Current Lecture

On Magnanimity and the Magis: What St. Ignatius Loyola Really Said about Finding God’s Will

Ignatius’s ideas about seeking and finding God’s will made the early Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) highly influential and highly controversial. They were, in fact, the linchpin for understanding his spiritual doctrine as a whole. Nevertheless, modern interpretations of Ignatian spirituality often fail to recognize what made him so distinctive. Fr. Geger addresses the historical reasons for that oversight and why an accurate understanding of Ignatius is more relevant than ever for those who seek God’s will.

Speaker:

Fr. Barton Geger, from St. Louis, Missouri, entered the Society of Jesus in 1990. In 2010, he received a doctorate in sacred theology at Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid with a dissertation on the Jesuit Constitutions. From 2010 to 2016, he was a theology teacher and Director of Ignatian Programming at Regis University in Denver, Colorado; he was also rector of the Jesuit communities at Regis University and St. Ignatius Loyola Parish. Since 2016, he has been general editor of the quarterly monograph series Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits. Since 2017, he has been Associate Professor of the Practice at the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College, and a research scholar at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, also at Boston College, where he is currently revising Fr. George Ganss’ ground-breaking 1970 English-language edition of the Jesuit Constitutions. His personal project is a translation of an obscure, heretofore unpublished manuscript by Fr. Pedro Ribadeneira, S.J. (1527–1611) on perseverance in a Jesuit vocation.