Unlocking a Treasure

Many Jesuits regard the Constitutions as a primarily juridical text, unlikely to stimulate the mind much less warm the heart. In the words of Nicholas Bobadilla, the Constitutions is ‘a labyrinth thoroughly confused’. Yet, outside the Society and especially in the academy the Constitutions is held up as a classic of Western spirituality.  

About the Constitutions two things seem true: it is a spiritual treasure of Christianity, it’s arch-complexity means that for many Jesuits it remains under lock and key.  

Brian O’Leary’s Unlocking a Treasure: Our Jesuit Constitutions is an invitation to explore the Constitutions now – no need to wait for a rare lull in your busy apostolic life or to take on study fulltime. 

Using four ‘keys’ – representing four approaches to reading the Constitutions – O’Leary carefully and quickly opens the lock, allowing the reader to develop an ‘architectural’, holistic view of the Constitutions. Individual paragraphs or phrases that may have held great meaning or consolation separately are shown to be part of a greater work, revealing a spiritual resource and a wisdom document that complements the Spiritual Exercises. 

Including an overview of the compositional history of the Constitutions and its relationship to Ignatius, Unlocking a Treasure gives the gift – for the 500th anniversary of Ignatius’s conversion – of a skeleton key to Ignatius’s unsung spiritual classic.