All Races, All Lands ‒ No Exceptions
The Ignatian is first and foremost a man who is Catholic in the very depths of his identity; who cannot imagine himself without Christ whom he cannot imagine without His Mystical Body, the Church.
Hence, he lives in intimate union with the other members of the Mystical Body of Christ throughout the world, wherever they are. He appreciates, values, indeed treasures the rich variety of races in the Church each of which has made its contribution with the gifts given it by the Creator for the building of the Kingdom of God.
The Ignatian also feels a deep love for all those men and women ‒ without exception ‒ who are outside the Mystical Body of Christ and ardently desires that they find the salvation and fulfillment willed by God for them through the Catholic Faith.
Tradition further urges him to open his mind and heart beyond the contemporary to the past. Nothing could be more alien to the man who loves Tradition than the narrow vision and isolationism of one who is imprisoned in the mentality of the modern world.
It is to know and love the Church as it has moved through history, impelled by the Spirit-derived dynamism of the saints of every age and by the sensus fidelium, which time and again brought new and renewed beauty to the Mystical Body of Christ.
Vast are Tradition’s horizons, stretching through the millennia to Our Lord Jesus and to His Apostles and beyond them to. All that is true and beautiful from the Church’s history, whether from East or West, from the Apostolic Fathers headed by St. Ignatius of Antioch from Asia Minor, from the great African Fathers of the Church led by St. Augustine, the Ignatian venerates. His sensitivity to Tradition imbues him with a sense of respect in the presence of his ancestors. He loves and venerates all that his spiritual forefathers contributed to the grandeur and beauty of Holy Church in her liturgy, her doctrines and her evangelization.
Indeed, the Ignatian’s glory and joy is to be the inheritor of four millennia of glorious achievements accomplished by men and women of heroism and genius.For, with deep admiration he looks to the greatness of his spiritual ancestors among our saintly Jewish forefathers who heralded His coming, among whom, in the fullness of time, the most beautiful woman of history, the “woman clothed with the sun” would give birth to the “Hope of the Nations”.
Through this open-mindedness he becomes poignantly alert to the fact that all that is true, good, and beautiful in the present is, to a greater or lesser degree, an inheritance, part of the rich heritage received from our Christian and Jewish forefathers. To them we look with the pride of sons for inspiration and guidance. With a sense of deep awe in the presence of these giants of history and with profound veneration for all they have left us, our only desire is to walk behind them along the tracks that they have trod. For we know that by walking behind them we will be empowered, if God so wills, to find new tracks for evangelization that continue upwards to the summit.
The traditional sensitivity is imbued with the sense of Catholicism as a reality that is not only in time but in eternity. His cosmopolitan sensibility extends beyond the visible to the invisible, to those who have left behind the ranks of the Church Militant on Earth and have migrated to the shores of Eternity where they have joined the ranks of either the Church Purgative or the Church Triumphant. For the souls in Purgatory he prays daily to assist them; to his brothers and sisters in Heaven he directs his admiring gaze and his bent knees asking for their solidarity.