Tue Jul 4, 2023 – 6:05 pm EDTTue Jul 4, 2023 – 6:11 pm EDT
(LifeSiteNews) — When I was 18-years-old, I did the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
St. Ignatius wrote the Spiritual Exercises to be read and practiced throughout a 30-day silent retreat. I had no cell phone, internet, TV, or any other kind of distraction. It was just me and Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle for 6 hours daily, and then the four walls of my bedroom at Manresa Jesuit Retreat Centre in Pickering, Ontario.
Sounds like a crazy thing to do for the modern 18-year-old, and looking back on the experience, it was.
Even my superiors at the seminary informed me afterwards it was too intense for a first-year diocesan seminarian. Later, when I entered religious life, we ate meals in silence as well, and I loved it. But I’m also quite an extrovert and a social individual, so there was an element of struggle associated with the newly imposed practice.
I’m now 21-years-old, and I think youth these days are infected with a plague of immaturity.
Young people are not
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