The preaching of the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius have long been a staple of the IVE under Fr. Buela. While the exercises in and of themselves are certainly a great spiritual gift, we have been concerned for some time that their traditional purpose as an opportunity for discernment was being deformed by the IVE practitioners.
Specifically, we have increasingly heard stories where the conscience of those attending the exercises has been influenced both directly and indirectly by the IVE priest with regards to discernment of a vocation. This is contrary to the explicit instructions of St Ignatius:
He who is giving the Exercises ought not to influence him who is receiving them more to poverty or to a promise, than to their opposites, nor more to one state or way of life than to another.Unfortunately, many IVE priests do influence those attending, especially during one on one direction or confession. This was the experience of our friend Laura Monica. It was also the experience of another reader who remarked that during the exercises "it was funny how the only answer seemed to be 'join the order'." These stories have us concerned that the IVE have warped the spiritual exercises into a tool for recruiting vocations.
Thankfully, Ines Pascaul, a previous attendee of the IVE exercises in their weekend form, had the same concerns and asked to share them with the readers of this site. This paragraph from the latter portion of her letter captures perfectly our the concerns regarding discernment:
"With timing, with the emphasis, and with many other subtle methods, the IVE way of conducting the Spiritual Exercises does not conform with Ignatius’ view of the role of the person giving the exercises... the retreat becomes about the teachings of the particular priest rather than allowing the individual to hear whatever it is that God wants to communicate at that time… When individuals viscerally experience their intense brokenness and sinfulness without also simultaneously experiencing God’s love for them… they enter an extremely vulnerable and frightening place… In this tumult, entering the IVE/SSVM can seem like the obvious solution. They are able to run from their selves and their pain and towards the certainty that a life with the IVE/SSVM would seem to provide. This is simply not the freedom to serve God with generosity that Ignatius sought to let others experience. It is positively dangerous especially because individuals who chose to take the risk to go on retreats are often already in a vulnerable place…"
Before going forward, we want to repeat here as we have done many times before that there are many very, very good men among the IVE priests. (The writer strongly agrees with this and is grateful for the hospitality and kindness received.) They were raised in this method of the exercises and of discernment. The individual priests are not to be faulted for any issues outlined below. They are made to preach the exercises regardless of their level of training, time for preparation, or conflict with additional responsibilities. Many are equally uncomfortable with it - albeit for different reasons.
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Today, with a Jesuit Pope, there is an increasing interest in Ignatian Spirituality, and, particularly, The Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius of Loyola intended for them to be accessible to all—not just the province of the Jesuits. This spirituality, almost 500 years on, continues to profoundly impact men and women throughout the world, bringing them into a deeper relationship with God. I am very familiar with Ignatian Spirituality through participation in several forms of retreats in both English and Spanish—including weekend retreats, 8-day retreats, and the 19th Annotation Spiritual Exercises in Daily Life. I have also done significant study of the Exercises from a more academic perspective, and helped to lead retreats myself.
Recently, I was looking for a weekend Spiritual Exercises retreat and happened upon one lead by the IVE/SSVM. The IVE/SSVM claim to model much of their spirituality on the Spiritual Exercises. They frequently offer weekend Spiritual Exercises retreats for laypeople and for people who may be in the first steps of discerning a vocation.
However, this retreat had very little to do with the spirituality of St. Ignatius, but it badly distorted it. This version of the Exercises should be avoided. Far from just being a variant on the Exercises, it presents a spirituality that is self-centered, closed off from the world, and consistently misrepresents St. Ignatius.
As I have previously experienced the Exercises, the point is really to get to know God as made known in love and serve him more. It is not a servile fear, but a questioning of how I can have an ever-deepening relationship with God. In Ignatius' words: “Conocimiento interno de Cristo, para más amarle y seguirle”: “An internal knowledge of God in order to love him more deeply and follow him more closely.”
Ignatius is singularly effective at bringing us to an honest evaluation of ourselves. He makes us focus on ourselves in all of our imperfection and brokenness, preventing us from sugarcoating anything. He wants us to understand ourselves as sinners, with all the depth that this means. Pope Francis’ first response in his recent interview with Antonio Spadaro, SJ, published simultaneously in America and Jesuit magazines around the world, speaks to this:
Recently, I was looking for a weekend Spiritual Exercises retreat and happened upon one lead by the IVE/SSVM. The IVE/SSVM claim to model much of their spirituality on the Spiritual Exercises. They frequently offer weekend Spiritual Exercises retreats for laypeople and for people who may be in the first steps of discerning a vocation.
However, this retreat had very little to do with the spirituality of St. Ignatius, but it badly distorted it. This version of the Exercises should be avoided. Far from just being a variant on the Exercises, it presents a spirituality that is self-centered, closed off from the world, and consistently misrepresents St. Ignatius.
As I have previously experienced the Exercises, the point is really to get to know God as made known in love and serve him more. It is not a servile fear, but a questioning of how I can have an ever-deepening relationship with God. In Ignatius' words: “Conocimiento interno de Cristo, para más amarle y seguirle”: “An internal knowledge of God in order to love him more deeply and follow him more closely.”
Ignatius is singularly effective at bringing us to an honest evaluation of ourselves. He makes us focus on ourselves in all of our imperfection and brokenness, preventing us from sugarcoating anything. He wants us to understand ourselves as sinners, with all the depth that this means. Pope Francis’ first response in his recent interview with Antonio Spadaro, SJ, published simultaneously in America and Jesuit magazines around the world, speaks to this:
I ask Pope Francis point-blank: “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” He stares at me in silence. I ask him if I may ask him this question. He nods and replies: “I do not know what might be the most fitting description.... I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”
Ignatius’ spirituality certainly has purgative elements. But it is within the context of the all-encompassing love of a God who, when looking at how his creation was messing up, decided to act with mercy, to not withdraw but to become incarnate with us, to pitch his tent among us. I've often heard this described as “the beloved sinner grace.” That is, only in this experience of the ocean of God's love can we start to understand the depths of our brokenness. And the solution is to accept this but then accept all of the gifts we've also been given and the joy of being able to serve others. To move out of ourselves, and not to dwell upon our brokenness, but to accept God’s mercy and to use our gifts to their fullest in service to him. Ignatius sums this up in the Principle and Foundation [23]:
Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created. From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it. For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created.
From the initial purgative aspects—of the consideration of how sin works in us—the Spiritual Exercises go on to allow us to develop our relationship with God, approaching an understanding of the complex mysteries of the incarnation, resurrection, and redemption, and experiencing with our senses and imagination the earthly ministry of Jesus from his birth to his crucifixion, and further, witnessing his resurrection, all the while engaging in prayerful conversation (colloquies) with Jesus, Mary, and God the Father. We don’t get stuck in our degradation and shame and guilt. We recognize that the last word really is the resurrection.
But in the IVE/SSVM weekend version of the “Exercises”—the focus remained nearly entirely on MY degradation, MY shame, and MY guilt. This is problematic for a number of reasons, but a few reasons in particular stand out. First, Christian spirituality should be about decentering us. It should not be about my goodness or my badness, but about God’s goodness. By having us focus so intensely on our own individual sin, we remained self-centered. The first sin, pride (superbia in Latin or soberbia in Latin) is about being self-centered, autonomous, keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves and not God and others.
Second, the IVE priests try to motivate people by fear to avoid eternal damnation. However, Ignatius thinks that people who are motivated by this are not ready for the Exercises. The Exercises are for those who are seeking to continually live their lives ad majorem Dei glorium [to the greater glory of God]. Ignatius talks about some people “who are going from mortal sin to mortal sin.” [314]. These aren’t the people who are ready to undertake the Exercises. At one point, the priest even said, “If you do not follow the Principle and Foundation, your soul is at risk of eternal damnation!” This is the extreme antithesis of the Principle and Foundation, which has nothing to do with fear and coercion and is entirely about generous response to grace.
Rather than just being a poorly done retreat, or a retreat where the text of Ignatius is just read, and then individuals are left to experience the weekend with very little guidance, a specific ideology of a judgmental and punitive God removed from everyday human life was consistently developed. The reduction of the Exercises into a weekend retreat is always difficult, in even the best circumstances. However, the focus was disproportionately on sin/damnation.
The following were the chosen exercises according to my notes:
1. Principle and Foundation I (focus on man’s primacy and superior role over everything else in creation)
2. Principle and Foundation II (focus on how to use other things in this role of domination)
3. Discernment of Spirits (misrepresentation of feelings—explaining how they are not to be trusted and the intellect is what should be trusted)
4. Three Sins
5. Rules for Election
6. 2 Standards (focus on imagining the sights and sounds and smells of hell)
7. 3 Classes of Men
8. Hell
9. Passion
There were no meditations or contemplations on the positive things of creation or a single contemplation of Jesus’ life and ministry and Passion. In Ignatian Spirituality, contemplation generally refers to putting oneself into the scene. Through the application of the senses—sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch—the person making the Exercises finds oneself experiencing the events of the Gospels with the heart. However, outside of a cursory 5-minute lecture on what this might look like in the situation of the Nativity [121-126], this method of prayer was essentially ignored. In the actual Spiritual Exercises, a great deal of time is spent on this style of contemplation. The idea is that in the so-called Second Week you get to really know Jesus by accompanying him through his 33 years of life so that you are able to be present to him, to the best of your abilities, during the Passion, the Third Week. This isn’t the suffering of a stranger you are hearing about, but you are actually witnessing the suffering of a beloved leader and friend. After the desperation of the Third Week, in the Fourth Week, you are given the opportunity now to become a witness to the Resurrection through Jesus’ post-paschal appearances.
While, in the closing Mass, there was a passing reference made to the Contemplation to Attain Divine Love and to the Resurrection, this was rushed and did not bring focus on how God was still active in the world. The way in which this type of prayer was nearly absent deprived retreatants of much of the heart of the Spiritual Exercises.
The time for each of the exercises was significantly less than one hour for silent prayer. Ignatius is very, very clear that each exercise should take at least an hour [12]:
I thought that this might be just to do with the concentrated weekend experience, but, in the online program that the IVE runs, www.ejerciciosive.org, only 27 minutes are suggested for each exercise.As he who is receiving the Exercises is to give an hour to each of the five Exercises or Contemplations which will be made every day, he who is giving the Exercises has to warn him carefully to always see that his soul remains content in the consciousness of having been a full hour in the Exercise, and rather more than less. For the enemy is not a little used to try and make one cut short the hour of such contemplation, meditation or prayer.
Generally the priest spoke for 35 minutes or so and then we were instructed to leave to go to another area to pray on the subject for half an hour our so. This is directly contrary to the role that Ignatius envisions for the person giving the Exercises:
The person who gives to another the way and order in which to meditate or contemplate, ought to relate faithfully the events of such Contemplation or Meditation, going over the Points with only a short or summary development. For, if the person who is making the Contemplation, takes the true groundwork of the narrative, and, discussing and considering for himself, finds something which makes the events a little clearer or brings them a little more home to him -- whether this comes through his own reasoning, or because his intellect is enlightened by the Divine power -- he will get more spiritual relish and fruit, than if he who is giving the Exercises had much explained and amplified the meaning of the events. For it is not knowing much, but realising and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul. [2]
This deviation impedes the direct prayer experience between the individual and God. Far from being insignificant, anything that impedes this direct experience between the individual and God can harm the discernment process. Ignatius warns:
He who is giving the Exercises ought not to influence him who is receiving them more to poverty or to a promise, than to their opposites, nor more to one state or way of life than to another. For though, outside the Exercises, we can lawfully and with merit influence every one who is probably fit to choose continence, virginity, the religious life and all manner of evangelical perfection, still in the Spiritual Exercises, when seeking the Divine Will, it is more fitting and much better, that the Creator and Lord Himself should communicate Himself to His devout soul, inflaming it with His love and praise, and disposing it for the way in which it will be better able to serve Him in future. So, he who is giving the Exercises should not turn or incline to one side or the other, but standing in the centre like a balance, leave the Creator to act immediately with the creature, and the creature with its Creator and Lord. [15]
With timing, with the emphasis, and with many other subtle methods, the IVE way of conducting the Spiritual Exercises does not conform with Ignatius’ view of the role of the person giving the exercises. The point of the Spiritual Exercises are to get a person into a position in which all sorts of desolations and consolations are working actively, stirring him or her up, and giving him/her the chance to work directly with God to become more directed to God’s will. It is the time, more than almost any time, when outside influence or pressure should be avoided.
However, the way that the IVE priests are trained to lead the retreat ends up doing the opposite. By reducing the time that individuals have to actually become acquainted with God, and focusing on intellectual meditations on judgment, the retreat becomes about the teachings of the particular priest rather than allowing the individual to hear whatever it is that God wants to communicate at that time. They take a very powerful experience, but do not give men and women the freedom and space they need to figure out how God is calling them in the silence of their hearts.
Rather, when individuals viscerally experience their intense brokenness and sinfulness without also simultaneously experiencing God’s love for them—particularly developed in the contemplations of the 2nd and 4th weeks—they enter an extremely vulnerable and frightening place. They are anxious to find a way out of this guilt and shame. In this tumult, entering the IVE/SSVM can seem like the obvious solution. They are able to run from their selves and their pain and towards the certainty that a life with the IVE/SSVM would seem to provide. This is simply not the freedom to serve God with generosity that Ignatius sought to let others experience.
It is positively dangerous especially because individuals who chose to take the risk to go on retreats are often already in a vulnerable place: I found myself at the retreat because I was seeking solace in the context of being a caretaker for an ill family member; others may be seeking to heal from trauma or addiction; and others may be struggling with what it might mean to enter religious life.
I think of the anonymous poem, occasionally attributed to St. Ignatius, that explains how our spirituality can’t be based on fear of our own damnation:
Soneto al Cristo Crucificado
No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte
el cielo que me tienes prometido,
ni me mueve el infierno tan temido
para dejar por eso de ofenderte.
Tú me mueves, Señor, muéveme el verte
clavado en una cruz y escarnecido,
muéveme ver tu cuerpo tan herido,
muévenme tus afrentas y tu muerte.
Muéveme, en fin, tu amor, y en tal manera,
que aunque no hubiera cielo, yo te amara,
y aunque no hubiera infierno, te temiera.
No me tienes que dar porque te quiera,
pues aunque lo que espero no esperara,
lo mismo que te quiero te quisiera.
To Christ Crucified
Heaven that you have promised me, my God,
Does not move me to love you.
Nor does hell so dreadful move me
To leave all that offends you.
You move me, Lord. It moves me to see you
Mocked, nailed to that cross.
It moves me to see your body so wounded.
Your dishonour moves me, and your death.
You move me to your love in such a way
That —even if there were no heaven— I would love you;
And —even if there were no hell— I would fear you.
You do not have to give to gain my love;
For —even if what I hope for becomes hopeless—
In the same way I love you, I would love you still.
—Translated by Stacy Shoop, 1996
I am saddened by the experience I had, particularly because the members of the community were exceptionally kind and hospitable, and so I want to be clear that this is not a judgment of them. Their good will was abundantly evident, and I hope that they can find a healthy and life-giving way to live out what I believe is a sincere commitment to serving God and the world.
Anyone who is curious about the Spiritual Exercises should very much be encouraged to learn more and undertake them because they are not just something that belongs to the Jesuits, but to the entire Church. However, the IVE simply presents them in a spiritually dangerous manner.
Some resources for learning more include:
· http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ (wide range of resources, including foundational texts, explanatory articles, and information on where to find a retreat)
· http://www.jesuit.org/ (U.S. Society of Jesus website)
· http://www.sacredspace.ie/ (daily Ignatian prayer)