Showing the way to God through the Spiritual Exercises and discernment

Illustration by Ignasi Flores

W

e are now more than halfway through the decade-long journey marked by the Universal Apostolic Preferences (2019–2029)—four pathways the Society of Jesus committed to in communion with the Church and in dialogue with the cries of the world.

When the UAP was first discerned and promulgated by Fr General Arturo Sosa SJ in 2019, he described it not as a strategic plan or a new mission statement, but as an invitation to “a spiritual process,” requiring depth, interiority, and freedom. His letter was a call not only to do more but to see differently—to see with the eyes of the heart—Discreta Caritas (Discerning Love).

Let me begin with a central insight from that letter regarding the first preference as the foundation for the others. "Showing the way to God through the Spiritual Exercises and discernment enables us to deepen our personal and communal encounter with the Lord, so that we may become more credible witnesses of the Gospel,” Fr Sosa writes.

In a letter addressed to the Jesuit General, Francis said that the process of coming up with the four Universal Apostolic Preferences is a "dynamic discernment," not a "library or labour” process. According to the Pope, the first preference is fundamental because it presupposes, as a "primary condition the relationship of the Jesuit with the Lord, the personal and community life of prayer and discernment." Francis believed that without a personal relationship with the Lord, through personal and communal prayer, our other apostolic preferences would not bear fruit—Contemplativus Simul In Actione (Contemplative While In Action).

In other words, if we fail to root our lives in that first preference, the other three risk becoming mere social activism or intellectual pursuits.

MEDITATION: How has the first UAP (Showing the way to God through the Spiritual Exercises and discernment) been quietly at work within the other three?

1. Walking with the Excluded – as a Discernment of the Cross

When we accompany the poor, migrants, indigenous peoples, and all those discarded by society, it is not simply because we are “for the poor.”

We do so because, in the words of St Ignatius of Loyola, we have “seen Jesus poor and humble” in our contemplative prayer.

What deepens our solidarity is not our resources or ideas, but our capacity to recognize Christ crucified in the wounds of our time. This is discernment. This is the fruit of the Exercises.

Without that inner seeing, we risk approaching the marginalized as projects rather than persons. But when we stay rooted in the Spiritual Exercises, we come not with solutions but with reverence—listening before acting, adoring before analyzing.

2. Journeying with Youth – as Accompaniment in Discernment

To journey with the young is to help them navigate uncertainty, longing, and meaning. But what do we bring if we ourselves have not learned to listen deeply?

We bring the Exercises not as a method but as a way of presence—to help young people discern their deepest desires, to recognize the voice of God amid the noise of ambition and anxiety. Our charism becomes an invitation to freedom, to “choose life,” as Moses said.

In this way, our work with the young is an extension of the contemplative gaze that sees “God laboring in all things”—especially in the questions and restlessness of youth.

3. Caring for Our Common Home – as Contemplation of Creation

Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, the contemplative dimension is essential. We cannot care for what we do not first behold.

St Ignatius teaches us in the Contemplation to Attain Love to see God in all things: in water, fire, the elements, and all created realities. The ecological crisis is not only scientific—it is spiritual. The wound is not just in the soil but in the soul. To heal creation, we must first fall in love again with it.

Laudato Si’ called this an “ecological conversion”—a shift not of behavior alone, but of vision. And the Exercises teach us this shift, slowly, gently, over time.

Gospel reference suggestion: Luke 24:13–35 — The Road to Emmaus

Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we often do not recognize the full meaning of the journey until we look back. Only in the breaking of the bread—only in contemplative stillness—did their eyes open.

So too, we pause now, halfway through this decade, to ask: Where has Christ been walking with us, hidden in the preferences? How has the first UAP been kneading into the dough of our ministries? And most importantly, how can we rekindle that contemplative fire—so that the next five years may not just be more work, but deeper witness?

Let us return again and again to the Exercises—not just as a formation tool, but as a way of seeing. Because only then can we “find God in all things”—even in the cries of the poor, the questions of the young, and the groans of creation.  Fr JM Manzano SJ