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Karl Rahner: Spiritual Writings, and: Pedro Arrupe: Essential Writings, and: Alfred Delp, S.J.: Prison Writings

2005; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 5; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/scs.2006.0005

1535-3117

Richard Hauser,

Catholicism and Religious Studies

Reviewed by: Karl Rahner: Spiritual Writings, and: Pedro Arrupe: Essential Writings, and: Alfred Delp, S.J.: Prison Writings Richard J. Hauser S.J. (bio) Karl Rahner: Spiritual Writings. Edited by Philip Endean. Mahwah, N.J.: Orbis Books, 2004. 206 pp. $16.00 pb.; Pedro Arrupe: Essential Writings. Introduction and selections by Kevin Burke. Mahwah, N.J.: Orbis Books, 2004. 215 pp. $16.00 pb.; Alfred Delp, SJ: Prison Writings. By Alfred Delp. Mahwah, N.J.: Orbis Books, 2004. 163 pp. $16.00 pb. The Modern Spiritual Masters Series is making available in readable and inexpensive formats the spiritual masters of our age—some twenty-three volumes by my count. The format is simple but demands careful editing. Each editor writes an introduction to the subject, selects significant excerpts from the author's corpus and then gives the historical-spiritual context for the excerpt. Endean and Burke have superbly edited the Rahner and Arrupe volumes. The Delp volume, a reprint of an earlier edition, lacks the editing and suffers in comparison. The three Jesuits reviewed here are presented by the Series as "great spiritual masters of our time," raising the question: Do these Jesuits reflect anything in common regarding Ignatian spirituality today? On the surface their lives and careers were certainly dissimilar: Rahner, university professor and theologian; Arrupe, Japanese missionary, novice master, provincial and the Superior General of the Society of Jesus; Delp, periodical editor, parish priest and martyred protester of Nazism. Yet I believe there is an underlying similarity among the three. Philip Endean, tutor at Campion Hall, Oxford, editor of The Way and author of Karl Rahner and Ignatian Spirituality, catches it best in his volume Karl Rahner: Spiritual Writings. As the first entry in his anthology Endean gives pride of place to a 1978 reflection by Rahner. Endean's introduction for the excerpt explains that Rahner wrote the piece in the person of Ignatius Loyola to contemporary Jesuits and later, in an interview before his death, noted that the piece could be considered his "spiritual testament." In the piece Rahner has Ignatius comment on his mystical experiences shortly after his conversion at Manresa: I really experienced God, the true and living one, the one who merits the name that destroys all names. Whether you call this experience mysticism or something else doesn't matter here. Your theologians might like to speculate how it can be somehow explained in human concepts that something like this is possible at all. But first: I encountered God; I experienced God's self. Even then I could already distinguish between God's self and the words, the images, the particular limited experiences that somehow point to God. The three authors reviewed here, along with all the great masters of Ignatian spirituality, are united by a common thread: the conviction that God has spoken to them in their lives and that this message must be put at the service of the Kingdom of God—irrespective of consequences and cultural obstacles. The source of this conviction that God speaks directly to us humans is best expressed by Ignatius in Annotation Fifteen of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Ignatius is instructing retreat directors not to impose themselves between God and the retreatant. "During this Spiritual Exercises when a person is seeking God's will, it is more appropriate and far better that the Creator and Lord himself should communicate himself to the devout soul, embracing it in love and praise, and disposing it for the way which will enable the soul to serve him better in the future. Accordingly, the [End Page 238] one giving the Exercises ought not to lean or incline in either direction but rather, while standing by like the pointer of a scale in equilibrium, allow the creator to deal immediately with the creature and the creature with its Creator and Lord" (George Ganss, SJ, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, [Institute of Jesuit Sources, St. Louis, 1992]). Our Creator and Lord "dealt immediately" with Rahner, Arrupe and Delp and they with their Lord. Karl Rahner (1904–1984), born in Freiburg, Germany, spent much of his ministry as a professor of theology at the University of Innsbruck. In 1959 Pope John...