A Familiar New Face
January 27, 2012The Spiritual Exercises blog might have a new face, but the content that we have produced over the past few years is all still here. We hope that you like the new look and are as excited as we are about the start of our Lenten journey again this year.
When we resume posting on Ash Wednesday (February 22), the format will be much the same as it was in years past: daily meditations based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius that will go throughout Lent and the first week of Easter. And, just like last year, you don’t need any familiarity with the Exercises to follow along. If you are new to the blog, please be sure to read the Getting Stated page first. From there, you should be able to follow along as each new post comes out.
Posted by Mr. Michael Wegenka, S.J. in UncategorizedConclusion
April 27, 2011With this, we end our time with the Exercises over Lent and Easter. We pray that while reading these posts, you have been able to develop your relationship with the Lord, and come to know and love Him more fully. While we won’t be putting up any new material until next Lent, we will keep the posts up so that you can go back and draw fruit from them as much as you like.
As you continue praying and getting to know the Lord in everyday life, you may wish to keep praying in the way recommended by St. Ignatius. There is a post from last year that gives a good introduction to Igantian prayer.
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in UncategorizedWeekend Repetition: Choosing Christ
April 9, 2011This week, we have had what seems like a break from the gospel narrative. The prayers seen are what are sometimes called “election” prayers, prayers that can help us as we make a decision– where to go to school, a new job, marriage, etc. First, in the Two Standards, St. Ignatius has us pray over the “playing field,” to understand the two sides that struggle for our hearts, the methods of each side, and what they ultimately offer us. Then, we look at what attachments we have to things of this world that keep us from choosing God, and pray to God that He help us to be free of them. All of this culminates in praying over Jesus’s baptism, that moment where He stands shoulder to shoulder with sinners as He takes on the baptism that will mark the beginning of His public ministry. Our own baptism is both the starting point and end goal of our response to God’s call. From the moment of our baptism, God says “you are my beloved son (or daughter), in whom I am well pleased,” and calls us to Himself. From then on, with the help of God’s grace we try and grow more fully into this role of being a child of God. But we can only do so by looking at the example of Jesus. Without the living example of the Son, we would have a hard time imagining what it means to be a child of God, and a hard time knowing how to make choices that express the fact that we are God’s children. So we pray about choices that we must make in the context of praying over the life of Jesus, to help us better see how the choice fits into our vocation as children of God.
If you have a major choice that you are making, you may find it helpful to go back to one of the prayers from this week (or even go back to the Call of Christ the King), renew that desire to live out your baptismal call to be a child of God, and take a look at what is keeping you from living out your call. That alone will go a long way in laying the foundation for making a good choice in Christ. If you aren’t faced with a major choice right now, you can still renew that desire to live out your baptism, and resolve to follow God in all the smaller choices that we all face in our day-to-day lives.
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in UncategorizedWeekend Repetition: An Extraordinary God in Ordinary Places
April 2, 2011The reflections this week began with the birth of Jesus, followed by the Presentation, flight into Egypt, the finding in the temple, and finally a reflection on the “hidden life” of Jesus. On the surface, they are all entirely ordinary events. A child is born, He is presented in the temple like any other first-born son, the family must flee persecution, the child becomes separated from His parents, and grows into a man. In one respect, Jesus’s childhood could be like any other. Yet in all of these events, there is always something else to them. A child is not just born, but choirs of angels announce His birth. A child is not just presented in the temple, but Symeon and Anna see Him and proclaim His glory. The family flees persecution, but does so because of a message brought by an angel. In each of these episodes, the mundane and miraculous are woven together inextricably. God comes into the world in an ordinary fashion, but then something else happens, something we could never have dreamed. In our own lives, God enters into the mundane, and calls us to more. St. Ignatius found this in his own conversion, when his desires to do great feats for his own worldly glory were transformed into desires to do even greater feats for God’s glory. As you look back over a reflection from this week, take a second look at the ordinariness of the event, and how that event is transformed. What are the ordinary events of your own life that God is entering (or trying to enter)? Once God enters, how will they be transformed?
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in UncategorizedWeekend Repetition: Following Christ in the World
March 26, 2011This week, we began to move into what is called the “Second Week” of the Spiritual Exercises. Here, to pray over the Life of Christ, using both scenes from the gospels and supplementary prayers by St. Ignatius. One of the steps that Ignatius provides for us as we prepare to contemplate is what is called a “composition of place,” where we pay close attention to where the scene we are praying over takes place: sights, sounds, smells, how things feel, etc. It could be the fields outside of Jerusalem or the park outside your office. This is an important step and should not be overlooked. We are always in a place (both figuratively and literally), and Jesus always speaks to us at that place. As the reflections proceed, the question of what Jesus is saying to us and calling us to will become more focused. While doing a repetition this weekend, you might wish to pay close attention to the place (or places) you find yourself when praying, and the variety of places from which Jesus calls you. Wherever you are, God is calling you. What is God asking you to do at the place you are at?
At the start of the Second Week, St. Ignatius recommends that we take up some spiritual reading—usually a biography of a saint. While this is by no means required, reading a saint’s biography can help to “incarnate” what God is asking of us; as we see a concrete example of a real person, how God called that particular person, and how exactly that person responded to God’s call, we can get a better idea of how God is actually calling us in our own lives, and how we should best respond.
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in UncategorizedWeekend Repetiton: Returning to God
March 19, 2011For those who are just coming to the blog, weekends are set aside for repetitions, a chance to go back to a prayer from the week and allow the graces of the prayer to deepen. This week, the focus has been on our sinfulness. As we continue to pray over our sins, it is helpful to remember why we do so. We do not pray over our sins just to wallow in self-pity and say “I am the worst sinner ever.” We also do not pray over our sins as though we were assessing ourselves at the beginning of a self-help program.
While there is nothing necessarily wrong with a self-help regimen, it is important to note that the point of calling to mind our sins in prayer is very different. The idea behind the reflections on sin in the Exercises is not “self-help,” where we recognize that we are not doing everything we should and say “I will try to be better.” In the Exercises, as with Lent, we pray over our sins in order to be closer to God in all that we do.
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in UncategorizedWeekend Repetitions
March 12, 2011The weekends will be dedicated to repetitions– going back to your prayers in order to allow a particular grace from that prayer to deepen. The purpose of repetitions can be made clear with two examples: one from the life of St. Ignatius, one from contemporary life.
In his Autobiography, St. Ignatius recalled how when he was having his experiences in the caves of Manresa that would later become the Exercises, God treated him “just as a schoolmaster treats a child whom he is teaching.” By his own admission, in those days Ignatius was not always the quickest learner when it came to the spiritual life. Ignatius had his own ideas of how to follow God’s will, and the Lord patiently instructed him otherwise. Eventually, Ignatius recognized the truth of that old adage repetitio mater studiorum (“repetition is the mother of studies”), and saw how it applied equally to the classroom and the chapel. In the classroom, we rarely ever understand a lesson by giving the textbook just one look. Often, we’ll need to go back a few times to see what is being said, and a few more times to see how it fits in with everything else that we’ve learned. So too in prayer: often, we’ll need to go back a few times to understand what is going on in a prayer period, and a few more times to see how the grace of the prayer fits in to our own lives.
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in UncategorizedComing Soon
January 25, 2011The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul seems like an appropriate day to announce some news concerning the blog. This Ash Wednesday (March 9th), the Spiritual Exercises Blog will resume posting. The format will be much the same as it was last year: daily meditations based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius that will go throughout Lent and the first week of Easter. And, just like last year, you don’t need any familiarity with the Exercises to follow along. What’s new is that we’ve brought a new lineup of Jesuits to reflect on the Exercises. So join us again (or for the first time) as a way to grow closer to Jesus through prayer over the course of the Lenten season.
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in UncategorizedConclusion
April 7, 2010With this, we conclude our posts on the Spiritual Exercises. Thank you all for your generous support. We hope that you have been able to grow in prayer and in your relationship with the Lord in reading this blog. While we won’t be publishing any new material, our plan is to keep the blog up indefinitely so that anyone may go back to this as much as they wish, and others may begin reading through our reflections for the first time.
It is appropriate to end with the text of the First Principle and Foundation, which introduces the Spiritual Exercises, permeates the prayers that St. Ignatius proposes in the Exercises, and is embodied perfectly in Jesus of Nazareth. In this way, we may come full circle in our meditations. As has been mentioned before, going back to a particular prayer often yields additional fruits, recognizing things that hadn’t been noticed before, and savoring old things with a new-found relish. Hopefully, in going back to the First Principle after reflecting on the Exercises for six weeks, you will be able to look on it with new eyes, coming to a fuller and deeper appreciation of it. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.
FIRST PRINCIPLE AND FOUNDATION:
Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.
The other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him in attaining the end for which he is created.
Hence, man is to make use of them in as far as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid himself of them in as far as they prove a hindrance to him.
Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things, as far as we are allowed free choice and are not under any prohibition. Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short life. The same holds for all other things.
Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created.
-St. Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, no. 23
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in UncategorizedThe Exercises and the Liturgical Year
March 13, 2010As we enter into the second half of Lent, the readings we hear at daily Mass begin to shift focus. Until now we have mainly heard readings from the synoptic gospels which have emphasized our relationship to God, particularly our need to acknowledge our sinfulness and repent. Beginning Monday, the Gospel of John will take precedence. These readings will focus more intently upon the person of Jesus. Two basic questions emerge: who is Jesus and what does Jesus do?
Our retreat follows the same path as the liturgical year. We find ourselves asking the same questions: who is Jesus and what does Jesus do? Let us, therefore, allow the liturgical year to draw us more deeply into prayerful contemplation of the person of Jesus.
Posted by Fr. Kevin Dyer, S.J. in Uncategorized