Yesterday was the second of the weekly gathering of our Lent Retreat in Daily Living at the Law school. As I wrote last week, our retreat this year aims to give us an experience of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.
The goal of our prayer during this past week was to help participants get in touch with God’s love at deep level, to get a sense of who they are in the eyes of God. At the beginning of our session (as we always do in these retreat in daily living) participants shared in small groups something of their prayer experience of the week.
After the sharing and some broader discussion about the first week, I offered a reflection on the subject of this week’s prayer: Ignatius’ Principle and Foundation.
Ignatius called the Principle and Foundation the key to the spiritual life and for him, it epitomizes the entire message of the Spiritual Exercises. It is, if you will, a skeletal summary of the inner journey; the kernel.
On the one hand, the Principle and Foundation is something that takes us some time to fully embrace in its entirety, to really grasp to the depth of our being. At the same time, as one commentator suggested, the “basic thesis of the Principle and Foundation is imprinted in human nature itself, which issues from the hand of God and is bound to Him by ties of total dependence and servitude.” It is indeed, imprinted in our nature, but whether original sin or something else, we are weak and need to come back to this understanding. That will be the aim of our prayer this week.
You can listen to the talk I gave at our gathering here or stream it from the icon below. The podcast runs for 23:30. You can the prayer material for this week here.
Creo en Dios! 
Thanks, Susan. I like listening to the recorded talks as I go on my daily “prayer walk” each morning. Also, enjoy learning more about Ignatius. Nice addition to my Lenten practice. With gratitude, Ann