Ignatian Contemplation
Facilitator Notes
The Ignatian practice of the Application of the Senses within the context of prayer opens up vast possibilities for
prayer. In the context of prayer we can travel anywhere in space and time. In this sense, prayer can be like our own
personal TARDIS.
It helps if we remind ourselves of several things before engaging:
 Our senses go far beyond just the five of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. We also refer to our mental
faculties: memory, free will, imagination, learned knowledge, etc. Engaging as many of these senses and
faculties as possible takes work and practice, and at the end of the day, a prayer experience depends
ultimately on God’s grace and what God chooses to do within the person during a particular prayer period.
However, we can prepare ourselves to participate in and get the most out of a particular grace.
 When we pray using our senses and faculties, we can sometimes fall into the trap of questioning if it’s really
valid prayer, since it’s coming from us. In reality, prayer is a partnership in which the Holy Spirit works with
us using our whole self. We are instruments but not inanimate ones. (In Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows, Harry is having a vision of a conversation with Professor Dumbledore. At the end of the vision, he
asks Dumbledore if the vision was real or if it all took place in his head. Dumbledore responds: “Of course
it’s all in your head, but why should that mean it’s not real?”) Perhaps it is more accurate to say that we are
partners in the experience of prayer. So bringing our whole self to prayer, or as much as we can, gives us and
the Holy Spirit that much more to work with.
 When we pray with Scripture, we are using our imagination anyway whether we realize it or not, since none
of us has ever been in 1st-century Judea. When we recognize this, we may be freer to intentionally guide our
imagination using memory, learned knowledge, and free will.
Supplies:
 “The Divine Heartbeat” – a guided audio contemplation in WAV format.
 A means of playing the WAV file – iPod, computer, etc.
Opening Prayer
Ask for the grace to open up our senses and faculties – memory, imagination, free will – to the promptings of the
Holy Spirit.
Check-In
Name a time, place, event, and/or person you would like to visit. There are no boundaries to the laws of physics in
this exercise, so let the imagination run wild.
Focus Exercise
Invite members to think of a person, place, event, etc. that they would like to visit – no holds barred. They should
spend a couple of minutes brainstorming in writing some details about their objective – associated sounds, sights,
smells, etc. They then close their eyes for a few minutes and practice visiting a place, person, or event that is
appealing to them. The leader may want to prompt members by inviting them first to build up a visual image of the
situation, pausing, then adding in auditory components, pausing again, and so on.
After a few minutes in this exercise, they may wish to share with the group some highlights or struggles. It may help
members who are struggling with this exercise to know how others experienced it, some techniques of others, etc.
Listening Deeper
Invite members to close their eyes and clear their imaginations to being the guided contemplation. You may prepare
them for this by asking them to imagine the instant before everything was created – in other words, imagine
nothingness, rather the way one practices centering prayer by clearing one’s mind. It may also be helpful to tell them
that after the file finishes playing, there will be another minute or two (or as much as the leader deems necessary) for
members to close up, review, or simply ease themselves back to the contemporary time and place. Instruct them that
you will invite them to open their eyes when the time is up. Start playing the WAV file which lasts a little less than
10 minutes. (It probably isn’t helpful to tell them the duration, so they aren’t distracted wondering how much longer
they have to contemplate. The less they have to worry about the passage of real time, the more they will enter into
the spirit of kairotic time1.
Allow several minutes for members to write down their experiences and impressions of the guided contemplation.
Some things they might want to consider (but are not required to answer) are:
 What surprising images or sensory sensations emerged during the contemplation?
 What emotions were you aware of during the contemplation?
 What emotions remain with you now, after the contemplation?
After that, they may share with the group one or two highlights, struggles, or insights with the larger group.
Remind them that they don’t need music or the voice of another to guide them in future contemplations. Reading a
favorite scripture passage slowly a couple of times and then allowing the scene to take on a life of its own is another
way to contemplate, that is, to partner with the Holy Spirit in prayer.
1
Kairotic time (Kairos) is a Greek concept. It represents the alternative to Chronic time (Chronos), the linear time that we humans and
the whole created universe are embedded in. Kairotic time is the time that God inhabits, which can be described as all chronic time
simultaneously.
Closing Prayer
Offer prayers of thanksgiving for the created world in which we live, including our own senses and faculties, our
memories, our personal history, our learned knowledge, our free will, our imagination, etc. Open up the space for
other members to offer their own prayers either of praise and thanksgiving or of petition.
Ignatian Roots
The fifth: It is very helpful to him who is receiving the Exercises to enter into them with great courage and
generosity towards his Creator and Lord, offering 2 Him all his will and liberty, that His Divine Majesty may make
use of his person and of all he has according 3 to His most Holy Will. (Fifth Annotation, Spiritual Exercises of St.
Ignatius [5])
“Ignatian contemplation is focused, not on losing oneself in God, but on finding oneself in God. Contemplating is
ordinarily understood as ‘gazing upon’ the divine. In this gazing, the emphasis is not on the relationship between
oneself and God, but rather is on being absorbed in God, lost in God, taken up into God. An example of this kind of
contemplation is centering prayer. For Ignatius, however, the focus is always on relationship.... For Ignatius,
contemplating the Gospel mysteries is the privileged way to come to know Jesus more clearly so as to love him more
dearly and follow him more nearly….” (David Fleming, S.J)
Additional Scripture
Almost any passage from the Gospels can be used as a launching point for contemplation. These may include
miracle stories, the nativity stories, the parables of Jesus, his passion, death, and resurrection, etc. I would avoid
using passage from the apocryphal literature, as it can be rife with frightening and not very consoling images, and
because too many people misunderstand the nature and purpose of apocryphal literature.