WHY THE EXERCISES OF ST. IGNATIUS?
The answer to this question is to be found in the Encyclical Letter that Pope Pius XI wrote On the Promotion of the Practice of Spiritual Exercises, or Mens nostra of December 20, 1929. The following passages all refer explicitly to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which are the exercises that the Pope recommends so strongly and unambiguously: “What better help and remedy can we propose than the invitation of those weakened and careless souls to the devout quiet of the Spiritual Exercises? In these Exercises an opportunity is given to a man to get away for a few days from the ordinary society and from strife and cares, and to pass the time, not in idleness, but in the consideration of those questions which are of perennial and profound interest to man, the questions of his origin and his destiny, whence he comes and whither he goes… But they have still greater advantages. By the fact that they bring men’s minds to deeper and more careful scrutiny of thought, word and deed, they
