Jean Khoury
Abstract: Comparative analysis of spiritualities requires not only careful examination of theological texts and methods but also understanding of the lived traditions from which they emerge. This article examines key distinctions between Carmelite and Ignatian spiritual traditions, with attention to their divergent aims, anthropological assumptions, and understandings of grace. Rather than establishing simple equivalencies between practices such as colloquy and mental prayer, or between imaginative contemplation and Lectio Divina, the argument here proceeds from the conviction that spiritualities must be studied in their full context—as integrated ways of life informed by specific theological frameworks and patterns of community formation. The article argues that Ignatian spirituality, centred on the Spiritual Exercises as a tool for election, does not propose contemplative prayer as a daily practice in the manner of Carmelite tradition, and that the two schools operate with different understandings of grace, human cooperation, and the role of the intellect and imagination. The conclusion acknowledges both the limitations and advantages inherent in comparative theological work.
Introduction
Comparisons between Ignatian and Carmelite spiritualities have become increasingly common in contemporary Catholic formation and scholarly literature. At first glance, both traditions offer paths to union with God through prayer and personal discipleship, and both count remarkable saints among their lineage. Yet surface similarities can conceal fundamental differences in theological anthropology, understanding of grace, and the purposes for which particular practices are designed.
This article addresses three inter-related questions frequently raised in comparative discussions: Is Carmelite mental prayer equivalent to the Ignatian colloquy? Can Ignatian imaginative contemplation be equated with Lectio Divina? And does Ignatian spirituality lack an equivalent to Carmelite contemplative prayer? Behind these questions lies a deeper challenge: how can we compare two spiritual traditions justly, without abstracting them from their lived contexts, their specific theological commitments, and the manner in which they form their adherents?
The argument proceeds in four movements: first, an examination of the essential aims of each tradition and the theological frameworks that distinguish them; second, a consideration of how grace functions differently in the two schools; third, a careful analysis of whether and how particular practices can be compared; and finally, a reflection on the methodological cautions required when engaging in comparative spiritual theology.
Foundational Aims and Theological Frameworks
The Purpose of the Spiritual Exercises
The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola are fundamentally exercises of election. That is, they are designed as a structured process to help one listen to God’s voice, discern it amid the noise of competing desires and motives, and choose a direction in one’s life. As originally intended, they are undertaken at decisive moments—not as a daily practice, but as a focused retreat when a crucial choice must be made. The Exercises are essentially dialogical in nature: the retreatant engages the conscious mind, uses the imagination to set Gospel scenes, and enters into conversation (colloquy) with Christ.
Notably, the use of imagination in the Exercises is pragmatic and methodological: it serves to place the retreatant in the Gospel narrative so that he or she might apply the events to personal life and discern God’s direction. Yet Jesuit experts on the Exercises will confirm that the use of imagination, while commonly taught, is not in fact essential to the practice. The Exercises succeed in their aim—election—through the interaction of intellect, will, and grace, whether or not visualisation plays a role.
The Exercises deal consciously with Gospel texts and the mysteries of faith, placing them before the mind for contemplation and application. This can be understood as a structured form of what we now recognise as Lectio Divina—a reading and meditation on Scripture aimed at hearing God’s word. Cardinal Carlo Martini, the distinguished Jesuit biblicist, has developed Lectio Divina from an Ignatian perspective with considerable acuity. Yet even his synthesis remains Lectio Divina and not the Spiritual Exercises proper. The Exercises serve election; Lectio Divina serves ongoing nourishment through the Word. They are distinct in purpose, though both employ Scripture and engage the conscious mind.
Crucially, within Ignatian tradition, contemplative prayer—understood as passive immersion in divine presence, without the primary engagement of conscious faculties—is not proposed as a distinct daily form of prayer. Saint Ignatius himself practiced mystical prayer, yet he did not theorise it or make it a structural element of the spirituality he founded. To extract contemplative prayer from the Carmelite context and apply it as a normative Ignatian practice, or to ‘milk’ the Exercises for this purpose, is to misrepresent both traditions.
The Carmelite Path: Mental Prayer and Contemplation
By contrast, Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross understood the entire spiritual journey as progressive movement into divine union through prayer. For them, mental prayer is not a method of election or discernment, but the fundamental way in which the soul opens itself to God’s transforming grace. Teresa’s teaching on the four ways of watering the garden—moving from active effort with the general help of God’s grace, to increasing passivity as God takes the initiative—presents a spiritual life understood fundamentally as prayer, as an ever-deepening encounter with Christ.
A critical distinction emerges here: the Carmelite tradition, particularly as articulated by John of the Cross, emphasises that the intellect and imagination serve primarily in the initial stages of the spiritual journey. As one progresses, these faculties recede in importance. The soul moves beyond the need to reason about God, imagine His presence, or speak to Him in words. Instead, there emerges what Teresa calls supernatural prayer, or what John more precisely terms contemplation (occurring in the spirit)—an encounter so direct and transformative that it transcends the operations of the conscious mind and the faculties of imagination and discursive reason.
Thus, while both Ignatius and Teresa might have advised the beginner to imagine scenes and speak to the Lord, they do so for different reasons and with radically different expectations. For Ignatius, this is the method of election. For Teresa, it is the elementary threshold of prayer, necessary at the start but ultimately to be transcended. The goal is not decision-making but transformation; not the will applied to a choice, but the will surrendered entirely to love.
Grace and the Two Helps of God
Underlying these methodological differences lies a profound theological distinction to which Teresa explicitly points: the difference between the ‘general help’ of God’s grace and the ‘particular help’ of God’s grace. This distinction is fundamental to understanding Carmelite spirituality and is often overlooked by commentators, leading to widespread confusion. (see here)
The general help of grace is God’s offer of assistance which human effort can still significantly affect through the exercise of reason, imagination, and will. In this phase—roughly corresponding to the first three of Teresa’s seven mansions—the human person bears primary responsibility for the direction and intensity of prayer. One must actively recall God, apply one’s mind to divine mysteries, speak to the Lord, and work to overcome distractions. The prayer is largely determined by the effort of the person praying. This phase does not require or await extraordinary divine intervention; ordinary grace (the general help of the grace of God) suffices.
The particular help of grace, by contrast, represents a qualitative shift. It emerges when God, having tested and purified the soul, takes the initiative directly. The soul ceases to be the primary agent; grace becomes overwhelmingly primary. The transition is initiated by God, not earned by human effort. This is the domain of what Teresa and John call supernatural prayer or contemplation, the prayer of the spirit. It cannot be produced by technique or intensity of will. It is received, not achieved.
This theological distinction has profound implications for comparison. In the early phase, before the transition that John and Teresa sometimes call the second conversion, practices such as Lectio Divina and Ignatian meditation operate in largely the same theological economy: one brings one’s mind and heart to bear on Scripture or Gospel scenes, and grace assists but does not override human effort. After the second conversion, the Carmelite tradition proposes that the dynamic changes entirely. The Ignatian tradition, by design, does not venture into this territory or propose a systematic formation through it.
Note: Certain Jesuits interpret the progression through the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises as corresponding to a pattern of spiritual growth analogous to that described by St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila..
To confound these two phases is to misrepresent both traditions. One contemporary phenomenon that exemplifies this confusion is the widespread advice given about Lectio Divina, which often suggests that the ‘contemplation’ phase of Lectio is equivalent to contemplative prayer. It is not. The contemplation in Lectio Divina remains an operation of the conscious mind, offered to God in prayer, but it is not the supernatural contemplation of which Teresa and John speak.
Two Types of Contemplation : Lectio Divina and Prayer of the Heart
Two Types of Contemplation : Video
Lectio Divina and Contemplative Prayer According to the Carmelite Spirituality
Lectio Divina & Prayer of the Heart at Two Important Turning Points in Spiritual Life
Can Particular Practices Be Compared?
Mental Prayer and Colloquy: Surface and Substance
Viewed from a distance, Carmelite mental prayer and Ignatian colloquy exhibit certain surface similarities. Both involve the deliberate turning of the soul toward God, both encourage spontaneity and honest speaking, and both assume the presence of Christ. On this basis, some scholars have suggested that they are equivalent practices.
Such a conclusion oversimplifies. While it is true that Teresa’s earliest instruction in mental prayer—as found in chapters 11 and 26 of the Way of Perfection—could be misread as recommending something like an Ignatian colloquy (speak to the Lord, gaze upon Him, stay with Him), this reading misses the trajectory of her own teaching. It also obscures her sources. Teresa learned mental prayer from the Franciscan Recollects, particularly from Francisco de Osuna’s Third Abecedary, where the practice of recollection (recogimiento) emphasises a freeing and opening of the heart before God. The heart of her method is not technique or structure, but rather a spontaneous presence to the Lord that is fundamentally receptive and relational, not discursive and problem-solving.
The colloquy, by contrast, is explicitly dialogical and transactional. One brings concerns, needs, and questions before the Lord. One seeks direction and responds to perceived guidance. The imagination plays a role in setting the scene. The entire structure is oriented toward a certain outcome: awareness of God’s will with respect to one’s choices. It is not, in the primary sense, about union, but about alignment of the human will with the divine will in a specific matter.
Ignatian ‘Contemplation’ and Lectio Divina
A similar difficulty arises when attempting to equate Ignatian imaginative contemplation with Lectio Divina. The Ignatian approach to imaginative contemplation is a method: one applies the imagination to Gospel scenes, places oneself within them, and receives Christ’s words and actions as addressed to oneself. This is highly structured, intentional, and goal-oriented. It is meant to move the will toward conversion, toward the pursuit of a particular vocation or choice.
Lectio Divina, by contrast—whether practiced by Benedictines, or others—is less a method and more a receptive stance. While it includes structured elements (lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio), the progression is not tightly controlled. One reads, one begins to ponder what one has read, one may find oneself speaking to God, and one may enter into a wordless awareness of God’s presence. The movement is not from scene to personal application, but from word to interior transformation. Ignatius’s Exercises certainly employ Scripture and Lectio-like practices, but the animating logic is discernment, not transformation.
Yet here too, context matters crucially. If someone practicing Ignatian Exercises finds themselves encountering God’s word in a truly receptive, non-methodical way, they are effectively practicing Lectio Divina, whatever the Exercises officially propose. Conversely, a person practicing Lectio Divina who approaches it with a strong agenda of personal decision-making is closer to the Ignatian method. The ‘purity’ of either method is less important than the actual dynamic taking place in the heart of the one praying.
The Absence of Contemplative Prayer in Ignatian Formation
Perhaps the most significant difference is the most obvious one: Ignatian spirituality, as traditionally structured, does not include contemplative prayer—understood as supernatural, passive encounter with divine love—as a normative daily practice and spiritual goal. The early history of the Jesuit order reveals a telling fact: there were two schools within the Society, one spiritual and one devoted to education. The spiritual school produced remarkable figures known for deep prayer, but this branch was eventually cut off. The Society developed as an order of active service in the world, with a spirituality of practical apostolate rather than contemplative immersion.
Saint Ignatius himself, as a layman and later as a priest, experienced profound mystical prayer. Yet when he founded the Society of Jesus, he did not propose mystical contemplation as a regular feature of Jesuit life (he even avoided Divine Office recited in community – this wasn’t his purpose). Rather, he emphasised discernment (the fruit of the Exercises), obedience (the binding of one’s will to God’s presumed will mediated through superiors and the spiritual director), and active service. This choice reflects a real theological and spiritual option, not a deficiency.
By contrast, the Carmelite reform of Teresa and John placed contemplative prayer at the centre of the spiritual journey. While the Order engaged in apostolic work, this activity was always understood as overflowing from the encounter with God in prayer, never as replacing it. The Exercises, correctly understood, were never intended to accomplish what Carmelite contemplation accomplishes. To suggest that they might do so is to confuse their purposes and to misrepresent both traditions.
On the Theology of Prayer: Contemplation as Manducation
A deeper understanding of contemplative prayer emerges from reflection on the two forms of nourishment in the Christian life: the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Both are forms of manducation – ingestion, eating, digesting, assimilation. The Word, heard and prayed with in Lectio Divina, becomes truly food. The Eucharist, received and contemplated, is the most intimate union. These are not two competing realities but two necessary forms of communion with Christ.
Contemplative prayer, understood in the Carmelite tradition, is the prolongation of the Eucharist. It is what naturally follows Communion. In it, the soul, having received the Body and Blood of Christ, rests in thanksgiving, in love, in the very presence of Him in whom it has communed. This is fundamentally different from the imaginative reconstruction of Gospel scenes or the active discernment of divine will. It is the soul’s response to the gift already given, not a technique for receiving further clarity or direction.
Note: To illustrate the relationship between contemplative prayer and Holy Communion, it is worth recalling that Teresa of Ávila recommended a period of ten to fifteen minutes of silence and recollection after receiving Communion; that the greater part of the graces she received came in this context; and that, most strikingly, her description of spiritual communion in The Way of Perfection closely resembles her account of the Prayer of Quiet—an observation of particular significance.
By this logic, Ignatian spirituality, which emphasises the conscious engagement of faculties in discernment, does not include a systematic place for this wordless, gift-dependent encounter. That is not a criticism; it reflects the Society’s charism. But it also makes clear that the traditions are not interchangeable and cannot be treated as offering the same things to the Christian life.
It is significant that contemplative prayer, properly understood, is not ‘being in the presence of God’ or ‘being still’ or ‘being aware of Christ within.’ Rather, it is being immersed in His love and being transformed by that love. It presupposes a deliberate offering of oneself to God, a movement of the heart toward Him, an opening that creates the conditions for God to take the initiative and draw the soul into Himself. This subtle but crucial distinction—between mere awareness and active love, between presence and immersion, between knowledge and transformation—is rarely explained with adequate clarity and has led to widespread misunderstanding.
Spiritual Anthropology and the Problem of Modern Commentary
A recurring problem in contemporary commentary on the Carmelite saints—and indeed on all contemplative theology—is that the distinction between soul and spirit, between the conscious and the supra-conscious, has been largely lost. Modern interpreters, working primarily with the tools of philosophy and psychology, tend to psychologize spiritual experiences, reducing them to emotional states or psychological phenomena. Yet the entire apparatus of Carmelite theology depends on recognizing that the spirit (pneuma) is a distinct dimension of the human person, not reducible to mind, emotion, or will, though in contact with all three.
“Spirit” or “Heart” in Spiritual Theology
The Tripartite Biblical Vision of Man: A Key to Christian Life, by Mgr Arthur Calkins.
Tripartite Biblical Anthropology Illustrated by a Few Saints, by Mgr Arthur Calkins.
“Tipartite Anthropology”, in “Theology in History” by Henri de Lubac, Ignatius Press, 1996.
This theological anthropology is not merely technical; it bears directly on how one understands prayer. In Lectio Divina and in the Ignatian Exercises, prayer operates primarily at the level of conscious faculties: the mind receives and responds to the word, the will is moved and oriented, the imagination assists in application. These are operations of the soul. But contemplative prayer, according to Teresa and John, occurs primarily in the spirit—a realm beyond direct perception, beyond conscious control, where God works directly without the interference or mediation of the faculties.
Here lies a fundamental difference from much modern spiritual literature, including contemporary treatments of Ignatian spirituality influenced by psychology and phenomenology. If one does not preserve the distinction between spirit and soul, one cannot adequately describe the Carmelite understanding of contemplation. And if one conflates contemplative prayer (operation in the spirit) with various forms of conscious prayer that address the soul and its faculties, one will inevitably misrepresent the traditions.
Any teacher or commentator who does not clearly grasp and consistently work from this spiritual anthropology will eventually confuse his or her readers. It is not merely an obscure technical point but a matter essential to coherent spiritual theology. The crisis in modern theology—its psychologizing tendency, its loss of the category of the spirit—explains much of the confusion in contemporary comparative spirituality.
Methodological Cautions: Toward a More Prudent Comparative Approach
Having engaged these distinctions, it becomes necessary to step back and ask: what is the proper method for comparing two spiritual traditions? The question admits of no easy answer, particularly in an age that tends to treat spiritualities as consumer items, subject to mix-and-match appropriation.
The first and most fundamental principle is this: A spirituality cannot be separated from the way of life that embodies it. The form and the matter cannot be disjunct. When the Church approves a religious order, it affirms that the order’s way of life and its spirituality together generate holiness. The two are inseparable. Yet contemporary comparative spiritual theology often violates this principle, extracting practices or teachings from their lived context and examining them in isolation. One cannot truly understand Carmelite spirituality from the texts alone, without knowing how a Carmelite actually lives—the rhythm of prayer, the practice of simplicity, the role of community and obedience, the whole economy of life. Similarly, one cannot judge Jesuit spirituality by reading the Exercises apart from an understanding of Jesuit life: the centrality of spiritual direction, the particular kind of obedience, the commitment to formation and education.
Spiritual direction itself is an example. In Jesuit life, the relationship between the individual and a spiritual director who has ultimate authority over one’s discernment is constitutive. This practice, though not unique to the Jesuits (it is foundational in Eastern Christianity and was essential to the Desert Fathers), is absolutely central to how Ignatian spirituality works. One cannot assess the spirituality without accounting for this. Yet academic study of the Exercises alone will not reveal it.
A second principle follows: Comparison requires deep knowledge of both traditions being compared. This means not merely reading the foundational texts but understanding the intellectual, cultural, and ecclesial context in which they emerged, the interpretive history through which they have passed, and the lived practice they generate. Few scholars possess this depth in more than one tradition. Frankly, it is easier to speak with false confidence about matters one has not adequately studied than to acknowledge the limits of one’s knowledge. Humility is a prerequisite for sound comparative work.
A third principle is this: Beyond textual and phenomenological study, comparison requires what might be called a ‘divine perspective’ and an ‘ecclesial perspective.’ That is, the comparison is not neutral or merely analytical. One is asking, implicitly: what is God’s purpose in these two ways? What holiness has been generated by each? What unique charisms does each bring to the Church? These are not questions that scholarly method alone can answer. They require spiritual wisdom—discernment—and they require humility before the Church’s judgment that both traditions have been approved as ways to holiness.
To put the matter sharply: one may note that Teresa and John of the Cross, in their writings, indicate awareness of the Ignatian approach and offer implicit critiques of certain spiritual directors (likely Jesuits) who guided souls in what the Carmelites considered an overly active, discursive manner. John’s preface to the Ascent of Mount Carmel—which should be read as also introducing the Dark Night—contains extended critique of certain spiritual directions that appear Ignatian in character. Yet this does not give license to dismiss Ignatian spirituality as deficient; rather, it shows that the two traditions, having different charisms and aims, can engage in productive tension rather than false harmony. The fact that they are not identical is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be understood and respected.
Conclusion
The questions with which we began—whether mental prayer is equivalent to colloquy, whether Ignatian contemplation can be equated with Lectio Divina, whether Ignatian spirituality contains an equivalent to Carmelite contemplation—must be answered with caution and nuance. From one perspective, the answer to all three is no. The traditions do not propose identical practices or operate from identical theological frameworks. Their aims differ, their understanding of grace differs, their anthropological assumptions differ.
Yet from another perspective, the traditions intersect and share common ground. Both are ways to encounter Christ. Both value Scripture and prayer. Both trust in God’s grace. Both have produced saints. A person might practice elements from both traditions in different seasons of life or according to personal temperament. The traditions need not be seen as mutually exclusive.
Note: In considering the relationship between human effort and the supernatural intervention of God, the distinction articulated by St Teresa of Avila between “general help” and “particular help” would have offered a decisive key for resolving the well-known debate on contemplation in the 1930s–1940s. The Jesuit insistence on human effort—understood within the order of “general help”—is not without foundation: contemplation is indeed an encounter between two freedoms, and the human person cannot be wholly passive. Yet to reduce contemplation to an “acquired state” is to truncate its existential dynamic, obscuring the interplay between our cooperation with grace, through the general help, and God’s sovereign initiative, expressed in the particular help. Conversely, to reduce contemplation to a purely “infused” gift or state risks eclipsing the real engagement of the human person, who, aided by general grace, is called to draw nearer to God. Read in the light of this distinction, St Teresa’s teaching offers a way beyond this reductive and ultimately misleading opposition. The debate itself appears, in retrospect, both narrowed and truncated, lacking the practical realism intrinsic to any genuine process of spiritual formation in contemplative prayer. Such a claim, however, would require a fuller treatment than the present article can undertake.
What must be avoided is false synthesis, the assumption that one can freely combine elements as though they were interchangeable parts. When one does so, one risks seriously damaging the spiritual integrity of both traditions. The Exercises, extracted from the context of Jesuit life and reinterpreted as daily practices leading to mystical union, become something other than what Ignatius intended. Contemplative prayer, reduced to a technique of centring prayer or mantra repetition, becomes mere psychological quieting rather than transformative union. Lectio Divina, subsumed into a decision-making method, loses its receptive character.
The path forward in comparative spirituality requires both intellectual rigour and spiritual wisdom. It requires attention to texts, to history, to lived practice. It requires humble acknowledgment of the limits of one’s knowledge. It requires the assumption that both traditions have been approved by the Church as genuine ways to holiness, and therefore both possess integrity and beauty worth respecting. And it requires a willingness to say, sometimes, that the traditions do not say the same things, and that this is not a problem but rather an enrichment of the Church’s spiritual patrimony.
In the end, Teresa and John of the Cross may, in a real sense, ‘begin where Ignatius leaves off.’ The observation offered by a Canadian Carmelite—that the traditions are more complementary than competitive—has merit. Yet this complementarity is not achieved through false equation or superficial harmonisation. Rather, it emerges when one recognises that different charisms serve different purposes in God’s providential design for the Church. The Exercises call us to discernment and decision; Carmelite contemplation calls us to transformation and union. Both are needed. Both are gifts.
Read also
The Particular Help of the Grace of God in St Teresa of Avila
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