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112 Recent Books
both authors, with all of the attached challenges, simplicity, silence and
contemplation, offer perspectives which can both introduce the casual
reader into the life of Ignatian spirituality and take that reader deep into
the fiercely compelling personal nature of the pilgrim path.
In Keeping Company with Saint Ignatius, Luke Larson details his journey
down the most popular of the pilgrim ways, the Camino Francés, along
with his wife, in the autumn of 2010. Larson points out from the beginning
that the invitation to take a walk with someone is an invitation to a certain
intimacy in conversation. Thinking of his pilgrimage as a walk and
conversation with God, Larson provides his reader with various anecdotes
from his experience, the better to illustrate various points of Ignatian
spirituality. Embracing the concept that Ignatius himself was walking the
pilgrim path along with him, Larson treats Ignatius as one of his
interlocutors in the prolonged conversation of the pilgrimage. Larson’s
book is an enjoyable read, easily accessible, and a wonderful introduction
to both the Camino Frances and Ignatian spirituality. He uses his
experiences on the Camino and at the Ignatian sites that he visits
afterwards, as a sort of contemplation of space and as an attempt to draw
close to Ignatius by understanding him through travelling in his homeland
and through the experience of pilgrimage. Larson fruitfully uses his own
experiences on the Camino to consider what Ignatius might have been
thinking or feeling at various points in his life and to invite us into just that
type of consideration as well.
Where Larson offers us a wonderful introduction to the concepts of
pilgrimage and Ignatian spirituality, in Redemption Road Brendan McManus
involves us in the drama of the lived reality of that spirituality, particularly
in the face of adversity. With unflinching honesty, McManus recounts the
times when he felt discouraged along the pilgrim trail, whether because of
the physical or the emotional weight of what he was carrying with him.
Often enough, his recounting of the daily practice of the Examen carries
him forward in gratitude, despite the numerous physical struggles that he
encounters and his own experience of processing his brother’s suicide. The
great beauty of McManus’saccount of his pilgrimage is not in his struggle,
but resides, perhaps, in how he is borne up along the way by his fellow
Jesuits, by other pilgrims and by the memory of his brother. It is clear that
the struggles he encounters along the way open him up to healing from the
loss of his brother, and also deepen his own lived experience of his Ignatian
charism, as at each step people open their lives to him to support him as he
treks his pilgrim path.
Each of these works provide excellent windows to understanding the
spirituality of St Ignatius through the experience of pilgrimage—which