Ignite is a retreat in daily life modeled on the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Like an ordinary retreat, Ignite allows retreatants to take a step back from distractions and burdens in order to pray and reflect more deeply in a small community of peers. Unlike an ordinary retreat, Ignite preserves ordinary obligations and socialization, but creates an opportunity for prayerful silence by removing other distractions like social media, alcohol, and video games.
Ignite draws from the spirituality of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, which means it focuses on gratitude, discernment, generosity, praying using the imagination, and detaching ourselves from desires that lead away from God, all so that we can fight deep, interior un-freedoms. Ignatius included all these values into a retreat called the Spiritual Exercises, a compilation of meditations, prayers, and contemplative practices that guide and train people to better love and serve God. Ignatius called his retreat the “exercises” because just as exercises help an athlete to train for a competition or a musician to rehearse for a performance, spiritual activities “prepare and dispose our soul to rid itself of all its disordered affections” and allow us to seek and find God’s will (Exercises [1]). The customary way to make the exercises requires going on retreat for 30 days of total silence and prayer, under the guidance of a spiritual director, but Ignite has adapted them into four movements lasting from the beginning of Lent until 4 days after Easter.