Louis M. Savary - New Spiritual Exercises, The: In the Spirit of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The New Spiritual Exercises

In the Spirit of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Louis M. Savary

Paulist Press

New York / Mahwah, NJ

Cover design by Joy Taylor

Book design by Lynn Else

Quotations from The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius by George Ganss, SJ, are used with permission: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, St. Louis, MO. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2010 by Louis M. Savary

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Savary, Louis M.

The new spiritual exercises: in the spirit of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin / Louis M. Savary.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8091-4695-6

1. Spiritual lifeCatholic Church. 2. Spiritual exercises. 3. Ignatius, of Loyola, Saint, 14911556. Exercitia spiritualia. 4. Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. I. Title.

BX2178.S28 2010

248.3dc22

2010023722

Published by Paulist Press

997 Macarthur Boulevard

Mahwah, New Jersey 07430

www.paulistpress.com

Contents

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For Patricia H. Berne, my wife, partner, friend, inspiration, and guide.

My biggest thanks go to four Jesuit classmates from my Jesuit years, all experts in giving the Spiritual Exercises but coming from quite different perspectives: George Aschenbrenner, SJ, Roger Haight, SJ, Matthew Linn, SJ, and Brian McDermott, SJ. I shared with them much of the text, piece by piece, and they gave very helpful comments, keeping me focused on my task. Like them, I made the original Ignatian Exercises under many Jesuit retreat directors, starting with my novice master Thomas Gavigan, SJ.

Additional contemporary Jesuits, Ignatian scholars whose writings I used as research, include David Coghlan, SJ, Robert Faricy, SJ, David Fleming, SJ, George Ganss, SJ, W. Henry Kenney, SJ, Thomas King, SJ, George Lane, SJ, Christopher Mooney, SJ, John OMalley, SJ, Juan Luis Segundo, SJ, James Skehan, SJ, and Joseph Tetlow, SJ.

In addition to Teilhard in his own writings, there are the many Jesuits who, over the years, influenced my understanding of Teilhard, most especially my cosmology professor Robert Johann, SJ. I read the books of those who knew Teilhard personally and first introduced us to his life and thought, such as Pierre Leroy, SJ, Claude Tresmontant, SJ, and Henri de Lubac, SJ.

I thank the people of the American Teilhard Society who supported my work, especially John Grim, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Arthur Fabel, and Kathleen Duffy, SSJ. I am grateful to the late Father Lawrence Boadt, CSP, Paul McMahon, and others on the team at Paulist Press who believed in my dream and helped make my manuscript worthy of publishing.

In addition, there are many who, over the past half century, have encouraged, supported, and enriched my Teilhardian workshops and writings, including: Father Thomas Composto, Dan and Rose Lucey, Father Gerard Fahey, Robert Fritz, Sister Sadie Nesser, RC, Sister Olga Neft, OSF, Father Charles Topper, Sister Marylouise Fennell, RSM, Edward Zogby, SJ, Len Sroka, Thomas Francis, OSCO, Judy Cannato, Richard Rohr, OSF, Clare Crawford-Mason, Bob Mason, and Sister Mary Madden, SSJ.

Thanks to enthusiastic supporters from Tampa: Father Austin Mullen, Father Len Piotrowski, Father Joseph Musco, and Father Jose Colina; Deacons John Alvarez and Gregory Kovalesky; Peter and Mary Esseff, Florence Murphy, Thomas Kochansky, Julie Cate, Sister Cathy Cahill, OSF, and the team at the Franciscan Center.

Finally, thanks to supporters from Orleans, MA, including Father Bob Powell, Ed Daly, Judy Burt-Walker, and others. I consider this book a work in progress.

For four centuries, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola have been a powerful and resilient force in shaping Christian life and spirituality. The Exercises, as they are familiarly called in the Society of Jesus, have inspired and energized many thousands of Jesuits and others. Just as well-designed physical exercises can help improve and renew ones physical life, Ignatius believed that well-designed spiritual exercises can help improve and renew ones spiritual life.

This book presents a spiritual renewal system for contemporary believers based on Ignatius Spiritual Exercises and inspired by the modern insights of Jesuit priest-scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (18811955)a reenvisioning of the original Exercises as Teilhard might envision and re-create them if he were alive today. While Teilhard never actually wrote such a book, these new Exercises are my vision of how a twenty-first century Teilhard might have adapted Ignatius classic work.

In the Teilhardian spirit, these New Spiritual Exercises do not focus primarily on personal sin and saving ones soul, but upon the graces and blessings God gives us for consciously creating a positive difference in our world. They are based on the scriptural revelation that God has a great project going onmuch more than just keeping souls from falling into sin and helland that we are all invited to become fully and actively involved in this divine project. Saint Paul clearly recognized and promoted this project (see Eph 3 and 4). It is a cosmic project God envisioned almost fourteen billion years ago at the first moment of creation. That great creation project is still going forward, and with humanitys creative help it will gain momentum. In The New Spiritual Exercises you are invited to become a co-creator with God of the divine vision, formulated by Jesus, That all may be one as you, Father, are in me and I am in you (John 17:21).

Teilhard the Prophet

Teilhard was Ignatian to his core, and he remained faithfully committed to the Society of Jesus until the day he died, despite decades of rejection by his own religious superiors and other influential people in the church.

In a prophetic spirit, Teilhard was presenting, as early as the 1920s, evolutionary theological ideas in his talks, essays, and correspondenceideas about integrating Christianity and evolution, revelations about the nature of God flowing from modern scientific discoveries, the central importance of the universal Body of Christ in everyday spirituality, the emerging noosphere (the collective mind and heart of humanity) as the tip of an evolutionary arrow, and the innate longing of all creation, not just humanity, to reach the fulfillment the Creator has always desired for it. In those earlier days, most minds in the church were not ready to hear Teilhards radically fresh insights, let alone grasp them, digest them, and integrate them into their theological and spiritual mind-set. Today, I think we are ready.

Teilhard and the Ignatian Exercises

Teilhard faithfully made the Ignatian Exercises during his annual retreat each year. However, in his retreat notes he hinted at a growing need for their transposition, which is an interesting concept.

For example, in music, to transpose means to shift into a new key. In its new key, the song is not changed but acquires a fresh expression and makes a more powerful impression. In the new key, different orchestral instruments often carry the melody and give it a new feeling and flavor. Teilhard is suggesting that there is the need to write Ignatian spirituality in a new key and let the instruments of science and evolution express the melody of Gods kingdom in a way we have not heard before. In his two books, The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine Milieu, Teilhard presents the core of what might be his way of approaching this transposition.