Reflections on the Spiritual Exercises

On September 29. 2014, I undertook a journey through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. For once, this effort wasn't begun with an underlying desire for pride of accomplishment. Rather, seeing how inconsistent my spiritual growth has been, how little personal discipline and maturity I have attained in my decades of allegedly walking with the Lord, and how I continue to yield to the same areas of personal sinfulness, I felt I needed a structure that would call me to consistency in prayer and reflection. Though blessed with many gifts, I consider myself in many ways as a spiritual failure. Though I believe I am saved by grace alone, I also believe I have a responsibility to respond to that grace consistently, and I have never done so for more than a single season of the breviary at a time.

In undertaking the Exercises I hoped that God might provide a means for me to grow in self-control, to migrate away from self-inflicted darkness caused by spiritual sloth to whatever God might have in mind for me in its place, even if that should prove to be an authentic dark night of the soul.

The links below represent my journey thus far through the Exercises, which I am grateful to find are way lengthier than I had imagined at first. If these exercises were shorter they would give me no hope of developing any discipline at all, since I have long since proven myself capable of cooperating with God's grace for a season. I still have no idea what work God might be doing in me, but I am glad to be participating in whatever it might turn out to be.

I am following the online program laid out by Step-by-Step Retreats. Most Scripture references in these posts are from the Revised Standard Version as published online at a University of Michigan site; at some point in the First Phase I started using the Revised Grail version of the Psalms.

In the pages below, Session, Reflection and Overview links are to my own musings, which are of far less value than taking the retreat for yourself! The wisdom entrusted to St. Ignatius has stood the test of centuries; mine will pass with the eventual infrastructure failure that renders this stored data inaccessible. Phase and step links are to the Step-by-Step Retreats pages. The step links in particular may be useful for identifying the full scripture reading for each session, since I don't always include a reference to the full prescribed passage.

• The first phase: Reforming - "To reform the deformed" or the liberative way
• The second phase: Conforming - "To conform the reformed" or the illuminative way
• The third phase: Confirming - "To confirm the conformed" or the unitive way of pain and suffering
• The fourth phase: Transforming - "To transform the confirmed" or the unitive way in joy