Jesuit Father John Horn, who last month was appointed as the next president-rector of Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, recently talked about the importance of Spiritual Exercises and how the concept can be applied in one’s prayer life.

Fr. Horn said that the Spiritual Exercises are a type of map for the human heart to follow in prayerful meditation and contemplation, and that the exercises allow the faithful to become closer to Christ.

“What happens in these prayerful exercises is that the person at prayer begins to taste and see patterns of thoughts, feelings and desires that are in union with Jesus’ spirit indwelling in our hearts,” he said.

Horn offered an example of how Catholics can participate in a prayer exercise using Scripture passages. By doing so, “something will be transpiring in the heart through this simple process,” he said.

1. Read the passage prayerfully and I notice what I am seeing.
2. Notice what I am thinking and feeling about what I am seeing.
3. Once I have acknowledged what I am thinking and feeling, notice if I have actually related these thoughts and feelings to God.
4. Wait in trust, wait in faith, and trust to receive a sense of what Jesus’ love desires to do for me.

For more of Horn’s thoughts on the Spiritual Exercises, read the article at the St. Louis Review.

Lisa Johnston/St. Louis Review

Jesuit Father John Horn has been named the next rector and president of Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in Shrewsbury, Mo., seminary of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, effective July 1.

Fr. Horn is the co-founder of the Institute for Priestly Formation (IPF) at Creighton University in Omaha and has more than 30 years of experience in Catholic education, spiritual direction, pastoral ministry and administration.

He has been serving as director of program development at the IPF, which has served more than 1,300 seminarians from 140 U.S. dioceses and 24 international dioceses since its founding in 1994.

Horn’s experiences have ranged from nursing home and parish ministry to high school teaching and field education for a suicide hotline.

Many years ago, he said, he felt the call to serve diocesan priests, one of Ignatius’s original works, in seminary formation. Ignatius “desired to serve diocesan priests because he knew if you affect one priest you affected an entire parish,” Horn said. “A great love of Christ compels me to want diocesan priests to have the best possible spiritual formation.”

Horn said Ignatian spirituality “helps us taste the presence of God at work in our hearts rather than have God be an idea and [just] talk about God. It invites us into the everyday experience of God’s presence in our lives. I can’t think of anything better to teach and form seminarians than this way of knowing God.”

For more about Horn, read the St. Louis Review article.

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