Ignatian Maxims and Principles

• These study notes cover First Principle of Foundation, Ignatian Maxims, Jubilee, Christian View of Vocation, Ignatian Discernment, Common Vocation, Philosophy, Human Person, Freedom, Virtue Ethics, and Christian Philosophy.

First Principle of Foundation

• Aims to help individuals be oriented to Loyola and to plan a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
• Involves activity, such as Jian or volunteering, that leads to a task, lowering the blind, and serving God.
• Emphasizes discerning choices and options, guided by grace, to avoid distractions and forget reverence due to being too attached.
• Reverence and remembering the goal is a first principle.
• Detachment is key, seeking uniqueness and avoiding indifference.

Ignatian Maxims

• Tantum Quantum: Pursue something only if it helps towards a goal, otherwise do not get too attached to creative reality; this can be linked to the Jesuit exchange room rule.
• Non Multa Sed Multum: "Hindi paramihan pero paraliman" meaning not many but much, which relates to student body activities like Sanggu.
• Cura Personalis: Care for the whole person.

Jubilee

• Jubilee is a period of resetting and an invitation to seek a right relationship with oneself, others, creation, and God.
• Kairos refers to opportune time while Kronos refers to regular time.

Jubilee in Scripture

• Leviticus 25:8-10
• Isaiah 61:1-2
• Luke 4:18-19

Definition of Jubilee

• The word "Jubilee" comes from the Hebrew word "yobel", which means ram's horn and is sounded to start the Jubilee year.
• Pope Francis opens the 5 doors in the major basilicas in Rome to symbolize the opening of the Jubilee year, which means opening the doors of our hearts.
• The 5th door is a prison door that invites pilgrims to enter the prison.
• Jubilee is a year of healing for people who are broken-hearted.

Jubilee Logo

• All elements of the logo give hope.
• Four People: Represent people from the four corners of the world.
• Anchor: Sign of hope in the maritime.
• Sailing on Waves: Represents a pilgrimage, including challenges that need hope.

Jubilees in The Past

• Modern Jubilees are usually held every 25 years, while traditionally they were held every 50 years.
• (2000's) Commemorated 2000 years since the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.
• (2016) The Jubilee of Mercy was an extraordinary Jubilee.
• (2025) Jubilee is focused on hope and is an ordinary Jubilee.

V.U.C.A

• An acronym used to describe situations that are volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.

Celebrating the Jubilee Year

• Involves recovering the joy of living and upholding human life and peace.
• Includes becoming tangible signs of hope in the world for prisoners, the elderly, the marginalized, and the youth.

Invitation of the Jubilee Year of 2025

• Return to Christ.
• Seek to be the source of hope to others and journey as a church of hope.

An Introduction to the Christian View of Vocation

• Mark Twain: "The two most important days in your life are the days you are born and the day you find out why" which gives a sense of purpose.
• Etymology of Vocation: "Vocare" means "to call".

1st Big Idea

• God is the source of vocation; it is vital to understand vocation in the relationship of faith in God.
• Search for vocation through prayer and discernment, within the context of our relationship with God in relation to the higher universe, free will, and how the universe works.

What is Ignatian Discernment?

• To discern requires straining to see something unclear, distant, and dark.
• Entails deciding between two good things and choosing where God comes in as the better option.
• Requires awareness of consolation and desolation.

How to Begin Ignatian Discernment

• List the pros and cons of each option and bring to prayer.
• Imagine what advice you would give to someone else in the same predicament.
• Reflect on discernment as if you were on your deathbed.

2nd Big Idea

• Everyone shares a common vocation: holiness.
• In the Church document Lumen Gentium: "All the faithful of Christ of whatever rank/ status are called to the fullness of the Christian life to the perfection of charity."

Holiness in Sacred Scripture

• OT holiness involves keeping laws and ritual purity.
• 1 Peter 1:15-17: "He who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct."
• Mt 5:48: "Be perfect, just as your heavenly father is."

Holiness in the Gaudete Et Exsultate

• Holiness is charity lived to the full and the love of Christ living in and through people.
• Everyone is called to be saints and not to settle for a mediocre existence.
• Saints are sinners who have opened themselves to the grace to be truly loving, life-giving, heeding their universal vocation.

How To Be A Saint by Pope Francis

• Strive to love God and others in small gestures.
• It is not our work but God's grace that started at baptism.
• Jesus Christ is the perfect model to follow for sainthood.
• More than one path exists; the sure path away from Sainthood is rooted in anxiety, pride, and the need to impress.

3rd Big Idea

• Noone is called alone but with the church.
• Vocation is shared with the church.
• Our vocation is in the context of life in community, striving to be loving & holy.

Etymology of Philosophy

• Philos/Philia means love among friends.
• Sophia means the love of wisdom.
• Implies an openness to knowledge, curiosity, and the passion to learn.
• Wisdom in the Bible is often referred to as "Her".

John F. Kavanaugh On Philosophy

• Philosophy divorced from life can be: thoughts by an isolated thinker.
• Complex, irrelevant to the “demands of the present".
• "Useless motions" in formal education.
• Esoteric: Has nothing to do with the other disciplines

The 3 Disciplines of Philosophy

• A Discipline of Questioning: Cessation of questioning arrests growth; questions drive us to the truth in all its complexity.
• A Discipline of Liberation: Is a personal revolt at the most personal level and sets you free from the limits of environments, history/prejudices, to understand what is & what as you can & should be.
• A Discipline of Personhood: Individuals embody the point of philosophy and are their own unique creative project.

How Can We Check What We are Perceiving?

• The use of the totem in the film inception can be useful
• Check what is being perceived as real through asking questions.
• Questions are a means to an end.

The Types of Questions

• Means of an end: Movement from point A to point B
• Spiral: Returns to the origin but deepens your understanding.

Why Are Questions Viewed As Means?

• History of Knowledge: The effort and work of past thinkers have already provided many answers.

3 Stages of Love, M Scott Beck

• Euphoria
• Falling out of love
• Choosing to love

2. Culture of Wanting Easier Things

• Society has become a culture that has forgotten to ask questions.

Socrates (470 - 399 BCE)

• The Father of Philosophy - known as the wisest in Athens.
• Socrates taught Plato, who taught Aristotle.
• "Know thyself" at the oracle of Delphi.
• Saw himself as the gadfly, also known as the midwife of wisdom.

The Socratic Method

• Draws out wisdom through questioning.
• Main point: “All I know, is that I know nothing"

The Branches of Philosophy & The Big Questions (M)

• Metaphysics: Studies reality & existence, venturing beyond the physical.
• Epistemology: Studies knowledge, its scope & justified belief.
• Logic: Studies reasoning & critical thinking, making & evaluating arguments.
• Ethics: Philosophical reflection on how we should live and what it means to do good.
• Aesthetics: Concerned with beauty, its nature, and the philosophy of art.
• Phenomenology: Investigates the structures of conscious experience and how individuals perceive and interpret the world.

The Steps of Phenomenology

• Epoche: Bracketing, or "Setting aside” biases & preconceived notions.
• Eidetic Reduction: Determining the essence (eidos) of the experience.
• Transcendental Phenomenological Reduction: Reflecting on its meaning in your subjective experience.

The Human Person: Embodied spirit, Historical, Rational, Relational, Unique through equal (M)

• The Philosophical Enterprise (H): The human person is driven by their personhood to know and do something about themselves.
• According to St Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274), the human person is made of: Embodied Spirit, Historical Being, Rational Creature, Relational Being (social creature).
• Aquinas based this on philosophical views from ancient greek philosophy, and considered Aristotle his favorite philosopher.

Plato (428 - 347 BCE) (H)

• Plato taught that what makes a person a person is their soul, the body is a person of the soul
• the dichotomy of body and soul was the main focus
• The soul is immaterial, immutable, indestructible
• Immutable, Not capable of or susceptible to change
• The human body is material, mutable, destructible and dependant on the soul
• The soul is made of: reason, feelings, and instincts
• A person's value lies in the ability to master feelings & appetites within reason

Aristotle (384 - 322BCE)

• Aristotle disagreed with Plato, taught that the body & soul are inseparable, and the human person is unity of the soul.
• Reasons, feelings, instincts are expressed & lived out through the body

St Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274)

• Aquinas taught that persons are embodied spirits.
• Human persons are not just their souls/ bodies.
• When a person dies, the soul continues to exists, enabling person to enjoy eternity with God

Gabriel Maricel & Embodiment

• Two ways to reflect the experience of the human body:
• "I have a body": Treat it like an object, study the body, & appreciate its limit & capabilities through science
• "I am my body": No separation between body & me

What is the world?

• Everything that is not our bodies, only experience the world through our bodies
• Every person is a subject, bodies are mediators from subject to subject

2. The Human Person as a Historical Being

• We are beings in time, persons shaped by histories, personal & community histories
• Human beings are works in progress

3. The Human Person as Rational Being

• A being endowed with intellect to understand what is happening and are persons of conscience
• According to Aquinas: persons are relational beings, we are "by others"

5. The Human Person as Unique Though Fundamentally Equal

• Persons are unique though fundamentally equal.
• The uniqueness is an indispensable aspect of what constitutes being human.

The Human Person as a Free Being (M)

• What is freedom? TP, link; to duterte, is freedom lost when one is detained?;
• The extreme notions of freedom:
  • Determinism: there is no free will.

Theories of Determinism

• Skinner: Behaviour is shaped by positive and negative “conditioning”.
• Karl Marx: Our decisions are largely shaped by economic forces & class struggle.
• Sigmund Fred: Behaviours are shaped by the subconscious - unconscious.
• Modern Hard Determinism: Everything is an effect of a previous cause; free will is an illusion.
• Absolute Freedom: Complete freedom of doing what one wants with no regard for others.
• Freedom "From" is the most immediate experience of freedom; freedom from restraint or interference.
• Freedom "For" has direction, goal, and a purpose.

Reflections on Win As Much As You Can

• Human freedom is a gift for humans
• Individual exercise of freedom impacts the community.

Reality of Sin

• The challenge of using our freedom well is choosing of good.
• The greatest obstacle to true freedom is sin - a break in relationship with God and others.

Virtue Ethics - Aristotle

• Deontology is to do the law/ obligations with a focus on duty.
• Ethics is focus on outcomes.

Aristotelian Ethics - Focus on Virtue Ethics

• GW - A Greek word
• Based on eudoraimonia: full human happiness, our greatest good

Mesotes

• means the golden mean
• arete: excellence and virtue

Cardinal Virtues

• Prudence
• Fortitude
• Justice
• Temperance

Theological Virtues - St Thomas Aquinas

• Virtues are oriented toward God.
• Faith: Belief in God, seeking to know and do his will.
• Hope: Desiring the promise of God and actively waiting for His kingdom.
• Love: Charity, the mother of all virtues.

The Relationship Between Philosophy and Faith

• Fides et Ratio: “Faith and reason [philosophy] are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.
• Faith and philosophy mutually support each other in pursuit of the truth.

Eras of Christian Philosophy

• The Patristic Era the Medieval Era, the Era of Enlightenment and the Contemporary Era

Philosophers of the Patristic Era

• St Justin Martyr
• St Irenaeus of Lyon
• St Augustine Hippo