The Spiritual Exercises

Why is this little book still in use today all over the world after so many years?

The book has been printed about once a month for 450 years; no one knows how many millions of copies.  But it isn't the book that kept the Exercises alive.  What kept the Exercises alive is that Iñigo gave them to Pierre Favre, and then he told Favre, 'Look, find others who can profit from this and help them with them.'  Favre did . One of the people he helped with them was a man named Dominic to whom he gave the Exercises, and Dominic gave them to another man who gave them to another man, or to a woman who gave them to another woman.

For all of these centuries, someone has been giving these Exercises in a live way to another person who handed them down.  So they were given to me first by a man who was my novice master, Tony Mengerisina.  He had got them from a man who was his novice master, who got him from his, and so forth, all the way back down the line.