I hope you found these past eight weeks of prayer suggestions helpful. If so, please consider making a habit of daily Ignatian prayer.
The thoughts and reflections posted here were excerpted from Sacred Space, a website maintained by the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus. Each day, Sacred Space provides the three preparatory steps for prayer with the Scriptures, a passage of Scripture taken from daily Mass, and guidance for those times when prayer does not come easily.
If you have used the suggestions on this page, even sporadically, you’ve had sufficient experience of Ignatian prayer to begin doing it on a daily basis. There is a detailed explanation of Ignatian prayer at Ignatian Spirituality. The articles on that page provide some background information about meditation with the Scriptures as well as guidance toward establishing a daily habit of Scriptural prayer.
The Scriptures, the Creeds, and Church teaching tell us that God loves us unconditionally. It's a simple enough act to grasp this truth cognitively. Sometimes, however, it is a more difficult act to believe and feel this truth in one's heart. The remedy for an incomplete faith or a tenuous relationship with God is to grow in one's interpersonal experience of God.
Ignatian prayer with the Scriptures facilitates a daily encounter with God; this daily encounter leads to a mature faith and a constant awareness of God's presence, that is, it leads one to trust God completely and to know with certainty God's unconditional love. Ignatius summarized this effect of daily meditation in his Spiritual Exercises (#104), when he wrote,
"Lord, grant that I may see you more clearly,
love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly,
day by day."