Saturday, September 8, 2007

Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola

A reliable source tells me that the Catholic Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE, for their Spanish acronym), located just to the Northeast of Washington, D.C., is going to have a retreat next weekend preaching the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. It will begin on the evening of Friday, Sep 14 and finish on Sunday, Sep 16 in the evening. If you are interested in attending, you can contact Fr. Mariano Vicchi at marianovicchi@ive.org.

The Spirital Exercises are said to be a powerful tool for discernment of all types. To give you a taste of the good saint's writing on this topic, this is his "Principle and Foundation" for the first week of the exercises:

"Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.

"And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created.

"From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it.

"For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created."

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