"Agere contra" means "act against." When desolation suggests withdrawing from prayer, lengthen the prayer slightly. When it suggests cancelling spiritual reading, read instead. Ignatius's Rule 6 in operational form.

Agere contra — "act against" — is the practical heart of the Ignatian approach to desolation. The enemy's suggestion in desolation is always to retreat from God: skip prayer, shorten the meditation, abandon the discipline. Ignatius's response is to do the opposite: not less, but slightly more.

Not heroic more. Just enough more that the will registers a refusal of the suggestion. If your prayer time is 20 minutes and you want to skip it, pray 25. If you were going to read 5 pages and you want to read 0, read 7.

"Act quickly in response to God's commands; the faster you resist, the weaker the enemy becomes" (Burke, SWADOS 6). Speed matters because the longer a temptation is held the harder it is to refuse it.