John J. DeGioia
"A Moment of Grace: A New Companionship for the Ignatian
Spirit "
May 25, 2004
It's always a privilege to take part in an event with Fr. Howard Gray, who
has been a source of inspiration and support for me for many years.
I'm grateful for this opportunity to get together with colleagues from Jesuit
colleges and universities and continue an important dialogue that began among
our institutions in 1989, and continues to this day in variety of different
contexts – none quite as large or as exciting as this one.
Howard has asked me to talk today about my own appropriation of Ignatian
spirituality in the roles I've served at Georgetown and to share a little
of my own spiritual journey. It is a path that Howard himself has deeply
influenced. In 1986, I attended a program at St. Louis University designed
to help lay people explore the Catholic and Jesuit tradition. That week
spent with Howard and Fr. John Padberg was the first time I was able to begin
developing a vocabulary to explicate the content of this tradition.
It takes time and it takes work. We're all in different places in our
lives, and it's not always easy to engage these questions and to understand
what role we might play in the development of this tradition. Along
with the beginnings of a vocabulary, I came away from that seminar with an
insight that has defined my approach to this question ever since—and
that is that it is a spirituality that fundamentally distinguishes the tradition
of a Jesuit university
Spirituality is not a "sometime" thing.
It is not a technique or a methodology that is applied in certain circumstances.
It is a way of ordering oneself and through the ordering of one's self, developing
a standard that can serve as a benchmark for deciding and acting. It
provides access to an affective feeling, which can, with care and patience,
and much intentional effort and close supervision, become something you can
trust.
I began my own journey in a serious Catholic home. My Mom went to Mass
every morning. Her brother, my uncle, is a Jesuit. He teaches
theology at the University of Scranton. As a family we went to Mass
every Sunday together. Our faith was so much a part of the fabric of
our family life that we didn't recognize it as unusual. There was nothing
forced about it. It was just a natural part of how we structured our
family.
I came of age in the Church in the period after the Second Vatican Council.
As a result, I confronted some ambiguities, tensions, and conflicts—not
all of which were clear to me as a boy, as a teenager, and a young man.
In the mid-1960s, the Church made a choice to enter into dialogue with the
world, in all of its complexity. The bold step articulated in the final
document of the Council, The Church in the Modern World
is something I experienced more as an assumption about the nature of the Church,
not as the radically new kind of engagement it represented.
Thus, as a boy, I came to understand two fundamental
principles: 1) our faith permeates every dimension of our lives, and 2) our
Church was engaged in some important new ventures.
As a student at Georgetown, I was confronted with some of the predictable
experiences of an undergraduate in the 1970's. I read Sartre, Althizer,
Berger, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud and Rogers. I was asked to question
my deepest beliefs and the grounds for those beliefs. Fortunately, I
also read Eliot, Donne, Shakespeare, Milton, Vanier and Faulkner, and perhaps
more important, I met a group of remarkable people, Otto Hentz, Jim Walsh,
Tim Healy, Tom King, Don Freeze, and Walter Burghardt, men of the Society
of Jesus who embodied the engagement of the Church in the world. I completed
my undergraduate years with a deepened faith and a set of questions that I
continue to wrestle with today.
I found that the greatest gift I was given by the Society of Jesus was to
share its spiritual heritage. While I've been fortunate to have many
opportunities to extend my personal spiritual journey, none has been more
important to me than my exposure to the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises.
We at Jesuit institutions today have a distinct advantage over earlier generations
in that the formative experience of the Jesuits -- the Spiritual Exercises
-- are available to us, available to lay people in ways that I think are unprecedented.
We are heirs to close to 40 years of work of contemporary pioneers –
like Howard Gray, like Brian McDermott, George Ashenbrenner. Folks who
took the tradition and re-imagined it, reinterpreted it, and made it available,
in ways that I really think weren't available prior to their work.
I had the incredible good fortune to be guided for more than a decade by
a spiritual director, the late William Sampson, who never, not for one moment
in the years that I worked with him led me to feel that I was in any way odd
for pursuing the spirituality of Saint Ignatius as a layman. He lived
at Gonzaga High School in Washington, D.C. He had taught English there
before spending the last thirty years of his life engaged in re-imagining
this spiritual tradition. We met every Friday, for an hour and a half
for about ten years. And in the course of that time, he directed me
through the exercises.
At one point, perhaps a year or so after we began our work together, he said
to me "It's not called 'spiritual direction' for nothing. You
have to be willing to subordinate to my direction, and if you insist on trying
to direct yourself, we're not going to have much chance of success here."
That was a crucial lesson for me—the need to subordinate to the discipline
of the spirituality of Saint Ignatius. After five years of these meetings,
roughly in the midpoint of our work together, in the summer of 1995, I did
the thirty-day retreat under his direction.
My work with Fr. Sampson occurred during a period in my life in which I was
balancing various administrative roles and my academic work. (I was
working on my graduate degree during this period.) Both my Ph.D. studies
and my career in administration converged on a singular question: what differentiates
a Jesuit, Catholic university? Our president in those years, Fr. Timothy
Healy, put the question this way: what is the difference between a university
that believes in God and one that does not? This question has defined
much of the last 25 years for me.
As I began to move through my studies and
in the many roles that I've had at Georgetown, I continued to wrestle with
this question. In my graduate studies I was exposed to the work of Charles
Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre and came to appreciate the transcendental condition
in which we find ourselves. We are situated within a tradition.
In the words of MacIntyre, "a tradition is an historically extended, socially
embodied way of interpreting the world." It is historical—that
is, it is created in social space, by people like us, and is extended, over
time, by people like us. We do not invent a tradition.
We can't just make this stuff up. We are given a tradition through
our original situation, through our original position in a defining community.
We're introduced to a tradition in the context of our family. Then over
time we are given the responsibility to engage the tradition, to extend it
ourselves, to re-imagine it, and make adjustments to it. Traditions
are not static; they are organic, constantly evolving, shaped by people like
us.
Embedded in the Ignatian tradition is a spirituality. For me, three
words help to capture the essence of the spirituality in relation to the mission
of the university: mystery, love, and grace. These are three tough words
in the context of the mission of the Academy. So let me talk a little
bit about these three words, in ways that have had some resonance for me as
I've wrestled with the understanding of our mission.
I think all of us have moments when you have such a grasp on reality that
you feel it in your bones and surprise yourself by your next action or your
next thought—moments when everything makes sense, when all of the pieces
fit together. Your efforts to grasp a complex piece of reality, to accomplish
a difficult project, or to solve a problem that just won't go away, seem to
begin paying off. You know the feeling may not last long, but the feeling
is so powerful that it keeps you coming back the next day and the day after
that. When that commitment you made pays off against all odds, you begin
to see links—you see the pieces fitting together. And when it
happens, you've encountered the mystery. Trying to replicate it is difficult.
There are many names for such moments when we have such a grasp on reality.
Such moments emerge out of a sustained and humble engagement with the deepest
possible reality. The spirituality of Ignatius acknowledges the difficulty
we find in such engagement. We constantly seek to avoid such engagement;
it's part of our nature. But it is only with such sustained engagement
that we can ever hope to break through the blocks to understanding.
If you asked me to summarize what I learned from my years of work with Father
Sampson, I would say two things. The first is the message that Jesus
brought – the good news – is the Love Command – that God
calls us to love one another. And as Father Sampson used to say to me,
not "like" one another, not "be nice to" one another, not "get along with"
one another... but love one another, even those who treat you poorly,
who arouse in you resentment, who treat you with contempt, love your
enemies. As we wrestle with this impossible command we come to realize
that there are blocks, there are obstacles to living this command that are
a part of our very nature, part of being human. This leads to the second
dimension that I learned from my work with Father Sampson: that the
ability to love is a gift and it requires the grace of God. We need
to ask for the grace to love, a grace that will freely be given.
This dynamic of accepting the demands of love and the concomitant responsibility
to see the gap between the ideal of the command and our current lived reality
– the self-awareness that is required and the recognition of the need
for forgiveness in each of our lives, and out of that sense of forgiveness,
an awareness that the grace to meet the demands of love is available to us...this
process places the self in a deepening sense of the presence of God.
In this presence, shaped by this dynamic, a sense of resonance, a sense of
alignment, a sense of wholeness, a sense of integration, a sense of authenticity,
a sense of self-possession emerge. As you can see, our vocabulary strains
to capture the feeling that occurs where there is this sense of God's presence
and a recognition of a deep truth about one's self and one's relationship
with God and one's place in our world. And this sense, this sense of
authenticity, this sense of integration serves as a standard for deciding
and acting in all dimensions of our lives. And the Ignatian term for
this, for this integration, this authenticity is consolation.
What Ignatian spirituality brings to me in any given moment is this framing
capacity that enables me to determine if the elements are present that bring
consolation or not. In my job, I bring my spirituality to bear on my
professional responsibilities. To do so, it is as important for me to
attend to my spirituality, as it is to prepare for a meeting or for a talk.
It is necessary to prepare for both. When there is a disconnect, one
feels a sense of desolation, when things aren't in alignment. It just
doesn't feel right. Often, for me, that follows periods of travel, fatigue,
increased volume at work. Trying to hold together the conditions where
the potential for consolation is greater is the great challenge that we face.
There are steps that we can take. Steps to create a set of conditions
that strengthen one's capacity for alignment, for resonance, for consolation.
These include a continually deepening grasp of the Gospels. I am consistently
amazed by the capacity of the Word, even after countless readings, to surprise
me, to catch me off guard, to penetrate my daily reality in exciting new ways.
I'm sure you've all had that experience where you see that passage and you
say, "Where did that come from?"
It matters that we take care of ourselves. Our human limitations need
to be honored. You need to bring your best self to day-to-day decisions,
whatever it takes to ensure you are bringing that best self – enough
sleep, enough exercise, the right diet, as well as a rich imaginative life.
The Ignatian tradition requires a rich imagination.
I remember when I started my work with Father Sampson – he said, "I
want you to begin reading imaginative work, fiction." Well, I had been
an English major at Georgetown as an undergraduate, so I thought, "Yea, okay.
Sure." Each week he asked me to keep track of how well I was doing,
and report in. Well, I found it very difficult to pull myself from the
orbit of my intense daily work routine and take even 30 minutes to place myself
in the hands of a writer. So he said, "Listen, I'll prescribe something.
Read Tolkien." I began by reading just a paragraph a day. It was
a real block. Ultimately, it took me a year to read Tolkien! Then
he prescribed Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter – three volumes,
medieval history, fictional! But I remember, as I was wrestling with
this block Fr. Sampson once said, "It is on the other side of boredom that
all the interesting stuff happens." He got me to put myself in a position
where I would be more open to a different kind of message, a different kind
of connection, a different kind of resonance.
To ensure that I do my very best to bring my best self to my decisions and
actions also involves a daily engagement with the Spiritual Exercises in many
different forms. I think the one that is probably most common in our
experience is the Examen of Consciousness. You quietly go through the
day and re-imagine yourself and the various situations you were in and how
you reacted. Were your actions were very strong, did they have a feeling
of authenticity? In the words of Ignatius did they bring consolation?
Or were they fueled by resentment, contempt, anxiety, frustration, fatigue,
anger, bringing instead in a sense of desolation? When I experience
the desolation, often it's because I was blocked in my grasp of the circumstance.
I didn't understand the reality of the other. I didn't understand the
reality I was in. Those moments at the end of the day are an opportunity
to try to connect with that affective sense of your understanding of that
current moment.
The responsibilities of leadership impose similar challenges for every leader;
the only difference, I think, for me is that I'm bringing to the engagement
of the responsibilities of leadership a particular spiritual approach in the
attempt to bring my best self to my decisions and actions. The Ignatian
tradition is predicated on the idea that there is a spiritual reality and
that you can engage in a practice that is accessible to any one of us.
But as I said, you have to subordinate to the practice, and it requires a
depth of engagement.
At various times, I have asked other members of the University community
to join me in seeking greater insight into our Jesuit identity. First
as Vice President for our Main Campus and then as Senior Vice President for
the University, I invited Fr. Gray to year long workshops with our senior
officers to help people from a wide range of backgrounds, traditions, and
religious convictions consider some key ideas that unify us around our mission.
As President, we've continued this process by offering Fr. Gray's workshops
to members of the Board of Trustees and senior University leaders.
One of the responsibilities I think we all share is to make judgments as
to how well our corporate enterprise is in alignment with fundamental principles,
with the missions of our institutions. I think this is always our biggest
challenge. I am still learning how to apply the resources of the Ignatian
tradition to communal decision-making. I think we can learn from the
Quaker tradition. Father Michael Sheeran, the president of Regis University,
has taken a step in this direction with his important book, Beyond Majority
Rule, which analyzes decision-making in the Society of Friends.
It has been helpful to me in trying to look for resonance with a more interior
experience within the individual.
Communal assessment still begins, for me, from within, but let me add a few
other thoughts about how I think about the connection between spirituality
and the process of public leadership.
I've discovered very helpful insights about the nature of leadership in the
work of Ron Heifetz, a psychoanalyst and founding director of the Center for
Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
For the last eighteen years, his research has focused on building adaptive
capacity in societies and organizations.
Ron describes adaptive change – distinct from technical change –
as helping a community or social group cope with the gap between their professed
values, between their stated mission, their shared commitments and their current
lived reality. This is the most difficult challenge a leader will ever
face. It is distinct from "technical" change – where essentially
we apply appropriate methods and techniques from our toolbox of resources.
The most important responsibility of leadership is to identify when an adaptive
change is needed and then to imagine how to work through the blocks to adaptive
change, and to manage the inevitable conflict that will occur to spur creativity;
introducing progress at just the right pace, giving the work to the people
who need to do it, and holding steady in the heat of action.
These are always high-stakes issues. In the worst-case scenario, the
challenge is rejected and the leader is removed. In the best case, the
adaptive work that needs to be done is appropriately engaged in a time frame
that can be handled by the group. It won't be ignored and it won't be
rejected. It may need to be modulated. It requires judgment.
You have to engage the process of discernment. This is the Ignatian
term. Is the choice authentic? Am I holding the group to the work
that needs to be done, or am I letting them off the hook? Does this
decision or action bring to me a sense of consolation or desolation when I
reflect on my role in the process?
The Ignatian tradition provides us with resources that I believe connect
with this concept that Ron Heifetz has developed. This notion of being
able to deal with the gap between our commitments and our lived reality, the
blocks that prevent us from engaging the deepest level of our reality.
The tradition provides us with the resources to achieve moments of consolation,
moments where we have a sense that we can trust our decisions and actions.
And as I said before, these moments emerge out of a sustained and humble engagement
with the deepest possible reality. The spirituality of Ignatius acknowledges
the difficulties we find in this engagement. This resonates very deeply
with one of the lessons that I learned from Father Sampson: how easy it is
for us to avoid the truth. In the words of Robert Bolt (that he put
in the mouth of Saint Thomas More) in the play A Man For All Seasons:
"Our natural business lies in escaping..."
It is only with sustained engagement that
we can ever hope to work through the blocks to understanding to confront this
natural tendency to escape our current reality.
Ignatian spirituality has emerged for me as a route to authenticity.
When, through the careful process of reflection, a sense of alignment emerges
that resonates with feelings I recognize, where I know that I've done my homework,
I've prepared myself for a decision, I've done the consultation, I've considered
the options, when the effect, as I take account within myself, is a sense
of consolation, there is a trust that emerges. I trust
the judgment.
Which is not to say that this is foolproof
(because I'm also often wrong). With some frequency, after a little
time – a little more distance – the consolation can wither.
I realized I wasn't really being honest with myself. I thought I was,
but upon further reflection I forced the issues. I found myself pushing
too hard or actually having closed the process of decision-making a little
to early. And this is where I found that having a director who could
help me differentiate when I was right and when I was wrong gave me the ability
to deepen my capacity to trust that sense, that affective feeling that we
have each day as we reflect on how things are going.
As I shared with you earlier, it was not
easy for me to subordinate to the discipline of the practice, but over time,
I found that the collaboration with a director made the engagement with the
experience possible. And in this relationship, I came to understand
what interior movements I could trust, and which I couldn't. I began
to develop the experience, the grounding to know the difference – to
know how easy it is to force a choice that really was not in alignment.
And to remind myself that as part of the human condition, this will continue.
It will characterize my decisions, my actions throughout my life. We
are so fortunate today because we live in an age where the tradition is more
available to us, I think, than any other generation. And it's because
of pioneers and giants like Howard Gray and others who made this accessible
to us.
To work in a University is a privilege.
Our mission to prepare young men and women for lives of purpose, to engage
in the process of discovery, to construct knowledge, to push back the frontiers
of knowledge, to innovate, and to ensure our institutions are instruments
of social justice. Anyone who has the opportunity to work in a university
lives an extraordinary privilege. But for us, to do so with the promise
embedded in the Ignatian tradition, where a spirituality, a way of understanding
the nature of these interior movements, a spirituality that provides us with
resources to engage these experiences at ever deepening levels, where we can
confront, without apology, the fundamental mystery of being human, where we
can deepen our ability to ask and be given the gift of grace, where we wake
up each morning and reflect each evening on the course of our day with the
profound understanding that we are loved, for us, living our lives in institutions
shaped by missions consistent with this tradition – I can think of no
greater privilege.
Thank you for allowing me to share this
morning with you. It has been a privilege.