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[Woodstock Report, December 1998, No. 56]
The Spiritual Exercises are a retreat of 30 days (with various adaptations in length and style) to assist people to understand how to discover, in the context of their daily lives and worldly affairs, God’s desires and will for them, and to be given the freedom to do it. Ideally, these exercises become, with practice and over time, a habitual modus operandi.
1. The Spiritual Exercises open with a consideration of God’s loving design for our world and our role in its achievement. We are then invited to an initial evaluation of our stewardship: our successes and failures in collaborating with God to realize his desires for us and our world.
2. For the most part the exercises are a series of meditations on select Scripture passages which the retreatant reads, ponders, and prays over, in order to be informed, impressed, moved, and affected by them. The aim is to come (a) to understand Christ's mission: what it is for and what it fights against ("to know him more clearly"), (b) to admire him ("to love him more dearly"), and (c) to feel drawn to join with him in his struggle and to follow him on his mission ("to follow him more nearly"). These scriptural meditations move from Christ’s birth and childhood, through his public ministry, to his passion, death, and resurrection. This is not just a chronology; there is, we discover, an unfolding "logic."
3. Interspersed throughout this series of scriptural meditations are special exercises which Ignatius has developed in order to clarify, illustrate, and dramatize (through use of imagination and affections) this struggle between the contending forces of good and evil, God and Satan, Jesus and the "world" (in St. John's sense). We come to experience that this struggle is going on both "out there" in the world and "in here" in our own hearts and minds. Some of these special exercises are: viewing our world through the eyes of the Trinity; considering Christ’s call to us as that of a warrior seeking companionship in battle (the young Ignatius was a soldier!); understanding the forces of good and evil as two sets of "campaign strategies;" and discovering, experiencing, and appreciating Christ as a "laborer" working here and now in history with and for us.
4. Also interspersed throughout the scriptural meditations are special exercises for testing, refining, and building up our freedom to choose the good. For instance, putting ourselves on our death bed and looking back on the options we "faced;" giving advice to our best friend; grading ourselves on the level or degree of our honesty and generosity; etc. There is instruction about and exercises for getting in touch with our feelings—which both energize us and reveal our motivations to us as either worthy or unworthy, freeing or binding us.
5. Instruction and guidance in discernment of "spirits" (i.e., the sources of feelings that are trying to motivate us to action) and decision making, i.e., in choosing the good to which God calls us. This process includes getting the relevant data, understanding and affirming it accurately, weighing or discerning the relative merits and value of the various possible courses of action in response to the needs or opportunity revealed in this concrete situation, making the decision which "seems best in the Lord," and carrying it into action. There are instructions about "Making an Election or a Choice of a State of Life," "Rules for the Discernment of Spirits," and doing the "Examen of Consciousness."
Some Presuppositions in doing the Examen
1. God’s creating is a continual sharing of Trinitarian life with all creation "that all may be one, as Thou, Father in me, and I in Thee, that they may be one in us." (John 17:21)
2. Thus present in creation and human history, God guides us toward the full attainment of this life with God and one another in unity and peace, justice and love.
3. We humans can discern the direction of God’s active guidance in our own daily history, and can collaborate with God to promote its realization in action.
4. The sign of God’s guidance is: what produces unity and peace among people and what instills feelings of peace, love, and integrity in us. By contrast, what produces dissension and hostility in society and selfishness and vengeance in us is a sign of the presence and activity of evil. (See Galatians 5:13-26)
Steps in Making the Ignatian Examen
1. We begin by quieting ourselves. Become aware of God’s goodness, the gifts of life and love. Be thankful. Recall that without faith, the eye of love, the human world seems too evil for God to be good, for a good God to exist.
2. Pray for the grace to see clearly, to understand accurately, and to respond generously to the guidance God is giving us in our daily history.
3. Review in memory the history of the day (week, month, etc.) in order to be shown concrete instances of the presence and guidance of God and, perhaps, of the activity and influence of evil. These can be detected by paying attention to strong feelings we experienced that may have accompanied or arisen from situations and encounters.
4. Evaluate these instances in which we have either collaborated with God or yielded to the influence of evil in some way. Express gratitude and regret.
5. Plan and decide how to collaborate more effectively with God and how, with God’s assistance, to avoid or overcome the influence of evil in the future.
Conclude with an "Our Father."