Wonderfully complicated: how can the dynamic of the spiritual exercises offer an invitation to a mystagogical process of encounter, conversion and mission? Ignatian co-operative inquiry with members of the personal ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham

The Spiritual Exercises offer an invitation to a deeper encounter with God and to a process of ongoing conversion and growing freedom for missionary discipleship. Their structure allows for flexibility and adaptation while retaining their transformative power and authenticity. This is a study of the effectiveness of an adaptation of the Exercises as a programme of mystagogical formation for agroup of new Catholics within the Ordinariate. Drawing on the relevant literature, I devised a new adaptation of the Exercises as the basis for a Co-operative Inquiry Group: Co-operative Inquiry is an approach which follows an Ignatian dynamic of cycles of action and reflection, and can enable a process of discernment for exploring experience, transforming practice and working creatively for a better world. For congruence with the subject I developed a methodology in which the research itself becomes a spiritual practice, using the structure of Ignatian prayer as a model for the gathering and analysis of data. The methodology, with its Ignatian form and idiom, enabled the group to engage with God’s continuing call to life and service in the Church. The process revealed the potential of an Ignatian mystagogia to foster ongoing conversion, growth and a missionary awareness; it also revealed the dissonances and resistances which can hinder a free response, and the need to attend to mystagogia as a continuing process. This study adds to the body of scholarship on the adaptation of the Exercises. It also offers an Ignatian method of inquiry which can be used in that continuing mystagogical process to enable the discernment of personal vocation. For the Ordinariate, and for the wider Church, it offers a much-needed resource and a creative and original response to the need for ongoing lay formation and a dialogue of receptive ecumenism.