Our Spirit
finding God
our life together
Rule of Life
our spirituality
Our Spirituality
Our Spirituality is rooted in a personal relationship with God. Though we cannot predict or control the moments when we experience God, we can allow ourselves to be touched. And when we are, we experience the rootedness of our existence. In that moment of God’s love, we become free and desire to give all for something much bigger than ourselves …
We cannot live this transformative experience for anyone else, but filled with desire to pass it on we can, through our experience, help people touch the core of their own unique relationship with God.
In devising and leaving us his Spiritual Exercises, ways of drawing closer to God and the experience of his life, St. Ignatius of Loyola left us the heritage of ‘Ignatian Spirituality’. From the 16 th century until today, that spiritual pathway has been taken up by thousands of men and women around the world. La Retraite encountered Ignatian spirituality in the 17 th century and since that time has strongly developed the following aspects :
- Helping individuals come to know the personal love of God for them and the whole of creation
- Use of the Spiritual Exercises to strengthen one’s freely given response to God’s call
- Imaginative ways into prayer using creative and traditional means
- Through daily reflection (examen), coming to recognise the forces of life and death at work in oneself and the world; to see movements towards life (God) or away from it
- Supporting one another in putting good intentions into right action for the world
In these Exercises, we find a way of prayer which envigorates our daily life and a way of life which becomes our prayer. In our experience of the Exercises, we do not find a blueprint for living, but rather a toolkit for recognising and moving closer to God.
For more information of St. Ignatius of Loyola and Ignatian Spirituality, see our Links page