Two related aims are combined in this part of the Communal Exercises.  It seeks (1) to supply guidelines for directors of the Daily Life Exercises in a common form, and (2) to provide an in-depth understanding of the cultural adaptations employed in this version of the sixteenth-century text.

           As the chapter headings should make clear, the commentary is given in a series of brief essays, none of which could hope to do full justice to its theme (whole books have already been published on many of these topics).  These essays attempt to clarify intentions and methods, and to summarize the assumptions made and the concepts selected for presenting the medieval Exercises of St. Ignatius in contemporary dress.  Naturally, more specific explanations of how each exercise or Week is being interpreted will need to be given as the directory proceeds.

           References to the main points of application are inserted at the start of each chapter.  A selected bibliography of more generally useful works is given at the end of the book.

           It should perhaps be repeated here that the view of basic Christian teachings adopted in my previous work, The Common Faith, is simply taken for granted throughout.  For the present program that book supplies “The First Principle and Foundation” in a contemporary, communal form.  The First Week exercises, for example, cannot make sense except as a real advance beyond the vision of evil already put forward in seven themes of “The Story of Sin.”

           Similarly, the exercises on the Two Standards relies on the treatment of “The Struggle between Christ and Satan” which appears on pp. 132-138 of my earlier book.

           Finally, the extensive development of Third and Fourth Weeks in this program (including the entirely new “Guidelines for Discernment in the Third and Fourth Weeks”) and the fairly sweeping transpositions made in the “Contemplation to Attain Love” and “Guidelines for Fidelity to the Church (sentire cum ecclesia)” will not become comprehensible to anyone who has not followed the stage-by-stage presentations of cultural challenges to the faith in “The Story of Salvation.”

           The analysis of contemporary Western culture selected for this program is certainly open to criticism (does it omit crucial features? Is it excessively oversimplified? Can it hope to achieve its aim of bringing exercitants into closer contact with today’s world?), but at least it is meant to build upon the extended effort made in The Common Faith to put participants through the paces of faith-culture challenge and response.  That kind of creative tension is taken to be at the heart of Christian spiritual development throughout our history.  We cannot expect to escape the same tension in our own time.
 

THE COMMUNAL EXERCISES -- a Contemporary Version of  The Spiritual Exercises in a Communal Form -- PART  B: DIRECTORY  by John Wickham, s.j.,   2nd Edition 1991 Ignatian Centre Publications Montreal, Canada. ---- can be purchased from the following:

The Ignatian Spirituality

Centre Of Montreal
 

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