The Audacity of an Ignatian Approach to Social Justice

Editor’s note: Throughout July, we’re hosting 31 Days with St. Ignatius, a month-long celebration of Ignatian spirituality. In addition to the calendar of Ignatian articles found here, posts on dotMagis this month will explore the theme of “The Audacity of Ignatian Spirituality.”

While I think that both head and heart are places we experience faith, we need to remember faith is not only about what we feel or how we think, but also what we do. The audacity of our faith includes the idea that despite all the many injustices that we see in the world, what we do matters; we are called to work for justice in the world.

Consider some audacious beliefs that underlie an Ignatian approach to justice.

• God asks us to be partners in bringing the world to greater justice. We are invited to be friends to Jesus, not only servants, in how we live out that mission. How audacious to be friends with God!
• Being a flawed person is no obstacle and no excuse. Take St. Ignatius himself: he struggled early in his life with overly romanticized visions of courtly love and military fame, was overly scrupulous about his sins, and was highly passionate. Yet God used Ignatius—and his passionate nature—for good.
• As Dean Brackley, SJ, has written, our vocation is not towards upward mobility, but rather towards “downward mobility.” (Downward Mobility: Social Implications of St. Ignatius’s Two Standards) While many see life as the pursuit of wealth, honor, and security, we are asked to be indifferent to these things and instead to pursue salvation for all. For the Jesuits, the promotion of justice is part of that apostolic work. Sometimes this pursuit can leave us—as it also left Jesus—vulnerable, disliked, or maligned, when we are touched by those whom society maligns. But what an audacious way to live!
• We are invited to exercise our imaginations to envision the world differently. God works through our imaginations. In my view, one of the greatest obstacles to social justice is that, at some level, we do not imagine things could be otherwise. We find it hard to imagine a world without food insecurity or a world where people live in greater simplicity so that future generations can enjoy God’s creation too. But God’s love is creative and imaginative.
• Working for social justice is ultimately joyful, because we discover what it means to be brothers and sisters to others, in community. As Greg Boyle, SJ, once said, “Service is the doorway to the banquet hall of kinship.” It is audacious to say that spending time with gang members, people who are unhoused, people who are imprisoned, and other marginalized people is joyful. Yet many people very much find God in those communities.
• Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises remind us that, despite the suffering of the Passion in Week Three, the healing and liberation of the Resurrection in Week Four surely will follow. Suffering is never the last word. Love is.

Reflect for just a moment on that last idea and how audacious it is! It is easy to look at injustice in the world and be overwhelmed by how much there is to do. It is easy to become cynical about what is possible and what is impossible. But Ignatius did not think that God calls us to a life that is easy. Rather, God calls us to walk with Jesus in a life of love, one in which we also believe that “with God, nothing is impossible.” (Luke 1:37)

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