Customer Reviews

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola - Enhanced Version

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Let me start off by saying this is not an easy step by step guide to spiritual enlightenment. The exercises are to be done over several weeks and there are specific exercises to be performed each week and at specific times of the day. It's more like a workout plan, but some of the details are omitted and/or assumed. If you've never done the exercises under someone else's guidance and you expect to be able to follow them easily, then you have your work cut out for you.

However, the quality and benefits of the exercises themselves is unquestionable. Even if you can't follow the whole "program" or if you don't fully grasp all of the exercises and you can only do one of the exercises, you will benefit greatly. In this hectic paced world, these exercises help you to look inward and improve your relationship with God.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola are amazing and deep spiritual exercises that have benefited many over the centuries. They may safely be considered a spiritual classic. There are several ways to approach them. In the first place, you could use them as intended: as a month's worth of meditations and exercises, led by an experienced guide to help one determine one's state in life. As such, they are very rigorous and demanding exercises and not to be entered into lightly. However, this doesn't necessarily preclude the Spiritual Exercises being used in other ways. Some have adapted them in a number of ways and still found them fruitful.

Personally, as an Anglican priest, I have used them in small quantities in my private devotions and found them a benefit to my soul. I believe it's possible for the individual Christian to adapt them to the rule of life to which he has subjected himself and thereby be blessed by the Lord. While intended as a whole course of spiritual exercises for the few, many could potentially benefit from Ignatian examinations of the conscience and meditations on sin, the kingdom of Christ, biblical narratives, the Sermon on the Mount, humility, the Ten Commandments, the senses, etc. Protestants and Evangelicals might find much here to lead them to a deeper examination of themselves and meditations on the Lord and His Word.

While highly recommended, they will be very difficult exercises for most Christians and would not necessarily be well-suited to those unaccustomed to such a degree of meditation.

A guide to the inner soul. This is not a work that is easy to grasp, which makes it
all the more a blessing.

The book is wonderful, the Kindle version sucks. This is yet another example of someone just copying/pasting from Gutenberg.org, hoping to cash in on the Kindle Kraze. If you waste your money on this so-called edition you will struggle with paragraphs hideously formatted: e.g. 2 words on one line, then 5 words on the next, etc. It is borderline unreadable. And don't even thing about footnotes with hyperlinks to the note (and back). Surely you jest.

I have just started the exercises and I know from my seminary days that these exercises are not to be entered into lightly. If you commit to this your depth of relationship will be increased greatly. It is best to progress through these exercises with a spiritual guide who can help you make the best progress. It is not about quickness but about depth. These exercises have stood the test of time.