Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works by Ignatius of Loyola

Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works Reviews

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  booklady

  Having not done the Exercises in a number of years, I nevertheless recall their forceful impact on my life.
  
  Through vivid visualization of critical Gospel events, you literally 'walk with Jesus' and enter into a deeper relationship with Him. Profound and life-changing. Organized into 4 'weeks', they can in fact be done over a longer or even a shorter period of time, although their original design is probably still best, the modifications many modern groups have developed, such as the one I participated in, called "Retreat in Daily Life" allows busy professionals to avail themselves of this timeless spiritual wisdom.
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  Jana

  I've been savoring this book for over a year. I used to think I knew Ignatius, but now I feel I have only merely scratched the surface...and I desire the depths.
  
  If you pick this up just as a practical guide or for informative purposes, you won't be disappointed, but read it through the the eyes of Ignatius and his experience and you will get much more.
  
  What is the role of desire in the spiritual life?
  How can I know God?
  Does God really speak to me?
  And how can I know it's him?
  
  These are some of the questions that well up when reading this book...and although Ignatius may not have all the answers, he gave me tools to find them and encouraged my desire to keep searching.
  
  Eminently practical, yet profoundly mystical, Ignatius is a saint for our times and his spirituality is a treasure for our Church!
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  Kenneth

  Having spent most of the past 20 years attending mass in Jesuit churches around the world, it's strange that it has taken me so long to familiarize myself with the creator of the order through his works. He turns out to be an interesting character though one must keep in mind that he was writing in another era for people with a vastly different view of the world. When reading this particular volume, one must also keep in mind the opinions of the editor which at first I found problematical but then came to appreciate.
  
  This is because the editor wants to focus on Ignatius as a Catholic Mystic. If you're familiar with the Jesuit Order, or at least its educational institutions for which it is well known, this may seem quite a departure from the character of the man and the Society he founded. This is because the Jesuit Order probably did more to provide a rigorous education to the men who launched both the Counter-Reformation and the enlightenment alike. Both Descartes and Voltaire were Jesuit trained, and the logical power of Jesuit sermons is why I have been travelling an hour each way to the Jesuit parishes wherever I have happened to live.
  
  This rigorous, organized, methodical nature of Ignatius comes out in his Constitutions, his Spiritual Exercises and his letters to various people that are published within the volume. These are all very interesting documents and they go a long way toward making more explicit can clear the mind of the man. The exercises in particular are very interesting because of their sensual focus. When contemplating the various moments in the life of Christ, Ignatius calls on the person undergoing the exercises to imagine himself physically present there by asking several questions: how does it smell, what is the temperature like on your skin, how many people are in the room. All these things are meant to concretize the experience and thus to drive home the humanity of Christ, a central tenet of Christianity. This kind of visualization, and it's adoption for religious purposes 500 years ago, were all very interesting to me.
  
  They also gave a hint of the other half of Ignatius, that the editor wanted to center and which at first I wanted to avoid and this was his mystical nature. This is because he's a famous organizer and the father of one of the finest and oldest educational organizations in the West, one that remains powerfully influential to this day. But the sensual, mystical side is important also because you can see that what was channeled through his logical mind was an incredibly powerful passion.
  
  For example, there is a section of his spiritual diary recorded as he was trying to decide how to finance the Society of Jesus. This would seem to be a fairly straightforward question, and on which would seemingly lend itself to the logical process outlined in the Exercises for making important decisions, and he does use it. At the same time, in his consultations with himself and God he is moved to tears in virtually every stanza. After a while I found myself torn between thinking to myself "Dude, get over yourself" and at the same time thinking "man, I wish I cared about anything as much as this guy cares about whether or not the Jesuits should own land."
  
  This I think is the key to the effectiveness, of Ignatius and the Jesuit order. There is a logic to it, and an order, but there is also an intensity of emotion, of devotion to God, that energizes and and powers the person, but which is make into productive action by the logical structures he erects. So in that sense the book is a great synthesis of two seemingly opposite, and in the case of his mysticism, perhaps under valued, elements.
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  John

  Certainly the compendium those of us needing an accessible and affordable resource whether for study or spirituality to be fostered in the personal, affirmative, and surprisingly insightful approach Ignatius worked out over his post-conversion life. He had to start sitting among the little children learning Latin. Quite a change from a man first a professional soldier and then a recuperating veteran in trouble with, yes, the Spanish Inquisition. I never knew he spent time locked up for his radical approach to teaching the Gospel to the laity. The fragment of his autobiography, a sampling of letters and of the Jesuit Constitutions, and the full Spiritual Exercises are supplemented by copious notes which are a necessity for any reader. While public domain texts of the first and last of these writings exist, it's unimaginable that any serious student of the founder of the Society of Jesus would be content with any other edition of this well-translated and relatively compact vademecum.
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  Mark Matzeder

  Ignatius was a disciplined man and it shows in his writings. There is much to be gleaned here of a system to make oneself ready for encounters with the divine. The Spiritual Exercises are very valuable but really need to be followed under the direction of a mentor. His diary--which I never entirely got over feeling voyeuristic reading--explodes with oblique references to the manifestations of his contemplation: namely copious tears and some kind of "visions" that he never describes.
  Ignatius' autobiography places it all in neat context.
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  Ed Meier

  I have done these exercises twice and plan to do them more. They are a great experience and lead to real spiritual understanding and peace. These are suitable for all Christian faiths. I highly recommend it.
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  Patti Clement

  Used in my Spiritual Direction Certification Program! A must have for any Ignatian trained Spiritual Director!
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  Anne Roat

  A must read for understanding Jesuit spirituality