This book is compiled from notes made by Father Keating during his annual retreats. Among the papers which he left at the time of his death on March 5th, 1939, were thirteen exercise books. They contained jotings of his retreat meditations from his first retreat in the noviceship in 1883 until the last of his life in April 1938. They early notes are derivative and I have not drawn on them at all, although they give an interesting summary of the spiritual teaching of such distinguished Jesuits as Father Francis Clare, Father John Morris, Father Charles blount and others.