An Ignatian Silent Retreat- What Happens? Day Three/Part Three

Captain’s Log……Stardate 11/18/2020

So that process I was talking about?

I am going to write a little more about it today.

Ignatius of Loyola was a spiritual giant who founded the Order of the Jesuits way back in the 1500s. There is a long and fascinating story that you can look up about this. Having graduated from a Catholic university (THE Catholic University actually), I was fairly familiar with some of the history. “The Mission”, with Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons, is my favorite movie of all time- and that movie goes into a lot of the political history. If you have not seen it, you need to.

There are Jesuit retreat houses, schools, universities, hospitals and other institutions all over the world. The history is complicated- and like all Christian history- messed up with power, politics and colonialism. The foundational methods of prayer and contemplation that Ignatius founded, however, have remained consistent and mostly unchanged in 500 years.

And they still work.

To learn more about the method, you can read the ancient, original writings by Ignatius- but if you want a bit of a more modern spin on it- read the works of Father James Martin. Father Martin is one of the most well known present day teachers of Ignatian spirituality. He is easy to…