Inside-out And The Spiritual Exercises: Common Sense Boundries In Dealing With Buddists And Hindus

Fr. Francis X. Clooney, S.J. writes a blog post entitled, Inside-out with Fr. Nicolas, in America Magazine about the Exercises in an Asian setting.

Here is a small portion of his post.

According to reports we find on the Web, Father Nicolas admits that it is still an open question how the Exercises might be presented to people of Asia's faith traditions, and to what effect. He is quoted as saying,

"The question is how to give the Ignatian experience to a Buddhist, not maybe formulated in Christian terms,

which is what Ignatius asked, but to go to the core of the experience. What happens to a person that goes through a number of exercises that really turn a person inside-out. This is still for us a big challenge."

Link (here)

My own personal experience with the Excercises is that the closer I stayed to the Elder Mullins translation the better my experience. When I first started with the Exercises I was given a coffee table version entitled Moment by Moment, I found it honestly, uninspiring. I eventually moved over to the classic version. I missed out on the first couple of purgative meditations, I had to back track in order make up for some missing homework so-to-say. Honestly, I really do not think that the Exercises are for non-Christians. My spiritual director told me that only in the last half century where the Exercises readily given to Catholic laymen. And only in the past few decades where women given opportunities to participate in the full excersises. A Jesuit once told me that making the Exercises, turns a Catholic into a super-Catholic. What is the definition of the Spiritual Exercises? If you break them down, and use non-Biblical source material what good is Ignatius' subtle meditative points? The genuis of Ignatius was that he culled 2,500 or so New Testament passages and pulled out 50, layed them out in a quasi-Church calander order. Another important point, is that Jesus is our retreat master, not our spiritual director. How can I have a personal relationship(union) with Jesus and mediate on his life if I am using non-Christian source material. If the Spiritual Exercises of St. Igantius are not used in a spiritual exercise, they can not there for be called The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.