- Doubly Ignatian because we have both St. Ignatius of Loyola and a saint he venerated as a role mode, St. Ignatius of Antioch, as the Society’s patrons
- Deeply Ignatian because of the pivotal function of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises in focusing us:
- Identity of purpose with that of Ignatius: “to the greater glory of God and the salvation of men”.
- Identity of “fundamental principle” with that of Ignatius: man has been “created to praise, reverence and serve our Lord God, thereby saving his soul” (Spiritual Exercises) and thus glorifying God.
- Ignatian because the Society’s mystique of chivalric asceticism and mysticism flows from the chivalric spirit that shaped the heart of Ignatius Loyola
- Ignatian because of the influence of St. Ignatius’s Constitutiones and so many traditions of his Society venerated for centuries
- Ignatian because of the equipping of Ignatians by an in-depth, rugged, lengthy, high quality equipping according to the traditional format laid out by St. Ignatius and his great successors, notably the Generals St. Francis Borgia and Fr. Aquaviva, from novitiate to tertianship
- Ignatian due to the structure of the Society of Ignatians according to St. Ignatius Loyola’s inspiration: a corps of men focused for a global mission of defense and spread of the Catholic Faith.
- With the sense of effectiveness that St. Ignatius compressed in the motto ad majorem Dei gloriam. Since “the love of Christ urges us” (2 Cor 5:14) to not only seek the eternal salvation of our own soul but that of as many others as possible, this impells us “to the greater: to the pursuit of excellence in equipping and action so as to choose the most effective means possible in the use of our time.
- With the sense of urgency and militancy for the sake of the “Ecclesia Militans”. In the Spiritual Exercises the Ignatian finds a focus on an essential component of the Church’s traditional liturgy: history as a battlefield in which the Ecclesia Militans battles for man’s salvation against the merciless Satanic forces and their human allies, whether conscious or unconscious.