The volume of Spiritual Exercises is structured in three days introduced by the text A Radiant Face; each day offers a lesson, some practical notes and some reading suggestions.

Introduction. A Radiant Face
The proposed starting point in order to experience the Exercises—after recalling the biblical passage of a radiant Moses descending from Mount Sinai (Ex 34:29-35) and the parable of a merchant searching for fine pearls (Mt 13:44-46)—is recognizing that “without God man can do nothing”; so, the consequent consideration is that “He brought us to birth for ‘His own’ use, according to His kingdom, and therefore not to a use we would define.” God’s Will, like that “pearl” or “radiance” of Moses’ face, must then be obtained and guarded with a detachment from oneself that needs to be attested “in the very formality of our own behavior.” Without this condition of detachment, this being “ripped out of our ordinary life, no words are meaningful enough.” Indeed, the temptation we are always exposed to is “to have as our supreme criterion not to remain detached from the fashionable trend,” when in fact “our true measure is the One who created us, and corresponds to meaning”—the memory and desire to remain at this level of meaning is prayer, and that is “the dawn of Resurrection.” The existential, historical repercussion of prayer understood in its full meaning is that humankind begins to affect social life, the life of a “people” through “mission”—thus a mission that “does not belong to the factor of detachment but already belongs to the possession of the kingdom of God.” We need to pray that the Lord will send us His Spirit to whom we can respond with an active and working disposition.

Day 1. The Event of the Covenant
Starting from the consideration that “the religious meaning of the world—and therefore, the truth of the world—can be found in a history that lies within human history,” this first lesson addresses the history of the Covenant so that each one can grasp it effectively in one’s own personal history. The Lord established His Covenant not because of the merits of the chosen people, but “in order to keep the promise which He made on oath” (Deut) and this also in the sense that it is “God’s faithfulness that changes us,” and this is the premise of any truly mature awareness. The first theme of the lesson is the methodological shift whereby, realizing our poverty, we do not find before us the object of a problem, but “we find before us the rock against which one is smashed if he does not build on top of it.” Paradoxically (this is the second theme in this reflection) “the God of gods, who has no favorites,” shows Himself in predilection—His choice, His preference is not in accordance with our ability criteria. The absolute gratuitousness of God’s predilection leads to the next reflection (third theme), “What does this Lord, your God—to whom belong the heavens […]—ask of you?” The immediate answer is “that you fear God”; to fear means to recognize Him as meaning, to recognize the connection between oneself and reality, between oneself and the other (and therefore, the creative connection). This fear of God becomes a simple law of life, and that is “following the events in which He has taken the initiative toward us” on the basis of what we have seen; Memory, “as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm,” is to become aware that the issue of the relationship with God is having been taken hold of historically, in His history— and therefore the criterion for Christians is not what they feel, but what happened. In other words, “the luminosity of the miracle in life is detachment from one’s own measure” in such a way that you recognize yourself as disproportionate to your happiness, to your freedom, to your destiny; in such a way that you recognize that “what you produce makes you a slave, alienates you,” as in the parable of the prodigal son— a true possession of life is thus only “in the land into which God is calling you.” The awareness, memory, and announcement that eternity has “already” entered history is the task of the people of God. In his Practical Notes Fr. Giussani explains that the “salvific plan” is objective and “coincides, not exhaustively, but methodologically, with the objective reality that the inevitable conditions of our life have created,” and “outside of the story of events in which we have found ourselves, and which defines the path on which we walk, there is no salvation.” Conditions, that might also bring out an instinctive and naturalistic attitude—when lived in the awareness that they are an act of love by Christ for me—are thus the expressive dimension of Christians who are willing to relinquish their own image, to live not according to their opinion, in order to adhere to their vocation.

Day 2. Prophecy
The purpose of this second lesson is to understand “that the person who is chosen is a prophet” since “the awareness of being part of the Covenant and a definite member of the Body of Christ [...] cannot come about unless one becomes vividly aware of what prophecy means”; otherwise, one runs the risk of a devotion that does not become “the root of thought, of judgment, of affection.” It is therefore necessary to identify oneself with the prophetic reality and that is “to announce before” the people, to give news to the people of the Covenant; if its first meaning is announcement and cry, we also need to keep in mind that “the announcement of the divine Event in human history becomes a judgment on what happens and shows the consequences of it” and so it foresees the future. We should keep in mind that the fear of God is always somehow prophetic. The condition on which a prophetic life is based—given that human beings are weak—is the call of God who, through a human weakness which is experienced consciously, inspires greatness. Thus the existential, historical, human value of the prophet emerges in the announcement of liberation: by relying on the memory of the history of a people, of a real event, and not vaguely motivated by optimism, the prophetic content carries the unshakable certainty of a total liberation; this shapes a social presence which is not aligned with the nervous confusion of the world, “[a watchman] who knows how to keep silent in front of the tumult of the world, but he cries out before the enemy’s attack.” This is why the “fundamental anthropological factor of the revealed discourse is original sin,” the warning of the danger that comes from sin: only humility is that attitude for which one adheres to the Announcement not according to a prudence of her own. This humility has as its fundamental content the recognition that the profound nature of the “I” is to be loved: only this “vivid perception” prevents the announcement of liberation from being reduced to ideology. An answer to this risk of ultimate rebellion (according to each person’s human limit, according to the original sin) is given by the verse from Chapter 8 [The book reports “ninth” and not “eighth”. Editor’s Note] of Saint John, “The one who sent me is with me, He has not left me alone”; thus, no one is left alone, and as to the one who is called to prophecy, if he does not “radically depart from the path, if he does not make rebellion his systematic project, then God will fulfill him in the nature for which He made him.” The face of a prophet is thus the face of a poor man who is nobody to the world; “it is sorrowful, sad, […]  to see how God’s method is not understood, even within the Christian community,” but “God gives the image of the prophetic victory in action, which will shine in the future, through the ‘few.’” The Practical Notes focus on ascesis in obedience and poverty, analyzing the consequences the lack of poverty brings: presumption (pretense of things, money, situations), annoyance toward work and envy of those who can do whatever they want (the rich), agitation, lack of prayer, the presumption of doing what you want.

Day 3. The New and Eternal Covenant
The third lesson opens on the consideration that “in the New and Eternal Covenant, prophecy is the announcement of the liberation that has already taken place,” namely, that “Emmanuel, God-with-us, Life that joins itself to humanity” and everything comes from this Presence, including the perception of it, including faith in it “sine tuo numine, nihil”: prophecy thus finds its stable form in a new age, in the Memory that constitutes the psychology and the awareness of the prophet. That is why the word “contemplation” shows the real dimension, the depth of the perception of that Fact. One does not grasp the Christian event through abstraction, through concepts, but through “that ecstatic attitude,” that “wonder” before reality, through which the presence is grasped by mankind; the repercussion of living in the perception of this presence (that is faith) is the fact of being impelled by the love of Christ: Memory, which we still often reduce to a content of our psyche that is related to the past, indicates for the new person the recognition of the force that unifies time and space, of Something that happened two thousand years ago but is a Presence now. The meaning of everything is the connection with the event of a Presence that is God. The life that unravels from the awareness generated by Memory is characterized by the absolute newness and certainty of the experience, life becomes “glory,” that is, an experience of the newness and stability of God. We become new subjects in society, sent into the world “naked,” transparent of our “being made,” witnessing that our nature is “to be in function of”, that is creatures. But the life of a Christian also becomes “pain” (not in its meaning of fear), pain because one loves—the awareness of one’s own misery, of one’s own powerlessness. This painful truth has its fruitfulness in forgiveness; the joy of being forgiven is truer and deeper than the pride of never having made a mistake. Only in this perspective can we understand and accept “obedience, poverty, and virginity,” the three great attitudes of the Christian tradition, until they become, as an operative consequence, an edification not only of one’s self, but also of humanity. The manner, the fundamental gesture of the “missus,” the person who is sent, affirming a new possession aimed at their own fulfillment, is the gesture of offering, that is, the recognition that Christ is the true substance of my action, of everything; the recognition that Christ is at the root of my vitality as a new person. Offering is the gesture “of the abyss of the human being, it is a gesture that exhausts the metaphysical abyss of human action”—by offering “we become capable of living the boundless borders of that sea that is being and life within the brevity of the instant.” The Practical Notes that follow the third lesson focus on ascesis and the difficulty in living a journey in prayer when no longer understood as a gaze of faith toward all things but as a practice isolated from life; the formalism with which we acknowledge that we are sinners that does not reawaken our passion for the Presence (connected to this is the dumbing-down of the sacrament of Confession); our tendency to prefer activism to the work to which we are called, and forgetting the mystery of His Presence—often in the wake of these reductions, we are guilty of relinquishing forgiveness and life as communion, generating situations that perpetuate, even in the Christian community, only violence, selfish possession and human meanness. The Absence of Memory, “the root of all of the ailments in life lived with others,” causes us to seek a “solitude that becomes flight the effort of communion with one’s brethren.”