Margery Eagan has spent the last nine months doing the Spiritual Exercises in daily life, writing about some of the experience for Crux. As she nears the end of the Exercises, she writes:
I look around the room. I hear the childcare worker, the nurse, the academic dean, the lawyer, the retired financier, the young man doing prison ministry, the young Jesuits from all around the world. These are serious Catholics talking not about Church politics or sex abuse or the latest on Pope Francis vs. climate change deniers. They’re talking instead about the movement of the spirit.
“It’s a constant humming.” That’s how one retreatant put it. A humming “that stays with you all day.”
“Something has happened to us” since we began the Exercises, writes the Jesuit Kevin O’Brien in “The Ignatian Adventure,” the study book we’re using. “We are not the same as we were.”
No, we are not.
If you’ve ever wondered what the actual experience of doing the Spiritual Exercises is like, Eagan offers some great insight. If you’ve completed the Spiritual Exercises, Eagan’s essay acknowledges the “what next” feeling you may have experienced. If you have, how does Eagan’s essay resonate for you?
Are there local community groups, post exercises that continue on with prayer?