Thank you for your interest in Companions in the Way, ISI’s ten-month formation program for guiding the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.
Please complete this application thoughtfully and prayerfully. All information is confidential.
After submission, a member of the ISI's team will contact you to schedule a brief conversation. Please be sure your email and phone number are correct as both are required for participation in the program.
This covenant is not a contract to be perfected, but a shared intention to be lived—one step, one conversation, one act of accompaniment at a time. Persons admitted to the program will be asked to sign and date this covenant.
This formation journey invites more than learning—it asks for a way of being. As companions on the way, we enter not as experts, but as attentive listeners to God, to one another, and to the quiet movements of the heart.
Take a few moments in prayer.
Place yourself in God’s presence. Notice how you arrive—your desires, hesitations, and hopes.
Gently reflect on the following:
• Desire
What draws me to accompany others in the Spiritual Exercises?
Is this desire steady and grounded, or hurried and uncertain?
• Relationship with God
Am I tending a regular, honest life of prayer?
Do I recognize how God has been present and active in my own life?
Happy Easter!!
St. Pope John Paul II echoed St. Augustine when he proclaimed:
“We are an Easter people!”
The message that we celebrate today - that Christ has risen, that Love conquers all things (even death) - is not just a message we are called to recognize once a year. It is a message we are called to live, every day of our lives. The challenge of Easter is - how do we keep this joy?!
St. Pope John Paul II:
Today had to feel so hopeless.
Why didn’t you take yourself off that cross? Why didn’t the angels come help you? It’s over, isn’t it? You’re laying in a tomb, sealed and impossible to open. It’s over.
Today had to feel so hopeless. Lamentations 3: 1-33
No long reflection today, except to say this.
You are loved. Enormously and immensely and impossibly. 2,000 years ago, somebody loved you. Enough to do this.
We remember Pope Leo’s message for this year:
“Lent invites us to place the mystery of God back in the center of our lives.”
That mystery is, so much, about love.
2,000 years ago, you were loved, enough to do this.
Holy Thursday
Our tradition tells us that tonight, Jesus gathered with his closest friends and ate the Passover meal - his final meal.
So much of what we know about the Last Supper comes from the Gospel of John. The Synoptic Gospels handle it relatively quickly, but John spends a great deal of time not just on the dinner… but on Jesus’s words that night. His final teachings (at least, verbally).
Wednesday of Holy Week
The Gospels tell us about the Agony in the Garden, which takes place after the Last Supper on the night before the crucifixion, in which Jesus prays through his anxiety.
“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39). He returns to pray this same prayer three times, always ending the same way: “your will be done!” (Mt 26:42); “not what I will but what you will.” (Mk 14:36).
(As I mentioned yesterday, there is too much to learn from Holy Week. Too much to digest in 100-word bites. My hope this week is to introduce something new, something thoughtful, some other angle by which to view the week’s events. And my prayer is that just one might be meaningful to you. - Chris)
The Last Supper: Jesus Washes the Feet of his Disciples
Station 10: Jesus is Stripped of His Garments
Station 11: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
“As we enter these sacred days of Holy Week, we are invited again - not as observers, but as companions - to walk closely with Jesus.”
It’s a challenge to provide reflections for this group of devout, learned, educated and intelligent people. I have felt a weight of stress as we approach Holy Week - how can any “reflection” written at a computer in 2026 live up to the gravity of these moments, which we remember this week?
