Facing the Fire
A journey into Hell with the Spiritual Exercises of st Ignatius
Religion is for people who’re afraid of going to hell.
Spirituality is for people who’ve already been there. Vine Deloria Jr
12-Step Programme
- We admitted to ourselves we were powerless over alcohol* – that our lives had become unmanageable
- Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made a direct amends to the such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory, and when we wrong, promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
- Or other addiction
Exercise
What am I ashamed of? (things you hide)
What am I afraid of? (things you avoid)
How have I hurt other people? (things you regret)
What am I addicted to? (things you can’t stop doing)
What imagery do I associate with this side of my personality?
The Persona is what we would like to be and how we wish to be seen by the world. It is our psychological clothing and it mediates between our true selves and our environment just as our physical clothing presents an image to those we meet. The Ego is what we are and know about consciously. The Shadow is that part of us we fail to see or know.
Robert A. Johnson
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Roman 7: 15
Eddie O’Connor
The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius has been a classic of Christian spirituality since its publication in the 16th century, with many Christians still completing either the entire 30-day retreat or over a longer period of time in daily life. Yet the opening section of the text is largely ignored in the present day, in part due to its focus on disorder, sin, and Hell. With so much darkness in the world, we tend to focus on the lighter, more hopeful side of the Christian faith.
But what if a little bit of darkness is exactly what we need right now? In this session, Eddie looks at the first week of the Spiritual Exercises as a medieval example of ‘Shadow work’, a confrontation with the unacknowledged dark side of our personality that we must come to terms with if we are to become the undivided people God is calling us to be.
Eddie O’Connor is currently a Chaplain at Burwood Hospital in Christchurch, as well as a retreat leader, spiritual director, and writer. He was the Director of Sister Eveleen Retreat House from 2020 – 2023, where he also completed his formation as a spiritual director in the tradition of St Ignatius of Loyola. Eddie is currently finishing a book that uses film and insights from psychology to represent the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius in a way that is accessible to a modern, spiritually-skeptical audience.
