Personal Writings

If you are looking for a common and useful type of Catholic spiritual exercise, you should know first that the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola may be a bit too dense and problematical for what you want. Many people like to pretend that they can do them on their own without an experienced Jesuit to monitor them. That is a 'new age' invention. It has nothing to do with how these exercises are actually praticed by those who hold the rightful ownership over them, namely the Jesuit order in full communion with the Holy See. I would instead point you in the direction of The Divine Office (also called The Liturgy of the Hours) as a very wholesome and progressive type of daily prayer that is recommended to all the laity around the globe by the Holy See. The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola are certainly more than a little too heady and intense because of its meditations on topics like sinners in hell. I would recommend that you maybe read through the Spiritual Exercises and try to answer the questions without too much spiritual intensity (using more reason and logic than feelings) or adopting the extreme environmental settings that Jesuits would undertake in doing them. As laity you are not supposed to be doing these on your own anyway. After talking to a Jesuit, I found out that the exercises are not for everybody and the person undertaking the exercises, needs supervision. This can not be understated. Anything to the contrary would be a brand new invention by the reader. God is love. Christianity without love is not Christianity. Saint Ignatius of Loyola `Personal Writings' is a very interesting book that reveals a lot of details about somebody who many of us would have taken for granted as a person who was born into a Christian vacuum and probably had a life full of Christian happiness that made him a Saintly person. Nothing could be further from the truth. Saint Ignatius was a warrior who sought glory through armed combat. After having his legs shattered he spent months recovering with multiple corrective surgeries, while reading books about the lives of Saints. He then set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to find himself and Christ, had many visions (which he continued to have until his death), sought alms, returned to Europe, often used his alms to support others in poverty, had one to one spiritual talks with people about Christianity, converted them, was accused by the inquisition of heresy several times, although never proven, wound up in Paris studying, went home to Spain, before going to Italy where he studied to become a priest and founded the Society of Jesus, whose members are better known as Jesuits today. This is all covered in Part 1 of the book called `Reminiscences' an 80 paged autobiography. It is interesting to note that Saint Ignatius appears to be a very strange character with possible delusions, doing many crazy things (like telling a wild ship crew that they better change their sinful ways while

Saint Ignatius was a Basque military officer from Loyola, a great saint, and the founder of one of the most influential religious orders in world history: the Society of Jesus(the Jesuits). His personal writings reveal a truly gentle, emotional man who gave up all the pleasures of nobility to become a poor, wretched pilgrim for the sake of Christ. His Reminisces recounts all the main events of his life, from his bravery in the battle that left him crippled for life, to his conversion in his recovery bed, and finally to his founding of the Jesuit order. His journal reveals his spirituality and describes his mystical experiences, his letters reveal his patience, wisdom, and kindness, and his tremendously popular Spiritual Exercises gives advice on how to dedicate your life to God and see His action all around you. Ignatius's writings resonate with the tender devotion and the firmness of purpose found only in the writings of the Saints. Reading this book, one can see the guiding hand of Providence in the life of Ignatius and in the history of the Church, a hand that can use even the worst sinner to bring a shattered world back to His Son.