Transcript

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle within us the fire of your divine love.

Send forth your Spirit and these shall be created.

And thou shall renew the face of the earth.

Let us pray.

Oh God that did instruct the hearts of your faithful by the way of the Holy Spirit, grant us Or by the same Spirit who may be truly wise and ever rejoice in his consolation to the Saint Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Our Lady of Fátima.

Pray for us.

Saint Joseph.

Pray for us.

Father Lanteri.

Pray for us.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

Pray for us.

All God's angels and saints.

Pray for us.

In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Well, good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Father.

Welcome you all to our spiritual exercises program with Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

It's great to have all of you.

And starting tomorrow, as is my custom, I will pray for all of you and I'll offer a novena for you starting tomorrow.

Thank you.

So starting tomorrow as, uh, special intention in the Mass that we celebrate every day, I'll place you on the altar so that this will be the most important transforming ten week, ten weeks in your life, and I believe God is going to hear my prayer.

Thank you, Father.

So that'll be my, my gift to you.

I'll I can't offer you limousines or money or new houses.

I have avowed poverty, but I can offer you something even better and that would be I'll offer you prayers, and especially the greatest prayers out of the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

Amen.

And invite you also pray for me in my intentions.

I'll be praying for you and pray also because tomorrow we've got another group, those who speak Spanish.

We'll have our Spanish one tomorrow, so, um, pray for the two groups.

It's it'll be simultaneous, but just changing the language.

So there's really a- a lot, a lot to be said.

Uh, the first session of the exercises, what I- I try to do, I try to cover three, uh, basic topics in this, uh, first session.

And the first is I want to speak briefly about Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and then I like to talk about, uh, I'd like to give you some ideas on how to meditate.

How to meditate, how to pray.

Then we'll give you the, the foundational exercise for all the exercises, and it's actually called principle and foundation.

So all the exercises are built upon what is called principle and foundation, so we'll try to, try to be as succinct as possible.

All right.

Our, our method is the following.

Uh, we give, uh, a talk, a lecture, which will give you the orientation of what you're gonna be doing the whole week.

So that'll be the first, the first part.

We'll give you a talk on where you're heading.

What are you going to be doing in the week?

What, what will your meditations be?

Okay, the second will be, after our conversation today, we will divide you into groups and starting next week, you'll be, you'll be sharing on what you meditated upon.

So we've got a lot of space here and I've given the exercise many place, place, but this is the best because actually I live here, so I know the environment.

Other places I'm kind of floundering where as where to go, but here you got many classrooms, you got classrooms here, you can have the sessions right here.

There's, uh, there's, um, a sacristy.

There's just a lot of space here, so this is probably the best place in LA to give the diocese right here.

And also, if we don't have enough photocopies, we got the machine right behind me, you know.

So, uh, and then the third part will be, I like to explain to you on, uh, how to meditate.

Uh, all of you have heard the word meditation, some of you have done the exercise, but I'd like to give you kind of a little coaching on what are the steps to make, uh, to make a good meditation.

So that's our, that's our tripod.

Talk, share in groups, and then we have The most important part will be your, your daily meditation.

That clear?

Yes, Father.

All right.

Um, even though I've, I've read the life of Ignatius, uh, more than once and seen movies on him, I always, uh, try to get to know him better.

Um, so I was able to google in last night and I got an article written, uh, by the Xavier Institute by a nun and a priest which was about the best six-page summary of his life I've ever read.Uh, you I would invite all of you to, to buy his autobiography.

It's actually it's only about 70 pages.

It's not very long.

So I invite you to read his autobiography.

There are many versions.

And I also invite all of you to try to see the movie that was made in the Philippines about eight years ago, which is The Life of Saint Ignatius.

Uh, have any of you seen it?

I mean, it's not, it's not perfect, uh, but as a intro to his life, I think it's- pretty well done.

And the scene in Pamplona where he where there was a battle between the French and the Spanish, that, that's my favorite scene, where the cannonball breaks through the wall and basically shatters his legs, no?

So the movie's pretty it's pretty, pretty well done.

N- not perfect, but I'd say I give it a B+, no?

Mm-hmm.

So get to know the saint.

Get to know the saint.

So, uh, trying to be as succinct as possible, I try to go through his life because unless you get to know the saint, you're not gonna really understand his spirituality.

It's like if you wanna get to know, uh, the writings of Teresa of Avila, you have to, you have to get to know who Teresa of Avila is.

You wanna get to know, uh, the diary of Saint Faustina, you have to know some biographical elements of Saint Faustina.

Same thing is about Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

You have to get to know the person and pray to him, pray to him.

So here we go.

He was, uh, he was born in Spain, in the Basque area, northern Spain.

And he was, um, born in 1491.

He was the last child, as was Francis Xavier, his companion.

He was the last of 13, okay?

Like Father Dave Jankowski is he's one of 13 also, no?

Mm-hmm.

13 is a good number.

I'm a New Yorker.

And if you go to New York and you go to the big skyscrapers, there's th- there's, uh, room number 12 and 14, but there's no, n- no 13.

I'm speaking like a New Yorker now.

But we don't believe in superstition, do we, no?

No.

You wanna get me angry?

Say, Good luck, Father.

Hmm.

God bless you, Father.

There you go.

God bless you, yeah.

Or buena suerte or in French, bon chance, no?

Uh, God bless you.

I don't believe in luck.

Nothing happens by chance.

God knows how many hairs you have on your head, Robert.

Right, Robert?

Yeah.

He's a bald guy, you know?

Once heard, uh, someone said, um, You know why you lose your hair?

In the front because you think too much.

In the back because you work too much.

If you lose it in the front and the back, it's because you think you work too much, huh?

Right, Robert?

Okay.

Do any of you know what ASAP stands for?

A-S-A-S

A-P.

A-S-A-P.

You know what that means?

Say a prayer when you take out the trash?

No.

Always say a prayer.

Amen?

Hey.

Got to be baptized, huh?

You've got the paganistic interpretation.

I've got the supernatural misinterpretation.

Amen or oh, me?

Amen, right?

All right.

So he's born in 1491.

One of 13.

I was exposed, uh, to the lives of the saints, at least to a limited degree when I was a child.

And my first the first form of life was, uh, Dominic Savio read when he was 12 or 13.

By the author was Peter Lapin, which is French for Peter the Rabbit, no?

And, um, I thought as a child that the saints were born saints.

I thought that they were born saints, that they, you know, they didn't they were just very holy.

They breathed another atmosphere.

They didn't have to go to the bathroom.

I mean, I thought all these things.

But then in time, I came to the keen awareness that the saints, the saints are like us and they have a lot of flaws, a lot of sins.

Some more than others.

So Saint Ignatius is in the category of, of the saints that lived very worldly lives before they underwent a conversion.

Like Augustine.

Have you heard of Saint Augustine?

Like Mary Magdalene, like Mary of Egypt was, who was a prostitute before she converted, no? like, uh, Camillus de Lellis.

I mean, I could go give you a whole list of these saints that lived pretty spicy lives before the Holy Spirit invited invaded their lives.

I th- beca- I think it's really encouraging, because we're all sinners.

We're all sinners.

We're all striving to go beyond our sinfulness.

So, uh, Ignatius was one of the sa- one of the saints that w- was in and out of jail.

Did you know that?

Yes.

Makes you feel very comfortable with the cholars at Hawaiian Gardens.

No.

I mean, he was- He was in and out of jail.

He was a tough guy, I think.

I think that the modern cholars would be afraid of him.

I mean, he was a tough guy.

So by he came from a very noble family.

They were religious, but didn't re- really live a very holy life.

They were Catholics by name, as you have today, so there's a real similarity.

Do you know the biggest the biggest religious group in our country are non-practicing Catholics?

Mm-hmm.

Did you know that?

Not always.

Biggest group are non-practicing Catholics.

When I was a child, 80% of Catholics went to mass and 20% did not.

Now, 80% don't go to mass and 20% go to church.

And I'm talking about two generations.

Mm-hmm.

And at the end of these exercises, your people are gonna be bringing people back to church.

By the time you finish these exercises, you're gonna be like a spiritual magnet, bringing Christ to others and bringing others to Christ.

Amen?

Amen.

That's my high ideal of this noble group of individuals.

No?

Say, Thank you, Father.

Thank you, Father.

You're welcome.

Yeah.

So by profession, Ignatius he was a soldier.

So what type of what type of person was he?

He was he liked to drink.

He was an excellent dancer.

He liked wine and women.

Mm-hmm.

He liked to fight.

He had his own dagger and sword.

I mean, he was a he- he- he was a tough guy.

He was vain.

He liked to dress elegantly, like Saint Francis of Assisi.

I mean, he had almost almost all the capital sins that you have, he had 'em, and pretty too pretty too high high degree.

Some autobiographies say that he he could've had an illegitimate child, too, like Augustine.

No?

Uh, so he wasn't a milk toast.

No.

He was a tough guy.

But God is going to change him.

So here we s- see this very worldly, sensual, angry, uh, proud, vain individual.

And he's a he's in he- he- he's- he's in a battle between the French and the Spanish.

Now, the French had a much stronger army, number as well as artillery, than the than the Spanish.

So he was the head of a squadron of- of soldiers and he said to his soldiers, Let's fight the French.

They all said, No, because they're too powerful.

We can't win the battle.

So Ignatius says, We can win the battle.

So the battle was fought.

In the movie, the movie made in the Philippines, it's my favorite scene, 'cause you see him at the top of a fortress.

He's fighting off individuals.

He's killing them right and left.

And then you see the French army encroaching with their horses and their cannons and their bayonets and their rifles and they're shooting.

And all of a sudden, you see one of the French soldiers aiming the cannon with the cannonball and he crashes right through the wall, right at Ignatius.

Right at his legs.

Shattering his legs.

There he is, laying there, half dead.

And the French were so impressed at his courage.

I mean, they could've killed him right away.

No?

They're so impressed that this soldier that was basically almost single-handedly holding back the French.

This one guy, no?

That they put him on a stretcher and they they brought him back to Loyola, 'cause they they could've killed him.

But here he is now, and, uh, the article I read last night points out s- a couple things that never really occurred to me.

Part of his part of hi- his personality was he was really, um, proud of the fact that he was handsome.

He was a woman's man.

He was attractive.

He was prestigious.

Now the guy can't he can't even walk.

He's gonna be losing all of his his- his attractiveness.

He's never gonna recover it again.

He's never gonna be able to walk without a limp.I mean, every- all- all the vanity that he had, God eliminated with one cannonball.

I mean, how God can work.

Incredible.

In one second, that vanity was crashed and crushed.

God can do that to us, too, if He wants to.

God knows how to work with us.

He knows how to pulverize within us, that's a strong word, isn't it?

Pulverize, in us what's not good.

So he was taken back to his castle in Loyola.

Now, there he- there he is with basically both of his legs are ruined, one worse than the other.

We might have some people here in the medical profession, nurses or doctors or medical assistants.

They had to break his leg with no anesthesia.

Then they had to break it again, because the first break was a lousy job.

I have an older brother who do- who does reparatory spine surgery.

You know what that is?

It means the doctor has botched it and my brother's gotta put him back on his feet again.

So it was done poorly the first time.

But then, now all this is without anesthesia.

Are you ready?

'Kay, below his knee there was a bone protrusion of about an inch.

He told the doctor, Saw it off.

His brother almost fainted, and he just clenched his fists and he barely moved.

I'm saying this not to scare you, but see the- see the willpower he has?

Once he's converted, all this energy is gonna be directed to praising God and to saving souls.

Very hope for all of you.

Thank you.

You have energy, so do I, but it's dissipated.

It's not properly channeled.

Be honest.

It's dissipated.

We wanna channel our energies to praise God and become the greatest saints in the world.

That's the purpose of the exercises.

So after these painful operations, you can imagine that the convalescence is gonna be very slow.

But providentially, so nothing happens by chance.

Nothing happens by chance.

So what's gonna happen as a result of this convalescence, this is a providential accident, he's gonna be starting his process of conversion.

Conversion is something that there- there can be a radical conversion, but also after the radical conversion, then there's a daily conversion till we die.

All right.

What I'm gonna tell you right now is, is one of the hallmarks of Ignatian spirituality.

And I'm gonna ask you a rhetorical question.

I'm not saying this to, uh, disparage your- your keen acumen or intellect, but how many of you know how to read?

'Kay, how many knew how to read 500 years ago?

Very few, because it was, this was before the Industrial Revolution, before the printing press.

So what you have is very few people knew how to read and write.

Uh, Ignatius and Teresa of Ávila, they knew how to read.

Teresa of Ávila, too.

Teresa of Ávila would never allow a nun to enter in if she couldn't read, so she could be au- autodidactic.

She could learn by herself.

Ignatius, not only could he read, but he loved to read, but telenovelas.

You know what that word is in Spanish, la telenovela?

He- he-

It's a movie.

he loved to read the chivalrous tales of the knights in shining armor, right, with the damsels in distress.

He loved that, so the romantic tales.

And he was a page in the court of Spain also before being a soldier, so he knew the court life and he wanted- he wanted one day to possibly marry the Queen of Spain.

So he wanted to be someone famous.So he would often think, What, what would I say?

What might romantic words be to win over win over the Queen of Spain?

And he didn't have any Shakespearean sonnets to quote because, number one, Shakespeare spoke English, and yet Shakespeare wasn't born yet.

Okay?

So what he did was this.

He wanted those books, but his relative couldn't find any of those books, so they brought him The Lives of the Saints.

Yeah.

That was the last thing you wanted to read.

So what he did was this.

Given that you didn't have TV and radio, his, his, his imagination was very vivid.

Our imagination is dulled because of the social media.

Anywa- his i- imaginations were very vivid.

So he would imagine himself dressed in elegant clothes, talking to the Queen, and what he would say And he could spend hours in these chivalrous, romantic, ideal dreams, and he spent hours doing that.

He had a lot of free time.

And when he was doing it, he experienced pleasure on the surface of his soul, and he was cast into Here's a key Ignatian word.

Desolation.

You're gonna be hearing that word in these exercises.

He was cast into desolation, which is basically a state of sadness.

But then, then he did open The Lives of the Saints and The Life of Christ by Ludolph of Saxony.

So there's The Life of Christ and The Lives of the Saints.

He started to read The Lives of the Saints, and it's almost as if dynamite exploded in his soul.

He was fascinated by these saints.

And you read his bi- uh, his b- autobiography, he, he wrote saying, Well, if Dominic can do it, so can I. If Francis can do it, so can I. If Augustine can do it, so can I. If the Desert Fathers can do it, I'll beat them.

And he read The Lives of the Saints.

When he was reading, he was on fire, but after he finished, that interior fire, that stayed with him.

Ah.

Very interesting.

The romantic memories, pleasure, desolation.

Lives of the Saints of Christ, consolation when he read, and he stayed with the consolation.

From that, my friends, we have the beginning of The Art of Spiritual Discernment, and Saint Ignatius is the greatest in the world.

We are gonna be teaching you The Art of Spiritual Discernment.

Applying this to yourself, all of you will understand this.

You do certain things that maybe c- cause you a certain amount of pleasure, and you feel sad afterward.

Whereas there are other things you do that when you're carrying them out, maybe there's a certain amount of peace, and afterward that peace and joy stands wi- stays with you, right?

You understand that?

Yes.

So we're introducing And that's key.

Very important, The Art of Spiritual Discernment.

People will come to me with interior battles or thoughts.

I was, I'll often This is my style.

I'll stop and say, Where does that come from?

And I purposely make you to rewind that and ask, Okay, does that come from good spirit or the bad spirit?

N- a- a- and 95% of the time, the person hits the nail on the head.

Sometimes the person's off the mark, and I'll say, No, this real- it really does come from the good spirit.

So constantly you have this dynamic within you, the good spirit and the bad spi- 24/7.

Unless you do the exercise, you're not gonna be able to pick up the vibes.

Spanish, they say that, Las buenas ondas, las malas ondas, no?

So you have to learn The Art of Spiritual Discernment to ac- to accept the good ones, and then to reject the bad ones, to be as simple as possible.

We have a priest in the Oblates who spends just probably almost many, many seminars.

Father Tim Gallagher, who's on EWTN.

Uh, some of you have probably heard of Father Tim Gallagher.

He's an Oblate priest.

He goes throughout the whole country giving a lot of talks, but a lot of it is based on The Art of Spiritual Discernment.

All right.

So there he is.

He's recovering, but it's a slow process because of the shattered limbs and the bad operations, and But he arrives at a point where he's, he's ready to start- moving.

And he decides that he's gonna become a pilgrim.

In some of the autobiographies of Ignatius, uh, in Italian, Il P- Il Piligrimo, if you know Italian, which means the pilgrim.

Spanish, El Peregrino.

Because you're gonna see the life of Ignatius, he's a pilgrim going from one place to another.

And I'll highlight the, um, the most important places where he's heading.

By the way, all of us are pilgrims too.

A pilgrim is someone that's heading tow- uh, toward an ultimate destiny.

Our ultimate destiny is to get to Heaven, so we are pilgrim people.

Okay, so after he recovers, he's a pilgrim.

He wants to go to, you've probably heard of this place before, Montserrat, okay?

Montserrat.

Montserrat is a famous Benedictine Marian sanctuary on the top of a, top of a, of a hill.

And many girls, I mean, there's, you have Filipinas as well as Mexicans, they'll, they'll choose that name, Montserrat, which is a beauti- beautiful name.

They don't know what it means, though.

Uh, but they should.

It's really, it's really a name for Mary, okay?

It's a very famous Marian Benedictine, uh, monastery.

So he's heading toward Montserrat on a donkey, and on the way he meets a, uh, a Muslim.

And he's on the donkey and he's talking with the Muslim about theology.

And the topic surfaces on Mariology.

And Ignatius is explaining to this guy one of Mary, Mary's privileges is her perpetual virginity, one of the four Marian dogmas.

And, uh, the Muslim violently opposes that dogma, insulting the Blessed Mother.

Ignatius is infuriated.

So he's arrived at a fork in the road on his donkey, and he says, If the donkey follows him to the right, I'll kill him in, uh, in honor of Our Lady.

But if the donkey heads toward Montserrat, Well, I'll spare his life.

Thanks be to God, it was a Catholic donkey.

Good, uh, Catholic donkeys, huh?

Don't say th- that I'm married to one of them.

No, don't say that.

So he arrives at Montserrat.

What is he doing there?

Okay, he's spending long periods of prayer.

He's practicing penance.

He's in silence.

He's examining his conscience.

And he's going deep within his soul, seeing all the trash, the moral rubbish, trash, he has accumulated in these years of his life.

He's in his late 20s.

So he arrives at the point where he wants to make a confession.

This is called a general confession.

So he finds a priest, goes to confession.

Have all of you been to confession in your life?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yesterday I heard about 100 confessions in five hours in a retreat there at El Semperono.

His confession took four to five days.

Wow.

Can you imagine that?

Your confession is not gonna take four to five days, no.

However, the, the priest that heard his confession was blown away at the, at the delicacy of his conscience.

This is another fruit that will become more evident to you.

As a result of these exercises, your conscience is, uh, gonna become more delicate.

You're gonna have a more refined conscience.

Some people have a very obtuse, coarse conscience.

Most.

Some have even, you know, killed their conscience, or they're living with a suppressed conscience.

Because the closer you get to the light, the more you can see the spots on your white dress, huh?

Mm-hmm.

That's right.

So the closer you get to the light, and God is light, the more you're able to see with greater clarity things that are really n- really not pleasing to God.So the priest was really blown away.

A confession of five days?

See his conversion, okay.

The conversion at Pamplona.

Read the lives of saints, and now you're going, you're going, you're going deeper.

Okay, then something else happens in which he's a soldier, now he's gonna become a soldier for Christ.

This is very common in the, in the Hispanic, in the Latino cu- uh, culture, is to have You're standing in front of the Blessed Mother with a sword, okay.

And you spend the whole night there in front of the Blessed Mother.

So Ignatius did that, and this is not a dogmatic fact, but it could've been, this is my conjecture now, is that he was given the grace of perfect chastity through the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Most people battle with that virtue their whole life.

But when God is gonna choose someone to carry a very sublime mission, that person has to really have chastity.

As in Thomas Aquinas, in Faustina, and these great saints.

How is God gonna work through an impure vessel?

So it's through the Blessed Virgin Mary that these graces are gonna pour.

Then after he finishes his time in Montserrat, he travels to a place, he's a pilgrim now, to Manresa.

Montserrat, Manresa.

Now there in Manresa, his state of soul is different.

In Montserrat he's basically in, just in a lot of consolation.

Preparing for the confession, praying, fasting, encounter with the Blessed Mother.

He's kind of in a wave of consolation.

Now on Manresa, he's spending a lot of time in the cave there in Manresa.

There's a cave in Manresa where he's spending long hours in prayer, but also he's going out and he's doing some type of apostolic work.

But he's plunged into a very deep state of desolation.

And I would have to say that behind this desolation was, uh, was the enemy, the devil.

He was cast into that state of desolation for a long time.

So he prayed and he fasted, and it seemed to get worse and worse.

Then he was, he was tempted to commit suicide.

Because the devil was saying, You're not gonna be able to put up with a life of penance for another 40 years.

Then he's fasting for a whole week, he talks to his spiritual director, who says, I fast, I'm gonna spend another several days to And his director says, No, start to eat now.

So he eats and obeys his director and it disappears.

By obedience, hmm, or actually by eating.

How important it is to learn how to obey.

How little is a priest of the virtue of obedience today.

Now the reason why the devil was attacking him we put, was because there in Manresa, in that cave, he's gonna have a mystical experience that will change his life, and change the lives of millions of people until the end of time.

While he's there in Manresa praying, the Blessed Virgin Mary appears to him and she dictates the spiritual exercise to Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

So the exercises come from the Blessed Virgin Mary.

So as Saint Faustina is the secretary of divine mercy, Saint Ignatius is the secretary of the spiritual exercises dictated by the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Like that?

Yeah.

As an oblate, I love it.

These exercises are given from Mary.

You never go wrong if you're in the hands of Mary.

Amen?

Amen.

You never go wrong.

So again, we place in these spiritual exercises in the hands and heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Okay, pilgrim, okay?

So see where he's, what's happened.

He's in Loyola, okay, he's brought up and raised in Loyola.

Then he goes to Pamplona.

Pamplona, Montserrat.

Montserrat, Manresa.

Now he wants to go to the Holy Land.

Biblical experts call it the fifth gospel, okay.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Holy Land.

They call it the fifth gospel.

He wanted to go there and kiss the ground on which our Lord walked .

wanted to venerate Bethlehem and the Mount of the Transfiguration and Lake Galilee and Calvary and the Holy Sepulcher.

He wanted, he wanted to see where our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ lived.

It was very difficult for him to do it.

And once he arrived, he spent some time there, but the Franciscans, who were in charge of the Holy Land, told him to get out because of the danger of the Muslim threat that they They could They'd end up by killing him.

So he didn't want to, but they lifted up a document, Otherwise, you're excommunicated.

Okay.

So he spent some time in Holy Land, but then he had to return to Europe and Spain.

Now what he's doing is this.

Whenever he meets someone, he's always talking about God.

Always.

Y- I mean, he loves God so much, he just He's talking always about God, and with a lot of enthusiasm.

But he's also giving people the Exercises.

So he got the Exercises in Manresa, but they, they, they were developing in time.

Manresa had the blueprints, but he kept developing them.

And he came to the Spiritual Exercises.

You're doing a 10-week program with me.

This is called Annotation 19, the program that I wrote.

But the original Exercises would be a month retreat.

You go off to a month retreat with a director, and he's directing you during the month, and there's no, there's no talks.

You're just praying, you talk with the director once a day.

That's the original pristine Exercises.

But most of you cannot go off on a 30-day retreat.

You can't do that.

But you can do this.

You can come once a week and you can do your meditation.

So in the Exercises, you have a lot of what are called annotations or adaptations.

For example, the teenagers, I wrote a program, some of you have teenagers.

I wrote a program for the teenagers, Annotation 9 18.

It takes this program, cuts it in half.

Five weeks, meditate a half hour.

I wrote that 10 years ago.

So the Exercises, they lend themself to adaptation.

I've written the Exercises for toddlers too.

Haven't I have.

I haven't launched it yet.

I already have written it.

And I've al- also written it for the elderly.

So you can adapt the Exercises according to everyone.

And given that we're oblates, our charism, we know how to do it.

That's our, that's our charism.

And I have many ge- many, many defects, but I can be very creative, right?

Very creative, especially with the Exercises.

So he comes back, and now he's given the Exercises, but he's got a He's in his 30s.

He's got a fourth grade education.

He had a fourth grade education.

This is the time of the Inquisition, okay?

So the ecclesiastic authorities come and say, What the heck are you doing?

You're not a priest, you're not a bishop, you're not a deacon.

You're not even an altar boy or that, huh?

But what was happening, he was giving the Exercises to the most simple, humble farmers and to priests and bishops and laypeople, married, single, with a radical conversion.

Irrespective of the social class of the person, people were being transformed in 30 days.

As I said at the end of mass today, if we don't learn how to meditate, we're gonna be mediocre.

There's no way around it.

We're just gonna be typical, mediocre Catholics.

But if you learn to meditate, we can transform ourself from being turtles to eagles.

Amen?

Yeah.

Amen.

Do you prefer to be a turtle or an eagle?

Eagle.

Yeah.

Yeah, you want them to win the Super Bowl too.

Okay.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay, so there he is giving the Exercises and there's these radical conversions.

This guy, h- he doesn't even He's not even graduated from elementary school, so they tell him, Stop doing that.

So he didn't obey.

He's thrown into jail.

They question him and he's not a heretic.

He gets out.

They throw him into jail again.

So he's thrown into jail about three times.

And it dawns on him that he's gotta go back to school.

So he's getting close to 30 and he's studying at school with kids that are nine, 10, 11 and 12.

And they're faster learners than him.

Talk about humiliation.

He's trying to learn the Latin and they're picking it up quick and he's gotta go back and try to learn it again.

But you see his, h- his perseverance, no?

And his humility.

So he, he goes back to school and he's gonna be going to these different places, Alcalá, and he's gonna be going to Salamanca.And from Alcalá de Salamanca, he finally gets his high school degree.

Th- the guy, the guy's got perseverance.

But he's not a keen intellect- intellectual like Aquinas or Augustine or John Paul II.

He's not.

But he's got this dogged tenaciousness, so he ends up in the most prestigious university in the world back then.

Want me to tell you?

University of Paris, okay?

Oh.

Okay.

Where Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas taught years before.

That was the, the Harvard, the Princeton, Yale, okay?

Or the Oxford or Cambridge, if you're an Englishwoman, huh?

That was the, the most prestigious.

And he went to, uh, which would be an offshoot of it called Sainte-Barbe, which was a part of Very fascinating.

He wa- he, he, he Now, he knew that he had to get his college degree.

He had to get a, he had to get a degree in philosophy and theology if he's gonna be accepted.

See how things work now.

He didn't have money, so he had to roo- he had to have roommates.

He had to have roommates.

Some of you, most of you went to college.

My first year, I had a roommate.

Then I had one of my professors that got me single as a sophomore, junior or senior, huh.

But he had to share a room with two other guys, who were younger than him.

Now, these two other guys with whom he was rooming, they had a lot of hangups, a lot of problems.

One of them was a Frenchman, who suffered from what we would say today, in psychological language, an inferiority complex.

A very s- a very low self-esteem, but are you listening?

He was a first class genius.

You can have someone that maybe have a low self-esteem.

It doesn't mean that they got, they don't have an intellect.

He was brilliant.

So Ignatius took him through the exercises and he was radically transformed and he went on to pe- he went on to become the greatest expert of the spiritual exercises after Saint Ignatius.

And Pope Francis, who's a Jesuit, you probably know that, Pope Francis canonized this guy four years ago.

His name is Saint Pierre Favre.

Okay?

Okay, maybe you never heard of him, but he was one of the original Jesuits, La Compañía de Jesús.

So after giving the exercises, Ignatius was the best, but then Favre was the, was the second best after him.

Eventually, he'd become a priest and give the exercises to kings and queens and bishops all over Europe.

And he'd, he'd die, I think, in his late 30s.

He died very young.

And he became an expert in giving the exercises, because he did the exercises well.

Yes.

You people can become great saints if you do the exercises well.

Hello?

Anyone home?

Depends on you.

If you're really open, God's grace is super abundant.

The question, opening our hearts to God's grace.

Now, the other guy was the exact oppo- he was the polar opposite of Favre.

He, uh, he was an extrovert.

He was a socialite.

He loved life.

He loved parties.

He, he would've been, he would've made it to the Olympic Games today as a high jumper.

He was an expert like John Paul, he was like John Paul II, an expert in languages.

Um, so a, a man just with all these talents, but he was proud as a peacock.

He was arrogant.

And Ignatius tried to get him to do the exercises and he, he looked down on Ignatius, because he was older, walked with a limp.

He kind- he saw him kind of as a, as a weirdo, hmm.

Kind of a weirdo, huh.

So Ignatius was going after this guy, trying to get him to do the exercises.

And he's like the other guy, he's brilliant.

He gets his doctorate in philosophy and he's teaching there at the University of Paris, this guy.

This guy is, is so gifted.

Finally, Ignatius convinces him to do the exercises and he takes these gu- this guy through the exercises.

And Ignatius says, This was the hardest nut to crack.

He gave him penances.

He told him to ti- tie ropes around his legs, because of his vin- uh, his vanity.

The ropes started to, to grow within his legs, you know.

I mean, Ignatius gave it to him .

but then it those ropes were cut because he, he reckoned this guy's proud as a peacock, he's very strong, I gotta break his pride.

And the guy collaborated with him.

He fini- he finishes the exercises.

Then, he who despised Ignatius became his best friend.

He had looked down on Ignatius, now he becomes his best friend.

And he's considered the co- co-founder of the Jesuits.

Oh, wow.

So Ignatius is he's got seven companions that, that wanna follow him.

They, they, they, they see him as kind of a weird guy, but this guy is a saint.

So they travel.

They wanted to go back to Jerusalem, but they couldn't.

So they go to Venice and they plan to go from Venice to Jerusalem, but there's too much tension between the Muslims and the Catholics, so they never go back to Jerusalem.

And where they go is, they end up by going to Rome with the group of the seven companions.

They go to Pope Paul III.

They ask Pope Paul III if they would if he would approve of this group of men, and he says yes.

And what we have is the Jesuits, the Company of Jesus.

Ignatius with the first seven followers; Salemone, Yanez, Bobadilla.

You got, uh, Pierre Favre, and then also another great man that followed him who was right, right-hand man.

And the pope s- the pope they he, he professed four vows; poverty, chastity, obedience, and

Almsgiving.

being, being, being willing to go where the Holy Father sent them, at the beck and call of the Holy Father.

So the Holy Father wanted to go to India because it the church back then, then was just centered where?

In Europe.

So up until the 1500s, the church was cen- was centralized in France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Holland, okay?

But the pope had a missionary spirit and he wanted, Hey, we gotta get out of Europe.

Let's go to the Far East.

So he turns to Ignatius and says, Could you give me can you give me a couple of your priests to go to the, to the Far East?

Ignatius pulls out two, and these two guys, they get sick.

So his right-hand man, his secretary, the cocky guy he turns to him and says, Will you go?

And he says, I will obey.

Then Ignatius says to him, You go now and go set it all on fire.

There's a book written, Go Set It All On Fire, a book.

So he embarks from Portugal, from Portugal ends up in, in Goa, India.

And this guy, he's preaching and teaching and baptizing and converting thousands.

But for him, India was not enough, so he goes to Indonesia.

From Indonesia to Japan, and he's converting the Japanese.

Then he had an idea.

The best way to convert the Japanese is through the Chinese, because the Japanese look up to the Chinese.

So I'll go, I'll convert the Chinese.

So there he is on the island of Sanchan overlooking mainline China, and he gets a fever and he drops dead.

No.

46 years old, working only 11 years in India, in Japan, in the Far East, converting thousands and thousands of souls, and that man is the great Saint Francis Xavier.

Thank you.

The great Saint Francis Xavier.

So what I've done, I've told you the s- the story of three saints.

The domino effect.

You become a saint, you can help others to become saints.

Yeah.

You can.

Ignatius was an instrument in the conversion of the greatest expert in the exercises, Pierre Favre.

An instrument and the greatest missionary after Saint Paul is Saint Francis Xavier.

You do the exercise, my friends, the sky is the limits.

Amen?

Amen.

All right.

What I do in the first session is this.

Uh, the first session, just the first session, I have two talks, because there's too much material to cover in, um, in just one talk.

So what I'd like to do now is we can maybe take five to seven minute break, okay, so we can stretch and maybe go to the bathroom.

And then you'll hear a, a bell in about seven minutes, and I'll give you the second lecture, okay?

Okay.

Glory be to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

To the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

World without end, Amen.

Okay.

So we'll see you in about five to seven minutes.

You'll hear, you'll hear the bell ring, okay?

Okay.