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The screen illuminates faces in the early morningnotifications burst in at every moment, and the incessant murmur of hyperconnection fills every crevice of the day. An everyday context in which pausing is completely disruptivelike going the wrong way on a highway that is moving at full speed. However, in the convent Saint Elizabeth of Hungaryan old construction in the mountains of Córdoba, a group of young people chooses the unlikely: spend several days in absolute silence. What they are looking for is not disconnection, but something deeper: a way to transcend the noise and find meaning in the midst of chaos.
“He Ignatian Way “It always aroused interest among young people,” he says. Nahuel Gaunacenter coordinator, “but after the pandemic, we saw a notable increase. There is a need for meaning and a search that is becoming more and more evident in the times we live in.”
The Ignatian Spiritual Exercises were conceived in the 16th century by Saint Ignatius of Loyolaand propose days of silence, prayer and personal reflection. Despite its ancient roots, for some reason it continues to resonate with a generation trying to defy the laws of a hyper-connected world.
Nahuel explains that “for many young people, the silence can be overwhelming at first. But it is also a unique opportunity to meet themselves, their deepest questions and God.”
The Manresa Center receives dozens of young people every year, during January, all with different motivations. Some seek spiritual solace, others a space for introspection. But the constant is clear: they arrive with the desire to look at their life from another perspective. “They seek to reconnect with their interior, silence external voices and find yourself again“, indicates Carolina Orias, guide at the Center. For her, the Ignatian Way is a transformative experience that extends beyond the retreat: “The important thing is not only the silence in the retreat, but how we learn to apply it in our daily lives, finding God in the everyday.”
For Carolina, silence is a transformative tool. “We like to talk about disconnecting to connect. Get out of everyday life and connect with our desires, thoughts and emotions. It is a premise that sometimes draws attention, but by doing the experience, they understand how necessary this is.”
The trend is shared by priest Eduardo Mangiarotti, author of a renowned podcast (La Brújula), where he usually addresses reflections on the loss of meaning in modern life and the need to reconnect from the spiritual plane through a process of introspection that exceeds the religious. “I think we are in a time of great search for some type of spirituality and also for community spaces,” he explains. “Not only in Christian environments, in different spaces the same concern for both things appears that is tied together in experiences such as retreats,” he adds. For Eduardo, “particularly young people, who have suffered the pandemic like few others, They find in these places a silence and a healing (there is a lot of search for mental and spiritual health) along with close, vulnerable bonds, richer than those that can be generated in other places.”
To describe this transcendental experience, Nahuel quotes theologian Karl Rahner: “The Christian of the future will either be a mystic, or he will not be a Christian.” And he clarifies: “Today spirituality has nothing to do with dogmasbut with experiences of encounter: with oneself, with God, with the other.”
Nahuel’s search began with questions that have accompanied him since he was a child. “As a child, I always felt that there was something beyond what I saw. I remember reviewing my day at the end of each day, moved by the simple moments, as if I were giving thanks without knowing it,” he says.
A family loss marked his life deeply. “My grandmother’s death was a turning point. I felt a peace that I couldn’t explain, as if his life didn’t end there, but continued somewhere that I didn’t fully understand,” he reflects.
His spiritual path led him to discover the Ignatian exercises, a practice that completely transformed him. “I remember my first retirement. The silence exercise was revealing“I opened a door to my interior that I didn’t know existed,” he says. That experience led him to commit to this practice, even doing the full exercises: 30 days of silence, prayer and contemplation. “During that month I saw my life as a sacred story, full of meaning,” he says excitedly. Since then, he dedicates at least an hour a day to silence, a habit that he describes as an anchor in the midst of the daily whirlwind.
Carolina had a similar experience, when she was finally able to make the spiritual leap between “thinking” and “feeling.” After his first retreat, he was “very thirsty for more.” “The second was eight days to pray your life hand in hand with the life of God, go through your history, your life, your shadows and battles; “It was something invaluable that marked my life before and after.”
Silence as counterculture
In times where notifications and stimuli are constant, the silence proposed by the Ignatian Way sounds countercultural. “It is absolutely contrary to the current way of life to stop in a world that demands immediacy from us,” Nahuel concedes. “Saint Ignatius spoke of ‘feeling and tasting things internally.’ That is the challenge: to get out of the noise to get in touch with what is essential.”
This silence calms, but also confronts. Many young people, disconnecting from the digital hustle and bustle, They face emotions and thoughts that they had silenced with daily distractions. But far from being a distressing experience, the retreat seems to offer them tools to transform those concerns into clarity and purpose.
Antonella Truisi, 32 years old, was one of those people who felt the need to participate in this retreat. Although he had ventured into other similar experiencesalways felt like something was missing. “I was left wanting more,” she confesses, as if the memory still passed through her. When he heard about the Ignatian Way, he did not hesitate. “The proposal resonated strongly with me, and I decided to do it.”
Joaquín Castagna, 23 years old, arrived by a different path. A close friend told her about the Spiritual Exercises, describing them as an opportunity to encounter God. “It was an invitation to self-knowledge, reflection and contemplation,” he says. Although he grew up in a home where mass and faith were part of the routine, he had never had such a profound experience. But it was a difficult moment in his life that led him to look for something more: “It was there where I began to have a closer dialogue with Jesus, to try to live as He intended.”
For both, silence was a great teacher. Antonella remembers that the first days were a trial by fire: “I got to packing my bag and wanting to leave. But that night, without a cell phone or Netflix, I realized that If I went back to my routine, everything would stay the same. At what point had he lost the ability to connect with me?” He decided to stay, and that decision marked a before and after. “The most difficult thing was not the external silence, but the internal silence: quieting our heads, turning off the noise inside us. But when you achieve it, it’s liberating. Literally, you feel free.”
For Joaquín, that silence had an almost sacred component. “There are moments in the retreat that invite you to spend a full hour in a pure encounter with Jesus. Sometimes, I would wake up at five in the morning to go to the chapel and contemplate that connection,” he says with emotion. That space of calm was not the absence of sound, but a “fertile silence, of connection with God,” which he defines as one of the deepest learnings he took away.
They both agree that disconnecting from the digital world was a liberating act. Joaquín describes it as “a gift”, although not without challenges: “In my daily life it is difficult for me to disconnect from social networks, from distractions. But The Ignatian Way gave me the opportunity to live 100% that silenceand now I try to bring it into my daily life.” Antonella, for her part, reflects on how overwhelmed we are with stimuli. “Isolating oneself from external noise was key to introspection. You realize how necessary these spaces are in a world where everything moves so fast.”
Joaquín is part of a digital native generation, and puts into words what many young people feel but do not always know how to express. “We are trapped in social networks, video games, pornography, online gambling. It is a world of immediacy, of instant gratificationwhich generates anxiety, stress, dependency, addiction. But if we place ourselves there with awareness and responsibility, we can use those tools in favor of our mental health.”
This search for balance is reflected in the growing interest in proposals such as the Spiritual Exercises. “There is something in our generation that reminds us that things were different,” Antonella reflects. “We had a childhood and adolescence without so much technology, and that left us a memory of what the pause means.” Joaquín complements that idea, pointing to the negative impact of the digital maelstrom: “It is leaving us hypersensitive, with a low tolerance for frustration, with difficulties in facing real challenges. Some of us try, and there are more and more of us, to break that circle.”
When the retreat ended, Antonella and Joaquín returned with practical tools, but also with something deeper: a peace that is difficult to describe. “It is a feeling of having an open heart and full of love,” says Joaquín. For Antonella, the experience was a rediscovery of the value of the everyday, of the simple.
Spirituality and mental health
The mental health crisis among young people is alarming. According to the WHO, rates of anxiety and depression are on the rise, linked to excessive use of social media and lack of deep connections. A recent study – the first of its kind – carried out in Spain, revealed that 20.22% of adolescents between 12 and 18 years old spend more than two hours a day on TikTok, and the majority state that, when disconnecting, they experience a decrease in their self-esteem, an increase in the feeling of stress and difficulties in establishing personal limits.
Spirituality can be a key complement in this context. “A person who knows himself, who asks himself what he wants in life, why he came into the world, perhaps he is a person who has a spiritual maturity that helps him understand himself better and have more tools to find his way in this world” , Carolina contributes.
For the young people who come to the Manresa Center, the retreat is more than a respite: it is a transformation. Nahuel describes this experience through the figure of the pilgrim: “Life is a path towards an unknown horizon, like Saint Ignatius said, ‘a healthy ignorance’. This process resonates with a generation that, although orphaned by traditional stories, continues to search for meaning.”
This is not a promise of easy answers, but it is a powerful invitation: stop, listen and walk towards what is essential. For Nahuel, the key is simple: “It is an invaluable gift in a world where everything seems fragmented. Here, young people discover that even in the midst of the noise, there is an echo of plenitude waiting to be heard.”
And that echo, wrapped in silence, continues to resonate.
