Interview with Father Enrique Martín Baena, new superior general of the Cristo Rey Parish Cooperators, experts in the preaching of this spiritual practice proposed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola
Anxiety, lack of meaning, anguish, loneliness… are becoming a true social phenomenon in the age of social networks. In this situation, the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola become a decisive help for many people.
This is the experience he shares in this interview with Aleteia Father Enrique Martín Baena, new Superior General of the Parish Cooperators of Christ the Kinga religious congregation made up of about 140 priests and religious, whose mission consists mainly of preaching the Spiritual Exercises.
The Spiritual Exercises are a series of meditations and contemplations (exercises), which seek to help discover God’s will for life, discern what God wants from the person, desire it and choose it for oneself.
New forms of Spiritual Exercises
When Saint Ignatius conceived the Spiritual Exercises, he thought of a thirty-day retreat, in silence and under the guidance of a companion or spiritual director (“the one who gives the exercises,” as the Basque saint said).
This formula is impossible to live for the vast majority of people with family or professional responsibilities.
Now, Father Enrique clarifies that this does not have to be this way: «If the Spiritual Exercises have something, it is their adaptability».
“Saint Ignatius of Loyola adapted the exercises to people, circumstances and times…”, he clarifies. “Adaptability is at the core of the exercise experience itself. Certainly, the genuinely Ignatian experience is that of the month, but in the Annotation 18 of the spiritual exercisesSaint Ignatius speaks of other modalities such as, for example, “light exercises”».
Nacho Braci
Five Day Spiritual Exercises
In the second and third decade of the 20th century, the founder of the Parochial Cooperators of Christ the King, the priest Francisco de Paula Vallet (Barcelona, 1883 – Madrid, 1947), experienced a surprising evangelizing irradiation by proposing to the students Spiritual Exercises of five days. They were a resounding success.
His current successor at the head of the cooperators is Father Enrique Martín Baena; born in 1972, preacher of the Exercises and until now director of the “Cristo Rey” House of Spiritual Exercises in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid). He reveals to us that new formulas can now be proposed.
“Today there are weekend exercises or taking advantage of the bridges,” adds the priest, a graduate in dogmatic theology and a graduate in Ignatian spirituality (Ignatian Master).
exercises in everyday life
“Exercises in ordinary life” are gaining more and more acceptance. Father Enrique explains this formula: “people who do not have time to be able to do them intensively, do them more extensively or over time.”
“If there is something good about this formula, which is giving us good results – confesses the superior of the Parish Cooperators – it is that the person does not need to leave their ordinary life to exercise. As long as he lives, he can do them in a very systematic way, accompanied, because every week he has the possibility of receiving spiritual direction. In that meeting with the accompanist he receives new material ».
«With this proposal the person learns to discern spiritually, while living ordinary life. A synthesis is achieved between what life is, the events of life, after which God speaks to us, and the spiritual experience itself».
“We are satisfied with this formula, which also has its difficulties. For a professional person, very inserted in the working world, it supposes a discipline that is not always easy to maintain. It requires, every day, a minimum of half an hour to have a time of personal prayer, examination and discernment».
Spiritual exercises online
During the confinement caused by the pandemic, the parish cooperators organized Spiritual Exercises online via the Internet.
Father Enrique acknowledges: “It was very surprising. We were very skeptical, if I’m being honest, because a spiritual experience somehow requires face-to-face. Because of the principle of the Incarnation, that sense of the concrete, of being before a person whose face you can look at and who you can accompany”.
Father Enrique clarifies that “accompany” is a word that comes from the Latin, “cum-panis”, which means “eat bread together”. In Spanish it is said: «I accompany you in the feeling».
“That expression is very beautiful, because however you are – be sad, be happy – I sit at the table, like bread with you. The Spiritual Exercises constitute an accompaniment”, indicates the priest.
«Ignacio gave them in a personalized way, one by one, and he went to the house of the subject who did exercises, the exercitant, to give them to him in this way. make them on-line it seemed to us a disembodied, distant, a bit artificial way».
“Our experience has been very different. Above all, it has allowed us to reach people who otherwise would never have been able to access the Spiritual Exercises. On the other hand, the recording of the meditations of the Exercises has allowed these people to be able to do the Exercises at the rhythm that their own spiritual experience demanded or asked of them».
“It has allowed us to offer virtual spiritual accompaniment, through the Internet; which has been much more fruitful and profitable than we could have imagined at the beginning. Therefore, it has been a blessing and we have realized that it is a new language, which we have to take very seriously.
«Obviously, it does not replace face-to-face. I think it enriches even more this modality of giving the exercises in a personalized way. In other words, customization is not diluted in the exercises. on-linebut I think it can even enhance it».
The Spiritual Exercises as a mission
The Cristo Rey Parish Cooperators were founded by Father Vallet, a Jesuit priest, in 1928, in Barcelona; with the aim of forming a group of priests who would dedicate themselves to the preaching and animation of Spiritual Exercises in parishes in the broadest sense of the word (communities, movements, Christian groups, etc.).
Due to the Spanish political situation, the first official house of the congregation was opened in Salto (Uruguay). Father Vallet established his residence in Valence, France, in 1934. In this city the female branch of the congregation was born. The first house in Spanish territory was founded in 1945, in Madrid.
The religious institute has nineteen communities, present in Argentina, Chile, Spain, France, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Switzerland and Uruguay.
If you want to live the experience of the Spiritual Exercises, you can request information from casacristorey@cpcr.es