When one runs down a hill, his descent is accelerated by his own weight, and he needs special help to avoid a serious fall. Such is the case of those who are losing their fervor, and a good retreat provides the remedy.
3. If any have unfortunately already lost their balance, and are hurrying along to destruction by the commission of serious faults, or by yielding to a no less dangerous tendency to tepidity, a good retreat is almost the only way of saving them from ruin. In connection with these thoughts it is well to reflect that some one of our annual retreats will be our last; it may be the present one. Many of those who made the retreat last year are now in eternity; and not a few of them saw no more reason then to expect so early an end than we do now.
III
It is very consoling for those who enter on these Spiritual Exercises to remember that their efficacy for good is far greater than men are apt to imagine; they are not merely human, but in some respects Divine; hence their extraordinary power to sanctify us.
1. These exercises are Divine in the truths they teach us; for they consist chiefly of meditations on the word of God; and the word of God is the seed of salvation: Semen est verbum Dei. It is not the learning of philosophers or scientists that brings us eternal life, but the teachings of Christ; and these are the power working in the retreat.
2. These Exercises are Divine in the principal director who conducts them; for in them the Spirit of God instructs and enlightens the soul of the exercitant and sanctifies it. The printed page containing these teachings, or the Father Master who explains them is not the chief power at work during the retreat, no more than the audible voice of Christ converted and sanctified the souls of His hearers. God speaks to our heart in the retreat, saying, “Hear, O my people, and I will speak.... I am God, thy God” (Ps. 49).
3. Not only the several truths considered during these days are the word of God, but the whole plan of these Spiritual Exercises is in a true sense Divine. For no one who is familiar with the facts of St. Ignatius’ life can believe that he had acquired, at the time when he produced this masterpiece of sacred wisdom, such knowledge of the spiritual life as it exhibits on every page. When he came to Manresa, he was a mere novice in spirituality. And in fact he himself always felt convinced that he owed these Exercises to Divine illumination. Thus, as Bartoli relates, “on one occasion the Saint confessed to Father Laynez that one hour of prayer at Manresa had taught him more concerning spiritual things than he could have learned from the instructions of the wisest doctors” (Life, I. p. 57).
The object which this unique book has accomplished was to reduce the direction of soul to a science, that bases on certain principles of faith an exact and positive method, which, guided by the rules prescribed, insures almost infallible success. Considering the circumstances in which it was written we cannot but attribute this work to superhuman aid. Hence its wonderful efficiency, testified to by countless witnesses, and continued in the experience of three centuries till the present day.
IV
Hence the high esteem in which these Spiritual Exercises are held by the best judges in such matters. For instance, when the learned Pope Leo XIII wished to select the best means by which he might prepare himself and his domestic prelates to gain the plenary indulgence of the jubilee year 1900, he had two of our Fathers conduct in his palace the Exercises of the retreat; and, at his advanced age of over 90 years, he attended in person nearly all the meditations. His successor, Pope Pius X, gave similar marks of his esteem for these Exercises. There exists in our society a venerable tradition, which seems to date back to the earliest years of the Institute, to the effect that St. Ignatius was specially assisted by the Blessed Mother of God in composing his unique masterpiece. The inhabitants of Manresa, some years after his death, embodied this tradition in a beautiful painting, which they placed in the cave, representing him as kneeling before the figure of the Blessed Mother and Child, with his eyes fixed upon her lips, and his right hand extended as if ready to write what she dictated to him.