17/04/2026
There are moments in life that quietly undo us.
Not publicly.
Not dramatically.
But inwardly.
For Ignatius of Loyola, it was a shattered body.
A cannonball.
A forced stillness.
The loss of the life he thought he was living.
What looked like failure…
became the place where God began something deeper.
In much of the Christian tradition, we often misunderstand failure.
We treat it as something to avoid, manage, or recover from.
But the deeper tradition—seen in Ignatius, and long before him in the desert—suggests something far more uncomfortable:
Failure is often the place where truth is finally allowed to speak.
Recently, I’ve had an article published in The Way:
“The Transformative Power of Failure: Ignatius Loyola and Psychological Safety.”
What I explore there is something I see repeatedly in both spiritual direction and leadership:
It is not failure itself that forms us.
It is whether we can remain open—
honest—
and attentive in its presence.
In modern language, we might speak of this through the work of Amy Edmondson and psychological safety.
But spiritually, the question runs deeper:
Can we face ourselves without defence?
Can we remain truthful before God when something breaks?
Can we resist the instinct to control, justify, or hide?
Because this is where formation really happens.
Not in strength.
But in those moments where something in us is exposed.
The tragedy is not that we fail.
The tragedy is that we learn to protect ourselves from the truth within failure.
And when that happens—
we stop growing.
Ignatius did something different.
He paid attention.
He allowed the experience to speak.
And over time, what began as disruption became discernment…
and discernment became vocation.
This is not just history.
It is a living question for all of us:
Where am I resisting what is trying to form me?
If this resonates, I’ve explored it more fully in the article here:
https://www.theway.org.uk/mobile/mobile/thisissue.shtml
A quiet question to sit with:
What in your life right now feels like failure… but may, in time, reveal itself as formation?
