This post is based on Week Four of An Ignatian Prayer Adventure.
The Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises invites us into an extended contemplation on the life of Jesus. We pray that we may become more like Jesus, and we do that by gazing on him as we explore the Gospels. We put ourselves into the scenes of the Gospels through imaginative prayer.
As Fr. Kevin O’Brien, SJ, explains:
We trust that God is with us when we are praying these Exercises…How we know this is the right use of our imagination is simply this: is it drawing us closer to Jesus? Is our imagination helping us grow in our knowledge of Jesus and in our love of Jesus and in our desire to serve or follow him? That is, in the end, how we know whether our imagination is properly used.
O’Brien is the author of The Ignatian Adventure: Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius in Daily Life and Seeing with the Heart: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Adventures.