Abstract

The article develops an Ignatian perspective, from within which it then interprets and amplifies Bernard Lonergan's intellectual project. Exploiting recent analyses of medieval memorial culture and the rhetorical dynamicsof monastic spiritual practice, the article highlights the performative quality of key Ignatian texts, paying particular attention to the categories of ornamentation and ordering . Appreciating the vantage afforded by heightened self-presence, reflexive knowledge and intentional praxis, the article then explores Lonergan's project, employing the rubric of ornamentation and ordering to investigate the interaction between cognitional activity and the matrix of desire informed by unbounded wonder, specific desires and distorting bias. Formative self-appropriation is then considered as a religious process, in which the self gathers the resources of Scripture and tradition to compose a creative faith response to the divine initiative of transforming love, a response that unfolds more fully in the co-development of personal, social and cultural activity