OUR IGNATIAN RETREAT PART 2

About eighteen months ago, Terry and I began an Ignatian style retreat under the guidance of Father Don Beaudois S.J. Now as many of you know, Father Don used to be a chemistry teacher at Brebeuf College back in the late sixties through to 1984. He taught with passion, precision and certitude. Amazingly, at age 86, his days as an educator are far from over.

Although he didn’t say it in words, I think his end game is that we not stumble into eternity like latecomers to a movie. Rather, he wants us to go prepared, with full knowledge of what the feature movie is all about.

Father explained at the outset of our study that he had not used this approach for an Ignatian retreat before. In fact, a true Ignatian retreat, based on the approach outlined by Jesuit founder St. Ignatius Loyola, lasts for thirty days and is usually reserved for Jesuit priests. However, Father felt a need to try something new with us and we were happy to go along. Besides, how can you refuse a Jesuit with a French last name who promised he would change the way we look at life?

Before embarking on our ‘retreat’, Father gave us a copy of St. Ignatius Loyola’s autobiography, entitled A Pilgrim’s Journey, to read. It tells the story of how an aspiring Spanish soldier (his given name was Inigo) was injured in battle in Pamplona in 1521 and used his time convalescing to redirect his life journey. After his recovery, he lived in the small town of Manresa for a year where, after an epiphany of sorts, he recorded some of the ideas that would one day be collected as the Spiritual Exercises. Later he would gather around himself a group of friends including Francisco Javier ( a.k.a. St Francis Xavier ) who would become the first Jesuits. The austere tone of his autobiography seems juxtaposed to his underlying message of finding God in all things. The fact that he seems intent on enumerating the steps to sanctification and to almost everything else in life, from how to manage stress to how to make a good decision, makes me think he was a sort of a mystical Dr. Phil.

At the same time, we also began reading The Jesuit Guide to (almost) Everything by Father James Martin S.J, sort of a Coles notes on what makes the Jesuits tick.

The book explained that the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are organized into four parts or weeks. The first week looks at gratitude for God’gifts in your life, the second week focuses on the public ministry of Jesus, the third on the Passion and the fourth on the Resurrection.

Martin explains that “the Spiritual Exercises are one of the main repositories for understanding the way of Ignatius: what leads to God, what elicits greater freedom, and what helps you live a purposeful life.”

As we drove back to Father Don’s home at the Manresa Retreat Centre in Pickering a few weeks later, we were eager to get started. And of course, we didn’t let on to Father that we had crib notes to help us with his course.