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Our Spirituality "The Institute is based upon Ignatian spirituality which gives it its own characteristic way of living out its charism".(Constitutions, 14)This "is based" goes back to the earliest time in our history. The first novices, gathered in Cordova, Spain, with Rafaela and Dolores, did not know exactly how the experience they were initiating was going to turn out. They had few certainties. One of them said with great conviction: "We want the rules of St. Ignatius"! Never through the years, was this determination of the first Handmaids contradicted. On the contrary, with the passing of time it was putting down deeper roots and shaping the Congregation's documents, their family letters and the heart of each Handmaid. In the Constitutions there are expressions taken almost word for word from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius or from the Constitutions of the Company of Jesus: * Availability to live in any part of the world. * To seek the Lord in all things. * To be instruments in God's hands for the service of the Kingdom. * To praise, reverence, and serve God. * Fidelity to the interior law which the Spirit writes in our hearts... ...and many more. Other passages do not give an exact textual phrase, but they express in Ignatian language very significant aspects of the living of our charism. When the Constitutions present reparation as a response to the love of Christ, they invite us to contemplate in his heart the revelation of God's mercy. When they give us powerful motivation for commitment to the apostolate, they encourage us to contemplate the world broken by sin. The contemplation spoken of has the stamp of St. Ignatius: it signifies much more than a simple look or an awareness: it is allowing oneself to be questioned, it is to become part of a dynamic, it is to feel oneself to be an integral part of a situation. The Constitutions speak, of course, of the contemplation of Christ in the Eucharist, and immediately indicate where this leads us: to discover God's presence and to respond to the call in all the realities of the world. It is another way of expressing that other Ignatian attitude of seeking God in all things, which St. Rafaela put in a beautiful phrase: "...I am in the world as in a great temple..." Many of the references of St. Rafaela in the Constitutions gather together Ignatian aspects of her spiritual experience... In her - and in us - the experience of the Spiritual Exercises is basic, in that it marks us with an identity, as a way of being, a style, a recognizable countenance... "Handmaids Today", no. 174
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