前言
PREFACE
这本书是为那些真诚地想要与神「面对面」，并按照他慈爱的计划安排生命的神父、修道人士和平信徒而写的。这些人由于工作或家庭责任，或其他原因，无法抽出三天、八天、十天或三十天的时间去某处参加圣依纳爵神操。只要他们能每天在家里留出一到两个小时的静默时间，持续一周（一个月会更好），他们仍然可以完成一次很好的退省。八天退省计划见第233页。然而，非常重要的是，这些个人退省者要把自己置于一位称职的灵修导师的指导之下。这位导师要熟悉神操，能够与他们进行完全信任的交谈，向他们解释神如何在他们的灵魂中工作，并陪伴他们寻求对神真实的爱。
This book is designed for priests, religious, and laymen who sincerely want to place themselves “face to face” with God so as to order their lives along his loving designs but who, because of professional or familial commitments or for any other reason, cannot go off somewhere to follow the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius for three, eight, ten, or thirty days. Provided these individuals put aside one or two hours of silence each day at home for a week (a month would be better), they can still make an excellent retreat.See p. 233 for an eight-day retreat plan. It is vitally important, however, that these individual retreatants place themselves under the direction of a competent spiritual guide, with whom they can converse in complete confidence, one who knows the Spiritual Exercises well and who will explain to them how God is dealing with their soul and who will accompany them in their search for the true love of God.
这就是依纳爵、彼得·法伯尔和他们最早的同伴们带领神操的方式。
This is how Ignatius, Peter Favre, and their first companions gave the Spiritual Exercises.