Sixteen Discernment Exercises – how to discern the presence and work of God

Discernment Retreat Experiences
4 October 2022
Discernment – a new way of proceeding, in a world hungry for change and a deeper sense of its humanity
4 October 2022

Sixteen Discernment Exercises – how to discern the presence and work of God

Sixteen Discernment Exercises – how to discern the presence and work of God

The JISA Discernment Series includes sixteen Discernment Spiritual Exercises from God’s Field Hospital. Michael Hansen SJ, Director of the First Spiritual Exercises Ministry at Jesuit and Ignatian Spirituality Australia, developed God’s Field Hospital Exercises firstly in response to the Covid pandemic, but now for much wider application.

What is God’s Field Hospital?

“I see the church as a field hospital after battle. The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and warm the hearts of the faithful. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if they has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal their wounds. Then we can talk about everything else…”. [1]

God’s Field Hospital is a response to the image above by Pope Francis. A field hospital spiritual exercise is a simple, structured, refreshing way to pray. Exercises like these were first offered by St Ignatius Loyola nearly 500 years ago and have helped many people during times of feast and famine, enrichment, and plague, inside and outside churches.

The field hospital exercises are for the immediate use of everyone in need of healing of any kind. Each spiritual exercise is a standalone prayer. Each will draw on your lived experience, your present feelings and desire.

While great for personal prayer, each exercise may be fruitfully prayed, and reflected upon in a group spiritual conversation. On belief in God, those who pray these exercises will have a variety of beliefs. So, the principal name for God in them is ‘Spirit’. You may use your preferred name, express your faith as you desire. We invite you to adapt and personalise, making each exercise your own, as well has offering them to others.

What are these discernment spiritual exercises built upon?

  1. The 5-part structure and dynamic of an exercise in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.
  2. The first 4 Rules for Discernment from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.[2]
  3. The first and third Methods of Prayer from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.[3]
  4. They use image, symbol, personal and gospel story at depth in Ignatian spirituality.

 

Five ways to use these exercises:

  1. To help people on the front lines of where they are to receive the grace of the
    discernment exercise they are praying.
  2. To help groups serving or living on the front lines to receive the grace of the
    discernment exercise they are praying.
  3. To teach people how to discern the presence and work of God in themselves.
  4. To teach groups Ignatian ‘discernment in common’ so that they may discern the
    presence and work of God on the front lines, and their place in it.
  5. To give away these spiritual exercises to receivers who will give them to others in need.

 

  1. Pope Francis interview with Antonio Spadaro, SJ., published in America, 2013.
  2. [SpEx 314-317]
  3. [SpEx 238-249, 258-260]

 

With thanks to Michael Hansen SJ for this contribution to the JISA Discernment Series. Michael is the Director of JISA’s First Spiritual Exercises Ministry, a giver of the Spiritual Exercises, an author, and keen amateur astronomer. He developed God’s Field Hospital Exercises in response to the Covid pandemic, which now have wider application.