15 Sep Sister Susan’s Ignatian Approach to Education

The woman who teaches the Regis course on priesthood and the Regis course on the “Foundations of Mission and Ministry” of course isn’t a Jesuit. But neither is she from one of the women’s religious communities founded on Ignatian principles and spirituality, such as the Sisters of St. Joseph or the Xaverian Missionary Sisters.

“I’m a Sister of Charity and I’m supposed to be Vincentian,” Regis College vice president and vice chair of the academic council Sr. Susan K. Wood says with a laugh. Of course she is Vincentian, while at the same time being deeply Ignatian and more than a little Benedictine. Between graduate studies and teaching at Milwaukee’s Marquette University, one of 28 Jesuit universities in the United States, plus five years at Regis College, Wood has spent 24 years working among Jesuits, teaching in the Ignatian tradition of discernment, examen and accompaniment. She also spent 10 years among Benedictines teaching at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., absorbing the rich tradition of Benedictine spirituality.

What all this experience has taught her is how central spirituality is to the advanced study of theology. “One undertakes theology from the perspective of a particular faith commitment. In a sense, you are in-dwelling what you are studying,” she explains. There are two different kinds of knowledge necessary for serious theological study, said Wood. The normal sort of book-learning that goes on at all universities is essential, but at the same time theologians have to analyse and apply their own experience of God.

“There’s the intellectual level, but there is also the experiential level,” she said. “I think spirituality has to be something that is not only intellectual but also experiential.” Ignatian spirituality, which seeks God out in every experience through the tools of discernment, the examen and accompaniment has an almost unique ability to complete and enrich the intellectual side of any systematic study of theology. “The Ignatian approach to things always starts with the concrete – not coming from abstract principles but from the concrete reality,” she said.

The result should be expressions of theology that are neither polarized nor polarizing. By referring back to the real experience of Christians of all kinds, Wood encourages students to put theology to use in people’s lives – away from the culture wars and in tune with the synodal church envisioned by Pope Francis. “We should not weaponize theology, which sometimes happens in the church,” she said. “That we hit people over the head with our doctorates.”

The basic insight that informs Wood’s work of teaching, researching and writing theology actually predates St. Ignatius, St. Vincent de Paul and even St. Benedict. “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian,” Evagrius Ponticus, also known as Evagrius the Solitary, wrote less than 400 years after the resurrection of Christ, while living in the Egyptian desert.

“That’s my answer to why theology needs a spirituality,” Wood said.