We hear a lot about how Sunday Mass attendance was strong before The Second Vatican Council. Now it’s easy to be discouraged about the Church because so many do not go to Sunday Mass.  But instead of fretting about that, I have found it encouraging to reflect on people doing spiritual exercises and praying every day.

Somehow, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) helped ordinary Catholics discover the grace of praying daily.  I don’t mean the rosary—I mean prayer, absorbed in God’s Presence and in what has to be called a holy dialog.

Sixty years ago, laity spending time in spiritual prayer every day was hardly anybody’s idea. But then, twenty-five years ago at the turn of the millennium, the numbers making week-end retreats and the number of retreat houses running in this country and around the globe had grown astonishingly.

Some instances of a few of the programs I was privileged to visit:  By 2000, The Bridges program in St. Louis had “graduated” about 400 people through year-long Spiritual Exercises. It was entirely lay led by Joan and Jim Felling; the program is still strong in 2025.  In 2000, in Wernersville, MD, an unused house of Jesuit formation had become The Jesuit Center run by George Aschenbrenner with an extensive lay team and lots of programs. 

Colleges and universities moved in. George Schemel, for instance, at Scranton University, was running the Institute for Contemporary Spirituality and creating the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises for the Corporate Person.  Provinces sponsored programs, too. Oregon, for instance, saw The Nineteenth Annotation movement under Fr. Pat O’Leary and Cissy McLane run retreats in daily life and train men and women to give retreats in parishes.   

To suggest how global this movement had become by 2000: In Dublin, Fr. Michael Drennan ran the Jesuit Centre of Spirituality and Brian O’Leary headed the spirituality program at Milltown Park;  In Great Britain, St. Beuno’s in North Wales began welcoming more than Jesuit tertians. In the Philippines, the retreat house run by Fr. Bob Rice and two laymen and women sponsored a spreading program among poor Catholics. In Australia,. Fr. Michael Smith headed a team of Jesuits and laity in a two-year program to teach others how to give Exercises in Daily Life.

Now, many people are praying daily and these programs, their forebears or their progeny, are strong and now more laywomen and layman look for a spiritual director than for a confessor.  It’s no longer a surprise and it’s  the Holy Spirit.