What would you say have been the formative moments in your personal life or work life?

Frances Tilly shares insights on Ignatian Formation, offering reflections on personal and communal transformation through the Ignatian spiritual exercises and discernment.

What have been the experiences, relationships, and events which have caused you to grasp something with new understanding, change direction, or choose a new way? Or which have opened up something unexpected for you, or brought you to something deeply longed for, which calls you forward into yourself and strengthens your commitment to the work you do?

This is the domain of our Ignatian formation – seeking and finding life, becoming more free to be ourselves, bringing together individual stories into our communal story, and the story of earth. Paradoxically, there’s a letting go and a receiving more. There’s tension and struggle – holding complex realities and needs, opening the hands, the mind, the heart, for a bigger understanding and way forward. Choice and concrete action in life and work arise from our ongoing reflection, conversation and discernment.

Ignatian formation offers ways to live at depth and in the service of others. It opens for us the life of Ignatius Loyola, and the God he came to know. It touches tensions and paradoxes, which are at the heart of our Christian understanding of the mystery of Christ’s life, death and resurrection.

The spiritual life lies at the heart of Ignatian formation. We draw on the continuing gift of Ignatius to the church, which in turn means we draw on gifts of God he received personally and with the first Jesuit Companions and the Society of Jesus which they founded. Their fundamental relationship is with the God of life, who labours for us in all things, inviting us into dynamic relationship and freedom, into service of God’s great call to reconciliation and practical action in our context in the world.

Our Ignatian formation opens space for you individually, and as a work or ministry team. We offer direct experience of Ignatian spiritual exercises, conversations and discernment – creative, practical processes with which to reflect on your experience and choose your direction.

We are available to support you, with individual accompaniment and good group experiences, to inspire and support your dreaming and desires, with discernment and practical choices.

Explore Ignatian formation here:

Introducing Ignatian Formation https://jisa.org.au/introducing-ignatian-formation/

First Steps and Foundations https://jisa.org.au/first-steps-and-foundations/

Discernment Formation and Training https://jisa.org.au/discernment-formation-and-training/

Ignatian Formation for Leadership https://jisa.org.au/ignatian-formation-for-leadership/

Individual Accompaniment https://jisa.org.au/individual-accompaniment/

Catholic Identity and Mission https://jisa.org.au/catholic-identity-and-mission/

What’s On – Resources https://jisa.org.au/whats-on-resources/

If you are interested in Ignatian Formation for your group or organisation, we would love to hear from you, contact us on 1300 392 636 or info@jisa.org.au

With thanks to Frances Tilly for this introduction to Ignatian Formation. Frances is an Ignatian Spiritual Director, Giver of the Full and First Spiritual Exercise, and a Supervisor. She is responsible for Mission Formation with Jesuit and Ignatian Spirituality Australia.