Formation
Finding one’s self
through serving others by Eric Clayton
T
he Spanish Jesuit priest, Jerome Nadal, companion to St. Ignatius of Loyola himself, wrote this of the Jesuit way of life: “The form of the Society [of Jesus] is in the life of Ignatius. … God set him up as a living example of our way of proceeding.” This way of proceeding, embodied in Ignatius, is alive and well in the Jesuits of today, passed on through the rigors of Jesuit formation. A hallmark of these formative eight-to-twelve years are apostolic experiences or — a better translation of Ignatius’ Latin word experimentum — experiments.
“There is a unique intuition that Ignatius had that colours everything about why we have and use apostolic experiences,” says Fr. Gilles Mongeau, SJ, socius of the Canadian Province. “He reflects on his experience, his development and that of his founding companions.” Those experiences of the early Jesuits prove foundational to the formation of all Jesuits — from the earliest days to the present.
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