God Who Prays in Us: Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Diary

This article explores Katherine Sonderegger’s thesis that in Christian prayer, not only does the person pray, but God prays. Though such an idea runs contrary to the settled conviction in Christian spirituality that the human person prays to God, this paper enquires into the idea that God also prays in the person with a study of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Diary. That record of his spiritual experiences suggests that not only did he listen to God’s prayer in him, but that this listening comprised a spiritual itinerary in which he was led into a deeper experience of God’s prayerful laboring in him. Following this itinerary, this article proceeds in three parts. First, a study of Ignatius’s prayer to the mediators reveals that in his petitions, he sought to hear the intercessory prayer of Mary and Jesus. Second, he found himself discovering a new way to name God as he celebrated the mass; that newness resided not in a new vocabulary but in his participation in the prayer of the Son to the Father. Finally, Ignatius experienced the grace of loqüela in which he heard a kind of celestial music whose tone and language moved him to a simple, contemplative admiration of God. More than the story of a mystic with an uncommon ability to listen to God, Ignatius’s journey into greater attention to God’s language within him is the story of grace, God’s life, which is always present, active, and audible in the believer’s prayer.