Spiritual Exercises of Iggy of Loyola

[IgnatiusJReilly]

I’ve been trying to sort of plan what kind of things to do for Lent this year. One thing I was thinking about trying was the St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises. The problem is I don’t have a spiritual director.

Can you do these by yourself? If so, does anybody know how you’re supposed to do them? I saw them on the web at some Jesuit site, but it wasn’t clear to me what I’m supposed to do.

Thanks!

 

[Joannm]

To do the 30 day spiritual exercises is a FULL time endeavor. Usually a person goes away for a month to a retreat house and meets with a director daily. The reatreat is also silent.

There is the 19 Annotated retreat which can be done in daily life but that is done over several months…about 6 -9 months if I recall how my husband did it. That requires about two hours of prayer and meditation a day plus meeting with a director once a week.

There are books, retreat houses, spiritual directors and even the web that offers “retreats” based on the Spiriutal Exercises. These can be very doable for a short period of time. The Jesuit retreat house near me used to offer a Lenten “retreat” that consisted of meeting for weekly gatherings where the material for meditation would be presented and the retreatant would pray with it at home. One idea is to simply meditate on the different points of the exercises, sort of as a springboard for prayer and contemplation. But the problem is, that without a director, if you get stuck you have no one to go to.

 

[puzzleannie]

Can you do these by yourself? If so, does anybody know how you’re supposed to do them? I saw them on the web at some Jesuit site, but it wasn’t clear to me what I’m supposed to do.

Thanks!

yes, Iggy, you can do them yourself with a good guide but of course with spiritual direction and in the context of a retreat is ideal.

there are two good “self study” guides I would recommend, having used them, one is Fr. John Hardon’s guide to the SE, the other is the study from Word Among Us Press, For the Greater Glory ofGod: a spiritual retreat w St. Ignatius, Manuel Ruiz-Jurado SJ

the first you need to also by a copy of the SE, so watch your translation, some are rather archaic and hard to read.

the latter comes in a spiral notebook with journaling pages and includes the passages from SE the author wants you to use. for both you also need a good bible.

the burden is on you, if you are not going on a formal retreat, to build your own retreat time and place. both of these ideally should be done over the traditional 30 day time frame, so you will have to block out time and room each day to devote to this. Is not something you can profitably dip into now and again, it should be the major focus for your time and attention during this period

I think the point is if you cannot or will not give up the 30 days of concentrated effort for the formal directed retreat, you are not likely to be able to give a DIY job the attention that will help you derive any benefit.

also the very format of the SE is designed to awaken movement of the soul and response that arouse the need for questions, for consultation with a good director, for guidance, and for repentance, so w/o a director you may be left hanging at crucial poitns.

 

[IgnatiusJReilly]

I think the point is if you cannot or will not give up the 30 days of concentrated effort for the formal directed retreat, you are not likely to be able to give a DIY job the attention that will help you derive any benefit.

also the very format of the SE is designed to awaken movement of the soul and response that arouse the need for questions, for consultation with a good director, for guidance, and for repentance, so w/o a director you may be left hanging at crucial poitns.

Thanks for those references! That’s exactly what I was looking for.

Right now, I’m a father of 4, so it makes it difficult to do a 30 day retreat. It’s not impossible, but my wife would probably kill me when I got back.

Sounds like the spiritual director is key. Unfortunately, I’m kind of new to my area and am not really sure how one goes about finding a spiritual director. I’m close to a monastery. Do I post a flyer over there or something?