To be young and noble, great with a sword, and dashing in tight: to be invincible.  This is the position of Ignatius of Loyola before the Lord crashes into his life and grips his soul. 

A Spaniard born into nobility in 1491, Ignatius enjoys a fast-pace military life — replete with wine, women, and song — until he is gravely wounded by a cannon-ball-to-the-legs at age 29. During his ensuing surgeries and lengthy recovery, only Christian reading materials, including the Bible and Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi, are available. Through reading these works and meditating on the life of Christ (and presumably through the power of God’s Spirit), Ignatius comes to a transforming faith in Christ.

The Spiritual Exercises is born out of a period of asceticism for Ignatius, as he renounces worldly passions and hangs up his sword for the priesthood.  Drawing heavily from the visualization techniques in Vita Christi, Ignatius sets down a four-week regimen of reflection and penance which an “exercitant” can complete under the administration of a spiritual director.  Just as physical exercises condition the body, Ignatius promotes his work as beneficial for “preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments.”

In these exercises, the exercitant endeavors to spend four weeks in significant meditation and is encouraged to settle into a quiet room of the house or a different location all together. 

Week One: the exercitant is to meditate on both the original sin of the angels and personal sin, including the “disorderliness” of sin, and the “horror” of the world and its sins, along with a meditation on Hell. 

Week Two: focuses on the incarnation, beginning with the Trinity’s plans for mankind before creation, and including the nativity, and the flight to Egypt. 

Week Three: centers on the Passion. Particularly, Ignatius gives instructions to focus on the sorrow of the Passion, not the joy of the resurrection (that comes later).

Week Four: encompasses the earthly life of Christ – from the celestial announcement to Mary, to the general appreciation of God’s sustaining grace in creation, to the miracles of Christ.

Throughout the exercises, Ignatius gives additional foci to various aspects of Christian living.  He offers guidelines on reigning in one’s fleshly appetites – particularly in regard to food and drink.  He outlines characteristics of love and directs the exercitant to meditate on God’s love and man’s relationship with Him.  He names a goal of these exercises as the training of the thought life – taking thoughts captive – that one might more readily distinguish the will of God. 

Much of what Ignatius accomplishes, he does through visualization techniques.  For example, he urges the exercitant (or reader, in my case) to put himself in the place of the Trinity, as they imagine mankind.  He encourages meditation on the hot flames of Hell, which will be searing friends and acquaintances who have not found salvation in Christ.  He begs the exercitant to remember the sorrows he has caused others and then ask him to visualize the joy that comes in the garden after the stone is rolled away. 

My Interpretation

Having spent most of my life in the reformed tradition, it is not surprising that I find myself wrestling with the introductory statement of The Spiritual Exercises, “The purpose of these exercises is to help the exercitant to conquer himself, and to regulate his life so that he will not be influenced in his decisions by any inordinate attachment.”  

Instead of controlling and renouncing personal affections, the reformed tradition often suggests ultimate godliness and happiness are found in fanning aflame affections of the Lord and the Spirit. Nevertheless, I feel Ignatius’s system of meditations offers wise and godly elements which could be effective in Christian life.

Three specific helps from Ignatius are: the extension of charity between exercitant and director, the acknowledgment of human limits, and the exhortation to stand firm during times of “desolation.”

In his introduction, Ignatius states both the director and the exercitant should extend each other the benefit of the doubt.  Early in my ministry career, a beloved pastor looked me squarely in the face and said, “You will have to give other missionaries the benefit of the doubt, even when you don’t want to.” I initially downplayed the advice — of course, as Christian, I would be charitable to wisdom and correction from other Christians. Right? But how easily do I toss this charity aside?  How closed am I to receiving instruction from fellow Christians? How tightly do I grip my own “right to be right” as a false path to salvation? Ignatius’s almost naïve-sounding directive to maintain openness and humility stops me in my crusty tracks.  It refreshes my soul.  It seems a great starting point in counseling, for both parties to commit to remaining open and teachable. It reminds us of the Christ-like path of humility.

Ignatius goes on to say we must become “indifferent to all created things.” I don’t agree with this entirely. For example, his statement, “we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty,”  could create meaninglessness, if carried too far. (The world God created is broken, yes, but not meaningless. We should strive to keep people healthy and out of poverty.)  But we would do well, as both counselors and counselees, to accept our circumstances with faith from the Lord’s hand.  As Job notes, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 3:21). I have found that receiving life’s parameters as gifts from the Lord and working within those parameters have been helpful in my own journey. Ignatius wisely exhorts exercitants to break the ties that bind their hearts to any created thing or plan.

Finally, much of Ignatius’s attention in these exercises focuses on decision making and discernment — preparing oneself spiritually to make sound choices and standing firm during times of despair or trial.  This is valuable for counseling because our decision-riddled western world is often confounding. Our choices are myriad and muddled. Some are haunted by past decisions.  Others reel from decisions made on their behalf or for their harm. Many of the “worried well” struggle with a framework for making decisions and are plagued by visions of choosing the wrong path.

Even though we may imagine Ignatius’s 16^th century as a simpler time, it is clear from his instructions that he and his contemporaries also wrestled with decision making. A passage which brings together the almost-mystical Ignatius (who says, “We should not make predestination an habitual subject of conversation” (p. 141)), and modern-day Calvinistic Presbyterians like myself (sometimes accused of being stuffy and frozen) is:  “In time of desolation one should never make a change, but stand firm and constant in the resolutions and decision which guided him the day before the desolation, or to the decision which he observed in the preceding consolation.  For just as the good spirit guides and consoles us in consolation, so in desolation the evil spirit guides and counsels.  Following the counsels of this latter spirit, one can never find the correct way to a right decision”  (p. 130).

I can envision using this passage in my own life and the lives of others.  The waves are tossing to and fro’.  Life feels bad. Love feels hard. 

                 Where are the promises of God when the path is dark? 

                 What are the promises of God when the storms rage? 

                  When will relief come from His hand? 

Ignatius is encouraging us to wait out the dark  He urges us to stand firm and not make decisions when the waves are high and the shoreline is dim. 

Struggling in your marriage?  Remember the decision made years ago to love and to cherish.  Wrestling with your emotions?  Remember the one who chose you and kept you. Seeking relief in wrong places?  Wait on the sustaining and quenching grace of the Lord. 

Life is sometimes dark, and a “spirit of desolation” will come. Ignatius urges us not to make rash decisions or take precipitous action during this period of “desolation.” God is still there; watch for Him. Whether you are Catholic or Presbyterian, a priest or a housewife, God is the same, and He is good.  His joy comes in the morning.

The Spiritual Exercises  St. Ignatius of Loyola, Image Books, Garden City, NY, 1964

200 pages (Including Introduction and Appendix). 145 pages without the appendix.

St. Ignatius of Loyola F.A. Forbes, Tan Books, Charlotte, N.C., 1998. 77 pages