Prayer Modeled on Ignatian Themes
from the Spiritual Exercises

Opening Song: Send Us Your Spirit, O God.

We see and consider the three persons of the Trinity, God our Creator, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, as they look lovingly upon our world.

• We try to enter into the vision of our world as God sees it.
• We see the struggle that exists, the compulsive aimlessness of killing, the addiction, the poverty and the despair of so many people.
• We see the injustive of some world leaders as they manipulate wealth and resources for power.
• We see the multiple natural disasters of the past years: tsunami, hurricanes, earthquakes and the consequences for millions of people.
• We see the governments of the world, intended to build the common good, but often ineffective in meeting the people's basic human needs.
• Within our vision are all the people of the earth: men, women, children, and all the colors and shades of humanity.
• Some are disabled, crippled. Some are strong and whole. Some are newborn, while others are old and diminishing.
• We see them all...those filled with tears, those overjoyed with happiness, those experiencing total alienation.
• We see our inundated ministries, awaiting new life:
  Boys Hope/Girls Hope
  Café Reconcile
  Father Tompson Center
  Good Shepherd Nativity School
  Holy Name of Jesus Church and School
  Ignatius Residence
  Immaculate Conception Church
  Jesuit High School
  Jesuit Provincial and Development Offices
  Jesuit Volunteer Corps
  Loyola University
  Our Lady of Wisdom
• We see our emptied communities, our brothers dispersed in service.
• We see the employees who have served our communities.
• We see our collaborators in ministry, many of them exiled and homeless.
• We see those whom we are on mission to serve: students, parishioners, retreatants, colleagues, and all of their families.
• We see those many homeless and exiles, living at the margins, people never touched by our Jesuit ministries.

View the video City of Ruin now.

• We envision within our hearts God's great love and compassion for all.
• We imagine this love as it moves slowly, tenderly over the darkness of our world and its people.
• Through this love the force of God's powerful Spirit is ignited.
• It is time, time for God to act, to rescue us from our blindness and self destruction, to bring us to fulfillment.
• God's plan, secret and mysterious, is about to be brought forth.
• We stay with God's vision as we listen to the prophet Ezekiel (36:25...)

  I shall pour clean water over you, and you will be cleansed.
  I shall cleanse you of all your defilement and all your idols.
  I shall give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.
  I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead.
  I shall put my spirit in you and make you keep my laws and sincerely respect my observances.
  You will live in the land which I gave your ancestors.
  You shall be my people, and I will be your God.

  — This is the word of God.

• Spontaneous Prayers of the Faithful and Faith Sharing
  Respond to these prayers: "Draw us to compassion and solidarity."
• Our Father

Closing Song: Let Us Build the City of God