The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION TO THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES The history of the composition of the Spiritual Exercises is, in a certain sense, the history of a soul's journey from spiritual childhood to spiritual adulthood. Probably almost every Christian knows the story of the conversion of St. Ignatius from a relatively worldly life to one of serious spiritual effort. However, the providential preparation of Ignatius as an instrument in the counterreformation of the Church and as a spiritual leader began long before his well-known conversion. His whole life was oriented to this end and the various influences of racial and family background, training and experience helped to mold the future author of the Spiritual Exercises. In 1491 Ignatius was bom at the family castle of Loyola in the Basque country. The family belonged to provincial nobility whose members had fought with the kings of Castile since 1200. Hugo Rahner notes that Ignatius kept, all his life, an aristocratic sense of form, order, and loyalty along with a practical, realistic grasp of problems, people, and principles which reflect both the nobility of his background and the fact that it was provincial nobility, close to the realities of life.i The traditions of soldiering characteristic of his family, members of which had fought in Hungary and in Naples, are also evidenced in Ignatius' strong sense of duty, of obedience, and of high-minded chivalry. Althoug^i Ignatius' father iHugo Rahner, The Spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola, Newman, Westminster, 1953, pp. 1-16. This book, together with A Key to the Study of the Spiritual Exercises by Ignacio Iparraguirre, will prove most helpful to one desirous of making a further study of the Exercises. A helpful commentary on the Exercises in English is A. Ambruzzi's A Companion to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Mangalore, 1928.