FOR those who are unfamiliar with the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, this is a comprehensive introduction. Early chapters include the author’s experience of the Exercises and a detailed account of them. The aim of the Exercises is cited “as Ignatius puts it, ‘to overcome oneself and to order one’s life’”.

In later chapters, the author enters into dialogue with other authors, notably Viktor Frankl and the psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. While there is no evidence of Jung’s having completed the Spiritual Exercises in a structured way, he gave 21 lectures on them viewing them as “an initiation rite in which a Christian form of ‘active imagination’ is presented, which is a type of dreaming with open eyes”. While there are references to many leading Jesuits, including Karl Rahner, I missed any reference to the late Philip Endean SJ’s post-doctoral 2001 monograph, Rahner and Ignatian Spirituality.

Costello seeks to place the Spiritual Exercises into a wider context, both philosophically and spiritually. As a Franciscan Tertiary, I welcomed references to St Bonaventure. A key parallel in Ignatian and Franciscan spirituality is a resistance to easy judgement. The daily self-check-up of consolation and desolation offers both balance and humility and encourages an accepting detachment towards our various strengths and flaws which can, therefore, permit action.

There are many paths to self-awareness. I have often been struck by the way in which those who have completed an Ignatian retreat, often at St Beuno’s in north Wales, have been able to plumb their spiritual depths and become increasingly both self- and other-aware, besides practising continuous discernment.

The death of Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope, on Easter Monday elicited a wealth of responses in praise of a man who walked humbly and prayerfully throughout his life and ministry. According to his autobiography, Hope (Books, 7 March), three things struck him about the Society of Jesus: their community, their missionary work, and their discipline. He saw the Church as the people of God travelling in history with their joys and sufferings. This is the “feeling with the Church” which St Ignatius of Loyola refers to in his Spiritual Exercises. In the wake of the death of Pope Francis, Costello’s scholarly exploration of Ignatian mysticism expands this “feeling with the Church” and deserves wide distribution. 

The Revd Dr Anne C. Holmes, a former NHS mental-health chaplain, works as a psychotherapist and SSM in the diocese of Oxford.

Ignatian Mysticism: Exploring the Spiritual Exercises
Stephen J. Costello
James Clarke & Co. £25
(978-0-227-18023-5)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50