An invitation to dinner with the Dominicans led to questioning him about preaching. Ignatius corrected the Dominican, saying, "We do not preach. We talk familiarly about divine things with some, in much the same way as after dinner we converse with our host." Ignatius, however, was seen as unlearned and untrained and thus not qualified for spiritual conversation and, not for the first time, he spent several weeks in a Salamancan prison.
How did our foray into spiritual conversation in Salamanca come about? In September 2023, Bishop Brian McGee asked myself and a colleague, Catriona Fletcher, to lead a workshop on ‘communal discernment’ for the clergy of Argyll and the Isles. The clergy were welcoming and open, and engaged really well with the process. Afterwards, Bishop McGee, who is one of the delegates to the Synod on Synodality in Rome, said that this would be useful and interesting for the Bishops.
Catriona and I were then invited to join the eight Scottish bishops for their annual ‘in-service’ meeting in Salamanca to lead a two-day course on ‘Conversations in the Spirit’ for them. We were using the wisdom of Ignatian spirituality to help them to identify spiritual movements of consolation and desolation and, as with the synodal process, a time of silence and prayer with Scripture was an essential component and pre-requisite, along with noticing and discerning the experience of the Holy Spirit ‘in the moment’. And I think it is fair to say that the Spirit moved.
I have never worked with a group of bishops before, and it was quite a daunting prospect. In the event, they were very welcoming, informal and gracious, and the workshop led to several follow-up invitations with various dioceses. Salamanca is an extraordinarily beautiful mediaeval university town, and fortunately, unlike Ignatius, our attempts at spiritual conversation did not land us in prison. Yet.
By Fr Roger Dawson SJ
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