Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: A Nine-Month Journey
The Sanctuary at Woodville is offering the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius led by spiritual directors Kat Gundersen and James Knight. It is a nine-month journey to help you grow deeper with God, assimilating “head knowledge” to “heart knowledge” of God. It includes an hour of one-on-one spiritual direction and two hours of group spiritual direction each month. The program cost is $1,000 (payable in installments) and starts at the beginning of October (flexible scheduling). Sign-up deadline: Friday, September 20th. Register below! Questions? Email [email protected].
Journey with The Trinity: The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (a nine-month journey).
Do you sense that you have hit a wall in your spiritual life? Maybe the spiritual disciplines with which you have been engaging have been devoid of life for you for some time. Is your soul needing to dive deeper into the wonder and joy of God’s love and grace? Consider participating with us at The Sanctuary at Woodville in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (SIGN-UP DEADLINE: Sept. 20, 2024). Sign up is first come, first served. It is a rich experience that has served to increase the participant’s intimacy with God. COST: $1,000 (payable in installments).
What is involved:
We will use the book, The Ignatian Adventure: Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius in Daily Life by Kevin O'Brien, SJ. It offers "32 weeks of prayer and meditations to draw participants into a deeper encounter with God."
For our Journey with The Trinity, we will follow this prayer and meditation guide (meditations are almost all based on Scripture passages). The daily time commitment involves 45 minutes a day in prayer/meditation, then journaling about your prayer experience. The journaling is to help you practice daily awareness as to what the Lord is bringing up in your life, as well as helping you see overall movements of the Spirit in your life. It is from your daily prayer/meditation/journaling experiences that you will share with the group, in group spiritual direction once a month, about the movement of the Spirit in your life (the director and the group will help you discern about that movement by their listening to God on your behalf during the time together). The once a month spiritual direction with me will be along the same lines, to help you attend more closely to themes that God is raising up in your life through your meditation/prayer/journaling.
Each week of the Exercises there is a specified "grace" prayed for that is very simple. At the end of each week, you evaluate whether or not you have received that grace and if you are ready to move on. If you are not ready to move to the next week and grace, you simply stay with the first week, staying with particular meditations offered within that week until you sense release from the Spirit to move on.
Here is more of what Kevin says about the purpose of the Exercises:
"...it is very practical: to grow in union with God, who frees us to make good decisions about our lives and to 'help souls.' Ignatius invites us into an intimate encounter with God, revealed in Jesus Christ, so that we can learn to think and act more like Christ. The exercises help us grow in interior freedom from sin and disordered loves so that we can respond more generously to God's call in our life. The Exercises demand much of us, engaging our intellect and our emotion, our memory and will. Making the Exercises can be both exhilarating and exhausting; it's no wonder that Ignatius compared making the Spiritual Exercises to doing physical exercise such as 'taking a walk, traveling on foot, and running'.
The Exercises are a school of prayer. The two primary forms of praying taught in the Exercises are meditation and contemplation. In meditation, we use our intellect to wrestle with basic principles that guide our life. Reading Scripture, we pray over words, images, and ideas. We engage our memory to appreciate the activity of God in our life. Such insights into who God is and who we are before God allow our hearts to be moved.
Contemplation is more about feeling than thinking. Contemplation often stirs the emotions and inspires deep, God-given desires. In contemplation, we rely on our imaginations to place ourselves in a setting from the Gospels or in a scene proposed by Ignatius. Scripture has a central place in the Exercises because it is the revelation of who God is, particularly in Jesus Christ, and of what God does in our world. In the Exercises, we pray with Scripture, we do not study it. Although Scripture study is central to any believer's faith, we leave for another time extended biblical exegesis and theological investigation."
The movements of the Exercises are in five sections, the first one being a section of preparation, and the other four are called "weeks" but are not calendar weeks. Each section focuses on a different movement of the Spirit in our lives. Each section is clearly discussed and laid out. The exercises are NOT academic at all, and the language of Ignatius has been modernized for our ease of understanding. Kevin's book also offers a brief overview of the life of St. Ignatius to help us understand more of his motivation in writing these Exercises.
We will use the book, "The Ignatian Adventure: Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius in Daily Life" by Kevin O'Brien, SJ. It offers "32 weeks of prayer and meditations to draw participants into a deeper encounter with God."
Cost for the nine month retreat is $1,000 per person which includes (individual spiritual direction monthly, group spiritual direction monthly, three Saturday all day retreats). The purchase of book and your own journal is your only other expense. If the cost is prohibitive, please let me know and we can seek an arrangement. The payment can be divided into monthly payments or in one lump sum, as would suit your budget best.
St. Ignatius Leaders: Kat Gundersen & James Knight.
Do you sense that you have hit a wall in your spiritual life? Maybe the spiritual disciplines with which you have been engaging have been devoid of life for you for some time. Is your soul needing to dive deeper into the wonder and joy of God’s love and grace? Consider participating with us at The Sanctuary at Woodville in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (SIGN-UP DEADLINE: Sept. 20, 2024). Sign up is first come, first served. It is a rich experience that has served to increase the participant’s intimacy with God. COST: $1,000 (payable in installments).
What is involved:
We will use the book, The Ignatian Adventure: Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius in Daily Life by Kevin O'Brien, SJ. It offers "32 weeks of prayer and meditations to draw participants into a deeper encounter with God."
For our Journey with The Trinity, we will follow this prayer and meditation guide (meditations are almost all based on Scripture passages). The daily time commitment involves 45 minutes a day in prayer/meditation, then journaling about your prayer experience. The journaling is to help you practice daily awareness as to what the Lord is bringing up in your life, as well as helping you see overall movements of the Spirit in your life. It is from your daily prayer/meditation/journaling experiences that you will share with the group, in group spiritual direction once a month, about the movement of the Spirit in your life (the director and the group will help you discern about that movement by their listening to God on your behalf during the time together). The once a month spiritual direction with me will be along the same lines, to help you attend more closely to themes that God is raising up in your life through your meditation/prayer/journaling.
Each week of the Exercises there is a specified "grace" prayed for that is very simple. At the end of each week, you evaluate whether or not you have received that grace and if you are ready to move on. If you are not ready to move to the next week and grace, you simply stay with the first week, staying with particular meditations offered within that week until you sense release from the Spirit to move on.
Here is more of what Kevin says about the purpose of the Exercises:
"...it is very practical: to grow in union with God, who frees us to make good decisions about our lives and to 'help souls.' Ignatius invites us into an intimate encounter with God, revealed in Jesus Christ, so that we can learn to think and act more like Christ. The exercises help us grow in interior freedom from sin and disordered loves so that we can respond more generously to God's call in our life. The Exercises demand much of us, engaging our intellect and our emotion, our memory and will. Making the Exercises can be both exhilarating and exhausting; it's no wonder that Ignatius compared making the Spiritual Exercises to doing physical exercise such as 'taking a walk, traveling on foot, and running'.
The Exercises are a school of prayer. The two primary forms of praying taught in the Exercises are meditation and contemplation. In meditation, we use our intellect to wrestle with basic principles that guide our life. Reading Scripture, we pray over words, images, and ideas. We engage our memory to appreciate the activity of God in our life. Such insights into who God is and who we are before God allow our hearts to be moved.
Contemplation is more about feeling than thinking. Contemplation often stirs the emotions and inspires deep, God-given desires. In contemplation, we rely on our imaginations to place ourselves in a setting from the Gospels or in a scene proposed by Ignatius. Scripture has a central place in the Exercises because it is the revelation of who God is, particularly in Jesus Christ, and of what God does in our world. In the Exercises, we pray with Scripture, we do not study it. Although Scripture study is central to any believer's faith, we leave for another time extended biblical exegesis and theological investigation."
The movements of the Exercises are in five sections, the first one being a section of preparation, and the other four are called "weeks" but are not calendar weeks. Each section focuses on a different movement of the Spirit in our lives. Each section is clearly discussed and laid out. The exercises are NOT academic at all, and the language of Ignatius has been modernized for our ease of understanding. Kevin's book also offers a brief overview of the life of St. Ignatius to help us understand more of his motivation in writing these Exercises.
We will use the book, "The Ignatian Adventure: Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius in Daily Life" by Kevin O'Brien, SJ. It offers "32 weeks of prayer and meditations to draw participants into a deeper encounter with God."
Cost for the nine month retreat is $1,000 per person which includes (individual spiritual direction monthly, group spiritual direction monthly, three Saturday all day retreats). The purchase of book and your own journal is your only other expense. If the cost is prohibitive, please let me know and we can seek an arrangement. The payment can be divided into monthly payments or in one lump sum, as would suit your budget best.
St. Ignatius Leaders: Kat Gundersen & James Knight.
About Kat Gundersen
Kat Gundersen will be leading the Ignatius Exercises. Kat received her certificate in Spiritual Direction from the PAX Institute and her Masters in Spiritual Direction from Merrimack College. She has also been the Women’s Minister and Prayer director for various churches. Her passion is walking along side men and women in their journey with God. Her desire is to provide others with a safe space to listen to their heart’s desires, hear from the Holy Spirit and grow in their spiritual formation. She believes that the Ignatius Exercises is an amazing tool to help people in their walk with God and to learn discernment for their lives.
About James Knight
Hi, I'm James Knight, and my greatest joy as both a pastor and spiritual director is creating spaces where people can connect with God and experience the profound depth of His love through Jesus. I firmly believe that knowing and being known in God the Father’s love brings wholeness. While many grapple with life’s questions and traumas, which can obscure this love, God persistently communicates His love and invites us to know Him more deeply (Jeremiah 30:3, John 3:13, Ephesians 3:18-19). Bridging the gap between the idea and reality of God’s love has been a transformative part of my journey, and I delight in walking alongside others on theirs. In 2024, I founded Wellspring Spiritual Direction through which I offer spiritual direction and other spiritually forming practices to the congregation I lead and also with people all over New England, the continental United States, and abroad. In my free time I enjoy reading, hiking, kayaking, exploring new and delicious foods, and traveling throughout New England and beyond with my wife and two boys.