HSE4 – St. Ignatius, A Man of the Church – The Heart of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola with Fr. Anthony Wieck S.J. – Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts


St. Ignatius, A Man of the Church – The Heart of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola with Fr. Anthony Wieck S.J.

Fr. Anthony Wieck and Kris McGregor continue this series centered around the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. This episode continues the analogy of the charism triptych and examines St. Ignatius’s role in the founding of the Jesuits.


An excerpt from the conversation:

“St. Ignatius, I would like to add to that third part of the Triptych, that he also had God concretely manifesting himself through nature. In other words, God sustains all in existence through its being power and essence. That’s Aquinas, but he’s sustaining all. He’s very much laboring in His creation for you and me. So God is showing His love indirectly by all of nature, holding it in such a perfect balance for us. That’s God at work.

… But the chances of such low entropy, where everything’s held together as it is so well in our world, Kris, is not just [an] one in 10 [chance] of it all holding together so well and not dissipating and falling apart, nor to add another zero to the hundredth power. But you’d have to add 123 zeros to that to get the chances of such low entropy in our universe. So God is sustaining this, all that science even talking. But you and I know that there’s three persons behind this: namely the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, sustaining us in this perfect existence.

So for Ignatius, it is said about him that from one of his first companions, Ribaneira, he says that, “At the sight of a little plant or a leaf or a tiny animal, Ignatius could soar free above the heavens and reach through into things which lie beyond the senses. So that’s fascinating. Something beautiful on earth he would allow himself to be kind of mesmerized by and watch how God is active in that. Sustaining it, strengthening it in its plant cycle, it’s life cycle, whatever animal it might be, or little plant. And it would lead him to this soaring experience beyond the senses into the divine again. So all things pointed for him back to the glory of God.

There’s a German poet, Hölderlin, and perhaps his phrase describes Ignatius better than any other. His experience. So he says this very short phrase. “To suffer no restriction from anything, however great, and yet to be contained in the tiniest of things. That is divine.


Fr. Anthony Wieck is a Jesuit priest of the Central & Southern province. Sixth of nine children, raised on a farm in Oregon, Fr. Anthony began religious life in 1994, spending his first five years of formation in Rome, Italy, studying at the Casa Balthasar and the Gregorian. The former was under the watchful patronage of Pope Benedict XVI (then-Card. Joseph Ratzinger).  Fr. Anthony currently acts as retreat master at White House Jesuit Retreat in St. Louis, Missouri. He also offers spiritual direction at the St. Louis diocesan seminary for 25 future priests there. 

HSE3 – The Charism and Gift of St. Ignatius – The Heart of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola with Fr. Anthony Wieck S.J. – Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts


The Charism and Gift of St. Ignatius – The Heart of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola with Fr. Anthony Wieck S.J.

Fr. Anthony Wieck and Kris McGregor continue this series centered around the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. This episode goes into the gift of charism and describes it as the first two parts of a triptych.


An excerpt from the conversation:

“Yes, I think you say it well because you’re speaking about how we’re drawn into that self-giving and self receiving a dynamic. So, I receive the other as a gift and I give myself as gift. So, as the father completely gives himself to the Son and holds back nothing. And the father is all about the Son. And even if you’re going to use technical Trinitarian language, I taught a course on the Holy Trinity at the seminary here. St. Thomas Aquinas says the father doesn’t have a relationship with the Son, the father is that relationship with the Son. It defines his very person as to be the father of the Son. And so, to the Son doesn’t have a relationship with the Father, as if he’s substantial of himself without the Father, but he is that relationship with the Father. All of this in the Holy Spirit, which is the spirit of love, that walls up between both of them.

It’s the spirit of complete self-gift in receiving. The other is gift. So, the Son receives himself eternally and at every moment as a gift from the Father. So, this is the dynamic of receiving oneself of gift, receiving all of creation as gift.

And then I have no greater desire than to do what? To give myself back as a gift, as I allow myself to be overwhelmed with the love of God and the greatness of God and the majesty of God and the ever greater. He loves that phrase ever greater. That ever greater ness of God. This is key to my healthy response of complete surrender and self-gift. Part of that goes back to the Lateran Council IV. It’s a definition in 1215 about what an analogy is. So, what the church defined there in 1215 was that between God and his creatures, within every similarity, there’s a greater dissimilarity. So, God is loving and I can be loving, God is wise, I can be wise to some degree. So, there are similarities between us and God. But within that similarities, there’s an ever greater dissimilarity. That’s a beautiful gift though, and it’s an invitation to love to receive that ever greater love, the divine love, and to live from that divine love and respond in divine love.”


Fr. Anthony Wieck is a Jesuit priest of the Central & Southern province. Sixth of nine children, raised on a farm in Oregon, Fr. Anthony began religious life in 1994, spending his first five years of formation in Rome, Italy, studying at the Casa Balthasar and the Gregorian. The former was under the watchful patronage of Pope Benedict XVI (then-Card. Joseph Ratzinger).  Fr. Anthony currently acts as retreat master at White House Jesuit Retreat in St. Louis, Missouri. He also offers spiritual direction at the St. Louis diocesan seminary for 25 future priests there. 

HSE2 – The Gift of Charism – The Heart of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola with Fr. Anthony Wieck S.J. – Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts


The Gift of Charism – The Heart of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola with Fr. Anthony Wieck S.J.

Fr. Anthony Wieck and Kris McGregor continue this series centered around the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. This episode goes into the gift of charism and continues the story of St. Ignatius’ ill-fated journey to the Holy Land.


An excerpt from the conversation:

“Yes, that’s right, many different orders. Saint Francis de Sales founded five different religious branches based on the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius. So they’re not unique to the Jesuits. They’re not our property. This charism is diffused in many different ways. But many different orders, Sisters of Saint Joseph, Sisters of Loreto that Mother Teresa was part of before she began her own order, were also rooted in the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius. So they’re a gift to the church. They’re a gift to the church to help us reorder our lives, to help us find the Lord’s will in our life. For Saint Ignatius, God is a choosing God. He was very enamored… I’ve spoke about the different charisms. But he was very enamored by this God who kept choosing men and women to follow Him, to enter into His company, to be conformed to Him.

So when you read the spiritual exercises, and ponder the various meditations therein that Saint Ignatius composes, you’ll notice how this is a very active Jesus. It’s not so much the preaching Jesus, which would be more appealing to a Dominican charism, the preaching Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount. It’s an active Jesus who goes out and finds people, who moves, who performs these miracles, who’s drawing everyone towards this Jerusalem experience of self-gift and sacrifice. This is a gift given to the whole church though.”


Fr. Anthony Wieck is a Jesuit priest of the Central & Southern province. Sixth of nine children, raised on a farm in Oregon, Fr. Anthony began religious life in 1994, spending his first five years of formation in Rome, Italy, studying at the Casa Balthasar and the Gregorian. The former was under the watchful patronage of Pope Benedict XVI (then-Card. Joseph Ratzinger).  Fr. Anthony currently acts as retreat master at White House Jesuit Retreat in St. Louis, Missouri. He also offers spiritual direction at the St. Louis diocesan seminary for 25 future priests there.