Five Things the Spiritual Exercises Taught Me About Jesus
On more occasions than I care to count, people will comment to me, “Ignatian spirituality does not have enough to do with Jesus. All...
What the Principle and Foundation Calls Us To
The launching point of Ignatian spirituality is that God loves us fiercely, passionately, and unconditionally. Because of this love, God’s desires and hopes for...
Better Than Your Best?
Magis is one of the more mysterious Ignatian terms. It’s a Latin word meaning “the greater, the excellent, the best.” It’s associated with restless striving to...
When You Think Someone Is Wrong
I've been thinking about Ignatius's Presupposition lately. This is a ground rule for the Spiritual Exercises that he puts right at the beginning of the book. It's...
Three Kinds of Humility
St. Ignatius, like many spiritual masters over the centuries, suggested that humility was a prerequisite for the spiritual life. In his Spiritual Exercises, he...
Contemplation to Attain the Love of God
The Contemplation to Attain the Love of God is a kind of capstone of Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises. Sometimes it is phrased as “The Contemplation...
Magis
A few years ago, I was visiting a Jesuit college and speaking to an eager and enthusiastic undergraduate. Our conversation turned to the idea...
Ignatian Indifference
Often, we think about freedom as freedom from interference from others, but St. Ignatius understood freedom differently. For him, human freedom is a freedom...
Ancient Roots of Spiritual Exercises
The French philosopher Pierre Hadot has studied the origins of spiritual exercises among Greek philosophers. There seems to be a straight line from Hellenistic...
Free at Last?
There’s a meditation in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius called “Three Classes of People,” which is designed to help us understand our attachments....