Experience the Spiritual Exercises

Gesu annually offers parishioners the opportunity to experience the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius as a retreat in daily life.

The Spiritual Exercises are a structured experience of prayer that grew out of St. Ignatius’ encounters with God following his conversion. Ignatius, in turn, shared the Exercises with anyone he thought would be open to and benefit from them. Some of those people began to follow Jesus more closely along the path of Ignatius and formed the Society of Jesus. They shared the Exercises with even more people, and from Ignatius’ own time to the present the Exercises have helped millions of people encounter Jesus in a deeper way and grow in their relationship with God.

Ignatius envisioned that a person making the Exercises would take a month away from their day-to-day activities to spend in silence and prayer. He also recognized that not everyone would be able to get free from their daily responsibilities for an entire month and made provisions for experiencing the Exercises as a retreat in daily life. In this way daily life informs one’s prayer and prayer shapes daily life.

Making the Exercises in daily life means committing to about an hour of prayer every day and meeting regularly with a spiritual director, someone who will help guide you through the Exercises. We’ll also meet regularly in small groups to share the movements of prayer, which can be a powerful experience of a praying community. The regular rhythm of the retreat will alternate meeting in groups one week with meeting with a director the next (with some breaks around the holidays). We’ll get underway toward the end of September and go through the Easter Season.

You can read more about what to expect from the Exercises here.

If you are ready make the Exercises this year, sign up here. We’ll be in contact with details about finding a spiritual director and forming groups.

If you’re interested but don’t feel like you can commit to the process this year, don’t worry. There are lots of ways to experience the Exercises. You might start by making a weekend retreat at the Jesuit Retreat House at Oshkosh or at Barrington, Illinois. Or you might just start by trying to pray every day with the help of resource such as Sacred Space. We’re currently talking about focusing the second-semester Faith Forum series on Ignatian Spirituality. The Exercises are such an important part of our mission as a Jesuit parish that we plan to offer the retreat in daily life every year.

Wherever you are on your faith journey, consider this an invitation and opportunity to deepen your relationship with God.