THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES

 
St. Ignatius Loyola, Founder of the Society of Jesus, underwent a profound experience of God during his stay in the little town of Manresa in Spain in 1522. His heart’s desire was, as a lay person, to share with other lay people this same experience. As time went on he wrote a small book to assist in doing this. He called this book of directions The Spiritual Exercises. It was intended to help the person who directed another in a structured thirty-day or even 10-month long program of prayer and contemplation.

All Jesuits make the full thirty-day Spiritual Exercises. St. Ignatius also provided for people to make the Exercises over a 10-month period. Over the centuries the Jesuits have adapted the Exercises into shorter individually-directed retreats of six to eight days, and into conference or group retreats of a few days’ duration, in which the director presents various themes of the Spiritual Exercises to a group of people, who pray on their own over the material presented. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are usually experienced in these shorter adaptations, but some people are moved by grace to give themselves to the full Spiritual Exercises in the form of the 10-month Spiritual Exercises in Daily Life retreat or in the more intense Thirty-Day Retreat.

Some of the major themes normally addressed in the four weeks or phases of the Exercises are: