Walking in the Spirit, a Reflection on Jeronimo Nadal's Phrase "Contemplative Likewise in Action" (review)

Joseph Conwell has a long and distinguished career in exploring the influence of Jerome Nadal on the early Society of Jesus and his role in developing a corporate self-understanding of its distinctive prayer. That distinctive form of prayer has been the focus of two earlier studies by Conwell, Contemplation in Action: A Study in Ignatian Prayer (Spokane: Gonzaga University Press, 1957) and Impelling Spirit: Revisiting a Founding Experience, 1539 (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1997). In this book Conwell again proves himself to be a thorough and sensitive interpreter of Ignatius and of Nadal, writes in a generally straightforward style, and provides something of a pastoral synthesis of history, theology, and spirituality. The student of Ignatian spirituality will find much in Conwell that is helpful for teaching, retreat ministry, and spiritual direction. That the book is as available to "everyone interested in prayer" (Preface, xi) is perhaps too optimistic an appraisal of the book's appeal.

Conwell is best in his reading of the development of Nadal as an exponent of Ignatian and early Jesuit prayer; he is less effective in attempting to make that tradition available to those unfamiliar with the Spiritual Exercises and the Jesuit Constitutions. This is a book not about prayer but about a particular style of prayer. For those who know the Ignatian heritage, who have been formed in its principles and priorities, and who wish to enrich their understanding of that tradition, this book is an excellent companion.

Conwell divides his study into eleven chapters, which establish Nadal's character, mission, and approach. As a trusted confidant of Ignatius, as a well-trained theologian, and as an unusually effective communicator, Nadal was truly the kind of social spiritual animator the early Jesuits needed. By that I mean that Nadal helped a far-flung, newly formed religious order of men appropriate a style of prayer and method of spiritual interpretation of their life and work that both confirmed their place in the Catholic tradition of spiritual wisdom and yet celebrated the ability to reinterpret and then adapt that tradition to new apostolic circumstances. It is Conwell's achievement to grasp and to represent the methodology of Nadal, especially the way he went about tying the Exercises to the General Examen and the Constitutions, while encouraging individual Jesuits to learn from and contribute to this evolution of a distinctive spirituality. In this analysis, in his care to provide historical context to each stage of Nadal's developmental spiritual process, Conwell is superb. This aspect of Walking in the Spirit makes it a valuable contribution to Ignatian studies.

Where I am less satisfied is in Conwell's effort to make his study available to wider audiences whose drive for spiritual guidance is more diffuse, and less concentrated on the Ignatian heritage. Juxtapositions of close textual analyses of specifically Jesuit documents, biographical references to Nadal's personal spiritual growth, and in-house Jesuit documents with the more generic Vatican II calls to apostolic spirituality do not work well. I wanted to skip huge sections of Conwell's contemporary application to sustain the really good developing illumination of Nadal's work with his brother Jesuits. I suspect those outside Jesuit life or not deeply interested in the genesis of the Jesuit "way of proceeding" will find the analyses irrelevant to their spiritual interests.

Conwell's friendship with Cecilia Wilms, a religious hermit, inspired his effort to undertake a reading of the development of Ignatian spirituality as a kind of paradigm for more general spiritual development. That friendship shines through the study and witnesses to something that Conwell discovered that is of tremendous importance today. Within the Catholic community, religious communities have relinquished not only their juridical control of institutions to lay boards and lay administrators but also, more and more, their spiritual interpretations of the meaning of these institutions. Conwell's volume, for all its...