Tag: Ignatian Spirituality

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From Collision to Conversion: What’s the Significance Today of the Cannonball Story?

The Ignatian Year at Georgetown kicks off on October 28 with a special event exploring the meaning of the “cannonball moments” in our lives. RSVP here!

Ahead of the event, “What’s Your Cannonball Story? Story-Telling in Georgetown’s Ignatian Year,” I want to consider the significance of the Ignatian “cannonball moment” as it relates both to the life of St. Ignatius and to our lives today. For some, relating this historical image to our contemporary human experience is a fitting way to enter more deeply into the principles and practices of the Ignatian Year. For others, the cannonball theme may feel distant, remote, or even dissonant with a desire for healthy spiritual development. In whatever way you relate to this image, I offer some insights that can hopefully help make this Ignatian story come more alive for you. 

The cannonball was literal for Ignatius, but it does not have to be so for us. One of the potential stumbling blocks of relating this 500-year-old story to our present lives is its dramatic nature. Not all of us can relate to the monumental wounding of St. Ignatius in battle, a war-time injury that earned the respect of rival forces because of Ignatius’s bravery. Some of us have had similarly significant life experiences – especially for many at SCS connected to the military. But it might feel like an unachievable high bar to have a similar cannonball experience in order to enter into the personal reflection invited by this Ignatian Year. That is not the point of relating this story to our lives today. 

The point is that we all have had some foundational event or experience that has caused us to question our existing beliefs or behaviors. This is especially the case in the context of the ongoing pandemic and how it has forced greater awareness of our feelings and the changes in our interior dispositions, attitudes, and beliefs as we have adjusted to unpredictable exterior conditions. The enduring meaning of the “cannonball moment” is that reflecting on our own examples can help set in motion a process of profound personal transformation. Here is an example of a relatable transformation offered by a prior student in the SCS “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice” course: 

“During a difficult consolidation of an organization where I used to work that divided employees and company leadership, I decided to pause and think very carefully about whether I wanted to survive through political maneuvering or doing the right thing for the company and myself. I discerned that the right thing was to continue to perform, collaborate, share information, and support the needs of the business. I chose this path and the decision was a relief. Ultimately, this path led to me to consider a more honorable path forward in my career.”

For Ignatius, the cannonball was a singular event, but for us personal transformation can take a long time and we might not consciously realize that it is even happening. While the fact of the cannonball collision is a salient detail in the Ignatian story, what matters most is how Ignatius responded over time. The injuries he sustained led to a deep shift in perspective that was possible because he committed to regular habits of prayer and self-examination. Battlefield wounds facilitated this process of conversion and enabled Ignatius to take time to imagine a different future for himself more aligned with God’s calling. 

For many, there is not a single moment that explains a deep change of heart that leads to reforming our habits, behaviors, and courses of action. Sometimes the interior transformation is a slow and patient process. It is only much later, with the help of dedicated reflection, that we understand what transformations actually occurred within us. One SCS alumna of the Jesuit Values course reflected on a slow change in her life in this way: 

“After a disappointing experience as a college athlete, I had to give up the sport that I loved. I became angry, disappointed, confused, and doubtful as a result of that decision. It took a long time for me to accept what felt like I had lost the most important thing in my life. Through much reflection over time I eventually embraced the decision, but it took a lot of patience with myself and others. I also later converted my passion for athletics into other ways of using my gifts and I became a mentor and have found other ways of helping people.” 


Over the course of the coming year, Mission in Motion will continue to bring to life the cannonball story by offering opportunities to make relevant connections to its enduring meaning. Please join us on October 28 as we mark Georgetown’s Ignatian Year by making some time and space to pause and reflect on your own cannonball journeys.

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Welcome to Georgetown’s Ignatian Year! (Wait, What’s an Ignatian Year?)

In her fall welcome message, “Looking Ahead with Hope,” SCS Dean Kelly Otter acknowledged the challenges and stresses many are experiencing in this semester of transition and pointed toward reasons for hope. Building upon the inspiration of Fr. Otto Hentz, S.J. that we can be hope for one another, Dean Otter articulated a special cause for hope at the University in 2021–2022: celebration of the Ignatian Year. 

This week’s Mission in Motion introduces the Ignatian Year, a celebration occurring in 2021–2022 at Jesuit institutions around the world. What is this Ignatian Year? And why should it matter to you? To answer these questions, we need to start at the beginning: the story of St. Ignatius. Check out this short film about his life. 

The purpose of this week’s reflection is to narrate the significance of the Ignatian Year, the 500th anniversary of the conversion of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, a religious order known for building schools all over the world. My own hope is that this brief summary of highlights will help make Georgetown’s Ignatian Year relevant to every member of this community. Regardless of your religious or spiritual tradition, your familiarity with the Spirit of Georgetown, or how long you have been at the University, the themes, principles, and practices at the heart of Ignatian spirituality and the style of education St. Ignatius inspired five centuries ago are relevant to you today. I invite you to consider how your ongoing journey at Georgetown, grounded in your unique lived experience, will be enriched by more deeply engaging with the events and opportunities planned for this special year.

This story begins with the story of St. Ignatius of Loyola (for an entertaining biographical summary, check out this short 10-minute film produced by Jesuits in Britain). The founder of the Jesuits was an unlikely saint, devoting the early part of his life to the pursuit of riches, honors, and conquest in battle. Upholding his knightly honor as a Spanish soldier, Ignatius defended against an invading French force and was struck by a cannonball that severely injured his leg. He had no choice but to recover slowly from his injuries, forced to stay put and entertain himself not with TikTok but with the castle’s only available reading material: religious books. This period of convalescence set into motion the deeper personal transformation that Ignatius would undergo for the rest of his life. 

What matters most for us about this transformation story is that Ignatius eventually decided on his life’s path because he paid attention to his daydreams! During his recovery, Ignatius began to notice how he felt after imagining his life’s alternate possibilities. The authentic option, the one that would lead him to pursue a profession of generosity and the common good, left him feeling joyful in a sustained way. When he imagined returning to his past life, Ignatius experienced fleeting feelings of excitement that ultimately left him feeling dry. The path toward realizing God’s invitation, his deeper purpose, would lead to deep delight and joy. Moving from a life of vainglory to a life of noble purpose required thoughtful discernment of Ignatius’s interior movements. And so it is the same for us today five centuries later. 

We are each called to make meaning of our experience by paying attention to our interior movements. You might consider these basic questions: 

  • What stirs you? 
  • What do you desire? 
  • What repels you? 
  • What distracts you?  
  • Where do you find purpose in your work? In your home? In your community? 
  • How and when do you feel most free to pursue the deeper meaning of your life? 
  • How do you want to share your gifts and talents with others? 
  • How do you want to realize justice, practice charity, and build bonds in your communities? 
  • Is there a shift in perspective that you are being invited to undertake? 

Ignatius would tell you to pay special attention to the movement of these feelings within yourself and where they lead you. Ultimately, it’s the direction of the movements that matters. And while we may not have literal cannonball experiences like Ignatius, we are each invited – especially in light of the ongoing pandemic – to convert our individual and collective suffering and adversity into profound moral and spiritual transformation. 

Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Georgetown, discusses the significance of the Ignatian Year by describing an Ignatian movement from profession to purpose. Watch the video. 

For Ignatius and the Jesuit spirituality that carries on this legacy, implanted in our interior life, rooted in our deepest desires, is our vocation to be realized in the world. All of our lived experience – from the most tedious daily details to the biggest cannonball moments – present opportunities to encounter a loving God. There are many names and paths for this encounter and some may use less theologically oriented language like the true self, transcendent mystery, goodness, truth, etc. According to Fr. Arturo Sosa, S.J., Superior General of the Jesuits, all of us, regardless of our beliefs, share in the “same struggle” of realizing real change in our day-to-day mission of life. 

This Ignatian Year is also an opportunity to shine a light on how all Jesuit institutions are called to realize the Universal Apostolic Preferences. These orientations – Showing the Way to God, Walking with the Excluded, Journeying with Youth, and Caring for Our Common Home – are intended to focus the energy of all Jesuit works for the next 10 years. Georgetown SCS uniquely animates Jesuit mission in a way that honors the context of our learning community. One of the great opportunities of Georgetown’s celebration of the Ignatian Year is a deeper appreciation for the diverse ways that schools and units across the University bring to life an Ignatian spirit in their teaching, learning, and working. 

In the coming weeks and months, Mission in Motion will dedicate attention to the meaning of the Ignatian Year. Stay tuned for opportunities, like events, communications, programs, and practices, that are designed to accompany you on your journey. 

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An Invitation To Consider Some Commotion in Your Life and Work

This week’s Mission in Motion is a cross-post from the blog of Georgetown’s Campus Ministry, “Integrating Jesuit Values in Professional Education.” Campus Ministry invited me to share some reflections, in the context of the Ignatian Year (more to come in the following weeks about the Ignatian Year and how the Georgetown SCS community can engage in it), about how Jesuit values come alive at SCS. The post below presents the various ways in which the curriculum, student experience, and community engagement efforts at the School manifest an Ignatian vision of teaching, learning, and serving. 

I am inspired by an image from the autobiography of St. Ignatius about causing “commotion at the university” when I reflect on what the Jesuit tradition offers professional and continuing education. The dictionary sense of the word “commotion” conveys “tumultuous motion, agitation, and noisy disturbance.” But is there a more constructive and healthy way of considering “commotion” as a spur to disrupting the unreflective status quo in our lives, in the institutions in which we work, and in the social structures we inhabit? How can the Ignatian spirit inspire us to see our lives anew and transform our habits of heart and mind? 

Jamie Kralovec (left) with Rashada Jenkins, a 2017 graduate of the Master’s in Human Resources Management program. This week’s Mission in Motion is a cross-post from the blog of Georgetown’s Campus Ministry: “Integrating Jesuit Values in Professional Education.” 

In his autobiography, St. Ignatius of Loyola describes a “great commotion at the university” that occurs after he gives the Spiritual Exercises to a few prominent teachers and students. Five centuries later, a similar dynamic can occur whenever a student, staff, or faculty member is transformed by an Ignatian formation program and is invited to exteriorize what they have deeply interiorized. St. Ignatius was willing to disrupt the status quo of universities and other institutions in order to see things new and follow God’s calling in the service of the common good. Jesuit schools, in the spirit of their founder, have evolved over time to meet the educational demands of the changing societies in which they operate. And while the forms of Jesuit education have been updated, including the development of professional and continuing education programs like those at Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies (SCS), the essential core of Ignatian-inspired teaching and learning has never changed. Universities like Georgetown and schools within them like SCS continue to uphold a humanistic tradition with a religious vision that, initiated 500 years ago and celebrated in this Ignatian Year, is constantly seeking how to most effectively respond to the challenges of our time while attending to the unique contexts of our diverse learners. 

At SCS, whose vision is to “transform the lives and careers of diverse lifelong learners by providing access to engaged and personalized liberal and professional education for all,” the intentional incorporation of the Spirit of Georgetown continues to bear fruit across the academic enterprise. Faculty are encouraged to explore the resources of Ignatian Pedagogy in order to integrate Jesuit values across the curriculum. For example, SCS Vice Dean Shenita Ray’s “Strategies To Integrate Georgetown Values into Online and On-Campus Courses,” helps faculty and instructional designers visualize the practical ways that Ignatian Pedagogy can come alive in assignments and other learning activities. 

Students, faculty, and staff are also invited to participate in a variety of Ignatian-inspired retreats and other spirituality programs, including SCS Daily Digital Meditation, a digitally connected community that originated at the beginning of the pandemic that continues to extend the resources of mindfulness meditation, including a weekly Examen. And a weekly blog reflection, Mission in Motion, narrates the many ways that SCS students, faculty, staff, and alumni live out Jesuit values in their study, work, and engagement with the communities beyond Georgetown. 

One of the signature SCS manifestations of Ignatian spirituality and pedagogy is “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice” (recently renamed “The Reflective Professional”), a first-of-its-kind elective open to all degree-seeking students at the School. Offered annually since 2016, this community-based learning course, which is supported by Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice, Research, Teaching & Service, is a reflection-based exploration of the history, education philosophy, spirituality, and social justice applications of Jesuit education. I created the interdisciplinary course in response to my own transformative experience of the Spiritual Exercises. Similar to those early Ignatian-animated citizens of the university, I discerned at the retreat’s conclusion how best to share my transformative experience with others. The outcome of my discernment was a dedicated course that introduces some of the tools of the Ignatian tradition in a way that honors religious pluralism, advances social justice, and meets the needs of busy adult learners at SCS. 

All of these experiences hopefully make clear that the enduring resources of Jesuit education and the vision of its founder animate the life of the School of Continuing Studies. In this Ignatian Year, I invite you to consider: what might it mean for you to cause a little graced commotion at Georgetown and beyond? How might you listen for and respond to deep callings in your life, your study, and your work?  

Jamie Kralovec is the Associate Director for Mission Integration at the School of Continuing Studies.