Wednesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
If the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola are, in any way, useful or good or helpful or holy, it can only be due to their continuity with the teachings of Jesus Christ, especially with Christ’s teachings on prayer. But there is nothing in the writings of St. Ignatius that contradicts the message of Jesus Christ. In fact, if there were, St. Ignatius, himself, would have been the first to condemn and amend his text.
Are there differences in emphasis, though? Yes. For example, the Spiritual Exercises are a form of individual meditation. Each retreatant goes his own way through each spiritual exercise. The retreatant goes into his inner room and locks the door and prays to his heavenly Father in secret. The focus is on the relationship between God and the individual.
Sometimes, though, Christian prayer must be more of a group activity. Once Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of the disciples asked him for his teaching on prayer. Jesus then taught the Lord’s prayer, the Our Father, which is not a prayer full of I’s and my’s and me’s but of we’s and our’s and us’s. Furthermore, even though it was only one disciple (τις, unus) asking for the teaching, Jesus replied that this is how they were to pray (ὅταν προσεύχησθε, cum oratis).
If someone, God forbid, were to stray from the Christian community in such a way as to subtract himself from the “Our” of the Our Father, he would pray neither as a Christian nor as a son of St. Ignatius. Let us find our brothers and sisters in Christ and let us pray with them.