Ignatian contemplation is a method of imaginative prayer developed by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and set out in his "Spiritual Exercises" of the sixteenth century. In sharp contrast to the wordless, imageless prayer of the apophatic tradition, it works precisely through the senses and the imagination: the one praying takes a scene from the Gospels, the nativity, a healing, the Last Supper, the crucifixion, and enters it imaginatively, constructing the place in detail, seeing the persons, hearing their words, noticing the smells and textures, and taking a part in the event as though present. This "composition of place" is meant to make the sacred history immediate and personal, so that the pray-er encounters Christ not as a figure in a text but as a living presence to be met.
The aim is not fantasy for its own sake but a deepened relationship and a movement of the heart. Ignatius directs the one praying to notice the interior responses the scene evokes and to draw from them a personal conversation with Christ, ending each period of prayer in direct address as one friend speaks to another.