Outline & Calendar

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius in Everyday Life (SEEL)

19th Annotation Journey

His 40 Days – Our 4 Weeks

Preparing Our Souls. Jesus prepared 40 days in the desert after His baptism before beginning His ministry. So, too, we are called to prepare before we begin as a pilgrim on the journey through the life of Christ on earth. These Disposition Days allow our hearts to experience more fully the unconditional love that springs forth endlessly from being created as God’s beloved. These weeks of preparation also include the First Week, where we come to encounter the boundless mercy of God.

His 3 Decades, 3 Years, 3 Days – Our 30 Weeks

Entering into the 30+-week Retreat in Everyday Life is to come to an internal and personal knowingness of who Jesus was and is for us. Here in the Spiritual Exercises, we are called to walk as if alongside Him in His life. Not just to observe in our imagination, but to actually walk and talk with Him. Share our thoughts. Ask questions. He is the Word, and His words are real.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

3 Decades

In the 3 Decades of preparation for ministry, He experienced all of our human experiences from infancy to the teens to young adulthood. We are called to reflect upon what it was like for Him with His family, mother and foster father, grandparents, extended relatives, friends, and neighbors. What was the journey to Egypt like? What were His years like there? How old was He when they came back? How did He play, run, and laugh as a child? What were the journeys like regularly going up to Jerusalem as a youth and young adult? How did He work alongside His foster father in the carpentry shop?

3 Years

We know some things about what He said and did from the Scriptures. What do you think He experienced during His baptism or those 40 days of prayer being tempted in the desert? What were the 3 Years of His ministry like for Him? Can you picture yourself there? What was the moment you committed yourself entirely to being a disciple and following Him?

3 Days

Passion, Death, and Resurrection

His 50 Days – Our 4 Weeks

The Resurrected Life

19th Annotation Calendar Following the Liturgical Calendar

Meet weekly, with a Prelude (Disposition Days) and four phases/dynamics/“Weeks”:

Ordinary Time: Prelude & First Week
Advent/Christmas/Ordinary Time/first part of Lent: Second Week
Second part of Lent: Third Week
Easter and the Easter Season: Fourth Week

Ideally, begin in the fall to follow the liturgical year, or in the spring around the end of April, after Easter; the content is the same, ending at Advent.

The 18th Annotation follows the dynamics of the full Exercises in an abbreviated format and shorter time frame; the number of weeks varies.

Prayers for the Spiritual Exercises

The Anima Christi
Prayers for Grace

There will often be a specific “prayer for the grace of the week” (also written as one’s “desire for a gift of grace”) as the main intent, with an invitation to add your own as the Spirit moves.

The Outline of the Spiritual Exercises

Dynamic Movements of the “Weeks”

“Disposition Days”: The Love and Mercy of God

Beginning in Ordinary Time, with some overlap into Advent, we venture into the “Prelude” and “First Week” sections with prayers, reflections, and learnings. Note: The Prelude could end right before Thanksgiving.

God is Love; we are His beloved. This adventure begins with a “Prelude”—disposition—where we encounter, through the Scriptures, God who is Love-loving.

Focus: In these preparation days, we consider the gifts of God’s ongoing creation in the world and in us. Here, we pray for a spirit of generous gratitude and awe for those gifts we are to share. We spend time savoring the beauty of God’s unconditional love for us, who are His beloved, created creatures.

The “First Week”: God’s Mercy

God’s Boundless Love and Compassion for the World

Within the first dynamic of the Spiritual Exercises, we come to encounter the boundless mercy of God as we look into the reality of sin and the history of grace in the world and in our own lives. (It may line up with our Thanksgiving holiday.)

In this first dynamic, as we recognize God’s boundless generosity and love for us, we naturally face our limited response to His love. Here, God reveals to us, in His gentle way, areas where we need to grow more in love. Here, we become more aware of, recognize, and come to understand those patterns in our lives that are not worthy of us. Here, we look to God’s help to free us from whatever stands in the way of loving God, others, and even ourselves, and from everything that would hold us back from following the call in freedom.

Focus: We pray for the grace of embracing ourselves as loved sinners, gazing upon God’s loving, gentle kindness and mercy, filling us with the grace of a profound sense of gratitude.

The “Second Week”: The Life and Mission of Christ

Accompanying Jesus on Mission

Advent up to Lent lines up as a well-suited time for this second dynamic. We spend the most time in this Week.

We begin with contemplation of the Incarnation, His birth, childhood, and public ministry, all ordered toward growing as disciples of Christ. The focus and method of prayer is Ignatian contemplation (imaginative prayer).

During this time, we will discuss the discernment of spirits (our responses, moods, and feelings) in terms of consolation and desolation, along with specific meditations: the Call of the King, the Two Standards, and the Three Classes of Persons.

Focus: We desire to know Jesus more intimately so we can love Jesus Christ more dearly and follow Christ more closely.

The “Third Week”: Compassion in the Passion

Identifying and Walking with the Lord in His Passion

We will most likely begin this Third Week towards the latter half of Lent, ending right up to the Easter Vigil. Here, we walk with Jesus in His suffering as we would with a close friend. It is a brief period yet so profoundly moving. Here, we spend time contemplating His Passion and the expression of God’s faithfulness and love for us in His gift of salvation.

We also look more closely at desolation. Though this section has fewer calendar weeks in Kevin O’Brien’s The Ignatian Adventure and other books, this “Week” is just as dense and intense as the other Weeks.

Focus: We come to share in His suffering and compassion, in bringing our own suffering into His redemptive gift for others.

Graces: Solidarity through Compassion in His Passion

The “Fourth Week”: You Are Called

Joy, Joy, and Joy of Consolation in the Risen Christ

Easter and the Easter Season are the time of the fourth dynamic; we will experience the joy of the Risen Lord in living the life in the Spirit, gathering our graces to live a life of hope through freedom with a generous heart to find God active in all things, and to love and serve God and others in concrete ways.

Focus: Sharing in the life of gifts of grace poured out upon us by the Holy Spirit.

Graces: Dynamic Four – Joy in the Risen Lord/Living the Life of the Beloved Disciple