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    Essay 2 - Conversion

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    andrew_mcdonald_82
    The document discusses conversion as portrayed in the Spiritual Exercises. It describes conversion as a process rather than a single event. The Exercises facilitate a deepening conversion through different stages as the retreatant grows in intimacy with God. This involves conversion on an intellectual, affective, and willful level. The First Week in particular aims to convert the heart by recognizing oneself as a loved sinner through meditations on sin and God's mercy. Ultimately, conversion through the Exercises is a process that moves one from an intellectual understanding of God's love to experiencing it affectively, allowing one to freely choose to love and serve Christ.

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    Essay 2 - Conversion

    Uploaded by

    andrew_mcdonald_82
    187 views5 pages
    The document discusses conversion as portrayed in the Spiritual Exercises. It describes conversion as a process rather than a single event. The Exercises facilitate a deepening conversion through different stages as the retreatant grows in intimacy with God. This involves conversion on an intellectual, affective, and willful level. The First Week in particular aims to convert the heart by recognizing oneself as a loved sinner through meditations on sin and God's mercy. Ultimately, conversion through the Exercises is a process that moves one from an intellectual understanding of God's love to experiencing it affectively, allowing one to freely choose to love and serve Christ.

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    Conversion in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola

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    The document discusses conversion as portrayed in the Spiritual Exercises. It describes conversion as a process rather than a single event. The Exercises facilitate a deepening conversion through different stages as the retreatant grows in intimacy with God. This involves conversion on an intellectual, affective, and willful level. The First Week in particular aims to convert the heart by recognizing oneself as a loved sinner through meditations on sin and God's mercy. Ultimately, conversion through the Exercises is a process that moves one from an intellectual understanding of God's love to experiencing it affectively, allowing one to freely choose to love and serve Christ.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    187 views5 pages

    Essay 2 - Conversion

    Uploaded by

    andrew_mcdonald_82
    The document discusses conversion as portrayed in the Spiritual Exercises. It describes conversion as a process rather than a single event. The Exercises facilitate a deepening conversion through different stages as the retreatant grows in intimacy with God. This involves conversion on an intellectual, affective, and willful level. The First Week in particular aims to convert the heart by recognizing oneself as a loved sinner through meditations on sin and God's mercy. Ultimately, conversion through the Exercises is a process that moves one from an intellectual understanding of God's love to experiencing it affectively, allowing one to freely choose to love and serve Christ.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    The key takeaways are that conversion is a process rather than a single event, and involves intellectual, affective and willful transformation in response to God's love. The Spiritual Exercises facilitate this process over four weeks through various meditations and exercises.

    The document discusses conversion as occurring in stages over time, with an initial beginning followed by a deepening process. It specifically mentions five exercises in the First Week and growing intimacy with Jesus in the Second and Third Weeks, climaxing in a free offering of oneself in the Fourth Week.

    Ignatius envisioned retreatants undergoing a deepening conversion and growth in commitment to Christ over the weeks of the Spiritual Exercises. This involves recognition of contrast between one's character and God's, and growing desire to serve Christ from an intellectual understanding and affective response.

    Essay 2: Conversion in the Spiritual Exercises

    DD8981J Spiritual Exercises Theory


    Andrew McDonald 201720171

    Conversion as a Process
    Conversion is not a single event in a persons life. Although a recognisable event, such as Saint
    Pauls Damascus road experience or Ignatius recuperation at Loyola may signify a beginning,
    the Christian life, as represented in the Spiritual Exercises, is a continual process of being
    transformed in response to Gods love. John Veltri helpfully illustrated the dynamic process of
    conversion by drawing our attention to various stages in the Gospel accounts of the apostle
    Peters life, asking the question, at which of these points was Peter converted? Over the course
    of Peters discipleship to Christ there was a clear process of deepening conversion that took
    place.1

    Ignatius was clearly aware of this dynamic of conversion in his own life and he clearly
    envisioned that retreatants would undergo a deepening conversion and growth in commitment to
    Christ over the weeks of the Spiritual Exercises. In the first annotation Ignatius described a
    conversion process characterised by freedom from disordered affections and that actively seeks
    the divine will in regard to...ones life [1]. Throughout the Exercises a profound journey of
    conversion takes place in stages or even cycles.

    The beginning of this journey is characterised by five exercises during the First Week when I, the
    retreatant, recognise a great contrast between my own character and the just and merciful
    character of God [59]. As the conversion process deepens through the Second and Third Weeks it
    is characterised by a growing intimacy with Jesus. The journey climaxes with the free offering of
    ones self in response to Gods love through the Contemplation to Attain Love that concludes
    the Fourth week of the Exercises [230-237].

    Intellectual and Affective Conversion


    Hans van Leeuwens observation that the ...aim of the First week is the conversion of heart can
    1 John Veltri, Conversion Cycle In Prayer And Group Processes, accessed 28 March 2017,
    http://orientations.jesuits.ca/Chapter32.htm.
    be applied to the Exercises as a whole.2

    Ignatius own conversion took place through his growing desire to love and serve Christ as Saint
    Francis or Dominic had done. The essential dynamic of this conversion involved Ignatius
    becoming attuned, not only to the intellectual content of his reading, but to his affective (or
    heartfelt) response to the alternatives of serving either a certain lady or serving Christ.3 Ignatius
    recognised that his felt responses of desolation and consolation, the first characterised by
    dryness and dissatisfaction, the latter characterised by joy and satisfaction, were pivotal in his
    conversion and became integral to his discernment of spirits.4

    The process of conversion anticipated by the Exercises therefore involves conversion on three
    distinct levels; intellectual, affective, and the will. The Ignatian method of praying draws upon
    our powers of memory, understanding and will with the goal of converting them. Michael Ivens
    observed that, A large part of the process of conversion consists in the powers being taken up
    into, and transformed by the Christ-life.5

    To put it another way, conversion is an on-going process initiated by God but requiring us to
    engage with our head, our heart and our choices.

    Mercy and Grace


    Michael Ivens writes that the essential grace of the First Week is that of a conversion arising out
    of the literally heart-breaking experience of being loved and forgiven.6

    This conversion is facilitated through a series of three exercises (plus the two repetitions)
    intended to help me recognise my own sinful disorder. The second of these exercises in particular
    struck a very personal note as I made an inventory of sin in my own life. The exercise reminded
    me that sin and grace are not simply intellectual, theological or moral terms for me to rationalise,

    2 Hans van Leeuwen, Sin and the First Week in Our Actual Faith, Review of Ignatian Spirituality, no.
    107 (2004): 11.
    3 George E. Gans, Ignatius of Loyola: Selected Exercises and Selected Works, The Classics of Western
    Spirituality (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1991), 70.
    4 Ibid., 71.
    5 Michael Ivens, Understanding The Spiritual Exercises (Herefordshire: Gracewing, 1998), 46.
    6 Ibid., 44.
    but affect my relationship with God and others. Leeuwen reminds us that, Sin does not have a
    juridical meaning in the first place, but it is refusal to be with God.7

    There was a temptation during this second exercise to become fixated on my sin in a self-
    absorbed manner rather than moving from there to a profound sense of gratitude towards the God
    who continues to look on me with goodness and mercy. It is the recognition and felt knowing of
    Gods love and mercy for me that finally enables me to desire God and make a choice for Christ
    [60-61]. Hitter describes the purpose of the First Weeks exercises as preparing the retreatant on
    the heart level to ask and to respond to the radical question [...]'what have I done for Christ,
    what am I doing for Christ, what ought I to do for Christ?'8

    Conversion and Choice


    Conversion involves recognising myself as a loved sinner, but Ignatius anticipates a deeper
    conversion that results in my own intentional and repeated choice to be with and serve Christ.
    Paradoxically this choice is a grace I must ask God for and a decision I must make. Desire and
    choice are intrinsically connected in the conversion process facilitated by the Exercises. It is a
    choice revisited throughout the Second and Fourth weeks [95-98, 136-147, 234]. The Gospel
    meditations of the Second week are notable for their absence of commentary by Ignatius and yet
    in practice they are richly shaped by choices posed by the The Two Standards and The Call of
    the King meditations in which Ignatius characterises the choice for Christ as desirable. The
    Gospel meditation based on the call of the disciples [161] was in my experience an incredible
    opportunity to acknowledge the tension between my feelings of desire and resistance to following
    Christ in my own life. The scene in which Jesus calls Peter to leave his nets was for me a
    profound moment in which I was confronted by a fear of losing other sources comfort, approval
    and control in my life.9 While the contemplated scene was imaginary, my sources of self-identity
    and happiness were not and there was genuine grace at work that allowed me to experience such
    a letting go as something to be desired.

    7 Leeuwen, Sin and the First Week in Our Actual Faith, 12.
    8 Hitter, 28.
    9 Personal Journal, Day 15, 16.
    Ultimately conversion in the Exercises is a process that moves the retreatant along a path (albeit
    an circuitous one!) from an intellectual to an affective realisation of Gods gifts and goodness
    towards us, and thereby becoming free from a sinful fixation on self in order to make a choice to
    love and serve Christ [234].
    Bibliography

    Fleming, David L. Draw Me Into Your Friendship/The Spiritual Exercises: A Literal Translation
    And A Contemporary Reading. Saint Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996.

    Fleming, David L. What Is Ignatian Spirituality? Kindle Edition. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008.

    Gans, George E. Ignatius of Loyola: Selected Exercises and Selected Works. The Classics of
    Western Spirituality. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1991.

    Hitter, Michael. The First Week and the Love of God. Way Supplement, no. 34 (1978): 2634.

    Ivens, Michael. Understanding The Spiritual Exercises. Herefordshire: Gracewing, 1998.

    Leeuwen, Hans van. Sin and the First Week in Our Actual Faith. Review of Ignatian
    Spirituality, no. 107 (2004): 113.

    Veltri, John. Conversion Cycle In Prayer And Group Processes. Accessed 28 March 2017.
    http://orientations.jesuits.ca/Chapter32.htm.

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