The Grace of Affectionate Awe

In the journals of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, there’s a curious word that shows up repeatedly,  difficult to translate from Spanish. The word is “acatamiento,” and it means something like “affectionate awe.” If there is one word that captures the Jesuit founder’s core spiritual outlook on the world, this may be it. To gaze with “affectionate awe” is to be alert for the beautiful, the sacred, the holy, in all things. Ignatius prayed each day for the grace of acatamiento.  

Ignatius was a man of deep feeling, often moved to tears by the most ordinary of experiences. Later in life, as an administrator in Rome, his Jesuit companions would often find him on the balcony outside his office at night, gazing at the stars with tears streaming down his face. The same was true of his encounters with other people. When you are in conversation, he counseled his fellow Jesuits, always try to practice deep listening before asserting your own opinion or perspective. “Be slow to speak,” he insisted, “so that you can understand the meanings, leanings and desires” of the other person before you. Like the silences between musical notes, often it isn’t what a person says directly but what is not said that reveals the heart of a person’s whole human experience, the hidden realities we all struggle to articulate.

In short, Ignatius came to believe that God grasps us, gets our attention, wakes us up, not primarily through the intellect or rational thought, as important as this capacity is. Often quietly, almost imperceptibly, and sometimes with dramatic force, God touches us through the eyes of the heart, through feeling, intuition, a sense of wonder, where words and intellect fall short.  

Acatamiento! I’m not sure there’s an equivalent word in English. (And then I wonder, why not?) But I’ve felt it so often here in Guatemala, watching the students and medical team laugh with one another, or gazing in admiration at the children, the mothers, the families, most of whom are navigating unimaginable difficulties. Whether or not we ascribe this irruption of awe to the hand of grace, as Ignatius certainly did, doesn’t matter so much. For Ignatius, as for me, “faith” in God and “faith” in human beings are two sides of a single cloth, a tapestry of wonder. The question of faith turns back on each of us. Do I have eyes to see? Ears to hear? 

There is another word that shows up often in Ignatius’s journals: “sentipensante,” literally, “feeling/thinking.” How do we discover what is most real and then learn to trust it – that we are worthy of love, and capable of immense generosity in our capacity to give and receive love? Through feeling and thinking all at once! Experiencing this remarkable place, Ciudad de la Esperanza, has awakened my whole being with a refreshing aliveness that I haven’t felt or known for a long time. It feels good. My intellect says, you can trust this feeling. 

Perhaps I am beginning to understand the great spiritual insight of Ignatius. We do not “find God in all things” so much as God finds us in ordinary signs and wonders. And for me that life-altering truth has a new face, a new place. Muchas gracias, Ciudad de la Esperanza!     

Chris Pramuk, PhD