33

CLC*: L A Y P E O P L E
CALLED TO HOLINESS
IN A N I G N A T i A N S T Y L E
By EINARDO AND MARIA CLARA BINGEMER

UR STORY BEGINS W I T H A LAYMAN: Ifiigo L6pez de Loyola,

who, after a long and painful process of prayer, pilgrimage
and discernment, understood that God did not want him
t o be a monk singing in a monastery choir like most of
the religious of his time. Instead, God wanted him to spend all his
life and energies 'helping souls'.
That is how he began to get together people he m e t - - l a y people
at the beginning, men and women of all kinds whom he helped to
find the ways of the Lord. Time passed and a stable group formed
around Ifiigo. With these men he formed and founded the priestly
order called the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.
These first companions, together with Ignatius, then formed new
'societies' of lay people, and renewed others which already existed.
These groups, also called fraternities or congregations, were an
expression o f the lay initiative and solidarity characteristic of the
spirit of the times, with the aim of 'growing in Christian life and
performing good works'.1
These little 'societies' of lay people sought the way to holiness
in the experience of the Spiritual Exercises, which were given to
them by the Jesuits 'with great success' .2 That is why our history
of 'CLC begins with these lay people who came together in the
name of Jesus Christ, who desired to grow in faith and charity by
following the 'school' of the Spiritual Exercises--much before
December 5th 1584, when Pope Gregory X I I I definitely approved
the Marian Congregations or Sodalities in the bull Omnipotentis Dei
(General Principle 3). 3 This is the same desire which impels the
CLCs today, causing their birth and growth all around the world.

* We use the abbreviation: CLC Christian Life Communities. In Latin countries, the form
is a different one: C V X (Comunidad de Vida Cristiana, Communaut~ de Vie Chr~tienne,
etc), the letter X referring to Christ, Christian. Despite the differences of languages we are
referring to the same reality present throughout the whole world.
34 CHRISTIAN LIFE COMMUNITIES

To share a great desire with others

The CLCs are communities of baptized Christians, men and
women who in daily life have:become conscious of the serious
commitment of their baptism: it not only 'erases' original sin, but
also submerges them in the death of Christ and allows them to rise
to new life (cf R o m 6, 3-11), a life of following of Christ, in pain
and carrying the cross, but with the joy and the hope of sharing
with him the Kingdom they are building together. They have found
themselves to be more and more possessed and even 'obsessed' by
a great desire--the same desire which, five centuries ago, set
Ignatius's h e a r t aflame: to correspond fully to all that love he
received from God; to serve our Lord in all things. 4
What brings C L C members, different as they are, together, is
certainly not any natural affinity they may have with each other,
but a common, enormous and complex word: desire. 5 This desire
flows from a loving and at the same time imperious call: the call
of the King, 'the eternal King, Christ O u r Lord', who has before
himself 'the entire world', who calls everyone a n d 'each one in
particular' and says: 'It is my will to conquer all the world and
all my other enemies and so to enter into the glory of my Father;
therefore, whoever wants to come with me is to labour with me,
that following me in pain, he may also follow me in glory' (Exx 96).
To that call, men and women who asked humbly 'to be able to
hear . . . and to be ready and willing to do wha t he wants'
(Exx 91) gave a personal and affirmative response. T h e y created a
community with other lay people who listened to the same call and
were possessed by the same desire. That is why 'our Community
is made up of Christians: men and women, adults and youth, of
all social conditions, who want to follow Jesus Christ more closely
and work with him for the building Of the Kingdom, who have
recognized Christian Life Communities as their particular vocation
within the Church' (GP 4).
That is what C L C is: a particular vocation, an answer to a call
which changed our lives and made us willing to ask for the help
of others to be better able to respond to this call within the Church.
That is also why our meetings are not limited to biblical study and
theological reflection, aimed at deepening intellectual knowledge.
Without disregarding the great importance of doctrine and intellec-
tual formation, what really nourishes our communities and gives
them life is sharing--a deep and honest sharing of our lives, our
joys, our sadnesses, and our hurts. Most of all, we share our
 C H R I S T I A N LIFE C O M M U N I T I E S 35

intimate life and friendship with God and the movements the
Holy Spirit produces inside us and in the world around us. The
C o m m u n i t y helps us to discern those movements and supports us
in responding to them with faith and courage.

A foundational experience: the Spiritual Exercises

There is no other way to seek, discern and find the will of God
for ourselves, personally and communally than by praying. In the
C L C way of life, prayer is an important part of the process. And,
as we are speaking of Ignatian communities and way of life, the
C L C process is also a school where we can learn the many
different ways of praying Ignatius put at our disposal: meditation,
contemplation, the three methods of prayer (on the Ten Command-
ments, the capital sins, the powers of the soul, and the bodily
s e n s e s ; b y contemplating the meaning of each word of a vocal
prayer; by the rhythm of breathing [Exx 238-258]).
But most of all, we can learn the Ignatian way of praying par
excellence, an interior discipline which teaches us to prepare ourselves
to enter the presence of God, to ask truly and from the bottom of
our heart for the grace we want to receive (cf Exx 56), to end with
a colloquy, that is to say, a dialogue of mercy, thanksgiving, and
love, with Mary, Jesus and/or the Father (cf Exx 61). And then,
after that, to examine and review our own prayer.
That constant examination of our prayer, trying to see which
movements we have experienced and what they mean in real life,
is our chief concern as C L C members, and also the main content
of our meetings as a Christian Life Community. That is why our
communities cannot call themselves real CLCs if their members
do not live deeply the central experience of the Spiritual Exercises.
The Spiritual Exercises, specific source and characteristic instru-
ment of our spirituality are, first of all, the experience of Ignatius
himself (GP 5). 6 The graces Ignatius received, during his painful
and risky pilgrimage to search for and find the will of God, are
our patrimony as well, for we are, whether Jesuits or lay people,
aflame with the desire following the same ways as Ignatius. And,
as C L C members, there is no obstacle to our going through the
complete experience just because we are l a y people with busy
schedules and other difficulties inherent in secular life.
That is why, today, we have the great joy of seeing the vast
majority of the members of our Communities seeking to make the
Ignatian Spiritual Exercises in one of their m a n y forms: either
36 CHRISTIAN LIFE COMMUNITIES

thirty days, or four retreats of eight days each spread out over two
years, or the Nineteenth Annotation retreat, in daily life, etc. 7 The
Exercises are the experience which is really 'foundational' for our
communities. Unless the members go through that school of prayer
and discernment no community will really become what it should
be: a community of discernment, an apostolic community of love
which discerns together the sign s of God and the signs of the times,
in order to be able to respond to them in a mission assigned by
the Lord and his Church. 8
With the help of regular spiritual direction and a daily review
of one's life, the passionate love and folly of following the poor
and humble Christ in today's world--so strongly experienced by
ourselves in the Spiritual Exercises--can be a :real possibility (GP
12a). The Exercises lead us to a progressively simpler lifestyle,
which allows us to keep our interior freedom and indifference
towards the world, as indispensable means for our apostolate. They
urge us on to an active participation in the vast field of apostolic
services (GP 12b). It is in the gospel Showing us the poor and
humble Christ, who first fascinated Ifiigo de Loyola, 9 that our life
must find its inspiration to be able really to be what it should be:
a missionary a n d apostolic life led within the lay way of living.

To love and serve in all things." a community for mission

I t is from the experience of :being passionately and graciously
loved by God our Lord and Jesus Christ's Father, and having
received the enormous grace of passionately loving this God of
grace a n d mercy, that the imperious necessity of serving him and
the people God loves, flows. Christian mission is not a human
initiative, but a certainty of being sent by Jesus and the Spirit to
serve the world and the People of God, in the same way Jesus was
sent by the Father and, in the Holy Spirit, sent the apostles.
The imperious necessity of serving is thus a consequence that
flows from the experience of loving Christ, contemplating him, and
seeing his life as a horizon from which I can understand and
organize my life (cf Exx 135). In the case of CLC, Jesus Christ's
life is an impulse and a mandate to lay people to assume the grace
of their baptism as a vocation and, most of all, a mission. 1° We
are called to live this mission in union with the Church, where
Christ, h e r e and now, continues his mission of salvation (GP 6).
And, within this Church, we are to belong to a World Community.
An important element about the C L C vocation is that it is a
 CHRISTIAN LIFE COMMUNITIES 37

universal vocation. Our commitment is not only with our tiny,

CoSy local community, but with a World Community, an organized,
worldwide body of lay people who try to live Ignatian spirituality
and lifestyle and who understand their lives in terms of service of
the whole Church and its mission.
That is why, as the World C o m m u n i t y ' s identity has grown over
the years, we have come to understand more and more that it is
not enough to do any service whatever within society or the Church.
Without disregarding little and humble services (GP 12c), we know
we are called to the greatest service, the most divine and universal
good, to search always for the greater glory of God. This requires
of us an ever deeper sensitivity to the urgent needs of Church and
society, a readiness to go and serve wherever the needs of the
Church may be. It involves an identification with Christ's mission,
being his witnesses before all people by our attitudes, words and
actions, bringing, as he did, good news to the poor, proclaiming
liberty to captives and new sight to the blind, setting the downtrod-
den free and proclaiming the L o r d ' s year of favour (GP 6, 7, 8).
The field of C L C mission knows no limits: it extends both to the
Church and to the world, struggling to convert hearts and to
transform oppressive structures.
This world conception of our mission was a very clear point at
our last General Assemblies. In Rome 79, we began to feel called
by God to be a World Community, instead of a World Federation.
In Providence 82, this decision was made definite, in a deep process
of discernment which brought us to the unanimous decision to be
a World Body. Loyola 86 was a time of grace, where the character-
istics of this World Body appeared more clearly to us: sent by the
Lord and his Church, having M a r y as the model of our mission,
we felt that it was the whole C o m m u n i t y that was sent, in
communion of mind and heart. And moving this process forward
led to an ever simpler lifestyle which would make us more free,
and bring us to live a decisive option for the poor.
We have just finished the XIth Assembly of Guadalajara 90
where, although feeling our poverty and our great need of unity
and spiritual freedom as a community of disciples, we approved a
new and revised text of our General Principles and General Norms.
This text, received by all the World Community, will continue to
help us think about our experience and find ways to allow God to
continue to make us more truly a World C o m m u n i t y in service of
the Kingdom. Certainly, this last Assembly and the new General
38 C H R I S T I A N LIFE C O M M U N I T I E S

Principles will aid us to find new forms of communal land organized

apostolate which will aid us to respond to the needs of the world
and the Church today in a more effective way. 11

Conclusion: C L C - - a way to holiness

C L C is a way of life, a way to Christian life, a way to holiness
too. The unique call of Jesus Christ for each one who disposes
himself/herself to follow his paths is to be holy and perfect as his
Father is (cf Mt 5, 48). There are many ways and styles of living
this radical appeal, this irresistible attraction, within the Church.
Through these twenty centuries iof history the Spirit has certainly
shown great and divine creativity in inspiring new and different
ways of following Jesus Christ in the midst of the world.
One 0 f t h e s e special divine gifts was given to Ignatius Loyola,
who received these graces not only for himself, but also for us,
who would some day be attracted and conquered by his way of
loving and serving God in all things, and learn how to follow Jesus
Christ according to the method proposed in the Spiritual Exercises.
CLC is, thus, the concrete and incarnate way we have found to
live out the Call and the goal proposed by our baptism.
O u r belonging to a World Community, expressed in belonging
to a local community, gives us the structure and the means to
organize our spiritual life, our communitarian links, our service
and mission, in both their personal and communal dimensions. In
all that process , we rely on effective collaboration with the Society
of Jesus and with other people, communities and institutions which
share the Ignatian tradition. ~2 As charisms are at the service of the
whole Church, lay people and religious can and even must share
the same charism--each one in a different state of life--to be
helped to live better the charism received by the grace of God.
Today's times and urgent necessities show very clearly that Jesuits
and C L C members are called t o be more and more 'companions':
companions of Jesus, and companions one to another in common
missions for the greater glory of God.
The new text of the General Principles , with the approval of the
Holy See, will then help CLC, during this Ignatian year, to pray,
reflect and deepen its identity and the grace of its vocation: making
o u r s the option of Jesus Christ and taking part through him, with
him and i n him in the loving initiative of the Holy Trinity of
bringing redemption to a sinful world so as to become more and
 CHRISTIAN LIFE COMMUNITIES 39

more servants and witnesses of our Lord Jesus Christ in today's

world (GP 1,4 and 5).

NOTES

t See the speech of Fr Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, World Ecclesiastical Assistant for the CLC,
delivered at the World Assembly of Guadalajara, Mexico, from August 28 to September 8
1990: 'The way of St. Ignatius and the charism of C L C ' , photocopied text, p 4, where a
good synthesis of this story of the first 'societies' formed by Ignatius and the first Jesuits
can be found.
2 Ibid., p 6.
3 From now on, ' G P ' refers to the new text of the General Principles, revised and approved
by the World Assembly of Guadalajara 90, awaiting confirmation by the Holy See.
4 See Kinerk, E.: 'Eliciting great desires: their place in the spirituality of the Society of
Jesus', in &udies in the spirituality of Jesuits 16 (1984). See also Bingemer, M . C . L . : Em tudo
amar e servir. Mistica trinitdria e prdxis crist~ em In&io de Loyola (S~o Paulo, Loyola, 1990),
specially pp 52-68.
5 See Kinerk, E., op. cir. p 1: 'Desire is an enormously complex word. In spirituality we
talk about " h o l y " desires, desires which orient a person towards God and which are
considered, therefore, to be graces from him.' The whole article can be very helpful too,
not only to understand Jesuit spirituality, but also CLC spirituality and way of life. S e e
specially the following chapters: 'Desire for the Cross', 'Desire to help souls', pp 16-18.
6 We must remark that Ignatius lived and composed the Spiritual Exercises while he was
still a layman. Thus they are a kind of experience which can pafectly be lived by lay people.
They are not at all aimed directly and solely to clergy, in spite of often having been
considered so by m a n y people.
7 See, for these different modalities, Progressio Supplement 33, November 1989, about
formation of lay guides.
8 See the final synthesis of the Loyola World Assembly, 'The grace of Loyola 86', in the
Progressio Supplement with the contents of this Assembly.
9 See Autobiography 5, 11, 52 and most of all 96, which describes the grace of La Storta.
See also a comment on this grace in Bingemer, M . C . L . : Em tudo amar e servir, pp 38-43.
10 See what the Holy Father says about lay people's vocation and mission in the recent
letter Ghristifidelis laici 33.
at It is worth quoting the final synthesis of Guadalajara 90, 'The grace and call of Guadalajara
90': 'This grace will be particularly important in regard to the way we receive and live the
revised General Principles and General Norms. In the second General Principle we are
reminded to live and relate to one another in the spirlt of the Gospel; and as General Norm
6 emphasizes, this spirit of the Gospel must necessarily be understood in diverse historical
and cultural ways, for it is precisely in and through each cukure's historical experience that
God acts, speaks, and invites a community to share in the work of the Kingdom.'
t2 As' it was said by Fr Kolvenbach, in his speech already quoted above: 'Anyone who
understands that charisms are at the service of the whole Church will never deny the laity
their right of helping themselves by a specific charism which is given to them in their
Christian life. They do not become any the less lay persons, but rather lay persons with
greater capacities. Nor are they 'semi-religious', but Christians in a religious family with
its multifaceted charism. This point of view prevents lay people and religious from feeling
that they are autonomous, and self-sufficient, with no connection linking one group to the
other. It likewise avoids any exclusivity in the interpretation and practice of the charism.
Here, r as in everything relating to the People of God, the Trinitarian principle that one's
identity comes alive in relationship to others must be foremost.'