Ignatius of Loyola

Íñigo López de Loyola was a courtier and soldier until a cannonball shattered his leg at Pamplona in 1521. Bedridden, with only lives of Christ and the saints to read, he noticed that daydreams of worldly glory left him empty while dreams of following Christ left him in lasting peace. That noticing became the seed of his whole method.

Out of his own conversion he wrote the Spiritual Exercises — not a book to be read but a retreat to be prayed, classically over thirty days in four 'Weeks'. Its genius is to make prayer an experience rather than a thought: God speaks through our feelings, our imagination and the events of daily life.

Two gifts run through everything he left us: 'finding God in all things', and the discernment of spirits — learning to tell which inner movements draw us toward God (consolation) and which pull us away (desolation), so that we can choose freely and well.