“How ought we to live?”
Ignatian spirituality is the way St. Ignatius Loyola and his followers understood and lived out their relationship to God, themselves, the Church and the world.
We are encouraged to find God in all things. The world is where the struggle between the "Two Standards" — the struggle between selflessness and selfishness — occurs. Found in this struggle is the Ignatian concern for the faith that does justice and the question, "How ought we to live?"
One of St. Ignatius’ significant contributions is a vibrant spiritual framework, known as the Spiritual Exercises. Just as there are many different kinds of physical exercises, so too there are many different kinds of spiritual exercises. God can enter our daily living through many kinds of activities: prayer, participating in worship, spiritual reading, meditation, contemplating scriptural passages, or having a spiritual conversation with someone. The Spiritual Exercises occur in the context of a retreat and the length varies from three days to eight days to thirty days. An adaptation, called the "19th annotation" involves a retreat in daily life spread out over several months and is based on the 30-day model. Ignatius invites the participant to live in a world filled with God's love and to be extensions of God's love in our world, a world charged with the grandeur of God.