Product Overview
This collection of 20 essays by some of the world’s most thoughtful writers on spirituality is a useful introduction to the main elements of Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises that includes practical commentary on their use in everyday life and on Ignatian retreats. “Many of the riches of the Ignatian tradition have re–emerged after a long period of obscurity or misunderstanding,” writes editor Philip Sheldrake in the introduction (a period that included, for example, the “rather austere theology and hell–fire sermons of Jesuits” depicted in the works of James Joyce). These essays, which explore the rebirth of the Exercises following the Second Vatican Council, include reflections on important features of Ignatian prayer and discernment, spiritual guidance in the Ignatian tradition, and historical background and context. Lavinia Byrne, IBVM, of the Institute of the Blessed Mary, contributes an original essay, “The Spiritual Exercises: A Process and a Text.”