The Foundational Text of the Jesuit Order, Still Given as Retreats Today

The Exercises became the foundational formation text of the Society of Jesus, the religious order Ignatius founded, and every Jesuit historically has made the full thirty day retreat based on the Exercises at least once, usually during initial formation and again later in life, a practice that continues within the order today.

Beyond the Jesuits, the Exercises reshaped Catholic retreat practice broadly, and adapted versions, including shortened retreats and forms designed for lay people to make gradually within ordinary daily life rather than during a single extended withdrawal, remain in active, widespread use in Catholic spiritual direction into the present. The text's emphasis on discernment, the careful, structured attention to one's own inner movements as a guide to decision making, has also influenced fields well outside formal Catholic spirituality, including some strands of modern pastoral counselling and organizational leadership training that have borrowed Ignatian discernment methods explicitly. Because the Exercises assume a director guiding a retreatant through the material, reading the text alone, without that guided structure, gives only a partial sense of how it is actually meant to function in practice.