This post is based on Week Four of An Ignatian Prayer Adventure.
The Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises invites us into an extended contemplation on the life of Jesus. We pray that we may become more like Jesus, and we do that by gazing on him as we explore the Gospels. We put ourselves into the scenes of the Gospels through imaginative prayer.
As Fr. Kevin O’Brien, SJ, explains:
We trust that God is with us when we are praying these Exercises…How we know this is the right use of our imagination is simply this: is it drawing us closer to Jesus? Is our imagination helping us grow in our knowledge of Jesus and in our love of Jesus and in our desire to serve or follow him? That is, in the end, how we know whether our imagination is properly used.
O’Brien is the author of The Ignatian Adventure: Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius in Daily Life and Seeing with the Heart: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Adventures.
Thanks Fr Kevin. We are privileged to be confidently walking on God’s Holy Ground and joyfully living in God’s Time.
Thanks for this, so good to bring to mind the memory of the exercises of the second week. I was telling my son a little about the Incarnation thinking of this. He is rich in imaginative contemplation but only recently is adopting into his life the knowledge, through faithful prayer, of the Spiritual Exx of Ignatius. This is the Grace of God working through a recovering alcoholic to a new life in Christ through His mercy and forgiveness. Your little video is expressing for him all that I was saying in a much more comprehensive way, enlarging on the theme ………words come as I write, the wonder of our lady, mother of God praying for us as we go!
Thank you for this Father Kevin.