St. Ignatius of Loyola was born Inigo Lopez de Loyola in 1491. He was born into a family of some nobility and therefore was exposed at a young age to the romances of courtly life, including gambling, sword fighting, and women. At the Battle of Pamplona, Inigo’s leg was shattered by a cannonball, which seemingly ended his life of excitement and adventure. While he was recovering at his family castle in Loyola his boredom led him to begin reading about the life of Christ and the lives of the saints. These books introduced him to a new kind of noble adventure, an adventure with God. Upon an unsuccessful pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he stopped in the town of Manressa. He had only intended to stay there for a few days, but he ended up living in a cave for ten months. This is where Inigo developed the Spiritual Exercises, a series of Spiritual Disciplines that are dedicated to growing in intimacy with Jesus.
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are made up of four “weeks,” each “week” dedicated to a contemplation of a different aspect of the Gospel. The first week being personal sin and the sin of the world, the second week being the life and ministry of Christ, and the third and fourth week focused on Christ’s passion that culminates in the apprehension of Divine Love. The complete retreat is often completed in a one-month block, where a participant leaves his or her home, spends time in a retreat center or monastery. It can also be completed over the course of 9 months where one dedicates 1 hour a day to a spiritual exercise.
Each individual meditation calls the participant to use several faculties of the mind in engaging with scripture passages and theological truths. The imagination is key in Ignatian prayer. The participant must offer his or her imagination to the Holy Spirit and allow the Spirit to bring the Scriptures to life and personal relevance. This allows the participant to experience the life and work of Christ more completely in his or her life.
Unlike many other retreats, this one necessitates a highly qualified spiritual director. The retreat may seem counter intuitive at times, so a director is very important for the interpretation of experiences. For this reason, Metamorpha is not promoting a self-guided Ignatian retreat. We do however see the benefits in Ignatian prayer concepts and it is these that we will be introducing over the next several months.
Ignatian meditation involves several key spiritual disciplines: lectio divina, Ignatian contemplation, reminiscence, and the examination of consciousness (notice: not conscience). Each of these disciplines plays a role in one Igantian meditation. Fortunately, they are also all highly beneficial to integrate into our own prayer life apart from a complete Ignatian Meditation.
The Practice of Ignatian Contemplation
Context
While this particular discipline has been called many things over the years and can be broken down in a variety of ways, the foundational aspect of Ignatian contemplation is imagination. From reading the short biography we have provided of St. Ignatius, you probably observed that this man was not lacking in passion and zeal. In his years as a soldier, he thrived on the excitement and romantic ideals. When St. Ignatius discovered the Gospel of Christ, he found many of the themes in Scripture even more invigorating than those found in courtly life.
When he read Scripture and about the lives of the saints, he was drawn into the story. He used his already well-practiced imagination to connect more deeply to the lives of Christ and His apostles. He encouraged those he spiritually directed to exercise their imagination when engaging with Scripture. We hope that you enjoy this time of allowing the Holy Spirit to guide your imagination as you open to Scripture.
Practice
Choosing a passage
Begin by choosing a passage that is fairly familiar to you (you know who wrote it or said it, who it was spoken to, and a basic context for that discourse). A bit of background information is a great protection against reading into a passage something that is not there, while still allowing the passage to be alive and personally relevant. For this discipline, it is best to choose a passage where there is interaction between individuals. For example, imagining one of Christ’s healings would yield itself better to this discipline than one of Paul’s theological discourses. Ignatius put a great deal of focus on the life of Christ. That may be a great place for you to start as well.
4 Steps of Ignatian Contemplation
Quiet your heart—Find a nice comfortable spot to sit and quiet your thoughts. You may want to focus on your breath or intentionally pass noisy thoughts to God.
Seek a Grace—Ask the Lord for what you desire. Hopefully you have chosen a passage that contains a theme you desire to connect with. Ask the Lord to help you connect to the truth found in that passage. For example, if Jesus is inviting the children to come to him, perhaps the grace that you would seek, would be to understand and experience how Jesus is inviting you to come to him as a child.
Read the Passage and Imagine—Pay particular notice to what the scene looks like? Where does this take place? Who are the people present? Watch the passage play out like a movie as you read it. You will likely want to read the passage several times until the passage is so familiar that you can watch it play out in your mind without interruption. Play the scene over several times. Notice the emotional movements that are taking place in you while you are imagining the scene.
Closing Conversation—Have a conversation with the Triune God about what you experienced in this time. Were there any surprises? Do you now have more questions? Were there any points of frustration? Were there times of consolation? Did you receive the Grace you asked for?
Discuss!