The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius propose a type of contemplation of the mysteries of the Passion, the object of which is the obtaining of the grace of compassion with the suffering Christ. The divine authenticity and the universally human opening of that grace is enlightened and ensured by a christology of the total immersion of the divinity in humanity, a christology to which the retreatant is called to be personnally and intimately associated, according to the letter and the spirit of communion with Christ's body, offerred as a supreme sign of his love. Although it may take the appearance of desolation, compassion is in fact a grace of consolation which, ordered to the service and praise of God, achieves its end when the same divinity appears in Jesus' resurrection in order to communicate to the soul what is its own: a joy and an exaltation which can alleviate and dispel human sufferings.
