Ron Hansen on the Spiritual Exercises
Tomorrow is the day that Creighton University's Ignatian online 34 week retreat for Everyday Life begins, if one wishes to make it in sync with the liturgical year (the 19th annotation form of the Spiritual Exercises). Making the retreat is more convenient than ever - you can listen to it in audio segments, there's now also a book, Retreat in the Real World with the full text of the retreat, or you can just visit the retreat website and read each week's guides as I did nine years ago.
Although the online retreat lasts longer than a typical month long Spiritual Exercises retreat, it follows the same structure. Here's part of an article that describes the retreat and its four stages or "weeks" by Ron Hansen, writer and Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University .....
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Spiritual Exercises
[...] Ignatius wrote that his Spiritual Exercises “have as their purpose the conquest of self and the regulation of one’s life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment.” The first week of the exercises requires a scrupulous examination of our life history, seeing God’s loyal and loving presence within it, but also acknowledging the sins, addictions, and predilections that hindered our possibilities. The first week ends with a meditation on Christ’s call for us to follow him, with the promise that we will lead richer, happier lives.
The second week essentially teaches us how to follow Christ more closely by establishing us as his disciples. We watch his birth and accompany him in his baptism in the river Jordan, his sermon on the mount, his raising of Lazarus from the dead, and other healing and teaching events in his public ministry. Empowered by the love of God and our friendship with Jesus, we are required to make a choice of a way of life, a choice that may involve a great change in our habits or careers, but more often entails only those amendments and reformations that enhance a closer relationship with God.
Intimacy with Jesus having been established, we witness in the third week his last supper, the agony in the garden, his arrest and trials, and his passion and death. And the fourth week is devoted to Jesus’ resurrection and his various apparitions to his disciples, concluding with a “Contemplation to Attain the Love of God.”
The method for each hour’s meditation is generally the same. We begin with a preparatory prayer and as a prelude to the meditation consider the history of the subject, such as Jesus appearing to seven of his disciples as they fished (John 21:1–17), reading the gospel passage several times until we can develop a mental representation of the locale and the people in it. We then ask for a grace; in this case, it is to be consoled at seeing Christ on the shore and to feel the joy and comfort of his resurrection. We see the fishermen hauling in their nets on the Sea of Galilee, hear the smack of waves against the boat’s hull, feel the sunshine on our skins, smell seaweed and brine, taste the water we scoop up in our palm. With all five senses wholly engaged, we become part of the scene and can be as shocked and happy as Peter was when he recognized that it was the risen Christ who was roasting a fish on a charcoal fire on the shore and plunged into the sea to wade to him. We hear Christ’s instruction to Peter, and we also enter the conversation—or as Ignatius puts it, colloquy—inquiring, perhaps, on how we ourselves can feed his sheep or just saying, like Peter, “Lord, you know that I love you.” We finish the meditation period with a standard prayer, such as the Our Father, and usually exercitants keep a journal in which they describe what happened in their prayer and its affect on them.
Ignatius found early on that there were those who were “educated or talented, but engaged in public affairs or necessary business” who could not find a free month to perform the exercises as he’d first intended. For them he developed a program in which the Spiritual Exercises could be completed without withdrawal from jobs or other obligations by having the multiple exercises of the 30 days carried out in the course of 30 weeks—an increasingly popular choice for lay people. One of the greatest gifts of this so-called “19th annotation retreat” is that it teaches a habit of prayer that can be incorporated throughout our lives—that journey with God that Ignatius called “the fifth week.”
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The images are from the website of the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus, which also offers a Spiritual Exercises retreat in everyday life
Although the online retreat lasts longer than a typical month long Spiritual Exercises retreat, it follows the same structure. Here's part of an article that describes the retreat and its four stages or "weeks" by Ron Hansen, writer and Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University .....
******************************
Spiritual Exercises
[...] Ignatius wrote that his Spiritual Exercises “have as their purpose the conquest of self and the regulation of one’s life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment.” The first week of the exercises requires a scrupulous examination of our life history, seeing God’s loyal and loving presence within it, but also acknowledging the sins, addictions, and predilections that hindered our possibilities. The first week ends with a meditation on Christ’s call for us to follow him, with the promise that we will lead richer, happier lives.
The second week essentially teaches us how to follow Christ more closely by establishing us as his disciples. We watch his birth and accompany him in his baptism in the river Jordan, his sermon on the mount, his raising of Lazarus from the dead, and other healing and teaching events in his public ministry. Empowered by the love of God and our friendship with Jesus, we are required to make a choice of a way of life, a choice that may involve a great change in our habits or careers, but more often entails only those amendments and reformations that enhance a closer relationship with God.
Intimacy with Jesus having been established, we witness in the third week his last supper, the agony in the garden, his arrest and trials, and his passion and death. And the fourth week is devoted to Jesus’ resurrection and his various apparitions to his disciples, concluding with a “Contemplation to Attain the Love of God.”
The method for each hour’s meditation is generally the same. We begin with a preparatory prayer and as a prelude to the meditation consider the history of the subject, such as Jesus appearing to seven of his disciples as they fished (John 21:1–17), reading the gospel passage several times until we can develop a mental representation of the locale and the people in it. We then ask for a grace; in this case, it is to be consoled at seeing Christ on the shore and to feel the joy and comfort of his resurrection. We see the fishermen hauling in their nets on the Sea of Galilee, hear the smack of waves against the boat’s hull, feel the sunshine on our skins, smell seaweed and brine, taste the water we scoop up in our palm. With all five senses wholly engaged, we become part of the scene and can be as shocked and happy as Peter was when he recognized that it was the risen Christ who was roasting a fish on a charcoal fire on the shore and plunged into the sea to wade to him. We hear Christ’s instruction to Peter, and we also enter the conversation—or as Ignatius puts it, colloquy—inquiring, perhaps, on how we ourselves can feed his sheep or just saying, like Peter, “Lord, you know that I love you.” We finish the meditation period with a standard prayer, such as the Our Father, and usually exercitants keep a journal in which they describe what happened in their prayer and its affect on them.
Ignatius found early on that there were those who were “educated or talented, but engaged in public affairs or necessary business” who could not find a free month to perform the exercises as he’d first intended. For them he developed a program in which the Spiritual Exercises could be completed without withdrawal from jobs or other obligations by having the multiple exercises of the 30 days carried out in the course of 30 weeks—an increasingly popular choice for lay people. One of the greatest gifts of this so-called “19th annotation retreat” is that it teaches a habit of prayer that can be incorporated throughout our lives—that journey with God that Ignatius called “the fifth week.”
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The images are from the website of the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus, which also offers a Spiritual Exercises retreat in everyday life
posted by crystal | 6:53 PM
2 Comments:
Looks like you're really working at "IT" crystal. :)
Keep UP The Good WORDS
God Bless
Thanks, Victor. God bless you too.
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