us to notice. This time, affecting the two imperatives, it permits them
to oscillate between two opposite meanings based on which the clause that each com-
mands must be full of meaning but heterodox, or else empty of meaning, and thereby in
no way offensive to orthodoxy.
In the face of these sparkling contrary, intertwined, combining values, the mind
hesitates, not knowing what to think … It comes to doubt itself and the power of nega-
tion. In order to regain certainty, along with clarity and stability, it is necessary to stop
this sparkling produced by malleability. Since we already know that the malleability
stems from the relation of freedom and time, it is enough to distinguish the two imper-
atives in function of each other.
Fide Deo or “trust yourself to God” may in fact command equally well absolute
and ultimate confidence as well as the simple initial obedience of faith. Taken in the
first sense—the one, let us note, that formulas B and C quite naturally give it—if this
imperative changes into a verb of prohibition, it does not proclaim anything errone-
ous, but its prohibition is no longer meaningful. To tell someone, do not trust (abso-
lutely) in God, as if success depended on you in everything, in nothing upon God is to
put the person on guard against a quietist attitude, while the hypothesis adopted by
him already excludes this danger either absolutely (if he does not note the fictitious
character) or relatively (if he paid attention to its presupposition: success depends in
part on God). At any rate, the warning is useless, and it collapses when we really try to
think it.—According to the second meaning, on the contrary, the prohibition takes on
a very clear meaning: Do not obey in (the spirit of) faith (wanting that you should adopt
all means to succeed), as if success depended on you in everything, on God in nothing.
Except that, this is in flagrant contradiction to Christ’s order to Ignatius, to the truth of
the Foundation, and the very meaning of the incarnation.
Likewise, operam admove, or “act,” can either look toward the arrangement of a
project and its choice of means before the decision, or their application and the proj-
ect’s relation after the decision. According to the first approach—which the impera-
tive in formulas B and C also takes—this time the prohibition expresses no error, but

via free access
it has no meaning. To say, (in your projects and choice) do not act as if God alone had to
do everything and you nothing, is to warn against a Pelagian attitude radically excluded
by the hypothesis already adopted, even if we take its presupposition into account.
You too must do everything with God. The second warning is, therefore, as empty as
the first. In the other direction, according to the second meaning, the same phrase gets
back a real meaning: Do not act (with perseverance in the execution of your undertak-
ing in God’s service) as if God had to do everything and you nothing. Except that once
again, it is a counsel already opposed to Christ’s order, to the Suscipe of Ignatius, and to
the very meaning of redemption.
2.9 Conclusion: The Traditional Maxim and the Exercises

The demonstration is completed. The traditional maxim wins in the test where its mod-
ern rivals fail. However, formulas B and C intend, as much as the traditional maxim,
to reject Pelagianism and quietism. But they do so by successive affirmations, whose
content presents no internal opposition, so much so that they remain without the nec-
essary link between them. The balance achieved in this way remains apparent and
precarious. It is broken by the slightest impact. By contrast, if Hevenesi’s formula suc-
ceeds in neutralizing these two errors, one by the other, and in harmonizing the double
truth that they envisage, it is because in each of its affirmations, a double negation
flows back from the subordinating clause upon its imperative, preventing it from being
isolated and forcing it to seek the negations of its negation in the other. Thereafter, it
is impossible to separate its two components or to understand one without the other.
By basing the value of every human initiative on faith, the first refers the latter to the
necessity of total confidence. Likewise, the second, by requiring perfect abandonment
to the divine will, makes it rest on the fulfillment of an action completely inspired in
faith. From that arises their unbreakable balance.
This is why the negation that is aimed at breaking it immediately appears discon-
nected. On the one hand, it is blamed for being guilty of injuring some moment of this
human-divine life. On the other, it is criticized for leading to the chaos of irrationality;
for falling powerless … To avoid this, the negation must recuperate the reversed image
of these two members, by which it would remedy the incomprehension of those who
attempted to rectify their “disjointed” form, and in turn, then, it denounces the useless-
ness of the so-called rectification. Twice disconcerted by the negation’s counter-action,
the rectifier regards itself as more logical when it has wholly or just partly reversed the
traditional maxim’s two subordinate clauses. But it does not see that they are welded to
their imperatives (as the imperatives are between themselves) by a temporal as well as
rational void, which in the last analysis gets its strength from the logic of the Incarnate
Word in history. So much so that to attempt to change the order of the words in which
this connection is reflected exactly is not only to reverse the order of Before and After
that governs the relation of grace and human freedom but also to misunderstand the

via free access
relation of the incarnation and the redemption, which at the same time is the foun-
dation of the relation and the only principle capable of uniting them logically and
historically.
At the end of our first analysis, which was historical and almost purely grammatical,
we were gripped by admiration for the beautiful order that the traditional maxim owes
to its exact divisions and to their harmonious balance according to a rigorous coun-
terpoint. We are also amazed by the heat and flash of love that make a living diapha-
nous whole centered upon a mysterious depth. Now, we know better the secret of this
beauty, power, and life. The fluid threat that cuts through the unified whole, dividing
it according to Before and After in depth and breadth and at the same time reunit-
ing its components with indivisible bonds, is the logic of “the word of God … sharper
than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12), more powerful than all the “enmities” of
our historical existence. It makes them “create in himself one new man from the two,
thus making peace that he might reconcile them both to God in one body through the
Cross” (Ephesians 2:15–16).
It seems to us that this is why this maxim offers a structure that is completely iden-
tical to that of the Exercises. Let us begin with what is most difficult to perceive, by
showing this identity from the standpoint of its pure form.
Taken in pairs, Hevenesi’s four propositions intersect exactly like Ignatius’s Four
Weeks. In their formal aspect, the relation of the weeks to the three ways—after having
awakened our curiosity, it will be recalled—served as a key to discover more than one
inner relation hidden in the Exercises. Although the same relation is more disguised
here, it is still possible to uncover it.
We observed after our grammatical analysis that the two noticeable chiasmi of the
two subordinate clauses are linked by a third, initially invisible one, but which our
whole dialectical analysis showed has enormous importance. This chiasmus unites
the two imperatives by the intersection of the relations that each has with the other’s
subordinate clause. Like the circle representing the illuminative way in relation to the
circles of the purgative and unitive ways of our figure 10, this central chiasmus is also
situated astride the others. It overflows, on the one hand, toward the Before by the
rerum successus … penderet—a hypothetical future that is prospective in relation to
the initial fide Deo, but really retrospective and past19 in relation to the time of the
19
The Latin subjunctive and its French imperfect translation mark this. Cf. the observations
about the correspondence between the French and Latin systems in Gustave Guillaume,
Temps et verbe and in his Architectonique du temps dans les langues classiques.
To express in passing our admiration and interest in Guillaume’s research and con-
structions in systematic linguistics as well as those of his French and Canadian disciples,
we add the following. We are confident that a more complete investigation about this
maxim than we can carry out here would confirm a number of observations that our
dialectical investigation has suggested. In particular, they concern the violence that

via free access
person who thinks or rather lives this maxim—and on the other hand toward the After
through the solus sit facturus, which is also future hypothetical but purely prospective.
Moreover, figure 10’s median circle is only that for the analysis that distinguishes it.
At the moment of synthesis, it is identified with the large circle that includes the other
three. Exactly the same occurs for the central chiasmus. A median relative to those of
Before and After, it finally embraces the whole maxim.
In other words, the here and now, hic et nunc, where divine grace and human free-
dom are joined cannot be the pure limit between past and future, nor even just the
partial synthesis of one with the other in a psychological present. Rather, it is certainly
the synthesis of the two by the eternal and in it, at the same time as the revelation of
the eternal through the temporal.
It should not be surprising that we discover such similarity between things that are
apparently distinct and even unlike. To carry out the analysis and synthesis of time and
of the human mind’s conduct in time, it must always employ its three ecstasies: past,
present, and future. It will itself become literally sense-less, if it cannot base itself on
the logic of language in order to find the sense of what it says and of what it does, the
sense of history in the double meaning of the word, what has taken place and the nar-
ration. If, as the dialectical analysis has just shown us, Hevenesi’s maxim were based
on the same unity of the historical and logical as the Exercises of Ignatius, it would be
rather surprising if it did not present the same formal structure.
The identity of the historical and the logical with regard to content is easier to grasp.
In the brevity and concision of the four propositions here, as in the length and breadth
of the Four Weeks, the same dialogue of the self with God unfolds, exchanging their
all and likewise their nothing through everything else. If the Foundation calls to the
Suscipe that remits to it, the same goes for sic Deo fide and Deus omnia sit facturus. And
so Hevenesi’s maxim curls back upon itself, grasping the same human-divine drama of
election that is repeated through all the same adventures.
In the course of its words, as in the words of the Meditations and Contemplations,
while grace and freedom attract each other, intertwine, and are connected to the
great glory of God and the greater happiness of human beings, the living circularity
of both allows that course to beat to the rhythm of inexhaustible dynamism, that of
God who becomes man in order that man may become God. The rhythm is marked by
formula C does to the subordinate clauses’ verbs and nouns. Given the importance that
our method attaches to the division of Before and After, to the logic of language, and to
the unity of the historical and the logical, we evidently have a great deal to learn from
a systematic approach like Professor Guillaume’s, which bases its analysis of verbs, for
example, on the image of chronological times—linear like the horizontal axis of our
symbolism—where the “characteristic profiles of the formation of the image-time (in
potency, in beginning, in reality, the chronological axes)” are represented by the perpen-
dicular to the horizontal axis of time and divide it into “three points, initial, middle, and
final” (Temps et verbe, 7–10).

via free access
the succession of the greatest contrasts and closest contents, by moments that exceed
infinitely or penetrate it infinitely, by the deepest separation and the most intimate
embraces.
For instance, this is what is expressed by the author of the maxim Non coerceri max-
imo, contineri tamen a minimo, divinum est. “It is divine not to be constrained by the
maximum, but to be contained by the minimum.” Indeed, divine life is what animates
Hevenesi’s maxim just as it does Ignatius’s Exercises. Like them, it ultimately reveals to
us that the faith in God that is annihilated in the Son’s nihil a Deo leads us to the Father
omnia solus facturus, through the Spirit, who unites us to both by his presence in the
hic et nunc.
We discover this extraordinary structural unity in the process of perceiving it. But
since so far it has only been based on an analysis that might seem strangely abstract
and suspect because of its origin, we only present it as a hypothesis at this point, capa-
ble of guiding us in the examination of objections and in the search for their hidden
origin. If we are successful, after these two tasks, we hope that the identity of structure
will lose any hypothetical character. In this expectation (because that is in our view
the result of the different tests to which we have submitted Hevenesi’s critics), we must
thank them for having given us formulas B and C. Without those formulas, we would
not have been able to penetrate so deeply into the beauty and depth of this jewel, a bit
of our family “treasure.” Who, seeing it with our eyes, would want to lose it?
Section 3: The Objections against the Traditional Maxim
By not recurring to the test of negativity, Fr. de Lapparent begins, as we say, by putting
the Kieckens-Hevenesi translation and his formula B at the same level. Noticing only
the disappearance in both of them of the paradoxical character, he does not observe
that the inversion of the subordinate clauses has the effect of making the rule useless.
On the other hand, the inversion of the imperatives hides the dialectical movement
without suppressing it. The translation loses in power what it gains in clarity, but it
retains the rule’s content.
Like Fr. de Lapparent, most of the critics of the traditional maxim do not perceive
that the inversion of imperatives gives them the means of eliminating what they find
offensive without destroying it. Therefore, it ought to enjoy some prestige, even in the
eyes of those who complain about the traditional maxim’s incoherence. Otherwise,
would they imagine they could keep its benefit at the same instant in which, by sac-
rificing the nerve of the negation of the negation, they no longer retain more than an
appearance, which is easily turned against the inversion of the subordinate clauses to
denounce its uselessness?

via free access
Since the Kieckens-Hevenesi translation confirms formula A much more than

formula B, and even perfectly agrees with it for anyone who looks at the order of the
subordinate clauses, Fr. de Lapparent ought to have criticized it just as much, had he
noticed it. But perhaps this was simple inadvertence, as things slip by the best exegete.
In any case, after having indicated that Hevenesi was the author of the traditional
maxim, Fr. de Lapparent quotes two old passages, one from Ribadeneyra, the other
from Bartoli, which, he says, “justify his claim and remove all doubt. Formula B is what
we find there.” Although it is more recent, let us first reproduce this passage of Bartoli:
Before committing oneself to an undertaking of this kind (for the glory of God),
it is necessary to support oneself upon God as if success were to come from him
alone; however, in the choice of means and in their execution, we must work as
if it (success) depended only on our effort and our work.
Bartoli, Histoire de S. Ignace, translated by Michel, S.J. (Desclée, 1893), 2:233.
Latin text is in Bartoli, 4:chapter 32
Obviously, this time Fr. Lapparent is right to say that formula B is found in Bartoli,
which consequently justifies its inversion. But the same certainly does not go for
Ribadeneyra. This second text is precisely that of De ratione gubernandi, which we
know, like the Kieckens translation, does not invert the subordinate clauses. Bartoli’s
work—as Fr. de Lapparent himself indicates—dates from 1650, whereas De ratione
gubernandi is from around 1572. As opposed to Ribadeneyra—a direct witness, whose
De actis Sancti Ignatii was composed at the latest between 1559 and 1566—Bartoli’s
text can only prove one thing: it is possible that in the face of Ribadeneyra’s two as if,
Bartoli perceived a difficulty like that of Hevenesi’s critics and that he was the first to
invert.
Still, when Fr. de Lapparent invokes Ribadeneyra’s testimony in favor of formula B,

he still commits the same error as earlier. The misstep is easy to explain. As we have
said, the point of departure of his criticism was a note in Fr. Mazoyer’s translation
of the Life of Fr. Doyle. This note is related to the same passage in Ribadeneyra that
O’Rahilly, author of the Life, cites. Therefore, it is Fr. Mazoyer who first mistakenly
believed that the order followed by Ribadeneyra is the inverse of Hevenesi’s formula
that he quotes in a note. Fr. de Lapparent would simply be guilty of having followed his
lead without checking the expressions.
This explanation may be too kind. In his following note, where he indicates two texts
in support of the two formulas, he recognizes without difficulty formula A in the first
(Cardinal Billot, De Gratia, fourth edition 1928, thesis 3, 82), but he commits the same
error in reading the second text—a quotation from Bossuet taken from Fr. Riondel, La

via free access
vie de foi (Lethielleux, 1931, 186). We reproduce only the end of the passage and Fr. de
Lapparent’s commentary:
In order to act, it is not permitted to expect that God should act in us and push
us. It is necessary as much to act as to wake us up, as much to move us, as if we had
to act alone, with, however, firm faith that it is God who begins, finishes, and con-
tinues in all our good works (Letter of March 21, 1696, question 53, Lachat edition,
27:347, Lévesque edition, 7:351).
This corroborates formula B that Ribadeneyra and Bartoli transmitted to us. It
is a “rule for our actions” that is easy to understand and follow. Thus, we believe,
St. Ignatius expressed himself, a “most reasonable” saint (Fr. Brou), who liked to
speak clearly and avoid excessive subtlety.20
Again, for the third time Fr. Lapparent does not recognize the order: first human means,
then confidence in God. He imagines that Bossuet contradicts Hevenesi, whereas he
confirms him.
There is more. Three years later, Fr. de Lapparent recurs in the same error. After
reading in Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu21 the short analysis of a pamphlet by
Francisco Maldonado, Lo fictivo y lo antifictivo en el pensamiento de san Ignacio de
Loyola (Madrid, 1940)22 that comments on a maxim of Fr. Gracián similar to Hevenesi’s,
Lapparent writes:
20
Nouvelles de la mission de Shanghai, no. 1306, October 15, 1944.
21
Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu 13 (1944): 232.
22
We became acquainted with this interesting article only recently. In it, Fr. Francisco
Maldonado quotes Hevenesi’s maxim only in passing, according to the edition of the
Thesaurus of Bilbao, 1887. At least, he comments, it “perfectly coincides with the text of
De ratione gubernandi by Ribadeneyra and this last text implicitly contains the two chi-
asmi developed by Hevenesi.” [Francisco Maldonado de Guevara, Lo fictivo y lo antifictivo
en el pensamiento de Ignacio de Loyola y otros estudios, Granada: Universidad, 1954.]
However, commenting on Gracián’s maxim, he has the opportunity to make observa-
tions that fully support our own analyses, not only of the traditional maxim but above all
of the Exercises. In his view, the paradigmatic “Ignatian tension … is that of the eternal
and the temporal, of divine means and human means, based on dogma and Christian
tradition, but nuanced by him in a personal, modern way” (25). For him, the chiasmus
constitutes a “scheme of movement and of circular movement,” and he dares to add: “In
grammar just as in logic, we are dealing with a figure that is specifically active, circular
and dynamic” (28–29). Several times, he notes that the “time factor” is essential to the chi-
asmus. “In order that the time with which we are dealing in the chiasmus may give all its
output, it is a time in which before and after of natural, qualitative duration is not given in
empirical, experimental form. By virtue of a transcendent duration of time, the two prop-
ositions of the chiasmus come to compose a single proposition with two parts linked, also

via free access
It is Fr. Gracián (1601–1658) who gives this lapidary form to the thought of
St. Ignatius: “Hanse de procurar los medios humanos como si no hubiese divi-
nos, y los divinos como si no hubiese humanos.” That is to say: We must recur to
human means as if there were no divine ones, and to divine means as if there were
no human ones.
This formula is found in Fr. Gracián’s Oráculo manual, which appeared in Huesca in
1647. Once more, it confirms our opinion that the formula included in the Thesaurus is
defective, and that in order to present St. Ignatius’s real thinking, there is good reason
simply to invert the two members of the phrase.23
Whether Hevenesi depends on Gracián or not is a matter we leave to those more
learned than us. What is certain in any case is that Gracián’s two uses of as if follow
the same order as Ribadeneyra’s and that in imagining that his “opinion” is “once more
confirmed” by Gracián, Fr. Lapparent commits a fourth error in reading.
Finally, to sum up, here is how he is mistaken a fifth time. In China, Father de
Lapparent did not have The Life of St. Ignatius by Nolarci (i.e., Carnoli) at hand, to
which Hevenesi refers. In order to confirm its source, he requests that Fr. Pinard de la
Boullaye transmit the essential passage to him. Before long, he receives not, it seems,
the account of the visit to the Spanish ambassador but the phrase we cited above (see
above, p. 316) as background to Fr. Kneller’s article, in order to show that it would have
provided Hevenesi the twofold as if that characterize his formula, even if he had been
unfamiliar with De ratione gubernandi. After reproducing and translating the Italian
text, Fr. de Lapparent writes:
equally, by a disjunction and conjunction that are simultaneous” (32–33). Lastly, in order
to sum up the whole Ignatian conception, he dares to speak of an “Ignatian chiasmus”:
“In the Ignatian cogito, which corresponds to a chiasmus, there is on the one hand the
Creator and on the other the creature, and between the two, there is human freedom
that dominates the whole economy of the chiasmus … In a word, the Ignatian chiasmus
is built upon the tension between the temporal and the eternal, a tension that we can call
theandric,” naturally understood analogically (42).
From this pamphlet, let us also take a supplementary testimony in Hevenesi’s favor,
Fr. Casanova’s formula: “Hagamos primero, de nuestra parte cuanto podemos, como si
Dios nada hubiese de hacer; después pongamos en Dios toda nuestra confianza como sí
nosotros no hubiésemos hecho nada.” Fr. Maldonado deems “truly admirable the result
Fr. Casanova comes to according to before and after” (34). Certainly, but we would wager
that if he had given as much attention to the Hegelian dialectic as he gives in the first
part of his pamphlet to Vaihinger and his philosophy of the Als ob, he would have found
Hevenesi’s maxim still more admirable.
23 Nouvelles de la mission, no. 1342, October 30, 1947.

via free access
In different terms, this is what Ribadeneyra, González, Maffei, Orlandi, Gracián,

Bartoli, and others, also say. So, it is settled. This passage proves that the formula
in our Thesaurus spiritualis taken from Hevenesi, which invokes Nolarci, is an
imitation of Nolarci’s text that Hevenesi has translated incorrectly. He inverted
the two parts of the phrase, and that makes the counsel rather difficult to under-
stand [maxim 2 follows].24
Of the six names that appear before the etcetera in this list, we have already met three,
Ribadeneyra, Gracián, and Bartoli. It should be acknowledged that only the last is in
favor of the inversion of the subordinate clauses. Fr. de Lapparent gives no reference
for the other three, and it is not possible for us to decide the value of their evidence,
except perhaps for González, for whom Doncoeur, cited afterward by Fr. de Lapparent,
furnishes a reference.
Above, in the course of these notes, we note that Fr. de Lapparent also cites two
other passages that are certainly favorable to him. One is from Fr. Bouhours in his
Maximes de saint Ignace (1683), which reproduces Bartoli’s phrase. The other is from
Fr. Brou in Xaverius (Toulouse, 1930). It proposes formula C, which we have already
discussed. This evidence does not change the state of the question.
Let us pass on to the last author invoked by Fr. de Lapparent, taking up the passage
from González, whose reference Fr. Doncoeur gives us. Here is its essence:
In his undertakings, it seems that the Father (Ignatius) many times employs no
human prudence, as was the case for this school that he founded without having
any income for it and other similar things. But it seems that all he does is based
only on confidence in God. Even more, just as when he began them, he seems to
go beyond the limits of human prudence, so also in furthering them and seeking
the means to make them progress, he employs all divine and human prudence.
Whatever he undertakes, it seems that first he has considered it with God. As
we do not see what he has considered with God, we are frightened by the way in
which he undertakes them.
Memorial de S. Ignatio, no. 234, Monumenta Ignatiana, series 4, 1:267
At first sight, this text does not seem to offer anything decisive for or against Hevenesi’s
order: First, human means, then, absolute confidence in God. Since we are not even
sure that in naming González in his list, Fr. de Lapparent alludes to this passage and not
to others, we certainly could have left it aside. However, in re-reading it, we were struck
by those adverbs of time whose importance we have often seen in Ignatius: “First,”
González says, “he considers with God the matter to be undertaken.” If we put this
24 Nouvelles de la mission, no. 1355, December 30, 1944.

via free access
primo beside the but afterward putting his confidence in God reported by Ribadeneyra,
and if we examine the components of Hevenesi’s formula in the light of the contrast
first—afterward, it seems that, without straining the texts, we can detect:
The first component, sic Deo fide quasi rerum successus omnia a te, nihil a Deo pen-
deret, corresponds to la negocia con Dios (“he treats of it with God”), which González,
an external witness, presents as the visible preparation for Ignatius’s visible action.
Likewise, the second, ita tamen iis operam admove, quasi tu nihil, Deus omnia solus sit
facturus, also corresponds nicely to the impression that this action gives to someone
else: todo lo haze fundado en sola la confiança en Dios (“he does everything based only
upon confidence in God”). But if this is true, the new text provides important confir-
mation for the perspective opened up to us by our first Hegelian commentary upon
Fr. de Lapparent’s incoherent proposition. The first phrase of Hevenesi’s formula per-
fectly captures what happens in the soul of Ignatius before any decision is externally
apparent; consequently, starting from the Foundation, we have the journey of the first
two weeks. Then, after the election and once the decision appears externally, the whole
action based only on confidence in God is covered by the second phrase in the same
way. What strikes González from the outside is evidently Ignatius’s total confidence in
God. On the one hand, he shows no human prudence, no usa de ninguna prudencia
humana, that is to say, in the name of faith he excludes any purely natural prudence of
skill, while on the other, he uses all divine and human prudence, usa de toda prudencia
divina et humana, which means “he takes all possible licit means.”
If we are not mistaken, this double observation also confirms in some measure
what we said earlier on how the circularity of Hevenesi’s formula retrieves that of
the Exercises. The sic Deo fide corresponding to the Foundation as oriented to the ad
Amorem immediately excludes any consideration stemming from purely natural rea-
sons. On the other hand, Deus omnia solus sit facturus, which corresponds to the abso-
lute confidence of this Suscipe, which refers to the Foundation, is conditioned by the
prior employment of all human means.
Although this analysis in our view confirms the hypothesis of perfect agreement of
maxim number 2 and the Exercises, we will not insist further on it, and we abandon
both again to whomever condemns them as too subtle, in order to return to the author
cited by Fr. de Lapparent, who writes: “Fr. Doncoeur has also indicated the (Hevenesi’s)
error. He quotes very clear passages, which we know, from Ribadeneyra and Bartoli,
and he adds: ‘It is a mistake to give this teaching the inverted form popularized by the
maxim …’” (L’honneur et service de Dieu selon saint Ignace, 157–58).
Indeed, Fr. Doncoeur first quotes Bartoli’s text, of scant value given its late date,
and subsequently Ribadeneyra’s testimony regarding the visit to the marquis of Sarriá.
Moreover, he takes care to put Ignatius’s words in direct style in order to show that
we are dealing with testimony that has first-hand information. At the very end of this

via free access
passage is attached the note where the phrase is found of which Fr. de Lapparent takes
notice. Following this note, the text from De ratione gubernandi is found, which we have
already encountered twice, and Fr. Doncoeur introduces it as follows: “Ribadeneyra
again testifies to the solid foundation of Bartoli’s lesson.” We know what one should
think of this good foundation; it is pointless to return to that. Just one conclusion is
inescapable: after Fr. Mazoyer, after Fr. de Lapparent (or rather before him, since his
book appears in 1943), Fr. Doncoeur commits a double mistake in his reading.
Such a repetition and accumulation of errors is cause for reflection. It is no surprise

that the most attentive persons should make a mistake once in a while, even in their
special pursuit. Chance and human weakness is enough to account for it. However—
without talking about Fr. Mazoyer, about whom we know nothing—the fact that two
experienced Jesuits, one the editor of Varietés sinologiques, the other the learned editor
of manuscripts concerning the trial of Joan of Arc, are both mistaken, one five times,
the other two, while thousands of kilometers and war separate them, is something that
cannot be the result of chance or human failing. Unless Hevenesi has so bewitched his
formula that it blinds all his confrères once they adhere to it, such an unusual phenom-
enon must have a profound reason. Whether a matter of charm or reason, we must
keep a pure heart and be faithful to Ignatius’s own words, adopting all possible means
to succeed, trusting to God alone to take care of opening bewitched eyes, if he so wills.
Section 4: The Secret of These Objections
Let us return to Fr. Kneller’s study that we have already found very useful in the first
section. It will provide an access road, with gentle slopes, toward the secret our curios-
ity attempts to uncover.
The article’s subtitle informs us that it is an “answer to a question originating in the
association of readers” of the journal that publishes it. Fr. Kneller begins by setting out
his correspondent’s doubt:
Is this maxim perfectly correct? Very respectable persons have criticized it for
not agreeing with the church’s doctrine on grace. According to that doctrine,
human beings can accomplish nothing by themselves and still less acquire any
supernatural merit. Furthermore, they have to trust completely and in everything
in God who gives us his grace. Consequently, the maxim ought to be set out as
follows: Trust in God as if everything depends on him and nothing on you, and
make your efforts as if you alone had to do everything and God nothing. It is
even said that a Jesuit would have judged Hevenesi’s formula nonsense (Unsinn).
Ignatius would not have said anything like it.

via free access
Fr. Kneller reacts against that exaggeration. In his view, Hevenesi’s formula is
perfectly orthodox. It is far from recommending confidence in oneself or in natural
means, still farther from attributing any supernatural efficacy to them. “It deals exclu-
sively with the problem of uniting trust and one’s own activity.” Fr. Kneller gives a very
simple explanation of this. Obviously, it is necessary to place all one’s trust in God,
but not to the point of folding one’s arms and saying, since everything supernatural is
God’s work, there is no need to act or at least of taking too much trouble. The rule of
action supposes that we put our shoulders to the wheel.
This defense of Hevenesi’s orthodoxy is fair. It has the further merit of letting us
anticipate that the center of the controversy between opponents and defenders of
his formula must be situated around the relations between nature and grace at the
heart of human action. Nevertheless, we can still ask whether Fr. Kneller has perceived
exactly how precise and prescient Hevenesi or rather St. Ignatius was in this area, and
we fear that by conceding too much to those who want to modify the terms of his for-
mula or to reverse its order, it may not be that Fr. Kneller too has been afflicted with a
bit of blindness.
We observed that in his defense, Fr. Kneller begins with the concession that this
rule has not been approved everywhere in the form Hevenesi gave it. Proof of that is
the diversity of versions under which some have tried to quote it over a long period of
time. These versions, he says, deserve a psychological study, and “we can wager a hun-
dred to one with no trepidation, that when the formula is quoted, it is quoted against
Hevenesi.” Our own experience does not refute Fr. Kneller’s claim. By borrowing a few
more examples from him, the claim is going to be strengthened.
It is not very grave that J. Alzog, at least in the early editions of his Universal History
of the Church, attributes Ignatius’s maxim to St. Anselm, in as much as he quotes it
correctly and presents it as “of the utmost importance for a correct understanding of
the relations of divine grace and human efforts toward autonomy.” It seems to us that
he entirely grasps the relation with the problematic of the Exercises and correctly des-
ignates the point at which many who quote it stumble. Their mistake is not about the
attribution, but as Fr. Kneller says, “They change Hevenesi’s own text into its exact
opposite.” For example: “It has been said about John Ireland, the archbishop of St. Paul,
who was the object of much commentary two decades ago, that he made the maxim
of St. Ignatius his own: ‘We must act as if everything depended on us and pray as if
everything depended on God’” (Études, September 20, 1897).
To this, Fr. Kneller answers that neither Ignatius nor Hevenesi says, “It is necessary
to act as if everything depended on us,” but on the contrary, “It is necessary to act as
if everything depended on God.” In our understanding, this remark is only half right.
The rule of action certainly says in its first part, sic Deo fide, which is to say that faith in

via free access
God should be active, quasi … omnis a te penderet. Fr. Kneller himself does not seem to
us to have grasped how deeply this prima agendorum regula is embedded in the vision
of the fundamental problem from which the Exercises sprang, writings as their title
says, ut homo ordinet vitam suam, that one may order his life. Nor does Fr. Kneller grasp
to what point the rule is intended as an answer to the specifically Ignatian question,
quid agere debeam? This question becomes explicit in the colloquy of the first exercise
(number 53). It is repeated in the context of the answer to the King’s Call (number 94).
Really, it is implicitly present in each paragraph as it was for Ignatius himself at every
moment of his whole life.
Our hypothesis is confirmed once more here by the perfect agreement between
the traditional maxim and the Exercises. What we should reject in Fr. de La Barre (the
Jesuit writer of the Études, who identifies Archbishop Ireland’s “It is necessary to act”
with the first part of Hevenesi’s formula) is not that he makes the latter say exactly the
opposite of what it says, but rather of posing a principle of action that does not find its
counterbalance in the second part, “It is necessary to pray as if everything depended
on God.” Like Fr. Kneller himself, Fr. de La Barre deserves to be criticized for failing to
notice that the contrast action–prayer does not correspond to the opposition before–
after of the decision, which is central to Hevenesi’s formula, as hic et nunc of the free
act is in the Exercises. Hevenesi has represented this instant (whose importance we
have shown at great length) by a semi-colon. Regarding this little sign in its application
to the two parts of Hevenesi’s formula and to their pairs of opposites, we must repeat
what we have said about the instant of election and about the relation the Four Weeks
have with the instant according to Before and After: Everything rotates around it.
If we want an eloquent proof of the difference between the contrast prayer–action
and Hevenesi’s contrast, it is enough to think back to the Études article, from which
Fr. Kneller took it. There, we learn that Fr. de La Barre had found it in the introduction
the archbishop wrote to the Life of Father Hecker [by Rev. Walter Elliott, Columbus
Press, 1898], translated with preface by Fr. Klein. In 1928, it was enough for Fr. Kneller
to quote Archbishop Ireland’s formula “as having caused much comment twenty-seven
years earlier,” to recall the storm created in 1897 around the Life and its introduction,
whose epilogue in January 1899 was Leo XIII’s encyclical Testem benevolentiae nos-
trae condemning Americanism and its errors. Prominent among those errors was the
distinction between active and passive virtues, interpreted as containing the distinc-
tion between natural and evangelical virtues. Such identification is in great danger
of destroying the correct notion of the relation of grace and freedom. If we interpret
Archbishop Ireland’s formula in function of that identification, we perceive that it adds
the quietist error to the Pelagian error, instead of excluding both of them as Hevenesi’s
formula does.
Certainly, Archbishop Ireland was neither Pelagian nor pietist in writing that sen-
tence. For his part, Fr. de La Barre, in equating Archbishop Ireland’s sentence with

via free access
Ignatius’s maxim, clearly perceived that placed in context,25 the sentence has an
Ignatian ring, correcting other less felicitous formulas of the same author.
We emphasize these details to underline the difference between Hevenesi’s for-
mula and the distinct versions of it. Maxim number 2, just like the spirituality of the
Exercises, has never been open to the deformation that threatens different formulas.
Clearly, it owes this advantage to its eminently dialectical form.
On this point, Fr. Kneller does not seem to have been as clear-sighted as when he
defended its orthodoxy. The reason, in our understanding, is that he does not grasp
what establishes this form’s value, due to his failure to identify it with the structure
of the Exercises. Because of the defect, as we have just seen, he immoderately accuses
Archbishop Ireland’s maxim of saying “exactly the opposite” of Hevenesi’s, and at the
same time fails to be completely fair to Fr. de La Barre, author of this mistaken identifi-
cation. The identification is indeed erroneous but better grounded than the accusation
would have us believe.
Understanding now why the same defect makes him even more unjust toward
Hevenesi’s other two translations will take us a step closer to the discovery of what is
so dear to our heart. Fr. Kneller continues: “In this mistake, if it is one, the archbishop
of St. Paul has many companions, even among the sons of the Society of Jesus.”
He then quotes two new versions, one belonging to Fr. de Ravignan, and a sec-
ond whose author he does not name. As they scarcely differ, we produce only the
first: “Listen to St. Ignatius address these fertile words to us: ‘We ought to do every-
thing as if we act alone and expect everything from God as if we had done nothing’”
(A. de Ponlevoy, Vie de P. de Ravignan, 1:chapter 13, twelfth edition, 1886, 365).
This is certainly a rather simplified version of maxim number 2. Can we really
assimilate it to Ireland’s and accuse it of saying, like Ireland, “exactly the opposite”
of Hevenesi? To our understanding, we can do neither. While Ireland, by distinguish-
ing action and prayer completely, departs from Ignatian perspectives, Fr. de Ravignan
remains in them. The hinge around which the contrast of the two infinitives, do and
expect, moves, remains, as in the Kieckens-Hevenesi translation, a distinction that is
internal to human action, insofar as the latter is governed by faith. His formula has
the same advantages and the same defects as that of Kieckens, because it also pre-
serves fairly well the distinction between Before and After in free acts and the relation
between one’s own act and total confidence in God. Provided that we interpret his we
25 Indeed, referring to Fr. Hecker’s virtues, the archbishop simply declared: “We often lean
upon God much more than God wants, and there are cases where a novena is a good
refuge for indolence and lack of courage. God has entrusted us with natural talents. We
never wrap ourselves up in the corner of a handkerchief with his permission … We must
act as if everything depends on us and pray as if everything depended on God.” French
translation, Life of Father Hecker, introduction, xlviii.

via free access
must as spoken in the name of faith, it is no longer difficult to recognize under the
worn-out words the bite of authenticity. It should be noticed that if Fr. Kneller has
been a bit unfair toward Ireland, and still more so toward Fr. de Ravignan, that is pre-
cisely because he has not glimpsed the sic Deo fide either under the it is necessary of the
first or under the we must of the second.
We will be asked what good it is to examine a text three lines long obsessively under
the microscope, why insist to this degree upon the errors of its translators and com-
mentators. Are they so grave?—Certainly, each taken in particular does not deserve to
be pointed out. But when repeated, they might indicate a deficit that is not only indi-
vidual but collective, affecting in some way the mentality of the social body in which
they are produced. They might impact that of the church, even if the Society of Jesus is
only “the smallest society” within the church, as its founder loved to say.
Accordingly, the self-criticism to which we devote ourselves is not misplaced. For
the rest, theological work has always in the final analysis consisted of scrutinizing the
meaning of texts and even words, as well as raising questions about variations that
introduce the smallest change, including the suppression or introduction of an iota. It
cannot be otherwise as long as the church remains based upon a tradition itself under
a scripture that is completely related to the incarnation of the Word, and so sustains
and in its turn includes the tradition.
Respecting the differences, the same holds for the Society of Jesus and its own tra-
dition, of which Hevenesi’s maxim is part. If Ignatius took so much time and trouble
to weigh the phrases and words of his Exercises, it is clearly appropriate for his sons
to spend a few hours weighing the value of a formula long held to be authentic and
currently battered. As the Society’s tradition and spirituality are themselves immersed
in the life of the church, it can be interesting for that life, given the osmosis that takes
place between all the cells of the great Body of Christ, to determine the value and
reasons for such a variation, even on the smallest point. This is so in as much as they
certainly transcend the Society and the church itself, at least as a visible society, to sink
their roots in the mentality of the world and in the course of history within which both
the Society and the church must live and develop.
The lack of clarity in Fr. Kneller, which we indicated before this apparent digression,
does not prevent, after defending Hevenesi’s orthodoxy, our citing and analyzing the
principal documents that ground the authenticity of maxim number 2. Nevertheless,
however slight the deficiency is, it will ultimately become so serious as to cause errors
as surprising as those of Fathers Doncoeur and de Lapparent. Certainly, Fr. Kneller
does not seem to advocate the inversion of the two subordinate clauses. Rather, he
abandons Hevenesi’s order in a spirit of conciliation. But despite its different inspira-
tion, this abandonment nonetheless has the same result. We are going to verify that.

via free access
After quoting the passage from Ribadeneyra’s De ratione gubernandi—a passage he

announces as fulfilling our wish to read the content of Ignatius’s letter to Borja into a
short, compact form, approximating Hevenesi’s—Fr. Kneller writes:
To conclude, if we return to our point of departure, the distinguished correspon-

dent who gave us the occasion to write these lines will be satisfied to see that
the form in which he suggested we should deem that the saint expressed him-
self is indeed found in Ribadeneyra; that Hevenesi’s exquisite (gekünstelte) form,
insofar as we can judge, can only be attributed to Hevenesi; and that Ireland,
Ravignan, and so on, also had the right to give the saint’s thought an expres-
sion of their own devising. We do not think they did so because they considered
Hevenesi’s particular text scandalous from the standpoint of dogma. Precisely
because Hevenesi’s expression was condensed and molded to an astonish-
ing degree (zu merkwürdig vershränkt und verschraübt), the same thought was
desired in a simpler form.
Let us not deny what is psychologically exact in all this and particularly in the last
observation. But we should be astonished to see how Hevenesi’s formula avenges
itself on those who would abandon it to its critics. Didn’t Fr. Kneller tell us first that
by changing the text, Ireland and Ravignan had made it mean “exactly the opposite”?
Doesn’t he contradict himself now by declaring that they had “the total right” to do
so, and by acknowledging “the same thought” where he had previously denounced
“the opposite”? What, indeed, is “the form under which Father Kneller’s correspon-
dent desired to see the saint express himself”? It is the inversion so dear to Fathers
Lapparent and Doncoeur. Fr. Kneller invites his correspondent to “see” this form in
Ribadeneyra’s text. What fate weighs upon Hevenesi’s formula that it should condemn
in this way to contradiction and blindness not only those who criticize it but the very
person who first defended it against them?
This fate is going to reveal itself ultimately if we again take the time to examine
how Fr. Kneller reacts to the passage from Gerson that he mentions as very close to the
Ignatian maxim: Presumptio renuit cooperari cum Deo, desperatio autem non expectat
cooperationem Dei secum. Medium iter est sic operari, ut totum gratiae tribuatur, et sic
de gratia confidere quod non deseratur operatio, faciendo quod in se est (De signis bonis
et malis, Opera, Dupin edition, 3:158 d).
This passage suggests a reflection to Father Kneller as well as a question of the

greatest interest for our purpose:

via free access
Here again there is something to note. The meaning Gerson gives to his maxim
holds for all Christians and is understood as self-evident. When a fire breaks out, we
run as fast as possible to find the extinguisher, and we are not content with supernatu-
ral means. Someone who wants to learn a trade goes to school and does not expect
knowledge of the technique from illuminations of the Holy Spirit. How can Ignatius
present the employment of natural means as a requirement by God for him in particu-
lar and not for everyone?
In answer to this question, Fr. Kneller formulates the hypothesis of which we spoke
above: the illumination about which Ignatius spoke after leaving the Spanish embassy
made him decide thirty years earlier to devote himself to study. What interests us now
is to shed light on the assumption behind such a question. To our mind, there is a con-
trast supposed by the text between all (or anyone) and Ignatius in particular, and the
contrast implies to someone who affirms it that there is no need of supernatural grace
to know that it is necessary to apply appropriate means to attain the goal proposed. In
other words, “whoever wants the end, wants the means” is an axiom of natural reason.
Likewise, the emphasis chosen and the mention of “supernatural means” and “illumi-
nations of the Holy Spirit” with regard to the school fire extinguisher leave no doubt
about this.
With that settled, let us see whether Fr. Kneller’s answer, or rather the conclusion he
draws from his hypothesis, confirms our deduction or not:
Giving their due to natural means, as Ignatius understood that, has remained
an original characteristic that he bequeathed to his order. For example, it was
tempting for religious persons in the sixteenth century to scorn humanism in
its totality as the product of paganism, Satanic activity, and diabolical snares!
Ignatius was able to discern what was good and bad about it; he favored one
and rejected the other for the greater benefit of the Catholic world. From this
perspective, the maxim with which we are dealing clarifies what Ignatius taught
at the beginning of the Exercises on the use of creatures, a teaching truthfully
evident but whose application is not at all evident to each and everyone.
In itself, there can be no objection to anything here. Only, we should recall the ques-
tion whose presupposition we have brought out: How could Ignatius need supernatu-
ral grace to apply a principle of action that natural reason suffices to set forth? We are
given the following answer here: grace can be necessary to apply the principle con-
cretely, in particularly difficult cases, as was the choice of studies for Ignatius. But the
principle itself, the tantum … quantum of the Foundation, is evident, just as the axiom,
“one who wants the end wants the means” is “understood of itself.”

via free access
Accordingly, Hevenesi’s maxim “clarifies” the principles of Ignatian spirituality

from “one (particular) angle” that is no more than an external, contingent, and his-
torical relation with those principles. As also, the grace that incited Ignatius to study
relates to the rule about the use of creatures, which is promulgated by natural rea-
son, and likewise generally speaking, the supernatural order in the face of the natural,
human order.
When Fr. Kneller conceives the relation of nature and the supernatural thus, he
does no more than adapt perspectives that have become common among theologians
but were not well known in Ignatius’s time and that do not agree perfectly with his
perspectives. Moreover, in the name of these same perspectives, Fr. Bouvier has spo-
ken against the commentators who interpret the expressions of the Foundation, unde
sequitur … necesse est … consequenter, as so many rigorous deductions from evident
principles and who see in the tantum … quantum and the “indifference” strict obliga-
tions of “absolute necessity,” whereas in the eyes of a moralist, the necessity is only
“relative, conditional, and moral.” For the rest, the examples by which he refutes them
are curiously related to those Fr. Kneller used for his part:
To explain the rule of the Foundation in the sense of an obligation, it has been
said that an artisan in his workshop chooses the tool required by the work he
wants to do. But even supposing that this work is obligatory, the artisan is not
forced to take the most perfect instrument. It is enough for him to take a suitable
instrument. It has been said that the traveler chooses the route that leads him to
the destination he must reach. But he is not bound to choose the more direct of
two routes that lead him there.26
When we read these pages more than thirty years ago, a confused feeling came upon us
that the Foundation and all of the Exercises could not have been written and thought
out in such abstract perspectives, and the seed of the present work began to germinate
slowly …
Without even casting doubt on the questions debated by theologians in our time,
today it seems obvious that Ignatius had a more organic conception (although one
less thought out at the conceptual level) of the relations between nature and grace. To
be exact, he did not acknowledge natural action that could escape the supernatural
order. He was not unaware of the resistance that our fallen nature puts up against the
intimations from above, but his intelligence rebelled against speculating upon the dis-
tinction between the two orders outside of some reference to his particular situation.
26 L’interprétation authentique de la méditation fondamentale dans les Exercises spirituels, 21.

via free access
In his view, there is the human self, one’s own ego, faced with the Divine Majesty, and
between them a world created exclusively so that this self should perceive the pres-
ence of a sovereign freedom summoning the self to its service in order to render to it
“the greatest glory and praise” in everything and through all things. The entire prob-
lematic of the Exercises is built upon the tension between the two poles in the here and
now, hic et nunc. Obviously, time introduces a division there that nature fills with infi-
nite diversity, but Ignatius’s mind, always careful to join theory and practice, refuses to
use the division and get involved in pure speculation. He does not like us to think only
about distinguishing the God of nature from the God of grace. Evidence of this is the
manner in which, by way of his secretary Polanco, Ignatius had Fr. Alvarez reproved
for having dispensed himself, in the name of some “spiritual philosophy,” from some
human steps under the pretext of not “bending the knee to Baal.”
One who places in God the ultimate foundation of hope and who employs with
great attention God’s gifts, inner or external, spiritual or natural, in his service,
thinking that his infinite powers will open with or without these means every-
thing that pleases him, and thinking that in any case rightly to take such care
for love of God is agreeable to God, that person has not bended his knee before
Baal but before God, acknowledging him as the author not only of grace but also
of nature. This does not seem to be acknowledged by one who does not render
pure action of thanksgiving to God and who does not rejoice in him only, under
the pretext that means of human endeavor have intervened in the object of his
joy and of his act of thanksgiving. On the contrary, it seems that such a manner
of speaking lets us believe that there is one principle of nature and a (different)
principle of grace.27
By contrast, such a distinction has become familiar to our contemporary thinkers; and
we have indicated in our 1947 preface that in the name of this distinction, their specu-
lation assumes it has nothing to learn from the pedagogy of the saints.
Once we perceive this distance of perspective, the enchantment of Hevenesi’s for-

mula vanishes. It seems to us that in this gap is the reason for the criticisms that today’s
Jesuits address to it and for the errors they fatally commit, when they compare it to its
27 Monumenta historica Ignatiana, epistulae Sancti Ignatiae, 2:481–82.—We can associate

with the letter the following verse, where Fr. Surin expresses the state of the soul entirely
abandoned to divine love: “Happy death, happy grave / Of the lover in love absorbed, /
No more seeing grace or nature / But only the pit into which he has fallen.” (Cantiques
spirituels, 1, 5, quoted in Les voies de l’amour divin, texts of Fr. Jean-Joseph Surin, chosen
and presented by Madeleine Daniélou (Paris: Editions de l’Orante, 1954), 214.)

via free access
sources or when they rank the different translations with an eye to justifying the inver-
sion they propose.
Let us show that quickly.
What surprises them first in this formula is the initial sic Deo fide. It places the use
of natural means (it seems to them) in dependence on “confidence” in a God, who
no more needs those means to achieve his supernatural goals than our natural activ-
ity of faith to obtain its goals. How can trusting in God imply that God should not
act, Fr. de Lapparent asks? For his part, Fr. Kneller wonders why Ignatius would have
learned from an illumination of grace what reason teaches to everyone, namely that it
is necessary to take the means required by one’s end. To say that such a reason depends
on faith is absurd, another Jesuit says.
After that, the second part of the formula seems equally incoherent to them.
What good is it to act, if we imagine that God does everything and humans nothing?
Therefore, let us reverse Hevenesi’s order. Since the opposition of the second member
certainly expresses absolute confidence in God as to the achievement of our goals, not
natural but supernatural, let us join it to the sic Deo fide of the first, that now obtains
the meaning: Trust in God on whom at the supernatural level everything depends, and
not on yourself. Consequently, since the opposition of the first component is trans-
ferred to the second, the latter will mean: Act on the natural level as if God did nothing
there and you everything.
We now have something that seems luminous, logical, coherent, in a word wor-
thy of St. Ignatius, this “most reasonable of saints, who knew how to speak clearly
and without being too subtle.” Hevenesi’s critics find in it their usual representation of
two levels, stripped of any internal connection: the supernatural order first and above,
“where human beings can accomplish nothing meritorious,” says Fr. Kneller’s corre-
spondent, and next and below is the natural order, where we can achieve our goals
without “supernatural means” or “illuminations of the Holy Spirit.”
After orienting the maxim this way based on their present conceptions, they
turn to the sources to seek confirmation. In Ignatius’s confidence to Ribadeneyra,
in Ribadeneyra’s De ratione gubernandi, in Nolarci, Gracián, Bossuet, and even in
Kieckens’s translation of Hevenesi, they do not find the sic Deo fide that orders the
use of human means according to Hevenesi. On the contrary, the latter is introduced
by a verb like “he must” (or “I must” in direct style), in Ignatius’s confidence or such
as “Ignatius recurred to” or “employed in Ribadeneyra and Nolarci’s texts” or by an
impersonal “it is necessary to act” or “one must” in Kieckens, Gracián, Bossuet, and
Ravignan. Interpreting these various terms as an imperative of simple natural reason,
it seems evident to them that Hevenesi’s iis operam admove fills the role much better.
As it further appears that confidence in God and not these means, although everywhere

via free access
mentioned in second place, can only be related to the initial sic Deo fide, Hevenesi’s
inversion seems flagrant to them. Finally, despite the late date of Bartoli’s text in rela-
tion to Ribadeneyra, it is prior to those of Nolarci and therefore Hevenesi. They are
sure they have an unshakable guarantee in him.
All this may seem complicated, but it is really very simple and becomes glaringly
evident, once we understand that the repetition and accumulation of reading errors is
caused in those who commit them solely by a representation of the relations of natu-
ral and supernatural that does not capture Ignatius’s view. By contrast, we can only
admire the perspicacity and dialectical mastery with which Hevenesi constructed his
formula and chose its terms, in a way that not only agrees with the sources he had but
above all with the Exercises.
After this agreement has helped us so much in refuting the objections to the tradi-
tional maxim by discovering their secret origin, it is no longer at all conjectural. Let us
take advantage of that to set it out once more.
Without the slightest doubt, sic Deo fide corresponds to Our Lord gave me to under-
stand that I must, which Ribadeneyra heard directly from Ignatius. But, however par-
ticular it was, this illumination has no other content than the truths of the Foundation.
Likewise, this initial imperative is internally connected to the God’s service to which all
human beings are submitted by the mere fact of their supernatural destiny. Because the
imperative deals precisely with things in his holy service, as Ignatius specified and con-
stitutes in Hevenesi’s maxim the first rule of action (agendorum), how could it require
an absolute confidence that considers at the outset inefficacious and useless that what
has not yet been undertaken? What the imperative requires, therefore, is much more
the obedience to faith that the human being (and the sinful human being) owes to
God, whose will is that he should participate in his redemption and in that of everyone.
Similar to the call of the Kingdom that is directed to the most ardent, the imperative
opens the course to freedom by proving its worth, choosing its field of action, and delib-
erating about the means to put to work in view of a gain, of a real success.
By making the subordinate clause’s quasi rerum successus omnis a te … penderet fol-
low this initial imperative, Hevenesi was copying Ribadeneyra flawlessly, who first had
given this form to Ignatius’s all possible honorable means. What is more, he doubles its
force by developing the chiasmus that remained implicit in his model.
For, at the same time, he signals first that the free exercise of all our faculties must
be commanded each time by our supernatural end and that thereby divine freedom
tends toward nothing less than rendering our nature a participant in its own and our
freedom Its equal—which implies that God passes into a quasi … nihil in our represen-
tation, as Christ who, in history, made himself nothing (exinanivit). But also, through
the double and rigorous opposition omnis a te, nihil a Deo, he was recalling the close
correspondence that exists between the exercises of the First Week (triple sin, personal
sins, Hell) and those of the Second Week (two standards, three pairs of men, and three

via free access
degrees of humility). In every election concerning matters in God’s service, freedom

cannot forget that it began by wanting not to depend in anything upon God, which is to
say positing Non-being. If Christ, God’s image, comes to open the field of the possible
to it again, it is not so that human freedom may develop according to the whims of its
fantasy, but in order that it should posit the negation of the Non-being preventing that
everything should depend on it and that the Kingdom of God should be also its own.
After this exaltation of reason and freedom that culminates in the election, comes
the obverse. Hevenesi introduces it by ita tamen iis operam omnem admove. His origi-
nality, we have remarked, consists in shifting to second place and transforming into an
imperative the infinitive of Ignatius’s confiding and Ribadeneyra’s imperfect, which
comes in first place in them. Perhaps this step was inspired by a text now quoted
against Hevenesi in favor of formula B, which he surely knew. In Bartoli, he could read:
“However, in putting into practice the means, we must work …” Whatever its origin, in
our judgement this imperative carries at the very least an unconscious influence of the
Exercises. It conveys perfectly that, on the one hand, action cannot remain in the realm
of the possible, where the elaboration of its projects requires that everything depend on
it. On the other hand, it tells us that freedom must cross the watershed of the election,
descend into things, and become full bodied, iis operam omnem, like Christ saying, Hoc
est corpus meum. In the end, it is necessary for it also to undergo its passion.
This lack of success in things undertaken, this thwarting of the best-chosen means
was implicitly foreseen by Christ’s order to Ignatius, but then trust in God and not in
these means. Here again, after adopting the translation that Ribadeneyra had given,
Hevenesi unpacks its implicit chiasmus. But in exchange, he refuses to follow its model
by adding the abandonment to Divine Providence to confidence in God. He does
not even mention the first. It is that clear to him that faith evoked at the beginning,
changes into hope in the fire of the proof! He is content with the quasi tu nihil to show
where the disciple must pass in following the master.
But immediately afterward, the word God resurges, the foundation of hope and
unlimited faith, as Christ did from the depths of hell and the tomb. Last comes omnia
solus sit facturus. The ending gives a resounding announcement of the Parousia,
while omnia, where we re-encounter the anticipated successes, along with the means
employed and the failures encountered, invites the soul, framed as it is by Deus and
solum, to pronounce its Suscipe and to taste in the action itself the fruit of the highest
contemplation, the presence and love of God in all things.
It is very difficult to say more in so few words and above all to render the movement
of the Ignatian dialectic, as it has appeared to us in the course of the Exercises.
We address one last remark to those who in spite of everything still doubt such
correspondence.

via free access
At the end of our commentary on the contemplation ad Amorem, the maxim was
presented to us, Non coerceri maximo, contineri tamen a minimo, divinum est, which
Hölderlin borrowed from the anonymous Jesuit who composed the Elogium sepul-
crale to St. Ignatius. We have analyzed and commented the maxim of the Hungarian
Jesuit Gábor Hevenesi about whom we know little else, except that he lived fifty years
later. Beyond the social fraternity that these two men had by their membership in the
same order, we glimpse a singular intellectual fraternity through their writings. Is it
not enough to look a little more closely at the impression left by these two maxims to
recognize that the stamp of the same genius marks them? Would it not be a prodigy,
unheard of in the history of human culture, to engender spiritual sons capable of such
works of art without possessing their secret oneself and without having enclosed it in
some secret deposit that is transmitted from generation to generation?
Let us sum up the conclusion of the different examinations upon which we have
concentrated during this long study. Because Hevenesi’s maxim respects the historical
sources and perfectly reflects Ignatius’s spirituality, it ought to be compared to those
historical words that, although never uttered exactly, still encapsulate the profound
truth of a whole personality—a more exact and more comprehensive truth than what
is scattered throughout documents older than those words—and extend their splen-
did and salutary radiance much better than longer narratives or discourses.
…
Since following Christ’s words to Ignatius we must “employ all licit means,” let us dare
one last time before ending to use our geometrical symbolism. To illustrate the tradi-
tional maxim, let us propose a figure that allows us to grasp at a glance its relation to
the Ignatian dialectic and particularly to the structure of the Exercises.
In agreement with our general scheme, let us place sic Deo fide at the top of the
vertical axis to represent the Freedom of the Most High, to which at the other end of
the same axis is opposed human freedom. Further, let us inscribe the word ita there, in
order to recall this opposition and represent at the same time the division of this “rule
of action” into two sentences that correspond to each other. Since each imperative
governs a subordinate clause introduced by quasi, we can represent this new division
and its intersection with the previous one by placing these two words at the end of the
horizontal axis in the place of Alpha and Omega. Now let us inscribe the subject of the
first subordinate, rerum successus, on the half of the horizontal axis corresponding to
the Before of election. Then, on the two lines joining the first quasi to the two ends of
the vertical axis, first on the one above, nihil a Deo, then on the one below omnis a te.
Lastly, along the vertical from top to bottom we write penderet.

via free access
Figure 30 Sic Deo fide …; ita
It seems that this second imperative (iis operam omnem admove) ought to occupy a
place that is symmetrical to the first imperative. And in fact, nothing prohibits plac-
ing it at the very bottom of the vertical. But it is better to leave only ita there, which
is enough to indicate this symmetry, inasmuch as ita does not exclude difference
between the two imperatives. The first, which comes from the eternal, commands the
second, which concerns more directly the visible action developing in time. Therefore,
let us inscribe it on the second half of the horizontal line, corresponding to the After
of the election. For the rest, this asymmetry is justified by the conventions of our sym-
bolism, since according to them the movement of the circumference corresponds to
those things that are developed along the vertical and along the horizontal. The cor-
respondence can be recalled by inscribing in two places the semi-colon that divides
the maxim: beside the ita, and in the center of the circle at the place of hic et nunc.
To finish this figure, it remains to situate the two contraries, tu nihil and ominia solus
Deus, on the sides of the inscribed square, so that they crisscross with those of the first
subordinated clause, and to write the final verb sit facturus from the bottom up along
the vertical line.

via free access
Here is what becomes obvious in this figure. The two components of the maxim are
divided in function of the election, as in the Exercises. Furthermore, the first opposi-
tion, by being duplicated, corresponds to the distinction that holds among the Four
Weeks. The circularity of the Exercises is found anew in the very movement of the
maxim, which, in agreement with the time of the horizontal, unfolds from Alpha
toward Omega, starting from sic Deo fide, and comes back to it. Finally, the totality
of dialectical relations, constituted by the triple chiasmus and its internal negation,
has as its soul the movement of going and coming that takes place along the vertical,
which means, according to our diagram’s symbolism, the movement of the Trinity.
As a counter proof, let us illustrate finally the inversion proposed by the critics of
Hevenesi, limiting ourselves to figuring formula C, where the change is reduced to the
minimum.
Minimal also are the modifications to be brought to the foregoing figure. For the
first phase, it is enough in fact to have omnis permuted with nihil and to change the
direction of penderet by writing from the bottom up. Thus, success is represented as
depending on God and no longer on me. For the second phase, sit facturus must also
be inversed, that is, written from top to bottom, while solus omnia and nihil change
places. But taking advantage of the latitude allowed by our symbolism, let us this time
inscribe the second imperative next to the ita in perfect symmetry with the first. Thus,
the isolation of the two phrases is already noted, which is, as we have seen, the conse-
quence of the inversion.
Now let us indicate the fundamental criticism that this figure suggests. Clearly, sic
Deo fide keeps its previous place of honor. But if a circular movement must also tie up
and establish continuity among the quadruple opposition of the two chiasmi, let us
ask ourselves where it can start in order to return to its point of departure.
Does it start from sic Deo fide and in the same direction as before?—Impossible,
because this meaning is contradicted by the one indicated by penderet. It is also impos-
sible to make it start from the same point but in the other direction. Although the cir-
cular motion in this case agrees with the one represented on both sides of the vertical,
it contradicts the movement of time, which is developed along the horizontal.
If we want to recuperate a circulation that agrees both with the movement indi-
cated on either side of the vertical and with the movement of time on the horizontal,
it is necessary to start from the bottom end of the vertical and return to it. Now, human
freedom is situated there. In this way, the dangers we have pointed out are symbolized
and made manifest. In this formula, the initial proclamation of sic Deo fide is the proc-
lamation of nominal sovereignty, having its fatal reply in freedom’s radical autonomy.
However, in practice, the real danger created by the inversion of the subordinate
clauses is different and subtler. Since the possible circularity contradicts the position

via free access
Figure 31 Formule inversée—C

via free access
of sic Deo fide, the mind renounces this circularity or rather splits it into two opposed
circles, each of which has an end of the vertical axis as its center. This is why we repre-
sented the large circle whose center is hic et nunc with a dotted line and the two new
opposing circles by continuous lines. Let us call the upper one the order of the super-
natural and the lower one that of the natural. In this way, we symbolize the new figure
that seems to us to be the hidden origin of the objections against Hevenesi and the
cause of reading errors made by his critics. By comparing this figure with the previous
one, we also have an intuitive image of the difference that separates this representa-
tion of the two orders, natural and supernatural, from the traditional organic concept
that both the structure of the Exercises and the structure of Hevenesi’s maxim repre-
sent without making it explicit.
With this indication alone, it would obviously be absurd to claim that the inver-
sion of the Thesaurus’s maxim number 2 implies the subversion of the spirituality that
inspired it.28 Furthermore, even if this were so, the error would be unimportant. It is
necessary to repeat again that the content of the words in general of such a maxim
in particular is never interpreted outside the social milieu in which it is transmitted.
This one possesses such vitality that by itself it eliminates all the seeds of errors that
imperfect language can conceal. But, being equally attentive to language and respect-
ful toward the Logos, isn’t it the duty of the theologian to indicate error when he sees
it and as he sees it, with the single goal that the dialogue of human beings with God
not risk being so meager that it is blocked, if only by a flaw in dialectic? After satisfying
this duty to the best of his ability, it remains for the theologian to appropriate the last
words of the Ignatian maxim—quasi tu nihil, Deus omnia solus sit facturus.
After enunciating his maxim, “It is necessary to use human means as if there were
no divine means and divine means as if there were no human ones,”29 Baltasar Gracián
28 However, perhaps it would be of some interest to indicate this little fact. It is by reasoning
on diagrams related to those published in the present work that we were able to perceive
and show the error of progressivism at a time when very few were aware of it and when it
was rather widespread in works or journals claiming to be inspired by the surest theology
and one highly recommended by the church. That is not surprising. In the last analysis,
the error rests on a conception of the relations between natural and supernatural orders,
where all organic connections are suppressed. So much so, that the progressive comes to
conceive the reconciliation of Marxism and Christianity by imagining Christians, possess-
ing the secrets of the eternal future in their faith in the people of God, could take charge of
the development of a supernatural ontology, while for their part, the Marxist, possessing
the secrets of the temporal future in his faith in the proletariat, would organize the world
in the name of his natural, sociological science.
29 Gracián, L’homme de cour, translated by Amelot de La Houssaye, introduced by André
Rouveyre (Grasset 1934), 198 [Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia, 1647].

via free access
appended this simple observation, “It is the precept of a great teacher. It needs no
commentary.”
Good advice that could thoroughly embarrass us for having produced such a long
commentary upon a maxim that, even more than Gracián’s, merits only silent medita-
tion and daily application. Our excuse is that we believe that, at bottom, all our pages
have just one motive and one end: to give the same advice or, better yet, to substitute
the advice that Hevenesi, had he foreseen his maxim’s destiny, would certainly have
uttered: This is the precept of a great master. We must change nothing in it.

via free access
via free access
Figures

via free access
370 Figures
Règles pour le Discernement des Esprits: Première Semaine
Figures 1–10

via free access
Figures 371
Règles pour le Discernement des Esprits: Deuxième Semaine
Figures 14–19
via free access
372 Figures
Figures 20–29 Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

via free access
Figures 373
Elogium Sepulcrale

via free access
via free access
Bibliography
Translators’ note: Fessard translates from different versions of Hegel’s complete works
and usually translates the title into French. We have indicated this in the text. The two
major versions Fessard uses are: Samtliche Werke, edited by Georg Lasson (Leipzig: J.
Hoffmeister, 1911ff.); and Sämtliche Werke: Jubiläumsausgabe, edited by H. [Hermann]
Glockner (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1927–40).
Alzog, Johann, Isidore Goschler, and Charles Félix Audley. Histoire universelle de l’église.
Paris: Lecoffre, 1855.
Aquinas, Thomas. Commentarium in Evangelium Ioannis, Commentary on the Gospel
of John. Edited by James A. Weisheipl, O.P., and Fabian R. Larcher. Albany, NY: Magi
Books, 1998.
Aquinas, Thomas. In Boethii de Trinitate. In The Theological Tractates and the
Consolation of Philosophy, 2–31. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1917, 1973.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa contra Gentiles. Edited by Aquinas Institute. Steubenville,
OH: Emmaus Academic, 2019.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa theologiae. Edited by Aquinas Institute. Steubenville, OH:
Emmaus Academic, 2012.
Astrain, Antonio, S.J. Historia de la Companía de Jesús. Madrid: Razón y Fe, 1902–25.
Asveld, Paul. La pensée religieuse du jeune Hegel: Liberté et aliénation. Paris: Desclée de
Brouwer, 1953.
Augustine. Confessions. Translated by William Watts. 2 Vols. Loeb Classical Library.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960–61.
Augustine. In Evangelium Johannis. In Jacques-Paul Migne, ed. Patrologia Latina. Vol.
36. https://patristica.net/latina.
Augustine. Expositio Epistolae ad Galatas. In Jacques-Paul Migne, ed. Patrologia Latina.
Vol. 35. https://patristica.net/latina.
Augustine. Quaestiones et locutiones in Pentateuchum. In Jacques-Paul Migne, ed.
Patrologia Latina. Vol. 34. https://patristica.net/latina.
Barrès, Maurice. Un homme libre. Paris: Perrin, 1889.
Bartoli, Daniello, S.J. Histoire de S. Ignace de Loyola d’aprés les documents originaux.
Translated by L. Michel, S.J. Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1893.
Baruzi, Jean. Création religieuse et pensée contemplative, vol. 2, Angel Silesius. Paris:
Aubier, 1951.
Beirnaert, Louis, S.J., and Charles-Henri Nodet. Direction spirituelle et psychologie.
Études Carmélitaines. Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1951.

via free access
376 Bibliography
Bernard of Clairvaux. “Sermo de resurrectione.” In Patrologia Latina. Vol. 185. https://

patristica.net/latina.
Blondel, Maurice. Action. Paris: PUF, 1963 [Paris: Alcan, 1893].
Blondel, Maurice. Action. Translated by Oliva Blanchette. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame
University Press, 1984.
Blondel, Maurice. Principe élémentaire d’une logique de la vie morale. Paris: n.p., 1900.
Boehmer, Heinrich. Les jésuites. Translated by Gabriel Monod. Paris: Armand Colin,
1910.
Bouhours, Dominique. Les maximes de Saint Ignace de Loyola, fondateur de la
Compagnie de Jésus, avec les sentiments de S. François Xavier, de la mesme Compagnie.
Paris: Mabre-Cramoisy, 1683.
Bouvier, Pierre. Interprétation authentique de la méditation fondamentale dans les
Exercices spirituels de Saint Ignace. Bourges: A. Tardy, 1922.
Bouyer, Louis. “Le problème du mal dans le Christianisme antique.” Dieu vivant 6
(1946): 15–42.
Bremond, Henri. “Ascèse ou prière: Notes sur la crise des Exercices de Saint Ignace.”
Revue des sciences religieuses 7 (1927): 226–61.
Bremond, Henri. “Saint Ignace et les Exercices.” La vie spirituelle 20 (1929): 1–47; 73–111.
Brou, Alexandre. Les Exercices spirituels de Saint Ignace de Loyola: Histoire et psycholo-
gie. Paris: P. Tequi, 1922.
Brou, Alexandre. Xaverius: Esquisse d’un directoire ascétique à l’usage des missionnaires
de la Compagnie de Jésus. Toulouse: Apostolat de la Prière, 1930.
Bultmann, Rudolf. Kerygma and Myth. Translated by Reginald H. Fuller. London: SPCK,
1953.
Bultmann, Rudolf. Kerygma und Mythos. Hamburg: Reich, 1948.
Carnoli, Aloisio. Compendio della vita di S. Ignatio di Loiola raccolto con fedeltà e con
brevità da quanti n’hano prouatamente stampato in vn secolo gravi autori pero opera
di don Vigilio Nolarci. Venice, 1680.
Cavallera, Ferdinand, S.J. “La spiritualité des Exercices.” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique
3, no. 12 (October 1922): 357–80.
Daniélou, Madeleine, and Jean-Joseph Surin. Les voies de l’amour divin. Paris: Editorial
de l’Orante, 1954.
Dante. The Paradiso of Dante Alighieri. English translation by Philip H. Wicksteed,
Italian text by Herman Oelsner. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1954 [1899].
De Gandillac, Maurice. La philosophie de Nicolas de Cues. Paris: Aubier, 1941.
De Gandillac, Maurice. “Sur la sphère infinie de Pascal.” Revue d’histoire de la philoso-
phie et d’histoire générale de la civilisation 33 (January–March 1943): 32–44.
De Grandmaison, Léonce. “Les Exercices de saint Ignace.” Recherches de science reli-
gieuse 10 (1920): 391–408.

via free access
Bibliography 377
De Guibert, Joseph, S.J. Saint Ignace mystique d’après son Journal spirituel. Toulouse:
Apostolat de la Prière, 1938.
De Guibert, Joseph, S.J. La spiritualité de la Compagnie de Jésus: Esquisse historique.
Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 1953.
De Lubac, Henri. Aspects du Bouddhisme. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2012 [Paris: Éditions
du Seuil, 1955].
De Lubac, Henri. Nouveaux paradoxes. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1955.
Descartes, René. Discours de la méthode. Introduction by Étienne Gilson. Paris: Vrin,
1966.
Descartes, René. Discourse on Method. In The Philosophical Writings of Descartes,
translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 1:109–52.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Doncoeur, Paul, S.J. L’honneur et service de Dieu selon Saint Ignace de Loyola. Paris:
Orante, 1944.
Doncoeur, Paul, S.J., and Henry Lavin, trans. The Ignatian Concepts of the Honor and
Service of God. Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1955.
Elliott, Walter. Life of Father Hecker. Introduction by Archbishop John Ireland. New
York: Columbus Press, 1891.
Elliott, Walter. Vie du Père Hecker. Introduction by Félix Klein. Paris: n.p., 1898.
Engels, Friedrich. Dialectics of Nature. New York: International Publishers, 1968.
Engels, Friedrich. Dialectique de la nature. Translated by Émile Bottigelli. Paris: Éditions
sociales, 1968.
Ernout, Antoine, and Alfred Meillet. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine.
Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1951.
Fessard, Gaston, S.J. “Le matérialisme historique et la dialectique du maître et l’esclave.”
In Atti del congresso internationale di filosofia, Rome, November 15–20, 1947, edited by
Enrico Castelli, 57–78. Milan: Castelllani, 1947.
Fessard, Gaston, S.J. “Le mystère de la Societé.” Recherches de science religieuse 1–2
(1948): 5–54.
Fülöp-Miller, René. Les jésuites et le secret de leur puissance. 2 Vols. Translated by
Gabriel Guidau. Paris: Plon, 1933.
Gerson, Jean. Oeuvres complètes. Edited by Palémon Glorieux. 10 Vols. Paris: Desclée,
1960–73.
Gerson, Jean. De signis bonis et malis. 5 Vols. Antwerp, 1706.
Gilson, Étienne. Being and Some Philosophers. 2nd ed. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1952.
Gracián, Baltasar, S.J. L’homme de cour. Translated by Amelot de la Houssaie, introduc-
tion by André Roveyre. Paris: Grasset, 1934.

via free access
378 Bibliography
Gracián, Baltasar, S.J. The Oracle: A Manual of the Art of Discretion. Translated by L.B.
[Leslie Bannister] Walton. London: J. M. Dent, 1953.
Gracián, Baltasar, S.J. Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia. Huesca, 1647.
Guillaume, Gustave. Temps et verbe/Architectonique du temps dans les langues clas-
siques. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1921, 1968.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Brief von und an Hegel. Edited by Johannes Hoffmeister.
Hamburg: Meiner, 1952–60.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Dokumente zu Hegels Entwicklung. Edited by Johannes
Hoffmeister. Stuttgart: Fr. Fromanns Verlag, 1936.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Enzyklopädie, Sämtliche Werke. Hamburg: Meiner,
1911ff.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Logik, Sämtliche Werke. Hamburge: Meiner, 1923.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phänomenologie des Geistes, Sämtliche Werke.
Hamburge: Meiner, 1923.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. La phénoménologie de l’esprit. Translated by Jean
Hyppolite. Paris: Aubier, 1963.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Rechtsphilosophie. Stuttgart: Frommann, 1927–40.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. System der Philosophie. Stuttgart: Frommann, 1927–40.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Vorlesungen über die Äesthetik. Hamburg: Meiner,
1931.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion.
Hamburg: Meiner, 1931.
Heidegger, Martin. Kant et le problème de la métaphysique. Translated by Alphonse de
Waelhens and Walter Biemel. Paris: Gallimard, 1953.
Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1927.
Hevenesi, Gábor, S.J. Étincelles de l’amour divin. Translated by J.-F. [Jan-Frans] Kieckens.
Brussels: Vromont, 1903.
Hevenesi, Gábor, S.J. Scintillae Ignatianae sive Sancti Ignatii de Loyola, Societatis Jesu
fundatoris, Apothegmata Sacra. Vienna, 1705.
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Correspondance complète. Translated by Denise Naville. Paris:
Gallimard, 1948.
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Hyperion. Translated by Howard Gaskill. Cambridge: Open Book
Publishers, 2019.
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Norbert von Hellingrath. Berlin:
Propyläen Verlag, 1913–23.
Hostie, Raymond, S.J. “Le cercle de l’oraison et de l’action.” Christus 6 (1955): 145–288.
Hugueny, Étienne, O.P. “Circulaire, rectiligne, helicoïdal, les trois degrés de contempla-
tion.” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 13 (1924): 327–31.

via free access
Bibliography 379
Ignatius of Loyola. Ejercicios espirituales. Texto autógrafo. Madrid: Apostolado de la

Prensa, 1962.
Ignatius of Loyola. Exercitia spiritualia S. Ignatii de Loyola et eorum Directoria. Madrid:
Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 1919.
Ignatius of Loyola. Journal spirituel [Extracts]. Translated by Maurice Giuliani, S.J.
Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1959.
Ignatius of Loyola. Letters and Instructions of St. Ignatius Loyola. Charleston, SC: Nabu
Press, 2014.
Ignatius of Loyola. The Pilgrim’s Journey. Introduction, translation, and commentary
by Joseph N. Tylenda, S.J. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1985, 1989.
Ignatius of Loyola. Récit du pèlerin. Translated by Eugène Thibaut, S.J. Bruges: Charles
Beyaert, 1924.
Ignatius of Loyola. Spiritual Exercises. Translated by Elder Mullan, S.J. New York: P. J.
Kenedy & Sons, 1914.
Ignatius of Loyola. The Spiritual Journal of St. Ignatius Loyola, February 1544 to 1545.
Translated by William J. Young. Woodstock, MD: Woodstock College Press, 1958.
John of Ruysbroeck. Le livre des sept degrés de l’echelle d’amour. Translated by the
Benedictines of St. Paul of Wisques. Vol. 1. 1915, 1919.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments.
Translated by Edna and Howard Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Miettes philosophiques. Translated by Paul Petit. Paris: Éditions du
Livre Français, 1947.
Kierkegaard, Søren [Johannes Climacus]. Philosophical Fragments. Translated by Edna
and Howard Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Post-scriptum aux Miettes philosophiques. Paris: Gallimard, 1941.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Riens philosophiques. Translated by Knud Ferlov and Jean J. Gateau.
Paris: Gallimard, 1937.
Kneller, C.A., S.J. L’interprétation authentique de la méditation fondamentale dans les
Exercices spirituels. Bourges: Typographie A. Tardy, 1922.
Kneller, C.A., S.J. “Ein Wort des hl. Ignatius von Loyola.” Zeitschrift für Azese und Mystik
3 (1928): 253–57.
Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Paris: Gallimard, 1947.
Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Assembled by Raymond
Queneau, edited by Alan Bloom, translated by James H. Nichols Jr. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1980.
Lalande, André, and correspondents of the Societé française de philosophie.
Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie. 2 Vols. Paris: Alcan, 1927.
Lallemant, Louis, S.J. Doctrine spirituelle. Paris: J. Gabalda,, 1909.

via free access
380 Bibliography
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “L’espérance et de l’union de ces deux élements.” In

Oeuvres, edited by Louis-François Foucher de Careil, 7:27–93. Paris: Fermin Didot,
1861–75.
Leo XIII. “Testem benevolentiae: True and False Americanism in Religion.” In “A Light
in the Heavens”: The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903), 441–53.
Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1995 [New York: Benziger Brothers, 1903].
Léon-Dufour, Xavier. “Actualité du quatrième Evangile.” Nouvelle revue théologique 76,
no. 5 (May 1954): 449–68.
Mahnke, Dietrich. Unendliche Sphäre und Allmittelpunkt, Beiträge zur Genealogie der
mathematischen Mystik. Halle: Niemeyer Verlag, 1937.
Maldonado y Guevara, Francisco. Lo fictivo y lo antifictivo en el pensamiento de Ignacio
de Loyola y otros estudios. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1954.
Mariès, Louis, trans. “Une Antiphona de Saint Éphrem sur l’Eucharistie.” Recherches de
science religieuse 42, no. 3 (1954): 394–403.
Maritain, Jacques. Court traité de l’existence et l’existant. Paris: Hartmann, 1947.
Marlé, René. Bultmann et l’interprétation du Nouveau Testament. Paris: Aubier, 1956.
Marx, Karl. Le Capital. Translation by Joseph Roy. Paris: Maurice La Châtre, 1872.
Mayoux, J.-J. [Jean-Jacques]. Controverse entre J.-J. Mayoux et G. Fessard. Venice: Société
européene de Culture, 1952.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard, 1945.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A.
Landes. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Newman, John Henry. Plain and Parochial Sermons. 1 Vol. ed. San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1997.
Nicholas of Cusa. Learned Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De docta igno-
rantia by Jasper Hopkins. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning Press, 1985.
Nolarci, Virgilio [Aloisio Carnoli]. Vita del Patriarca Sant’Ignatio de Loiola: Fondatore
della Compagnia di Giesu. Venice, 1680.
Nonell, Jaime, S.J. Études sur le text des Exercices. Paris: Collection de la Bibliothèque
des Exercises, 1922.
Nougat, Noël. Les Exercices spirituels d’Ignace de Loyola. Montauban: Faculté de
Théologie Protestante, 1906.
O’Rahilly, Alfred. Father William Doyle S.J. N.p.: Forgotten Books, 2011 [1921].
O’Rahilly, Alfred. Vie de P. W. Doyle. Paris: Lethielleux, 1927.
Ott, Heinrich. Geschichte und Heilsgeschichte in der Theologie Rudolf Bultmanns.
Tübingen: Mohr, 1955.
Palma, Luigi de la [Ludovicus Palmensis], S.J. Obras completas del Padre Luis de la
Palma. Madrid: BAC, 1967.
Palma, Luigi de la [Ludovicus Palmensis], S.J. Via spiritualis. Translated by Jaime
Nonell. Barcelona: Rosalius, 1887.

via free access
Bibliography 381
Pascal, Blaise. Lettres provinciales. Paris: PUF, 1984.

Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. Edited by Léon Brunschwig. Paris: Hachette, 1897.
Pascal, Blaise. The Provincial Letters. Translated by A. [Alban] J. Krailsheimer. London:
Penguin Classics, 1982.
Peeters, Louis, S.J. Vers l’union divine, par les Exercices de saint Ignace. 2nd ed. Louvain:
Museum Lessianum, 1931 [1924].
Picard, Yvonne. “Le temps chez Husserl et chez Heidegger.” Deucalion 1 (1946): 93–124.
Pinard de la Boullaye, Henri. Les étapes de la rédaction des Exercices de Saint Ignace.
Paris: Beauchesne, 1945, 1950, 1956.
Ponlevoy, Armand de. Commentaire sur les Exercices spirituels de saint Ignace. Évreux:
Imprimerie de l’Eure, 1889.
Ponlevoy, Armand de. Vie de R.P. Xavier de Ravignan de la Compagnie de Jésus. Vol. 1.
12th ed. Paris: Gervais, 1885.
Poulet, Georges. “Pascal et la sphère admirable.” Esprit 233, no. 12 (December 1955):
1833–49.
“Prémotion physique.” In Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, edited by Jean Michel
Alfred Vacant et al. Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1888–1950.
Przywara, Erich. Deus semper maior: Theologie der Exerzitien. 3 Vols. Freiburg: Herder,
1929–40.
Pseudo-Dionysius. Les noms divins. In Oeuvres complètes du Pseudo-Denys, translated
by Maurice de Gandillac. Paris: Aubier, 1941.
Rahner, Karl. “Le début d’une doctrine des cinq sense spirituels chez Origèn.” Revue
d’ascétique et de mystique 13 (1932): 113–45.
Rahner, Karl. “La doctrine des cinq ‘sens spirituels’ au Moyen Âge et en particuler chez
S. Bonaventure.” Revue d’ascétique et mystique 14 (1933): 263–99.
Rahner, Karl. “Die Grabschrift des Loyola.” Stimmen der Zeit 72, no. 139 (February 1947):
321–39.
Rahner, Karl. Saint Ignace de Loyola et la génese des Exercices. Translated by Guy
de Vaux, preface by Henri de Lubac. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1992 [Toulouse:
Apostolat de la Prière, 1948].
Ribadeneyra, Pedro de. The Life of B. Father Ignatius of Loyola, Author and Founder of
the Society of Jesus. Translated by Michael Walpole. Saint-Omer: English College
Press, 1616.
Ribadeneyra, Pedro de. The Life of Ignatius of Loyola. Translated by Claude Nicholas
Pavur. Chestnut Hill, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2014.
Ribadeneyra, Pedro de. Treatise on the Governance of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Translated
by Joseph Munitz, S.J., afterword by Mark Rotsaert, S.J. Oxford: Way Books, Campion
Hall, 2016.
Ribadeneyra, Pedro de. Vita Sancti Ignatii Loiolae, societatis Iesu fundatoris. Naples:
Apud Josephum Cacchium, 1572.

via free access
382 Bibliography
Rondet, Henri, S.J. “La définition de l’assomption.” Bulletin de la Societé Française de

Études mariales (1949): 59–95.
Rondet, Henri, S.J. Gratia Christi: Essai d’histoire du dogme et de théologie dogmatique.
Paris: Beauchesne, 1948.
Rondet, Henri, S.J. La vie de foi. Paris: Lethielleux, 1931.
Roothaan, Jan Philipp, S.J. Exercitia spiritualia Sancti Ignatii de Loyola: Versio litteralis
ex autographo hispanico. N.p.: Pravava Books, 2020 [1920].
Roothaan, Jan Philipp, S.J., ed. Thesaurus spiritualis Societatis Jesu. Rome: Apud Curiam
Praepositi Generalis, 1953 [1845].
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions. Paris: Hermann, 1939.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2001.
Surin, Jean-Joseph, S.J. Cantiques spirituels de l’amour divin. Charleston, SC: Nabu
Press, 2011 [Paris, 1660].
Surin, Jean-Joseph, S.J. Les voies de l’amour divin. Edited by Madeleine Daniélou. Paris:
Éditions de l’Orante, 1954.
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, S.J. “Cône du temps.” Psyché 99–100 (November–December
1955): 23–27; 171–79.
Tonnelat, Ernest. Oeuvre poétique et la pensée religieuse de Hölderlin. Paris: Marcel
Didier, 1950.
von Balthasar, Hans Urs. “Theologie et santité.” Dieu vivant 12 (October 1948): 15–32.
Wahl, Jean. Malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel. Paris: Rieder, 1929.

via free access
Index of Names
Adam 48, 53, 57, 62, 120, 123, 123n5, 125, 132, Eckhart, Meister 220n31, 224
133, 134, 137, 188, 205–6, 209, 258, 289, Engels, Friedrich xvi, 237n56, 238, 296
292, 295
Aquinas, Thomas xii, 32n5, 38n9, 53n2, Foucauld, Charles 289
163n11, 163n13 Francis Xavier, St. xiii, 25, 308
Astrain, Antonio 307n23 Füllop-Miller 4, 4n4
Augustine, St. 22, 57n3, 76, 76n3, 127n6,
135n4, 136, 157, 158, 233, 294, 294n13 Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Reginald xii, 271
Gerson, Jean 355, 356
Barre, F. de La 352, 353 Gilson, Étienne 46n1
Barrès, Maurice 35, 35n8 Giuliani, Maurice M. 190n2, 200n17, 214n25,
Baruzi, Jean 224–25n35, 225, 225n36, 294, 295n15
225nn38–41 González de Ávila, Egidio 26, 246, 348, 349
Beirnaert, Louis 34 Gracián, Baltasar 346, 346n22, 347, 348, 359,
Bellarmine, Robert 181, 182 366, 366n29, 367
Blondel, Maurice xiii, 2, 2n1, 134, 134n2, 194, Grandmaison, Léonce de 93, 93n11, 95, 96,
194n6, 234 98, 308, 308n24, 309
Boehmer, Heinrich 4, 4n3 Guibert, Joseph de 31, 39, 155–56n1, 189,
Borgia, Francis (Francisco de Borja) 314, 189n1, 194, 194n7, 195n8, 200, 200n18,
315, 320, 355 226, 229
Bouhours, Dominique 348 Guillaume, Gustave 342–43n19
Bouvier, Fr. xiii, xiiin3, 1, 357
Bouyer, Louis 46n1 Hecker, Isaac 352, 353n25
Bremond, Henri 2, 7n6, 9, 19, 33n6, 35, 92, Hegel, G.W.F. xiii–xvi, 2, 3, 3n2, 11, 12, 14, 22,
92nn6–8, 93, 93nn9–10, 94, 94n12, 72, 72n1, 73, 90, 103–5, 111n1, 135–36n4,
95, 98, 98n13, 99, 100, 100nn15–16, 161, 161nn5–10, 168, 173, 174–77, 179,
101nn18–19, 102, 102n21, 103, 166, 173, 180n12, 181, 181n15, 182, 183, 187, 194,
173n18, 191, 191n5, 192, 193, 194, 195, 217, 220, 220nn30–31, 221, 224, 224n34,
195nn9–10, 196n11, 197, 197n13, 198, 200, 234–39, 241n72, 242, 243, 243nn74–75,
300n22 244, 251, 257, 261, 261–62n5, 297, 300,
Brou, Alexandre 6n5, 337, 346, 348 310, 323–24, 325, 326, 329, 346–47n22,
Bultmann, Rudolf 8n7, 241, 241n72, 242, 243 349
Helyar, John 197, 198, 199
Câmara, Luis Gonçalves da 17, 203 Hevenesi, Gábor xvii, 311, 312, 313–17, 318,
Carnoli, Virgilio 314, 316, 316n7, 318, 321n8, 319, 320–21, 322, 323, 325, 326, 326n15,
347, 348, 359, 360 327, 328, 329, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336,
Cavallera, Ferdinand 99, 99n14, 100n17 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344,
Cullmann, Oscar 241, 242, 243 345, 346, 346–47n22, 347, 348–49, 350,
351–53, 354–55, 357, 358, 359–60, 361,
Delbos, Victor 2n1 362, 364, 366, 367
Descartes, René 20, 21 Hölderlin, Friedrich xvi, 174, 176, 176n5,
Doncoeur, Paul 348, 349, 350, 354, 355 177, 178, 179, 180, 180nn12–13, 181, 182,
Doyle, Willie 323, 345 182nn16–17, 183, 187, 217, 362

via free access
384 Index of Names
Hostie, Raymond 4n4 Nodet, Charles-Henri 34n7

Hugeny, Étienne 223–24n32 Nolarci. See Carnoli
Nonell y Mas, Jaime 24, 24n2, 28, 29, 30, 31
Ignatius (of) Loyola passim Nougat, Noël 195
Ireland, Archbishop John xvi, xvii, 351, 352,
353, 354, 355 Olave, Martín 307n23
Ong, Walter J. 184n19
Joseph, St. 12n15 O’Rahilly, A. 323, 345
Joseph of Arimathea 138 Ott, Heinrich 241n72, 242n73
Kant, Immanuel 33 Pascal, Blaise 52n1, 178, 181n14, 184, 218n27

Kieckens, Fr. 312, 326, 327, 328, 332, 334, 335, Paul, St. xv, xvi, 11n10, 22, 75, 76, 107, 125, 138,
344, 345, 353, 359 139n6, 158, 170, 183, 209, 210, 212, 261,
Kierkegaard, Søren xv, 2, 11, 11nn10–11, 12, 306, 351, 353
12nn12–14, 14, 234, 235, 238, 238nn61– Peeters, Louis 308, 308n25, 309
65, 239, 239nn66–67, 241, 242, 243, 244, Pinard de la Boullaye, Henri 70n1, 197,
262, 267 197n12, 198, 313, 314, 316, 321, 347
Kneller, C.A. xvii, 312, 314, 315, 316, 321, 322, Ponlevoy, Armand de 10, 75, 75n2, 157n3,
322n11, 324, 325, 326n15, 347, 350, 351, 166, 191, 191n4, 195, 196, 256, 256nn2–3,
352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 359 258, 263, 353
Przywara, Erich 13, 157n3, 184n19, 233,
Lalande, André 328, 329n16 233n46, 235n47
Lallemant, P. 58n4
Lapparent, Fr. Joseph de xvii, 311, 312, 312n1, Rahner, Hugo 10n8, 177, 177n6, 178, 178n8,
313, 314, 316, 323, 325, 326, 327. 332, 337, 180, 181n14, 183, 189
344–50, 354, 355, 359 Rahner, Karl 139n7
Lebreton, Fr. 13n16 Ribadeneyra, Pedro de 314, 314n3, 315, 316,
LeJeune, Fr. Paul 196 317, 318, 319, 320, 321n9, 322, 326n15,
Lenin, Vladimir 4, 4n4 327, 328, 335, 345, 346, 346n22, 347,
Léon-Dufour, Xavier 295n15 348, 349, 350, 355, 359, 360, 361
Leturia, Pedro de 10n8 Riondel, Henri 345
Lubac, Henri de 10n8, 135n3, 294n14 Rondet, Henri 144n9, 271n7
Roothaan, Jan Philip 229n44, 265, 275, 276,
Magdalen 66, 150, 151 298
Maine de Biran, François-Pierre-Goutier Ruysbroek, John of 218, 218n29
1, 2
Maldonado y Guevara, Francisco 346, Sertillanges, Antonin 46n1
346–47n22
Maritain, Jacques 46n1 Virgin Mary 61, 121, 125, 126, 135n4, 137n5,
Marquis of Sarriá 314, 314n2, 316, 349 138, 142, 143, 144, 145, 201, 208, 210, 211,
Mayoux, Jean-Jacques 262n6 282, 295
Mazoyer 323, 345, 350 Von Balthasar, Hans Urs 7n6
Nadal, Jerónimo 4n4, 6n5, 10n8, 17, 22 Wahl, Jean xiii, 2, 3n2

Newman, John Henry 294, 294n14

via free access
Index of Terms
abandonment 106, 107, 130, 150, 199, 238, 317, 330, 331, 332, 336, 338, 339, 340, 341,
284, 290, 307, 312, 315, 316, 319, 321, 326, 342, 342–43n19, 343, 346–47n22, 352,
327, 330, 332, 335, 341, 354, 358n27, 361 353, 362
Absolute, Absolute Self 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, Being 12, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 48, 49,
56, 57, 59, 60, 63, 110, 112–13, 119, 130, 50, 51, 52–54, 55, 57, 58, 59–63, 65, 67,
259 68, 72, 78, 82, 86, 89, 104, 110, 111, 112, 113,
affective criterion 86, 274, 278, 279, 285, 286, 115, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 123, 126, 128,
287, 288, 289, 291, 292, 295, 301, 304 130, 131, 132, 135–36n4, 136, 137, 138, 139,
After 5, 14, 16, 36, 37, 38, 64–68, 70, 71, 72, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151,
74, 77, 81, 82, 84, 86, 88, 103, 104, 105, 153, 157, 162, 164, 165, 168, 169, 180n12,
110, 111, 113, 115, 119, 121, 127, 128, 132, 159, 184, 189, 190, 190n2, 200, 206, 207, 208,
161, 162, 164, 167, 204, 212, 215, 216, 226, 211, 215, 218, 223–24n32, 227, 231, 250,
227, 230, 235, 247, 263, 277, 278, 283, 252, 258, 259, 263, 272, 275, 280, 284,
290, 292, 293, 306, 330, 332, 335n17, 285, 292, 295, 298, 303, 307
336, 338, 339, 341, 342, 342–43n19, 343, Being of Freedom 53, 60, 115, 131, 132, 145,
346–47n22, 352, 353, 363 146, 149
allegria 265–66, see also gladness better 30, 55, 57, 58, 58n4, 60, 63, 64, 65,
alms 91, 245 110, 152, 203, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211, 228,
Alpha 205, 206, 207, 209, 212, 215, 219, 221, 264, 277, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284,
227, 276, 295, 296n16, 362, 364 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292,
apparent pleasures 140, 141, 207, 250, 272, 293, 301, 302, 304, 337
273
apparent reasons 266, 279, 280, 285, 292 causa sui 284, 287, 288
appearances 30, 41, 57, 65, 77, 86, 121, 125, church militant 223, 225
128, 130, 131, 134–35n3, 135–36n4, 150, circularity 173, 174, 175, 176, 187, 188, 189, 198,
156, 190, 207, 234, 248, 259, 272, 287, 200, 216, 217, 219, 226, 229, 230, 231, 234,
297, 300, 303, 340, 344 247, 269, 276, 296, 297, 303, 309, 321,
ascetic xi, xii, 7, 7n6, 20, 21, 33, 34, 35, 93, 325, 343, 349, 364, 366
139, 143n8, 194, 195, 200, 234, 267, classless society 296–97n16
271n7, 284 Co-Redemptrix 125, 144, 210
autobiography 10n8, 17, 101 conscience 6, 13, 80, 87, 88, 141, 228n44, 248,
autonomous 40, 45, 50, 52, 55, 130, 237, 290, 250, 260, 273, 277, 279, 280, 282, 284,
335, 336, 351, 364 304, 339
consolation 34n7, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 89, 127,
bad spirit 103, 252, 264, 268, 277, 301, 302, 146, 148, 150, 152, 202, 203, 246, 249,
306 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 262, 264,
balance scale 70, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272,
104, 202, 204, 205, 210, 212, 216, 221, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 289,
228–29n44, 230, 282 291, 292, 298, 299, 303, 304, 305, 306,
Before 5, 14, 16, 22, 36, 37, 38, 46, 53, 54, 64, 307, 309
65, 67, 70, 71, 72, 74, 77, 80, 81, 82, 86, Constitutions 3, 97, 193, 297n17, 321
103, 104, 110, 111, 113, 121, 132, 159, 161, contemplation, contemplation ad Amorem
162, 165, 167, 204, 208, 212, 215, 216, 226, xii, 2, 16, 17, 24, 31, 61, 65, 66, 90, 102n21,
227, 230, 235, 247, 249, 251, 255, 263–64, 115, 119, 120, 135, 146, 154, 155, 156, 157,
267, 278, 283, 290, 291, 292, 293, 306, 157n3, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164, 167, 168, 172,

via free access
386 Index of Terms
contemplation (cont.) 141, 142, 148, 183, 192, 194, 206, 207, 209,
183, 186, 187, 191, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198, 217, 221, 223n32, 229, 246, 247, 250, 251,
211, 216, 217, 219, 222, 223, 223–24n32, 254, 255, 256, 265, 267, 271, 271n7, 272,
225, 229, 231, 247, 251, 253, 265, 269, 273, 274, 275, 277, 282, 284, 285, 287,
275, 276, 288, 304, 309, 322, 324, 325, 290, 320, 323, 338, 341, 364
343, 361, 362 director 34n7, 73, 79, 87, 248, 260, 267, 273
counterfeit 73, 297 Directory, Directories 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 140,
crossroad xii, 36, 53, 55, 56, 202, 205, 212, 160, 187, 215, 226, 227
216, 238, 249, 274, 282, 302 discernment of spirits xv, 2, 16, 46n1, 66, 75,
77, 86, 87, 140, 141, 146, 186, 202, 203,
death xiii, 2n1, 40, 41, 57, 87, 88, 90, 114, 115, 204, 207, 208, 210, 212, 213n24, 215n26,
116, 118, 119, 199n4, 120, 122, 123, 124, 221, 227, 228, 230, 245, 246, 247, 248,
125, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 135–36n4, 283, 298, 307, 337
137, 142, 145, 146, 147, 175, 176, 183, 185, disordered affections 5, 29, 64, 72, 73, 74,
195–96n10, 201, 209, 210, 211, 213n24, 91, 253
241, 244, 257, 260, 261, 262, 289, 297, divine freedom 6, 8, 12, 22, 74, 67, 78, 82, 90,
318, 325, 331, 358n27 103, 114, 159, 163, 164, 165, 168, 169, 172,
death of God 130 184, 185, 186, 201, 203, 208, 209, 211, 212,
descend 61, 77, 85, 86, 99, 100, 106, 124, 136, 216, 222, 226, 235, 247, 251, 254, 255,
138, 142, 143, 161, 169, 170, 185, 202, 206, 264, 265, 267, 268, 285, 288, 289, 300,
207, 209, 210, 216, 217, 222, 268, 272, 301, 303, 305, 306, 308, 309, 324, 331,
276, 278, 292, 293, 294, 301, 303, 361 333, 334, 336, 337, 338, 360
desolation 34n7, 77, 78, 79, 228, 249, 251, divine influence 267
252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 262, 265, 272, 291 dogma 4, 5, 6, 7, 7n6, 8, 9, 18, 144n9, 147,
determinism 36, 52, 132, 146 157n3, 182, 183n18, 205, 242, 305,
devil 203, 246, 249, 250, 256, 258, 261, 272, 346n22, 355
273, 280, 299, 304, 305, 307 dualism 7n6, 46n1
diagram xv, xvn8, xvi, 81, 83, 104, 112, dwell 41, 57, 106, 162, 164, 216, 226, 258, 269,
116–17n1, 203, 243, 249, 250, 254, 255, 304, 305
256, 263, 264, 267, 268, 269, 272, 277,
290, 292, 302, 305, 364, 366n28 ecclesiastical office 90
dialectic xi, xv, xvi, 2, 3, 10, 10n8, 12, 14, 19, ecstasy 144, 230, 236, 239–40n69, 243, 244,
20, 33, 35, 39, 53, 54, 60, 63, 73, 81, 82, 254, 306, 343
83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 100, 101, 102, 102n21, egotistical dialectic 106, 118, 119, 128, 134
103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 111, 113, 120, 121, egredi 268, 269, 373
122, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 132, election xi, xii, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 16, 20,
135–36n4, 149, 150, 152, 154, 158, 161, 175, 24, 26, 31, 32, 37, 39, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70,
176, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 191, 193, 196, 71–114, 115, 117, 119n4, 142, 145, 155, 165,
198, 207, 216, 217, 219, 225, 228–29n44, 168, 169, 170, 171, 186, 192, 193, 195, 199,
229, 234, 236, 237, 238, 247, 249, 251, 202, 202n21, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208,
253, 254, 257, 262, 265, 271, 274, 279, 210, 211, 213n24, 214n25, 215, 221, 226,
280, 283, 286, 288, 289, 296n16, 298, 227, 230, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 253,
303, 306, 307, 310, 313, 318, 328, 335, 254, 255, 256, 259, 262, 267, 272, 273,
346–47n22, 361, 362, 366 275, 279, 280, 283, 297, 307, 308, 309,
dialectic of freedom 22, 33, 36, 132, 150, 216, 322, 343, 349, 352, 361, 362, 363, 364
257, 271, 280 end 5, 27, 28, 30, 32, 39, 49, 50, 53, 54, 62,
direction(s) xv, 3, 4, 21, 31, 34, 35, 64, 77, 78, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71–73, 76, 78, 80, 81,
81, 91, 92, 94, 1021, 102n21, 106, 124, 140, 82, 83, 84, 88, 90, 91, 93, 97, 103, 111, 117,

via free access
Index of Terms 387
119n4, 121, 126, 128, 130, 138, 140, 141, 142, 305, 307, 308, 309, 313, 321, 322, 325,
147, 150, 152, 153, 158, 161, 163, 165, 168, 326, 331, 341, 342, 343, 344, 346n22, 349,
169, 170, 174, 175, 179, 185, 186, 187, 191, 351, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 358, 360,
192, 196, 197, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, 361, 362, 364, 366
211, 213–14n24, 215, 218, 219, 220, 221, exire 272, 273
223–24n32, 229, 235, 237, 239, 244, 247, existentialism xiii, 1, 2, 3, 13, 46n1
249–50, 251, 253, 254, 255, 260, 261, 265,
267, 271, 272, 275, 284, 287, 289, 295, feminine attitude 145, 260, 273, 289, 304
296, 296n16, 297, 298, 301, 308, 309, finite 49, 122, 147, 150, 154, 217, 220,
318, 319, 321, 330, 336, 356, 360, 362, 261–62n5
364, 366, 367 finite spirit 123, 220
equilibrium 31, 34n7, 63, 64, 70, 81, 82, 83, for himself 3, 5, 120, 179
115, 202, 228–29n44, 278 forgetfulness 133
eternal return 238, 296, 297 foundation 2, 13, 17, 22, 24, 30, 31, 41, 45, 66,
eucharist(ic) 8, 9, 18, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 67, 70n1, 71, 73, 80, 97, 99, 101, 105, 106,
117n2, 118, 118n3, 119, 125, 128, 135–36n4, 125, 141, 144, 144n9, 148, 154, 157n2, 159,
137, 185, 194, 195, 200, 203, 209, 219, 165, 167, 168, 171, 172, 176n5, 177, 184, 187,
233, 295 188, 189, 196, 199, 203, 204, 211, 216, 220,
evil 29, 30, 31, 36, 40, 46n1, 50, 53, 55, 57, 60, 231, 234, 275, 283, 289, 296, 305, 307,
110, 111, 112, 113, 121, 150, 158, 188, 201n19, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 336, 340, 342,
203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 212, 238, 250, 343, 349, 350, 356, 357, 358, 360, 361
256, 259, 263, 264, 277, 278, 281, 283, Four Weeks xii, xiii, xv, 1, 2, 5, 6, 13, 16, 24,
287, 289 25, 27, 28, 31, 36, 37, 39, 40, 72, 81, 83,
exegesis 7n6, 138, 194, 234, 241, 242 89, 104, 105, 106, 140, 154, 156, 158, 172,
exercise(s) xi, xii, xv, xvii, 1, 2, 7n6, 11, 24, 26, 185, 186, 187, 192, 197, 198, 204, 212, 215,
27, 33, 48, 66, 67, 75, 78, 91, 95, 102n21, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222, 223, 226, 229, 230,
112, 137, 138, 139, 154, 157, 157n2, 158, 160, 233, 245, 246, 247, 249, 252, 254, 255,
161, 163, 164, 168, 170, 176–77n5, 181n15, 256, 257, 269, 276, 289, 292, 295, 296,
191, 192, 199, 204, 216, 217, 224n35, 259, 307, 309, 322, 342, 343, 352, 364
271, 294, 301, 308, 330, 352, 360 freedom passim
Exercises (Spiritual) xi, xii, xv, xvii, 1–6, 6n5, fullness of immortality 148
7, 8, 9–10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19–22, future 47, 48, 49, 55, 56, 57, 59, 77, 90, 115,
24–28, 30–33, 33n6, 34, 34n7, 35, 36, 39, 116, 116–17n1, 119, 122, 133, 137, 142, 147,
45, 66, 67, 70n1, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 147n10, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155,
80, 81, 83, 87, 89, 90, 91–96, 97, 98, 99, 159, 164, 167, 171, 172, 188, 199, 205, 216,
100, 101, 103, 105, 113–14, 117, 138, 140, 228, 230, 238, 239n69, 242, 255, 256,
141, 144n9, 154, 156, 157, 157n3, 158, 159, 267, 272, 281, 282, 283, 284, 286, 287,
160, 162, 163, 166, 167, 171, 172, 173, 174, 290, 301, 303, 306, 307, 329, 331, 338,
175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 183–84, 184n19, 342, 343, 366n28
186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192–98, 199, 200,
202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 210, 212, gaudium 89, 265
213, 214–15n25, 216, 219, 220, 221, 222, geometry, geometrical xv, 18, 19, 57, 71, 81,
223, 224–25n35, 225, 226, 227, 229, 230, 83, 104, 173, 175, 187, 189, 190, 191, 195,
233, 234, 235, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 198, 200, 201, 210, 216, 218n27, 225, 227,
248, 249, 251, 253, 254, 257, 261, 262, 228n44, 233, 234, 235, 239, 240, 241n72,
264, 267, 269, 270, 271, 271n7, 274, 275, 243, 245, 247, 262, 265, 267, 269, 273,
278, 279, 283, 288, 289, 290, 292, 294, 277, 290, 295, 298, 302, 310, 362, see
295, 295n15, 297, 298, 299, 300, 302, also spiritual geometry

via free access
388 Index of Terms
gladness 213–14n24, 265, 266, 278, see also imaginary senses, senses of the
allegria imagination 35, 139–43, 143n8, 144,
go out of 268, 269, 270 144n9, 207, 211, 221
God passim Immaculate Conception 208, 210
Good Angel 207, 264, 266, 267, 275, 276, in himself 5, 85, 120, 126, 174, 179, 342
277, 302 Incarnation 9, 51, 107, 114, 131, 143, 186, 205,
goods of this world 29 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212, 219, 241,
grace 9, 17, 18, 22, 33, 40, 41, 46n1, 50, 52, 53, 269, 310, 340, 342, 354
54, 55, 58n4, 60, 61, 62, 63, 110, 112, 113, ingredi 269, 291, 373
114, 115, 116, 116–17n1, 117, 118, 118n3, 125, instant 11, 12, 32, 36, 75, 77, 78, 81, 89, 90, 115,
126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 144, 145, 151, 162, 117, 124, 133, 150, 172, 203, 216, 217, 218,
164, 165, 172, 186, 200, 208, 210, 226, 252, 222, 224n33, 239, 239–40n69, 242, 244,
253, 254, 255, 256, 259, 269, 270, 271, 247, 254, 255, 256, 258, 265, 266, 267,
271n7, 287, 290, 293, 294, 295, 308, 309, 269, 296, 305, 306, 352
321, 322, 331, 333, 336, 338, 339, 341, 343, intellect 83, 135–36n4, 171, 199, 268, 270, 298
350, 351, 352, 356, 357, 358, 358n27, 359 intellectualism 155, 270, 271
grief 126, 137, 138, 213n24 intellectualist mysticism 169, 172, 190–91n3,
218, 219, 220
Hell 47, 49, 50, 59, 122, 128, 130, 138, 139, intentionality 251
140, 141, 142, 184, 185, 206, 210, 211 intrare 272, 273
224–25n35, 250, 360, 361 irrational 46, 67, 72, 297, 341
hic et nunc 9, 34, 81, 104, 125, 126, 137, 147,
164, 168, 169, 185, 202, 203, 206, 207, Jesuit xi, xiii, xvii, 4, 91, 92, 97, 177, 178, 180,
208, 209, 210, 212, 216, 217, 218, 219, 222, 181, 182, 192, 194, 202, 223, 224n35, 271,
226, 230, 263, 270, 274, 277, 292, 293, 288n10, 313, 314, 316, 318, 322, 326n15,
294, 297, 302, 324, 343, 344, 352, 358, 339, 350, 352, 358, 359, 362
363, 366 joy 53, 88, 127, 136, 138, 139, 146, 148, 182, 185,
historicity 73, 193, 200, 235, 238, 239, 241n72, 190n3, 207, 213–14n24, 251, 265, 266,
257, 262, 295n15, 296, 297, 339 278, 301, 331, 358
history xi, 3, 4, 12, 14, 22, 32, 48, 53, 61, 92, 93, judgement 11n10, 45, 58n4, 76, 78, 87, 88,
98, 99, 101, 103, 104, 105, 114, 116, 120, 121, 88–89n5, 89, 116, 147, 161, 195, 228,
123, 133, 141, 154, 158, 174, 205, 208, 216, 228n44, 236, 306, 313, 316, 324
220, 236, 237, 239, 241, 241n72, 242, 244, Day of Judgement 88, 88–89n5, 89
264, 271n7, 274, 295n15, 296, 296n16,
297, 341, 343, 354, 360, 362 Kingdom 30, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63n5, 65,
hoc 113, 114, 119, 123, 125, 126, 131, 132, 133, 66, 74, 112, 120, 124, 128, 129, 130, 145,
136, 142 147, 150, 151, 152, 167, 170, 179, 180, 192,
hope 60, 75, 105, 126, 127, 129, 146, 147, 237, 251, 259, 262, 264, 360
147n10, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 244, Kingdom of God xvi, 152, 176, 176n5, 179,
251, 252, 265, 314, 315, 331, 358, 361 180, 237, 361
horizontal axis 85, 203, 204, 205, 209, 212,
215, 221, 222, 223n32, 226, 230, 277, labor 9, 14, 18, 167, 186, 193, 237, 244, 248,
342–43n19, 362 292, 331
humility 56, 66–68, 70n1, 106, 107, 188, 221, laborat 166, 167
225, 261, 287, 361 Last Supper 8, 114, 115, 117
less good 55, 57, 58, 60, 63, 110, 150, 152, 206,
illuminative way xii, 2, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 207, 208, 264, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281,
160, 226, 227, 228, 229, 250, 342 282, 283, 284, 286, 287, 290, 291, 292,
299, 301

via free access
Index of Terms 389
life of God 130, 187, 189 Most High 169, 170, 203, 026, 207, 209, 211,
light 8, 10n8, 14, 22, 23, 77, 78, 79, 83, 86, 88, 212, 216, 217, 221, 222, 223, 268, 270, 276,
89, 93, 98, 124, 136, 140, 157, 160, 163, 290, 295, 309, 362
169, 187, 190nn2–3, 207, 212, 213–14n24, mystery / mysteries 5, 6, 9, 12, 22, 23, 26,
215n26, 231n45, 246, 252, 272, 273, 278, 32, 35, 58, 65, 67, 112, 113, 117n2, 122,
280, 285, 286, 290, 298, 304, 319, 337, 135–36n4, 137, 139, 141, 142, 152, 177, 184,
340 195, 213, 213–14n24, 225, 237, 273, 294,
Logic 103, 104, 168, 174, 221, 235, 237 295, 342
love 16, 22, 24, 25, 29, 31, 32, 33, 40, 41, 46n1, mysticism 7n6, 34, 93, 169, 172, 194, 195, 203,
50, 75, 85, 86, 90, 106, 107, 112, 116–17n1, 209, 213, 218, 219, 220, 220n31, 221, 222,
118, 139n6, 143, 147, 148, 149, 154, 155, 223, 225, 233, 244, 248, 254, 267, see also
156, 158, 159, 161, 163, 165, 169, 170, 171, intellectualist mysticism
172, 173, 176n5, 178n7, 183, 185, 186, 187,
188, 194, 196, 197, 200, 202, 216, 217, 218, nature 4n4, 14, 50, 53, 54, 55, 76, 78, 83, 85,
219, 221, 228–29n44, 247, 251, 253, 259, 98, 101, 113, 116–17n1, 118, 119, 121, 127,
268, 269, 270, 273, 275, 276, 285, 293, 144, 146, 152, 159, 162, 179, 180n12, 184,
304, 321, 324, 325, 326, 331, 342, 358, 186, 188, 208, 218n27, 219, 220, 221, 226,
358n27, 361 237, 238, 250, 253, 254, 258, 261–62n5,
266, 267, 271, 272, 284, 285, 296n16, 299,
manly 258, 259, 304 305, 309, 325, 338, 351, 357, 358, 358n27,
masculine attitude 289, 304 360
matrimony 90 negation 38, 39, 40, 45, 46, 48, 49, 52, 54, 55,
means 4, 9, 15, 31, 34n7, 45, 49, 62, 64, 71, 61, 62, 63n5, 66, 70, 88, 95, 113, 119–22,
72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 146,
88, 91, 97, 103, 105, 106, 114, 118, 125, 131, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 165, 184, 206, 250,
132, 133, 137, 139, 140, 141, 145, 158, 163, 296, 328, 330, 331, 333, 334, 335, 337,
165, 173, 174, 186, 197, 201, 211, 213, 214, 339, 340, 341, 344, 361, 364
213–14n24, 216, 237, 243, 244, 250, 252, Non-being 12, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45,
254, 255, 261, 275, 278, 281, 283, 284, 46, 46n1, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52–54, 59–63,
287, 290, 293, 297, 305, 308, 309, 314, 63n5, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 78, 82, 86,
315, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 329, 330, 87, 89, 104, 110, 111, 115, 116, 119, 120, 121,
331, 332, 333, 336, 340, 344, 345, 346, 122, 123, 130, 131, 132, 136, 140, 141, 146,
346n22, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351, 356, 147, 149, 150, 151, 153, 165, 205, 206, 207,
358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 366 209, 210, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255,
mediatrix 145, 147 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 264, 266, 272,
meditation 8, 58, 59, 65, 66, 112, 114, 120, 140, 273, 274, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 283,
188, 192, 198, 247, 303, 343, 367 284, 285, 286, 287, 289, 290, 292, 295,
metaphysics 7n6, 218n27 296, 297, 297n17, 298, 300, 301, 302,
method xv, xvii, 3, 5, 6, 9, 19, 21, 29, 34, 34n7, 303, 304, 307, 309, 361
35, 39, 70n1, 71, 74, 79, 80, 83, 85, 86,
88–89n5, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, objective existence 54, 63, 111, 112, 113, 116,
101, 102, 102n21, 103, 105, 106, 138, 141, 122, 123
186, 189, 191, 196, 202, 235, 237, 245, obstacle 14, 16, 28, 66, 97, 132, 133, 144, 208,
247, 248, 249, 254, 262n6, 267, 271n7, 248, 250, 253, 305, 323, 331
275, 276, 279, 298, 307, 308, 309, 322, Omega 205, 211, 212, 215, 219, 221, 222, 223,
342–43n19 227, 240, 276, 295, 362, 364
missionary 223, 312 ontogenesis 295n15
mortal sin 66, 106, 140, 249–50, 272, 296 ontology 162, 241, 244, 259, 260, 366n28

via free access
390 Index of Terms
operatur 157n3, 160, 162, 166, 217 284, 286, 287, 291, 300, 301, 306, 313,
Our Lady 12n15, 126, 137, 138, 185, 190–91n3, 329, 339, 350, 355
201, 201n19, 213 relation xiii, xvi, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 17, 18, 31, 33, 34,
34n7, 37, 48, 50, 61, 62, 63, 72, 76, 77,
Parousia 57, 149, 152, 205, 211, 219, 241, 307, 81, 82, 87, 89, 98, 99, 103, 104, 111, 114,
361 116–17n1, 117, 120, 123, 124, 125, 133n1,
Passion 8, 25, 26, 33, 56, 67, 115, 116, 117, 134, 135–36n4, 139, 139n6, 140, 142, 143,
117n2, 118, 119, 120, 122, 126, 127, 129, 143n8, 144, 144n9, 145, 146, 155, 158, 160,
135–36n4, 136, 142, 145, 146, 148, 167, 211, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 172, 174,
292, 294, 308, 331, 335, 361 175, 183, 186, 187, 201, 203–4, 205, 207,
pedagogy 7, 7n6, 9, 185, 358 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214–15n25, 215,
phenomenological 3, 125, 234 217, 219, 225, 226, 229, 230, 235, 236,
posit 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 56, 57, 61, 62, 63, 72, 237, 239, 241n72, 243, 243n75, 244, 246,
120, 130, 150, 168, 203, 207, 258, 284 247, 249, 250, 251, 255, 257, 258, 259,
poverty of spirit 281, 283, see also spiritual 261, 262, 263, 267, 269, 272, 274, 277,
poverty 278, 279, 281, 282, 283, 287, 292, 293,
present 17, 22, 32, 47, 48, 54, 56, 57, 58, 65, 296, 298, 299, 301, 303, 304, 305, 306,
72, 89, 105, 115, 116, 116–17n1, 119, 122, 317, 318, 325, 328, 329, 333–34, 336, 338,
124, 128, 131, 132, 133, 147, 148, 149, 150, 340, 341–42, 351, 352, 353, 357, 360, 362
151, 153, 164, 171, 172, 178n7, 184, 228, 230, representation xv, 21, 22, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37,
252, 261, 263, 267, 271, 281, 286, 289, 39, 45, 46, 47, 50, 52, 53, 54, 59, 60, 61,
306, 343 62, 63, 64, 65, 81, 83, 98, 104, 111, 112, 113,
prior cause, absence of 75, 77, 89, 266, 267, 114, 117, 118, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 127,
305 128, 129, 131, 132, 142, 147, 148, 149, 150,
professed houses 202, 214n25 152, 154, 157, 172, 175, 187, 188, 224n34,
psychic phenomenon 306 237, 242, 243, 243n75, 246, 273, 306,
purgative way xii, 2, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 140, 359, 360, 366
160, 226, 227, 228–29, 342 resurrection 9, 26, 36, 66, 88, 114, 116, 122,
purified 30, 32, 127, 158, 187, 211 ,274, 280 123, 127, 130, 131, 135–36n4, 136, 137,
137n5, 138, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148,
quasi 316, 319, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 149, 192, 211, 219, 241, 292, 331
334, 362 rules for discernment of spirits 2, 16, 46n1,
quietism 172, 330, 332, 333, 334, 335, 337, 86, 140, 141, 146, 186, 204, 207, 212,
338, 340, 341, 352 213n24, 221, 228, 245, 246, 247, 283, 298,
307
rapture 306 ruse 63, 86, 272, 280, 286, 286n9, 289, 291,
real poverty 64, 281, 282, 286, 287, 290, 291 293, 304
redemption, redeem 8, 9, 25, 76, 120, 121,
130, 144, 147, 158, 164, 171, 185, 212, Scholasticism xii, xvi, 100, 103, 154, 157,
213–14n24, 216, 219, 295, 297, 341, 342, 157n3, 161, 162, 163, 166, 270, 271n7
360 Scintillae Ignatianae 313, 314, 318, 326,
reflection xi, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 326n15
20, 21, 22, 31, 32, 36, 48, 49, 55, 56, 70, scruples 136, 214n25, 228, 228n44, 245, 279,
77, 79, 80, 81, 83, 86, 87, 89, 113, 114, 117, 281
121, 125, 126, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135n4, 147, seduction 188, 273
148, 150, 154, 156, 158, 159, 161, 165, 166, self 22, 33, 34, 34n7, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 45,
170, 173, 200, 205, 217, 225, 235, 236, 239, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59,
242, 246, 252, 255, 267, 270, 271, 281, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71,

via free access
Index of Terms 391
72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, struggle 10n8, 55, 119n4, 149, 180n12, 188,
83, 84, 85, 86, 87 88–89n5, 90, 104, 107, 195–96n10, 237, 242, 257, 258, 260, 261,
110, 112, 113, 115, 116, 119, 120, 112, 123, 124, 262, 296n16, 297, 304
126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, subtleties 134, 266, 279, 280, 284, 285, 286,
138, 147, 148, 152, 154, 161, 164, 168, 169, 290, 292, 298, 346
172, 174, 178n7, 180n12, 217, 219, 221, 222, Superman 296n16
224n34, 225, 241n72, 246, 247, 248, 249, Supreme Good 271, 276, 277–78
250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 258, Suscipe 157, 159, 170–73, 188, 197, 199, 218,
259, 260, 261, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 219, 221, 325, 326, 341, 343, 349, 361
269, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279, Swastika 212, 223–24n32, 234
280, 281, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 289, syllogism 100, 236–37
290, 291, 292, 293, 298, 300, 301, 302, symbolism xv, 195, 200, 201, 211, 217, 219,
303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 335, 220, 221, 223, 227, 233, 298, 300, 302,
343, 358 303, 310, 342–43n19, 362, 363, 364
sensual delights 140, 250 symmetry 19, 195, 211, 227, 292, 363, 364
serpent 297, 298, 299, 300, 300n21 system 9, 67, 104, 173, 181n15, 200, 234, 235,
sin 11, 11n10, 12, 29, 30, 31, 33, 40, 41, 45, 46, 236, 237, 238, 243, 243n75, 261, 342
46n1, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 51n2, 52, 52n1,
53, 54, 55, 57, 58n4, 60, 61, 64, 67, 91, temptation 65, 228n44, 252, 258, 260, 264,
110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 272, 273, 300, 301, 329, 331
118n3, 120, 122, 123, 123n5, 125, 127, 128, temptation of Christ 273, 295
130, 132, 135n4, 138, 139, 142, 143, 144, theologian xii, 3, 6n5, 7, 7n6, 9, 13, 14, 200,
145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 158, 165, 184, 205, 234, 239, 241, 241n72, 271n7, 357
185, 187, 188, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 215, Three Ways xiii, xv, 17, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31,
219, 221, 228, 239, 250, 256, 260, 272, 32, 39, 81, 89, 158, 197, 226, 227, 230,
273, 275, 280, 360, see also mortal sin 275, 342
soul 8, 12, 17, 18, 19, 24, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 49, time xi, xv, 2, 3, 4n4, 11, 17, 22, 27, 45–48, 51,
55, 56, 66, 71, 73, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 52, 54, 56, 57, 61, 62, 71, 72, 74, 76, 77,
83, 87, 90, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102, 78, 80, 81, 86–88, 89, 90, 91, 99, 102,
115, 116, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 103, 105, 111, 111n1, 112, 116–17n1, 117, 118,
127, 129, 131, 137, 138, 139, 142, 143, 144, 124, 125, 126, 146, 151, 152, 154, 163n12,
145, 147, 148, 150, 151, 155, 155–56n1, 172, 165, 171, 172, 176n5, 178, 178n7, 187, 188,
173, 176, 178, 178n7, 184, 186, 189, 195, 190nn2–3, 195, 195n10, 197, 202, 203,
197, 198, 199, 201n19, 202, 203, 210, 212, 205, 206, 207, 211, 215, 216, 217, 219, 220,
213–14n24, 219, 222, 223, 223–24n32, 221, 222, 223, 228, 230, 231, 236, 237,
228, 228n44, 229, 246, 248, 250, 251, 239, 239n69, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244,
255, 258, 260, 262, 267, 268, 269, 270, 245, 246, 247, 249, 252, 254, 255, 256,
272, 273, 274, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281, 257, 261, 263, 264, 265, 267, 268, 269,
282, 285, 290, 292, 294, 297, 300, 301, 174, 276, 277, 279, 281, 283, 284, 285, 186,
302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 287, 290, 292, 294, 295, 295n15, 296,
321, 328, 349, 358n27, 361, 364 296–97n16, 297, 298, 299, 305, 306,
spheres of existence 219, 238, 242 308, 319, 327, 336, 338, 339, 340, 342,
spherical 189, 190, 214n25, 231 342–43n19, 343, 346n22, 348, 351, 358,
spiritual geometry 27, 173, 175, 217, 294 363, 364
Spiritual Journal 189, 190n2, 214, 214–15n25, Time(s) 2, 71, 74–76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84,
294, 305 86, 89, 103, 113, 195, 199, 203, 210, 215,
spiritual poverty 282, 283, 286, 287, 290, 291 221, 230, 247, 254, 255, 256, 267, 279,
295, 297, 306, 307, 360

via free access
392 Index of Terms
transubstantiation 8, 116, 117 unitive way xii, 2, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30,
Triduum Mortis 122, 123, 126, 137, 138, 210 144, 145, 160, 212, 226, 227, 229, 342
truth 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10n8, 11, 14, 22, 32, 36,
46n1, 50, 52, 55, 61, 63, 64, 76, 111, 119, vertical axis 202, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209,
122, 123, 125, 126, 128, 131, 144, 147, 150, 210, 211, 212, 216, 222, 226, 230, 233, 251,
155, 175, 176, 178n7, 179, 180n12, 182, 188, 256, 264, 267, 268, 269, 309, 362, 366
189, 221, 224, 234, 235, 239, 240, 244, vigilance 261, 305
259, 260, 266, 276, 288, 310, 328, 329, voluntarism 155, 270
330, 331, 340, 341, 360, 362
Two Standards 58, 62, 63n5, 65, 66, 106, 155, woman 14, 134, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262,
195, 262, 303, 360 263, 304

via free access

The Dialectic of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Dialectic of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises of St.

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Robert A. Maryks (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)

James Bernauer, S.J. (Boston College, emeritus)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/js

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

By Gaston Fessard, S.J.

Translated and Edited by

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fessard, Gaston, author. | Colbert, James G., 1938- translator,

Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Thoughts on the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises xi

Postscript to the Preface 16

1 Division of the Exercises 24

2 Positing Non-being: Week One 45

3 Negation of the Positing of Non-being: Week Two 52

Introduction to Part 2 70

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

4 Two Ways of Making Election in the Third Time

Introduction to Part 3 110

5 Exclusion of All Non-being: Third Week 115

6 Positing of Being: Fourth Week 130

Conclusion: The Contemplatio Ad Amorem Obtinendum 154

Circularity of the Exercises and Circularity of Absolute Knowledge:

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

2 Division of the Exercises 226

Appendix: Rules for the Discernment of Spirits 245

Further Study of the Ignatian Maxim 311

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Section 3: The Objections against the Traditional Maxim 344

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

The full four-week Exercises, as described by Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491–1556),

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

1 Translator’s copy, Milwaukee: Bruce, n.d.

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

A testimony of the difficulty of fully appreciating Fessard’s insights into Hegel

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

1934 article “Sur la mauvaise conscience: À propos du livre de M.W. Jankélévitch,”

5 Gaston Fessard, Hegel: Le Christianisme et l’histoire, unpublished texts presented by Michel

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

1966 brief contribution to discussion at the colloquium in Rome on Hegel, Karl

6 Fessard, Hegel: Le Christianisme et l’histoire, 27.

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

of such diagrams to convey the tensions, conflicts, and contradictory options

9 See below, 176n5.

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004504738_002Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Indeed, no other work exists in Catholic literature whose historical bear-

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8

It follows that the same consequence is applicable to all dogmas. Certainly,

Gaston Fessard S.J. - 978-90-04-50473-8