Just before we started our first stage of walking — from Loyola to Zumarraga — I spoke to the group about three of the most important processes in Ignatian spirituality, namely, (i) desire (the id quod volo — asking God for what it is I desire), (ii) the use of the imagination in the composition of place, and (iii) the colloquy. Concerning the colloquy, Saint Ignatius writes in his Spiritual Exercises:

“The colloquy is made, properly speaking, as one friend speaks to another … communicating one’s affairs and asking advice in them” [SpEx. 54].

The colloquy is the conversation in which you engage at any time during a prayer exercise. This dialogue can be with Jesus, with God the Father, with the Holy Spirit, with Our Lady, with God, with a saint, etc.

The colloquy is a conversational technique intended for any moment during the prayer exercise. It is made when you feel moved to make it. At times you enter into such a colloquy when you pray for the Grace [id quod volo]. It is made as a friend with a friend [54]; during it, you pour out your thoughts to God [53]; during it, you talk over what is happening in your experience, be it temptations, desolations, consolations, or desires. You talk over what you need—seeking advice, inquiring how you could be more open, asking for enlightenment as to some particular issue [199]. Like any conversation, it is a dialogue. Monologues are not conversations; nor are they colloquies. The colloquy is an instrument of discovery and freedom. When you talk out your experiences and pour out your thoughts, there may be a release from some of painful experiences that shadow your heart. Revelation and discovery come both from within yourself and from the grace of God’s enlightenment. Often you begin the colloquy in one fashion, then forget yourself in the conversation and discover yourself saying things and expressing deeper and unexpected desires. In the development of these desires and in their indication of growing spiritual freedom, you recognize the impulse of the Spirit.

The colloquy is a two-way conversation. You may find that you have no trouble talking to Jesus or God as Father, but you may fail to talk with them. The colloquy is a conversation and conversation is dialogical. As you pray, feelings and thoughts about life will surface through your prayer. As these feelings and heartfelt thoughts become more evident, express them to God. Talk to God about these feelings.  Don’t be afraid to express how you really feel when you are at prayer. Sometimes it helps to imagine Jesus walking the Ignatian Camino with you. Tell him what is on your mind and what is in your heart. Then be silent and imagine Jesus responding to you. Together you enter into a conversation. Make your inner reactions available to Jesus.

When you are unaware of deeper reactions being touched off in your prayer, God seems distant or impersonal. It is as if you are hiding something from the one you love. When you hide something from someone you love, you feel more distant from that person. You may do this to remain on safe territory. There is no significant growth in prayer unless you allow God to influence your real interior reactions that are presently needing to surface.

Example of Colloquies: excerpts from the Journal of a Soul

Angelo Roncalli, (Pope John XXIII) February 1900, writing as an eighteen-year-old seminarian in Bergamo, Italy:

Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? I am nothing. Everything I possess, my being, life, understanding, will and memory—all were given me by God, so all belong to him. Twenty short years ago, all that I see around me was already here. Everything was proceeding in its appointed way under the watchful eyes of Divine Providence. And I? I was not here. Everything was being done without me, nobody was thinking of me, nobody could imagine me, even in dreams, because I did not exist. And you, O God, with a wonderful gesture of love, you who are from the beginning and before all time, you drew me forth from my nothingness, you gave me being, life, a soul, in fact all the faculties of my body and spirit; you opened my eyes to this light which sheds its radiance around me, you created me. So, you are my Master, and I am your creature. I am nothing without you, and through you I am all that I am. I can do nothing without you; indeed, if at every moment you did not support me, I should slip back whence I came, into nothingness.

June 1957, as Patriarch of Venice: “Give me more light as evening falls.”

O Lord, I am now in the evening of my life. I am in my seventy-sixth year. Life is a great gift from our heavenly Father. Three-quarters of my contemporaries have passed over to the far shore. So, I too must always be ready for the great moment. The thought of death does not alarm me. Old age, likewise, a great gift of the Lord’s, must be for me a source of tranquil inner joy, and a reason for trusting day by day in the Lord himself, to whom I am now turned as a child turns to his father’s open arms.