“Bodily exercise profiteth little.”[1] Pastors and elders use that saying to caution others about the competitive influence of sports and athletics upon spiritual disciplines. While the concerns they bring are valid, the pastors and elders focus more on a symptom than the root of the problem. What is on the opposite end of the spectrum of bodily exercise? To the Christian, the answer is not “no bodily exercise” but rather “spiritual exercise.” Through his own time of intra-reflection, Ignatius Loyola developed a four-week guide to spiritual exercise, entitled The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. Loyola designed the exercises to include a team: the one administrating the exercises and the one doing/making the exercises.[2] In the exercises, Loyola also described three prayer methods, of which I will only focus on two. Designed to be consistent though not ritualistic, Loyola emphasized prayer’s reflective and contemplative nature as a spiritual exercise.

First, Ignatius Loyola set forth the preparation for prayer. He wrote, “One may sit or kneel accordingly as one feels better disposed or finds great devotion, but should keep the eyes closed or intent on one place, and not allow them to wander.”[3] The posture of prayer was to display one’s internal disposition to prayer and enable the reflective and contemplative nature of prayer. A preparatory prayer turned the mind of the applicant towards the day’s text. The preparation for prayer ensured that the applicant was mentally prepared for the exercise.

The first method of prayer is reflective in nature. Loyola highlighted four categories in which human nature tends to err or violate God’s commands: “the ten commandments, the seven capital sins, the three faculties of the soul, and the five senses of the body.”[4] The exercise involves the applicant reflecting on his nature and his past and how God wants him to live and how he can learn to live that way. The ten commandments objectively prescribe God’s plan for moral living. Today, we may glance over these commandments in favor of New Testament wording; nonetheless, the ten commandments remain a pivotal part of God’s moral conduct for His people. Furthermore, Loyola mentioned the seven capital sins and required the applicant to ponder such sins’ consequences. The means to reflect on the capital sins is not the sin itself but rather its opposing virtue. In attempting for the virtues, one will necessarily oppose the capital sins. Not much direction was given for reflection on the three powers of the soul and the five senses. Nevertheless, the same examination process occurred in all four categories—a time of reflection of past actions.

While the first method of prayer did focus on reflection, it also emphasized repentance. As written in the exercises, “I should accuse myself accordingly and beg grace and help to amend myself for the future.”[5] While reflecting on one’s past actions, the applicant would find areas of failure and cry out to God for mercy and forgiveness. Furthermore, the applicant must find ways to amend himself for the future. Reflection in prayer would bring confession and amendment.

While the first method relied on reflection, the second method relied on contemplation. As Loyola describes it, “then the person should say the word ‘Father,’ and continue to consider the word as long as meanings, comparisons, relish, and consolations connected with it are found.”[6] Though meant for written prayers which may not be as common today, I would suggest that songs could be a perfect substitute. We have many hymns and meaningful songs that induce a mentality of contemplation. Nonetheless, I still strongly emphasize the need to carefully consider each word of a prayer, whether written or not. Whether songs or prayers, Loyola desired the applicant to take the time needed for complete contemplation. There were no time constraints; one word could take one hour! Looking to our nature, something familiar becomes habitual; habitual requires no thought. The command for everyone is to think about each word and describe its meaning. Do not sway to the temptation of glancing over words in songs and prayers but contemplate their meaning. The second method of prayer was a contemplation of the spiritual texts.

Spiritual disciplines have the potential to become ritualistic. We do them because we have always done them. While consistency is needed, focus on prayer as a time of reflection and contemplation. Allow prayer to be a reflection of the accounts of our lives to the commandments of God. Take the time to contemplate the words that God has given us and the words we speak to Him.

References

[1] I Timothy 4:8, KJV.

[2] Ignatius Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, trans. George E. Ganss, S.J. (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1991), 21-26.

[3] Ibid., 99.

[4] Ibid., 96.

[5] Ibid., 97.

[6] Ibid., 97.

The 20th century French philosopher Simone Weil imagined prayer as absolute attention. While this is a useful way to speak of prayer it was hardly a novel one, for Christian mystics have long held that a connection to the divine might rapture the individual to behold the face of God. Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century French mystic) spoke of prayer, “The more I contemplate God, the more God looks on me. The more I pray to him, the more he thinks of me too.” Bernard’s prayer was shaped by his Catholic faith. Weil was captured by the beauty of that same Christian faith, and though she never gave herself to it in full, it shaped her writing and her prayer profoundly.

Only a few centuries before Weil, a young Basque man had walked the very same Parisian streets while studying there, and much like Weil and St. Bernard, prayer was on his mind. He was Ignatius of Loyola, and his past was that of a military man, a high-spirited, flamboyant youth in service of his kingdom and the noble virtues of bravery and chivalry. His courageous servitude of king and country brought to a crashing halt by a cannonball accident, he arrived in Paris with his own spiritual conversion fresh in memory. And so, his sword and dagger hung up beside the Virgin Mother in a highly figurative demonstration of his new intentions, Ignatius set himself to studies and to prayer.

Prayer and the Spiritual Exercises

During his Parisian period, Ignatius wrote and revised his musings on prayer, and a manual of sorts formed. In his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius wanted to develop a pattern of prayer which could be used by monks or anyone else who wished to deepen their connection to the divine. He designed the Exercises to be used in a 30-day retreat format, with the retreatant praying alongside a spiritual guide, perhaps an abbot or priest who had been trained in the Exercises. Crucially, Ignatius insisted that the Exercises were not themselves a method of prayer, calling them rather “a structural form,” with the intent “that those praying may prepare themselves ... and make their prayer acceptable” (96). Indeed, little about them is solidified, as Ignatius intended them to be adapted to fit the needs and personality of the retreatant. His recommended 30-day length could be shortened or lengthened, and he recommended that different forms of prayer be adopted according to the retreatant’s experience and temperament. This move by Ignatius was an insightful one, and the flexibility of the Exercises would contribute to their popularity in the years to come. For even as they gave the retreatant a framework with which to begin prayer, they left room for one’s prayers to become one’s own, according to the leading of the divine.

Like Bernard of Clairvaux, Ignatius believed that prayer should change the one who prayed. To behold the face of Christ, after all, was to be changed increasingly into his image. Unity with the divine, for Ignatius, was the end of all men. “The end and culminating point of the Exercises”, his editors later added, “can only be a union with God which is most intimate and total” (147). This beatific vision, then, was the ultimate fulfillment of humanity, and man’s highest aim. Humans were the only earthly beings who could enjoy this inner experience of the divine, Ignatius reasoned, and therefore, all other created earthly things existed to help man achieve this end. In this order Ignatius sees a great danger: the human tendency to abuse created things, and to be distracted away from the divine by these very objects. “We ought to use these things to the extent that they help us toward our end”, he charged, “and free ourselves from them to the extent that they hinder us from it (32). So then, Ignatius posited, the beginning of prayer must be to re-order one’s desires, to recognize the earthly attachments that kept one from communion with God, and to shed them. Only when the retreatant was rid of such desires would they be truly free not only to pray, but to use God’s created matter rightly in their pursuit of unity with Christ.

Prayer and Salvation

To pray was to unite oneself to Christ, and to be united to Christ was salvation for the one who prayed. To be truly saved, in Ignatius’ view, was to become as God, to enter into the beatific vision more fully every day. “Human beings” he wrote, “are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by means of doing this to save our souls (32).” His editors add, “By ‘salvation,’ Ignatius meant also continual spiritual progress” (150), and “For Ignatius ‘salvation’’ often connoted ‘perfection’” (149). Freedom from disordered loves and discipline in prayer were the path to union with Christ. To pray was to be spiritually formed into the very image of Christ, and this process was akin to salvation. The Exercises were a tool for prayer, prayer was to lead one into union with Christ, and such a union, to the Christian, was salvation and transformation.

Bibliography

Ignatius, Saint, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: A Translation and Commentary, trans. George E. Ganss. (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1991).

Ignatian Solidarity Network. n.d. https://ignatiansolidarity.net/st-ignatius-of-loyola/.

"Saint Bernard of Clairvaux." ALL SAINTS: SAINT OF THE DAY. https://saintscatholic.blogspot.com/2018/11/saint-bernard-of-clairvaux.html.

Kenneth Godoy '22