Ignatian Prayer

What is Prayer?

  • What is your experience of prayer?
  • Prayer ≠ Personal reflection
  • Prayer is an encounter

What is Prayer

Prayer as Encounter

According to St Ignatius

  • The preparatory prayer

  • The Preludes

    • Composition seeing the place

    • Asking for what I desire

  • The Colloquy

The Preparatory prayer

“Target practice”

I always take a moment to call to mind the attitude of reverence with which I approach this privileged time with God. I recollect everything up to this moment of my day—my thoughts and words, what I have
done and what has happened to me—and ask that God may
take and receive all of this as praise and service.

Composition Seeing the Place

  • A physical place

    • Become aware of where I am

  • A Metaphorical place

    • My inner room

    • A place that matches where my spirit is.

  • When contemplating…

    • The scene where the Bible passage is taking place.

To ask God our Lord for what I want and desire.

There is an importance in my speaking out
my desire for God’s grace according to the subject matter and my own dispositions. Perhaps expressing what I truly want from God may also act as a preparation of my inner being for an openness to God’s entrance into a particular area of my life.

The Colloquy

The intimate conversation between God the Father and me, Christ and
me, or perhaps Mary or one of the saints and me. This conversation happens on the occasion of my putting myself as totally as I can into the setting of the prayer. I will find that I speak or listen as God's Spirit moves me… [54]

Briefly…

  1. Prayer is an encounter of the creature with its Creator.

  2. We refocus “out target” – everything for God.

  3. We seek to be at the same place with God.

  4. We open our hearts to God by asking for the grace we want.

  5. We conclude with, a conversation between friends.

Fundamental Attitutude

according to St Ignatius

  • “ it is not knowing much, but realizing and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul.” Sp Ex [2]

  • “…we use acts of the intellect in reasoning, and acts of the will in movements of the feelings.” Sp Ex [3]

  • “it is very helpful to him who is receiving the Exercises to enter into them with great courage and generosity towards his Creator and Lord.” Sp Ex [5]

Repetition

  • …marking and dwelling on the points in which I have felt greater consolation or desolation, or greater spiritual feeling. [Eż. Sp. 62]

  • The heart of repetition is becoming aware of the spiritual motions by dwelling on where you felt spiritual consolation or desolation to see where the Will of God is guiding you.

  • During repetition you notice the difficulties and obstacles you encountered in the previous prayer, like dryness, temptations or lack of good will.

Prayer Methods

in the Spiritual Exercises

  • Meditation

  • Contemplation

  • The “Examen”

  • Other methods

Meditation

  • The Content: A (Biblical) text
  • The tools:
    • Memory → I remember and associate
    • Intellect → understand (≠ comprehend)
    • Affectivity / Will → feeling, relating, deciding

Contemplation

  • The Content: The story
  • New Tool: Our Imagination
    • I see the persons
    • I listen to what they say
    • I observe what they do

The “Examen”

  • The Content: Your Life
  • Tools: All those that are necessary
  • Method
    • Thank the Lord for what you received
    • Ask for Light
    • Observe what happened more deeply
    • (Ask for forgiveness)
    • Look ahead with hope and with the Lord

The Second Method

It is by contemplating the meaning of each word of the prayer. Sp. Ex. [249]

  • The Content: Some prayer
  • Tools: “Lateral thinking”
  • Method
    • Stop to reflect on every word

The Third Method

The third method of prayer is that with each breath in or out, one has to pray mentally, saying one word of the Our Father, or of another prayer which is being recited: so that only one word be said between one breath and another. Sp. Ex. [258]

  • The Content: Some prayer
  • New tool: Rhythm
  • Method
    • Stop to reflect on one word at a time, one with each breath

Spiritual Conversation

Listening to the Spirit through a group

  • Active listening – truly active
  • Attention on what is moving in me
  • What are my reactions?
  • What thoughts came to me?
  • I listen even if I do not agree
  • What can I learn from him/her?
  • Profound respect

Method

  • A time keeper
  • A clear topic
  • Pray: listen to the Spirit
  • Consise sharing
  • First round: What is the Spirit telling me?
  • Silence
  • Second round: What is the Spirit telling us?
  • Silence
  • Third round: An attempt at synthesis

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made” (Ps 33:6). This tells us that the world came about as the result of a decision, not from chaos or chance, and this exalts it all the more. The creating word expresses a free choice. The universe did not emerge as the result of arbitrary omnipotence, a show of force or a desire for self-assertion. Creation is of the order of love. God’s love is the fundamental moving force in all created things: “For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it” (Wis 11:24). Every creature is thus the object of the Father’s tenderness, who gives it its place in the world. Even the fleeting life of the least of beings is the object of his love, and in its few seconds of existence, God enfolds it with his affection. Saint Basil the Great described the Creator as “goodness without measure”, while Dante Alighieri spoke of “the love which moves the sun and the stars”. Consequently, we can ascend from created things “to the greatness of God and to his loving mercy”. Laudato Si' 77

Praying with Nature

Some Resources

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