Annual Center for Ignation Spirituality program teaches participants how to encounter The Living God in their daily lives
I find myself looking forward to my weekly sharing with my spiritual director and can honestly say that I have received much more than I expected.
— — Caroline Fain, Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius participant
On Monday, January 22, the Center for Ignatian Spirituality will hold two information sessions for its popular spiritual direction program, Ignatian Encounter, The Spiritual Exercises, at 12:30 p.m. and 4:45 p.m. in Dolan House, Room 107.
The ten-week Ignatian experience is an adaptation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which allows participants to encounter the Living God in their day-to-day life. The program is offered twice a year in September and January and is free and open to the public.
Ignatian Spirituality centers on the belief that God can be found in all things and focuses upon a growing awareness of one’s affect, imagination, and intellect.
St. Ignatius emphasized the importance of one’s personal experience as the vehicle to form a closer relationship with God. Insights about how God is present in one’s experience emerge through processes of attention, contemplation, and discernment.
The 10-week directed Ignatian prayer experience, which is available to students, faculty, staff, and the local community, involves:
- An immediate experience of God
- Being contemplative in action
- Finding God in all things
- The meaning of the Magis
- An experience of discernment
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are for those who desire integrity and authenticity; a renewed sense of purpose, direction, and meaning; a clearer sense of God’s presence and activity in one’s life; a deeper knowledge of and relationship with God; and to explore whether or not one would like to participate in the complete Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.
The experience includes 30 to 60 minutes of daily prayer and reflection and 45 minutes of discussion each week with a spiritual director/companion.
For more information, contact Colleen Gilbertson at cgilbertson@fairfield.edu or 203-254-4000, ext. 3468, or visit fairfield.edu/cis .
