On this Memorial of St. Ignatius I find myself reflecting back on an opportunity I had in 2018 to participate in an Ignatian Pilgrimage. We travelled the route of Ignatius’ life from the Loyola family home in Azpeitia, to the founding of the Society to Rome. Two things emerge as I consider the life of Ignatius and my own journey in his footsteps: uncertainty and clarity.
What does it mean to be faithfully uncertain? Ignatius’ spiritual awakening in Loyola changed his life; but I was just the beginning. His life changed again, and again in the following years. He grew through some phases that must have had his later self shaking his head in retrospect. He made some discernments that lasted a lifetime, and others that turned out to be untenable for various reasons—most notably his desire to live out his days in the Holy Land. Through these many changes he strove for fidelity over certitude. It makes me ask myself how I might be called to be less attached to certainty: more free to grow, to recognize when I’m wrong, and to change.
Along with this uncertainty in the details, Ignatius also experienced profound clarity in the big picture. His orientation towards the God who called him never wavered. It was this confidence that kept him back from the brink when he struggled with scruples in Manresa, it was this confidence that allowed him to trade in his pilgrim’s shoes for a desk and a pen as the first Superior General of the Society in Rome. I suspect it was an outcome his early self could not have imagined, but it laid the foundations for centuries of shared work for the Kingdom. On my own pilgrimage it was this administrative location in Rome that surprised me most deeply.
I loved seeing the family house of the Loyolas, visiting the shrine of Our Lady of Montserat, praying in the cave turned chapel in Manresa, and viewing the banks of the Cardoner River. All these scenes added depth for me to the life of Ignatius, but it was the Aula, the meeting room of the Jesuit Curia in Rome that I found myself moved to tears. This is the place where the shared confidence and uncertainty of the Society today come together as Jesuits today continue discerning their place in God’s great work of the world. As a partner of the Society it is also a place where my voice, and the voices of so many other lay colleagues, have been received and honored as part of the conversation in unexpected ways.
Before my Ignatian pilgrimage I was invited to participate in a group discernment conversation among partners of the Society. These Conversations in the Spirit happened all over the world amongst Jesuits and lay colleagues who collaborate in Jesuit works. The fruit of those conversations converged there in the Aula as the Universal Apostolic Preferences were discerned. This shared mission—its clarity and its openness to an uncertain future—is what moved me to tears.
On this Memorial of St. Ignatius I pray for the future of Jesuit Works and all who move them forward, for the Society of Jesus itself, for the entire Christian community, for the world, and also for myself as one pilgrim among many. May we learn from Ignatius what it means to hold the tension between clarity and uncertainty; confidence and humility. May we commit, recommit, and recommit yet again to the fundamental call of the Divine, with humble uncertainty about the details, making space for creativity, flexibility and sharing in God’s vision of a future we cannot imagine.
Sara Schulte-Bukowinski
Originally from central Nebraska, where my home diocese of Grand Island nurtured vocations to lay ministry, I pursued Divinity studies and completed my M.Div. at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in 2007. After 12 years of providing formation and education in Catholic schools, I spent 7 years as a lay pastoral minister (Parish Life Director) at St. John’s, Omaha’s Jesuit Parish. Most recently I took on another new role, now as Director of the Deglman Center for Ignatian Spirituality here at Creighton University. I live in Omaha with my husband Adam, our dog Lilly, and as of 2022 my parents-in-law Ann and George.
In graduate school I was fortunate to take a course from the illustrious theologian and Johannine scholar, Saundra Schneiders. I still remember her talking about the location where ongoing scriptural revelation occurs—in the space between the page and the eyes of the reader. This is where the Divine meets the realities of our lives, in our time and place. I look forward to sharing this encounter together as part of this reflection team.
