“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.” Pope Francis
The First Spiritual Exercises Field Hospital is a response to the above image of Pope Francis. Mary O’Duffin our RE Adviser will be adding these resources in an accessible form adapted for our Diocese. In the Hospital Directory you will find there are many departments. Each department has four spiritual exercises.
A spiritual exercise is a simple, structured, refreshing way to pray. It was developed by St Ignatius Loyola nearly 500 years ago, and has helped many people during times of feast and famine, enrichment and plague, inside and outside churches. The FSE Field Hospital exercises are for the immediate use of everyone affected by the Covid-19 virus. 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. The invitation to share your stories and graces assumes safe sharing by internet, mail, phone, as well as at home. The FSE of the FSE Field Hospital stands for First Spiritual Exercises, a ministry of Ignatian spirituality. The hospital is a hospital of healing exercises.
They are ‘first’ in that they meet an immediate need. They are ‘spiritual’ in that they bring you to a personal God. They are ‘exercises’ in that they are a regular, structured, focussed form of prayer – like a set of fitness exercises for the body. The exercises have three uses: to meet your immediate need, to give you a spiritual resource for the rest of your life, and to be given by you to others with similar needs.
These Field Hospital exercises are purposely created to be rippled out into the community, from giver to receiver, who becomes a giver in turn, and so on. The last point of every exercise invites you, urgently in these times, to do just that.Mary O’Duffin will be regularly adding these to the Dunkeld Diocese website so do check and see.
Blessings! Stay safe.
….with Mary O’Duffin mary.oduffin@dunkelddiocese.org.uk