Our Lord Jesus told His followers to "lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest" (Jn. 4:35). Yet aware of the rich harvest, He observed that "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few." Following His command, we pray that "the Lord of the harvest" will "send out laborers into his harvest" (Lk. 10:2). All scriptural references, by the way, are to The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version, ed. Herbert May and Bruce Metzger (NY: Oxford University Press Inc., 1973).
The interest in deeper prayer on the part of the faithful has long been growing. Retreat houses and monastery guest houses are sometimes booked long in advance. Many find spiritual nourishment by going to centers of prayer, engaging in the liturgical life of a community, perhaps meeting with a person of prayer for guidance. Perhaps, since St. Ignatius of Loyola is the patron of all retreats in the Church, there is a special interest in the Spiritual Exercises. Relatively few are able to attend an Ignatian retreat or find direction from someone skilled in giving the Exercises. Eager to enter into this form of retreat, people may secure a copy of the Spiritual Exercises — but as the book of St. Ignatius is primarily a manual for the director, many find themselves baffled by the text.
All the great spiritual traditions seem to agree that one needs a spiritual guide. Though the Christian has the Spirit of God as "inner teacher," still it is very easy to lose the way in spiritual matters — hence the Church which God has given us. And within the Church, He has appointed some to be "evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ . . ."(Eph. 4:12–13).
It was with these concerns in mind that I agreed to film the series "The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius" for EWTN television, a series which has subsequently been distributed in video format by Ignatius Press. The great response to and interest in this form of Ignatian retreat has encouraged me to attempt a companion volume to accompany the filmed retreat talks.
As we approach prayer, it must be noted that the Spirit of God is infinitely creative in His engagement with people, and there is absolutely no limiting His ways (Jn 3:8). So in prayer we, as children of God, have direct access (what theologians call "parrhesia") to God, who is always free to speak to us at any time. At the same time, we are weak and prone to confusion and mistake in discerning what is the Spirit of God from our own selves, and even the evil spirit. We need guidance, and this book is meant to offer some guidance in discerning the form of Christian prayer.
The Spirit of God is given to us through the Son, whose life in the world reveals the form of God and shows us the pattern of our salvation. St. Ignatius developed a school of contemplation in which, using our imaginations and all our senses, we can enter into these mysteries of God’s dealings with His creation, culminating in the life, passion, death, and resurrection of His Son, and so come to know God. St. Ignatius wants us to come to know God’s will for us, and knowing His will, we can then love and serve Him with ever greater freedom and generosity.
God works with each soul individually, and so the individually directed retreat rightly has pride of place in the Ignatian approach. But individual retreat direction is more often than not impossible for many souls, and even when possible, it might well be supplemented by a more objective approach, which helps counter contemporary tendencies to excessive subjectivism. Hence the "preached retreat," for generations the staple of Jesuit retreat work, is the format which I have chosen to use, blending it with the fruit of private prayer.
I attempt to share with you, the retreatant, what it is that St. Ignatius is encouraging us to seek in prayer. Concretely, this always takes the form of a particular "grace" for which we are seeking at any given point in the retreat (the particular grace is listed at the end of every chapter). The retreatant is a bit like a hunter in search of quarry: intent on following tracks and traces, pursuing the quarry through all manner of terrain and weather until it is found. Holy desires are very important for St. Ignatius. God can speak to us through our desires, and we, for our part, want to discipline and hone our desiring so that it is in conformity with God’s will.
We are coming before God our Father, asking for a gift — grace is a gift. Though in one sense we want to have and give the freedom to receive "whatever" is pleasing to God, we are not just jellyfish flopping around in God’s ocean; we are His image and likeness gazing out to sea. And so God works with us, and we with Him, forming our souls in the way God has revealed to the Church through St. Ignatius, building on the millennial experience of men and women of the God of Israel.
Because this prayer is a school of the heart, our affections and our emotions are involved — and are to be developed. When we are reflecting on matters that are distressing, like sinfulness, we ask for the grace of shame and confusion at our infidelities in the face of God’s goodness. We want to know — to feel keenly — the pain sin causes. When we are reflecting on matters that are joyous, like God’s decision to enter into our world — the events around Christmas — we ask for the grace of joy, that we may interiorly savor the joy of Christ. And so on through the various moods of life with God. It is like learning to color a landscape in various weathers. God is the supreme artist, and the world is His canvas. He invites us to be co-creators with Him, in His Holy Spirit. This presupposes a right relationship. That is, we may be co-creators but there is no equality between God and us. He has privileged, gifted us, by calling us into freedom — and though we have real freedom, everything, including that freedom, is a free gift from God, who alone is perfect freedom. The free gift is called grace. And so we ask for a particular grace at a particular time, while doing everything we can to support God’s work. That also means that when I am considering matter that is sober or dark — like Christ’s Passion — I will try to create an ambience in which my soul can resonate with the seriousness of the matter. I will darken my room, both outer and inner, as I enter into the dark mysteries. At other times, as with more joyful mysteries, I will light a fire or a candle to cheer the winter’s cold or sit in the cool, breezy shade on a hot afternoon. In everything, I want to cooperate with God’s will, to cooperate with His grace.
All this is geared toward helping me receive the grace which I am seeking and for which I am asking — and, having received it, to savor it, to know what it is.
In my presentations, I attempt to share with you some of what I have experienced in prayer as a sort of example, a way of experiencing, the meditations. This book is offered as a way of "priming the pump" for your own prayer. People vary widely in their approaches to God, and even in the same soul different times of life will know different ways of praying. Praying with images, so characteristic of the way of St. Ignatius, is not the only way. For some people, it is just not possible, ever; for others, it is an occasional gift, interwoven into other modes of being with God.
This book is meant to be able to stand by itself as a help in making an Ignatian Retreat. That is, there are suggestions offered on how to proceed and then illustrations from my own experience of prayer. At the end of the chapters there are listed the graces appropriate for that point in the retreat, as well as suggested scriptural texts, where applicable.
No one can or should duplicate the prayer experience of another. Rather, these reflections are written both to help with some images and other input, and also to say to the person praying: "Well, it’s kind of like this" so that as one prays, one gains in confidence that in fact one is cooperating with the Spirit of God. Prayer is a good deal like fishing. A retreat director can help a retreatant prepare pole and bait, take him or her to his favorite fishing hole, and sit nearby with his own pole — but the retreatants must cast for themselves. Only so will they know the thrill of the tug on the line, a line that leads into the intimacy of their own hearts.
This book is also intended as a possible companion to the thirteen-part TV series, each chapter closely approximating the content of the talks on the videos, with supplementary suggestions for prayer. So if one were to view one of the talks, the particular chapter would be a way of reading through the material that has been heard, and then having scriptural references and other resources right before one. Using the video as a companion to this book would be quite helpful: "Faith comes from what is heard" (Rom. 10:17), to which Confucius adds: "One showing is worth ten thousand tellings."
Those who have watched the video series may have noticed that the individual episodes were not numbered. It was felt that for television viewers it might be discouraging to indicate that there was in fact a progression through a thirteen-part series; someone tuning in for the first time and seeing something like "Six: Discipleship" on the screen might well be discouraged and turn the dial, not having viewed the first five episodes.
In fact, however, the Exercises do follow a sequence. Though naturally one can plug into either the video series or indeed this book at any time and draw profit from it, if one is to make the retreat, one should follow the sequence, which is an articulation of St. Ignatius’ Four Weeks.
So one reads a section of the text, perhaps watching the corresponding video section either before or after reading. Then, one selects the section of the chapter on which he will focus for the time of prayer. At the end of the chapters there is a grace listed for each section of prayer. This is the gift I am asking from God as I enter into my prayer.
Every chapter has three or four main sections. Some of them refer to the matter from the Spiritual Exercises themselves, in which no further text is generally given. Other sections are based on passages in Scripture. At the end of most chapters, there are suggested readings listed.
The best book to have on hand as one prays is a Bible: it is the Word of God. It would be extremely helpful to have a Bible at hand as one follows these chapters.
Having the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius themselves at hand is less important. Though they can be helpful for some, the book is really a manual for a spiritual director, and can create more confusion than help if approached directly.
Father Walter Ciszek, in his spiritual classic He Leadeth Me, teaches that perhaps the single most important part of prayer is the "act of the presence of God": that is, the act of faith with which we enter into the special time and space which is prayer. We begin every time of prayer with such an act. Let us now recollect ourselves in the presence of the Holy One, let us beg Him for the grace we need to enter into His most sacred mysteries, and let us humbly and prayerfully enter into these "exercises for the soul."
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