Introductory notes for readers of this thesis - Theses - Flinders ...

The Ignatian Exercises—especially numbers 15 and 16—imparted to Rahner oneof the main pillars of his theological thought: God’s experiential selfcommunication.Ignatius was convinced that during the Exercises the exercitantexperiences the immediacy of God’s self-communication and that the Creator andthe creature work directly with each other. This Ignatian insight is almost a shortformula for the entire Rahnerian enterprise. His theological point of departure isnothing less than a genuine, original experience of God, a starting point hehimself experienced 91 .Modras also highlights the directive from number 15—‘allow the Creator to dealimmediately with the creature and the creature with its Creator and Lord’—as a ‘hallmarkof Ignatian spirituality’92 . Modras asserts that Rahner does not appeal to Origin andBonaventure when making his case for direct experience of God precisely becauseRahner believes this experience is found in Ignatius and his Exercises 93 , demonstratingthat though other spiritual sources can be read in Rahner’s Ignatian interpretation, Rahnerhimself clearly believes—or at least came to be finally convinced in his later years—thatthe spirituality of Ignatius Loyola points the way to a contemporary ministry of formationin Christian spirituality.Karl Rahner’s ‘spirituality of silence’ as an Ignatian practiceIn his introduction to a 1997 translation of one of Rahner’s books on prayer, Harvey Eganoffers the following synoptic reflection on the essence of what his late friend and mentorbelieved and taught about human spirituality:Rahner maintains that our deepest, primordial experience—what haunts the centreof our hearts—is of a God who remains holy mystery, the word that illuminatesour spirits, and the love that embraces us. This is not a particular, or ‘categorical’experience to which we can point. Rather, it is an experience beyond allparticulars, a ‘transcendental’ experience. It is the atmosphere in which we live,our basal spiritual metabolism, ‘more intimate to us than we are toourselves’…Just as we take our breathing, our beating hearts, or our own selfawarenessfor granted, so too may the ever-present experience of God remainoverlooked, repressed, or even denied 94 .Egan proposes that Karl Rahner arrived at this belief through a personal, direct, Ignatianencounter with God; for Rahner, Ignatian spirituality offers a way for the church to serve91 Karl Rahner - Mystic of everyday life (New York: Crossroads, 1998), 32.92 Ignatian humanism, 25.93 Ibid, 226.94 K. Rahner, The need and blessing of prayer – a new translation, Trans. B.W. Gillette (Collegeville,Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Xi.48