St. Ignatius of Loyola	Consciousness Examen	Meditation
Christian Life Community	Spiritual Exercises	Discernment

For more than 450 years, the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola, based on his own mystical insights and realizations, and worked out at a deep schematic level in his Spiritual Exercises, has drawn women and men into a deeper intimacy with God and a renewed energy in their service of others.

Ignatian spirituality has at its center the life, the teachings, the death and resurrection of Jesus, acknowledged as the Christ, and invites people to come to know, love, and follow Jesus more wholeheartedly, as Ignatius did. This spirituality teaches us that while we live in a world of much darkness and brokenness, God is passionately involved with all creation, working to bring healing and reconciliation, justice and hope, forgiveness and love to everyone.

Ignatius taught that God could be found at work in every situation, relationship, and experience of human life—in the daily stuff of working, raising children, caring for neighbors, seeking justice in civic life, protecting the earth, and building the human community, as well as in experiences of friendship, of solidarity in a common cause, in times of rejoicing and great happiness, times of sorrow and grieving, and times of loneliness and fear.

Finally, Ignatius developed, out of his own experience, an original contribution to the practice of spiritual “discernment" in the Catholic tradition, a practice that enables people to understand more clearly God's movement in their hearts and God's purposes for their lives.