Spiritual Exercises

The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius by St Ignatius of Loyola, translated by Louis J Puhl, SJ,127 pages

The young St Ignatius of Loyola underwent a profound conversion during his convalescence after being wounded in battle.  Renouncing the glories of the battlefield for the humility of the spirit, he pursued the conquest of self through the cultivation of detachment.  Sought after as a spiritual director first in Spain and later in Paris, he developed a series of exercises designed to enlist the imagination and the will in the soul's spiritual combat with the forces of sin and death.  The men formed by this method became the first members of the Society of Jesus, and five centuries later every year tens of thousands of men and women around the world benefit from undertaking the exercises.

A classic example of a process that must be experienced rather than documented, the text of The Spiritual Exercises consists of little more than notes for directors, and poorly organized notes at that.  Ignatius' method targets the individual without being individualistic - it demands a director to guide the exercitant through the exercises and to whom the exercitant is accountable.  At the same time it is extraordinarily flexible.  St Ignatius did include short treatises on prayer and the discernment of spirits, so there is some profit for the solitary reader.