It was during a Holy Cross Advent reconciliation service in my sophomore year when Rev. David Gill, S.J., who happened to be my Latin professor, suggested I start praying something called the Examen, a daily practice of reflecting on your day to see where God might be leading you.
“Have you ever heard of Ignatian spirituality?” he asked. I had done the five-day retreat at Narragansett, Rhode Island, that fall, but was still putting the pieces together.
For me, the Spiritual Exercises retreat had been a mixed bag. On one hand, I loved the intensity of the silence, journaling, and immersion into the scriptural stories of God’s mercy and unconditional love. On the other, I returned from the retreat feeling like a spiritual failure. I did not meet Jesus on the beach, as friends had assured me I would, and I was certain that I did not pray well enough nor frequently enough to attain the level of holiness that our retreat director called us to.
As I built a career in Jesuit ministries — first as a Jesuit volunteer, then at a Jesuit parish and university — Ignatian spirituality became more familiar, accessible and applicable to all areas of my life. The methods and dynamics of Ignatian spirituality, such as the Daily Examen, the Suscipe (a prayer of surrender), discernment and contemplation with scripture gradually began to constitute my daily prayer life, or the short fragments of reflection I would grab during a busy week.
Eventually, it was Ignatian spirituality that solved the spiritual dissonance I experienced in college. Through Ignatian spirituality and the Exercises, I discovered that I was holy enough, was good enough, and was worthy of God’s love exactly how I am, and that God works in our lives in ways more subtle than appearing on a rock (although sometimes God does indeed surprise). During my years of working as a spiritual director and campus minister, I came to discover that the Exercises had a similar effect on other people, too — in particular, women — who often experience feelings of ecclesial and social less-thanness. One woman shared with me:
“Through the Exercises, I felt like I was coming home to myself because I was able to see and value my whole selfanew, through God’s generous and loving gaze. Sometimes it can be harder to see one’s own beauty than it is to see one’s faults or weaknesses. I found that the Exercises helped me to still that overly critical voice within.”
In my experiences accompanying women through the Exercises, I noticed that the sense of one’s own worth comes from a very deep place, from a very deep encounter with God, and that the words, “I am worthy,” can be almost unutterable, spoken in barely a whisper. A deep sense of one’s own worth is both the starting point and the ending point of the Exercises — in many ways, and for many women, the first and the last step to living in freedom and finding one’s voice.
