The Way of the Faithful

Our lives are full of challenges, bewilderment, wonder and delight. How do we place these experiences within the constantly changing relationship we have with God, and in the light of God’s desire for us? Do we seek out God’s love for us, or do we flee from that intimacy?

Monty Williams undertakes to examine what being loved by and in love with God entails, by plotting the dynamics of desire present in our ordinary and everyday lives. This dynamics underpins the discernments of each of the Four Stages (Ignatius calls them Weeks) of the Exercises. Williams skillfully plots a movement from the first stage of a self-enclosed security to the final stage of a creativity that builds community across the divisions of otherness and alienation. With each stage there is a growing recognition of what it means to be in love.

Monty Williams, SJ, is a highly regarded priest, scholar and guide to the Ignatian spirituality. He serves as a faculty member at Regis College at the University of Toronto and is Co-Chair in the Diploma in Ignatian Spirituality at the same school. Williams is a frequent retreat leader and speaker, and he travels around the world, and has written many books for Novalis, among them The Gift of Spiritual Intimacy (2009).