Sacred Story Institute Ignatian Spirituality Collection (3 vols.)

by William M. Watson; William Watson

Publisher:

Sacred Story Press

, 2012–2018

Overview

The Sacred Story Institute (SSI) is dedicated to revitalizing the classic 15-minute Ignatian Examination of Conscience. Our mission for this powerful daily spiritual discipline is to help adults, teens, and youth encounter Christ, the Divine Physician, who heals us in body, mind, and spirit, transforming our lives into a Sacred Story! Evangelization programs can have a shelf-life or become the victims of unplanned obsolesce. The evangelization programs of Sacred Story Institute, based on Fr. Watson’s legacy, will become part of your faith community and endure in their relevance and effectiveness for decades to come. Invest in programs that will carry your faith community forward, built on the time-tested spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola.

This Verbum collection will introduce you to the core ideas of Sacred Story and the spirituality of St. Ignatius applied in our modern culture. Inviting God Into Your Life offers a short and accessible introduction into the Sacred Story ethos. Sacred Story: An Ignatian Examen For The Third Millennium provides insight into the spiritual and intellectual foundations of the Sacred Story Institute. Forty Weeks: An Ignatian Path To Christ With Sacred Story Prayer (Second Edition) is an adult program for parish spiritual renewal for pastors, parishioners, adult faith formation directors, and RCIA programs, it also serves as a self-guided prayer experience for the individual user.

Key Features

• Explores the spiritual and intellectual foundations of the Sacred Story Institute
• Introduces the core ideas of Sacred Story and the spirituality of St. Ignatius applied in our modern culture
• Provides a self-guided prayer experience for the individual user

Product Details

• Title: Sacred Story Institute Ignatian Spirituality Collection (3 vols.)
• Author: William M. Watson
• Publisher: Sacred Story
• Volumes: 3
• Pages: 817
• Christian Group: Catholic
• Resource Type: Monographs
• Topic: Spirituality

Forty Weeks: An Ignatian Path to Christ with Sacred Story Prayer

• Author: William M. Watson
• Editors: Betsy Stokes and Eileen Meinert
• Edition: Second Edition
• Publisher: Sacred Story
• Publication Date: 2018
• Pages: 386

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

What kind of person becomes a saint? The answer is any kind of person. Sacred Story Institute’s pioneer program Forty Weeks is based on the spiritual practices of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the last man anyone expected to become devoted to God, let alone a Saint. He was graced by God with an understanding of the human psyche that was far ahead of his time, and, with that gift, he developed not only his Conscience Examen, but also his Spiritual Exercises and Rules for Discernment. Forty Weeks offers a highly practical, easily understood, week-by-week process to find integrated healing and peace in Christ. It is the narrow road which thousands of people all over the world have taken since we first published the program in 2012. It has been translated in Spanish and Italian, and we look forward to many other translations in the future. If you are ready to make Christ the center of your life, you will find no better daily spiritual prayer discipline. Divine love is an abiding relationship that God invites you to share in daily. The wisdom found in Forty Weeks will help you to enter this daily abiding love relationship with God. That relationship is your Sacred Story.

Inviting God Into Your Life: A Practical Guide for Prayer

• Author: William M. Watson
• Edition: Second Edition
• Publisher: Sacred Story
• Publication Date: 2014
• Pages: 104

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Gathered in this booklet is a sampling of the simplest but most effective pathways to connect with God in daily life. Most of the sections have been influenced by my retreat work with high school and college students, university faculty, and alumni. The rest of the booklet contains spiritual wisdom and advice that I have found holds universal appeal to all age groups seeking growth in the Christian life. All of it is intended as a means to draw you deeper into God’s love. This divine love is offered to you every single moment of your life. It is most completely offered in the Eucharist.

Sacred Story: An Ignatian Examen For The Third Millennium

• Author: William M. Watson
• Publisher: Sacred Story
• Publication Date: 2012
• Pages: 327

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

How and why did St. Ignatius Loyola develop the Examen prayer? What is it supposed to accomplish for those who practice it? Why do people choose to forgo this discipline that has proved to be invaluable and essential to spiritual growth and the discernment of spirits over the centuries? What are the contemporary cultural crises confronting today’s would-be Examen practitioners provoking distrust, fear, or dismissive attitudes towards it? How can an Examen faithful to Ignatius original method be modernized to address the mindset of today’s Christians? This book in its three parts takes a new approach to answer these questions. It provides a new analysis on how Ignatius' spiritual Examen disciplines were developed, the challenges inherent in practicing them, and a dynamic new reading of the Examen called Sacred Story. This book will give you the spiritual tools you need for a practical, daily prayer discipline that incorporates principles of spiritual discernment.

William Watson’s Sacred Story is an exceptional work. It masters the difficult task of integrating spirituality and psychology and creates an original, rigorous, brilliant and scholarly book. It is an excellent contribution to Ignatian Spirituality and spirituality in general. The author has the ability to take the classic Ignatian Examination of Conscience and recreate it with great originality and scholarship. It illuminates with brilliant insights and accuracy the fields of both psychology and spirituality. Books like this rarely come along once a decade.

—Javier Melloni, S.J., Th.D. Author The Spiritual Exercises in the Western Tradition

About William Watson, S.J.

William Watson, S.J. has spent over thirty years developing Ignatian programs and retreats used by Georgetown University, Seattle University, Santa Clara University, Gonzaga University and Loyola College in Baltimore. He has collaborated with Fr. Robert Spitzer in the last fifteen years on Ignatian retreats for corporate CEOs. In the spring of 2011 he launched a non-profit institute to bring Ignatian Spirituality to Catholics and Christians of all ages and walks of life. The Sacred Story Institute is promoting third millennium evangelization for the Society of Jesus and the Church by using the time-tested Examination of Conscience of St. Ignatius. Fr. Watson has served as: Director of Retreat Programs at Georgetown University; Vice President for Mission at Gonzaga University; and Provincial Assistant for International Ministries for the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus. He received his Doctor of Ministry degree in 2009 from The Catholic University of America (Washington D.C.). He also holds Masters degrees in Divinity and Pastoral Studies, respectively (1986; Weston Jesuit School of Theology, Cambridge Massachusetts). He is a specialist in Ignatian Spirituality and the Ignatian Examination of Conscience.