An Ignatian retreat is a retreat built on the Spiritual Exercises, the manual of prayer that Ignatius of Loyola composed between 1522 and 1524 and that Pope Paul III approved in 1548. In its full form it lasts about thirty days of silence, with four or five hour-long periods of prayer each day and a daily conversation with a director; shorter retreats and a version made over several months at home follow the same method. It is also the pattern behind the Cenacle retreat: the congregation that ran Houston's Cenacle Retreat House used the Exercises from its first years in France.

What is an Ignatian retreat?

The phrase describes a retreat that follows the method of the Spiritual Exercises, not simply one with a Jesuit speaker or an Ignatian theme. Ignatius did not write a book to be read straight through. He wrote instructions for the person who gives the retreat: prayer material arranged in order, with notes on how to adapt it. The retreatant receives that material a little at a time, prays with it alone, and talks over what happened with the director. Ignatius compares the Exercises to bodily exercise: as walking and running train the body, examining conscience, meditating, contemplating and praying train a person to set aside disordered attachments and seek the will of God. In practice three features mark an Ignatian retreat: sustained silence, prayer drawn mostly from scripture, and a regular conversation with a guide who knows the method.

Where do the Spiritual Exercises come from?

Ignatius was a Basque soldier wounded at the siege of Pamplona in 1521. During a long convalescence he underwent a conversion, and after a stay at the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat he spent about ten months at Manresa, in Catalonia, praying for long hours and noting what moved him. The foundations of the Exercises date from that period. He refined them later as a student in Paris, where he gave them to the companions with whom he went on to found the Society of Jesus. Pope Paul III approved the book in the brief Pastoralis officii of 31 July 1548, and the first printed edition appeared that year in Latin, translated from Ignatius's Spanish manuscripts.

What are the four weeks of the Exercises?

Ignatius divides the Exercises into four parts he calls weeks, though they are not calendar weeks: each lasts as long as the retreatant needs, and the whole, he writes, will be finished in thirty days, a little more or less. Before the first week stands the Principle and Foundation, a short statement that human beings are created to praise, reverence and serve God, and that everything else is to be used or set aside as it helps toward that end. Ignatius calls the inner freedom it asks for indifference: not fixing in advance on health or sickness, wealth or poverty.

• The first week considers sin, its consequences and the mercy of God.
• The second week follows the life of Christ up to Palm Sunday; a retreatant facing a major decision makes it here, in what Ignatius calls the election.
• The third week accompanies the Passion.
• The fourth week contemplates the Resurrection and the Ascension.

What does a day on an Ignatian retreat look like?

On a full retreat the retreatant prays four or five times a day for about an hour each time, using a passage or a set of points from the director. After each period comes a short review: what happened, where attention went, what brought peace and what brought unrest. Ignatius builds in repetition, sending the retreatant back to a fruitful passage instead of hurrying on, and ends each period with a colloquy, a plain conversation with God in the way one friend speaks to another. Once a day the retreatant meets the director to report and receive the next material. Meals are quiet, there is time for walking and rest, and the day closes with the examen. The outward shape resembles the one described in the guide to what a silent retreat is and how silence is kept; the difference is that each prayer period follows a written method.

Which kinds of prayer does it use?

Three forms carry most of the weight. Meditation works reflectively through a truth or a passage. Ignatian contemplation, used from the second week on, invites the retreatant to enter a gospel scene, to see the people, hear what they say and notice what they do; Ignatius adds an application of the senses that lingers on sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. The examen is a short review of the day, which Ignatius treated as the most important practice to keep once the retreat is over. In the form usually taught today it has five steps: recalling the presence of God, giving thanks, reviewing the day, asking forgiveness and resolving for the day ahead. Beneath all three runs the discernment of spirits, a set of rules for noticing consolation and desolation and telling which inner movements lead toward God.

Directed, preached or in daily life: which form fits?

Ignatius expected the Exercises to be adapted, and his introductory notes to the Spiritual Exercises say how. The eighteenth note fits the material to each person's age, education and ability. The nineteenth describes someone busy with public affairs or necessary business who can give an hour and a half a day. The twentieth describes the full retreat made in seclusion, away from friends and acquaintances. Retreat houses still offer the forms that grew from those notes.

For centuries the long retreat was the standard form; Jesuit-run guides to Ignatian prayer now describe the retreat in daily life as the most common, since it needs no long absence from work or family. In a preached retreat a speaker gives the points of prayer to the whole group, and each person prays with them alone between talks. In Texas, Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House on Lake Dallas is one house that gives weekend retreats in this tradition.

Why do Cenacle retreats follow Ignatius?

The link is as old as the congregation. At Lalouvesc, Étienne Terme introduced the Spiritual Exercises to the retreats for women pilgrims, and the sisters began using them to guide the women who came to pray. When Terme died in 1834, his will entrusted the sisters to the Society of Jesus, and Jesuits went on to form them in Ignatian spirituality and in giving the Exercises. A reader searching for a Cenacle retreat is therefore, in practice, looking for an Ignatian one: Cenacle houses kept silence, offered preached and directed retreats, and made spiritual direction part of the ordinary week. The congregation's own story is told on the page about the Cenacle tradition from 1826 to Houston.

Houston followed the same pattern. The Cenacle Retreat House on Kirkwood Road ran weekend retreats, days of prayer, directed retreats and ongoing spiritual direction, and in 1985 the sisters founded a school to train the kind of listener a directed retreat depends on. Its history, including its transfer to Emmaus Spirituality Center after the house closed on 31 May 2020, is on the page about spiritual direction and the Spiritual Direction Institute.

How should a beginner prepare?

Preparation is mostly a matter of choosing the form. A newcomer usually does better with a preached weekend or a directed retreat of three to five days than with the full thirty days, which many houses reserve for people with some experience of prayer and direction. Before booking, ask whether the retreat is preached or directed, how often guests meet a director, and whether meals are silent. A Bible, a notebook for the review after each prayer period and clothes for walking are enough to bring. Expect the second or third day to feel slow or dry: Ignatius anticipated this, and one of his rules is to make no change to earlier resolutions while desolation lasts. Afterward, the practice that travels home most easily is the examen, a few minutes at the end of each day.

Three questions readers ask

Do you need to be Catholic to make an Ignatian retreat?

The Exercises were written by a Catholic saint for Catholic retreatants, but houses in the Ignatian tradition commonly welcome Christians of other churches, and the Houston Cenacle, in the ecumenical spirit of its congregation, served members of many churches.

How long are the full Spiritual Exercises?

About thirty days in Ignatius's own estimate, divided into four weeks of variable length. The same material can be spread over roughly five to seven months as a retreat in daily life.

Is an Ignatian retreat always silent?

Residential directed retreats are kept in silence apart from the meeting with the director and common worship. A retreat in daily life is not silent in that sense: the retreatant keeps ordinary life and protects a daily time of prayer within it.