Introduction

So, welcome to these talks, times of prayer that we're going to share over the next four weeks. I'm really happy to be able to do this because the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius that we'll be sharing, breaking open, and above all, praying, have been such a richness in my own life that I'm just so happy to have a chance to share them with you. I would say it this way: twice in my spiritual life, spiritual realities have grabbed and absorbed my attention in a way that I knew was really something special and that I needed to attend to. And the two are related.

One was our founder, the founder of my religious community, the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, and that's the Venerable Bruno Lanteri. From the moment I encountered our community—this is eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old—he's fascinated me, and he has ever since. And the second thing was the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. And I say the two things are related because Venerable Bruno had a deep love for the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and gave them to our religious community as our primary apostolate. So that's how someone who is not a Jesuit happens to be so deeply involved in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius.

My first experience of them was in my first year in the seminary when a Jesuit priest came. Over five days, he gave us a series of talks on the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, essentially taking us through them. It just whetted my interest even more. But I'd say the key point came after my second year in theology—so two years away from priestly ordination—when one of my companions in the summer made the full thirty-day Ignatian Exercises. And something in me just wanted it in the worst way.

You know, I was drawn to that, just really desired and hoped for the grace of being able to do that. And through a series of circumstances, the following summer, I was able to do the thirty-day retreat with a really venerable and, I would say advisedly, holy—certainly knowledgeable—Jesuit. This Jesuit not only guided us through the thirty days of that retreat with expertise and with real spiritual unction and warmth, but he furthered in me a sense of the treasure that there is in this retreat in a way that has marked my life ever since. After that experience—and it's a little bit of that that I hope to share with you. Above all, I would say I hope that the Lord will share with you through what we'll be doing in these times of prayer over twenty-eight days.

That became a focal point for me. I studied the Exercises. I learned from men, Jesuits, who were real masters in them. And eventually, the time came when I began to give them myself. And much of the now forty-two years of my priesthood has been spent with the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises.

And I have experienced over and over and over again the power of these exercises to change lives. Now, there are endless accounts of this kind over the five-hundred-year history of the Spiritual Exercises, but I think the point is made. And better than my making the point, you will experience it as we go forward and you pray through the Exercises. Now, what we're going to do is, essentially with Ignatius as our guide, enter into prayer with the Scriptures, because that's the basic pillar of the Spiritual Exercises. There are other actions in the Spiritual Exercises, but the main one is to pray over and over again through the days with Scripture.

And Ignatius has a wonderful teaching, one of the most practical teachings in our spiritual tradition about how to do that. So we're going to look at those two things. We're actually going to be praying with Scripture, but we'll also break it open a bit at a time as we go through Ignatius' way of praying with the Bible. And I'll preface that by quoting just two sentences from the document of Vatican II on the Scriptures, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. And the Council says this: In the sacred books, the Father who is in Heaven comes lovingly to meet His children and talks with them.

Often we want to hear God's word. What's your answer? Well, here in the Sacred Scriptures, the Father comes lovingly to meet His children and talks with them. And such is the force and power of the Word of God that it can serve the Church as her support and vigor, which obviously the Church always needs, but how much more in these times? And then, turning specifically to us, it can serve the Church as her support and vigor and the children of the Church in three ways: as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting fount of spiritual life.

As I've looked at that quote over the years, it just strikes me how much we need all three of those things. Think of your daily life in the work world, at home. You live your marriage, your role as a parent. You take part in the life of the Church and where the culture is. Three things that we so much need: strength for our faith. There is less support for our faith now around us in the culture, and it becomes more and more important that we find in our daily lives a way to grow stronger in our faith.

And here it is. Food for the soul. You know when you're thirsty and you feel your energy is diminishing, and then you have just the meal that you need and you're ready to go. That's what prayer with Scripture can become in our lives if we learn how to do it well and if we're faithful to it.

And I would say that the Spiritual Exercises are the best school of prayer that I know of. And then finally, a pure and lasting fountain of spiritual life, so that something pure, integral, unmixed with things that are not of God, grows stronger in our hearts as we live our daily spiritual lives. Now, who doesn't need these things? And here is the royal path to it. The Father comes lovingly to meet His children in the divine Scriptures and speaks with them.

I think many of us feel drawn to pray with Scripture, but I am quite confident that I speak for many of us when I say we may also have a sense that we're not quite sure that we really know how to do that well. Is there any help in this? You know, I went through years of preparation to become a priest. For example, we had our novitiate with a really fine, and I'd say holy, priest as our novice master. And we had many talks on prayer.

But one thing I will never forget: I remember that final day of my thirty-day Ignatian retreat with the Spiritual Exercises, and I said to myself, someone has finally taught me how to pray. Ignatius can do that for us. There is a spiritual journey in these Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius calls them weeks, and there are four of them. Call them stages if you want.

In the formal thirty-day retreat, there probably will be roughly five, six, seven, eight days—something like that. So Ignatius begins the journey of the Exercises with what he calls the Principle and Foundation. If you're going to build a building well, you need a solid foundation. And so Ignatius invites us to go back to the real roots of why we're here in this world: because God created us, because He loved us from eternity and placed us in this world to accomplish a task in our respective vocations toward the work of redemption in this life, and so enter into eternal life. Basically, the first and most foundational thing is just to know that we're loved, that God loves us.

That's where it starts. And then, in what he calls the first week—call it the first major step—Ignatius invites us to pray for freedom from anything that would hold us back from God: weaknesses, fragilities, sinfulness, failings, and so forth, and to bring these to the loving mercy of our God for healing. And then, in what is the real heart of the retreat—the center, most developed part of the retreat—Ignatius invites us to pray through the life of Jesus together with Jesus, and just drink in Jesus, learning more about Him, growing in love of Him so that our lives will be more centered on the Lord Jesus. And then, in the third stage or the third week, we walk with Christ through His Passion, seeking the strength that we will need to live this new, rich, growing spiritual life. And in the fourth and final stage, we pray with the Resurrection of Christ, where we see the victory over all His sufferings, which engenders hope and energy and courage for us as the retreat concludes and we resume a more normal way of living our lives.

Along the way, as we'll see, Ignatius will give very valuable instruction about prayer, about many aspects of the spiritual life, and about understanding discernment, attractions, thoughts—what's of God, what is not of God. He has some marvelous teaching on that. So I'm going to conclude now with a lovely text that we read in the Liturgy of the Hours every year in Advent. And it's the very first lines of this written work by Saint Anselm, the Proslogion, which is a beautiful meditation on God as Creator. And as I read these first—oh, it should be about four sentences.

You'll see why I read them as an invitation to the whole process that lies ahead. I generally read these to retreatants the first night when we gather to begin any retreat that I give. Oh, little soul, he says, escape from your everyday business for a short while. Hide for a moment from your restless thoughts. Break off from your cares and troubles and be less concerned about your tasks and labors.

Make a little time for God. That's what these sessions are. Make a little time for God and rest a while in Him. Enter into your mind's inner chamber. Shut out everything but God and whatever helps you to seek Him.

And when you have shut the door, look for Him. Speak now to God and say with your whole heart—and here he quotes Psalm 27—"I seek Your face; Your face, Lord, I desire." Make a little time for God—ten minutes, fifteen minutes, a half hour, whatever you can comfortably do—and rest a while in Him. And with Ignatius as our guide, in so doing, we will experience the refreshment and growth and renewed energy that the Spiritual Exercises so blessedly offer us. Amen.