The Three Teachers of the FSE Giver

Your experience of receiving the First Spiritual Exercises is your best teacher in giving it. In turn, your giving the First Spiritual Exercises to others is your next best teacher. This Manual sits between these two teachers as the third guide. You need all three experiences to learn how to best give the FSE. The Manual teaches you through commentary on the different exercises, the retreat structures and dynamics.

To keep step with what your receiver is experiencing, it will, at times, closely replicate the text in book The First Spiritual Exercises.

Though Catholic in origin, the First Spiritual Exercises is inclusive of all Christian traditions, searchers and unchurched. It is for all people— the disadvantaged, youth, workers, professionals, the influential, the middle class, the poor, leaders, parishioners, teachers, prisoners, the sick, the confused, the lost . . . anyone looking for inner peace.

Jesus proclaimed at the beginning of his ministry,

The Spirit of the Lord Is Upon Me. The time is ripe. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting (John 4:35).

In your hands, the First Spiritual Exercises stand ready to help in the harvest, to help serve in the ministry of Jesus.