reviewing your life in prayer

REVIEWING YOUR LIFE Many is the time that I have driven my car into the city with my mind
preoccupied with many different things. I was not able to remember any part
of the trip. The associate pastor at St. John Fisher Parish would ask the
sisters what the readings were at the 6:30a.m. Mass. Often they could not
remember what they were. God is constantly speaking to us through the
people, places and events of our ordinary and everyday lives and well as
through our inner life, through our thoughts, daydreams, instincts,
intuitions and desires, but we are not listening. We live continually in
the presence of God. We look so hard for God in the extraordinary that we
fail to notice the presence of God all around us in the ordinary and the
everyday. Jesus did this automatically. The parables are examples of how he
experienced God in all the events of life.
The Ignatian Examen is a way for us to become more aware of the many
ways in which God is trying to be a part of our lives. CONSCIOUSNESS EXAMEN This prayer form developed out of the Spiritual Exercises of St.
Ignatius (David Fleming, S.J., The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A
Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading) St. Ignatius developed a
method by which people who were going through his spiritual exercises could
take time each day to examine where God was present in their retreat
experiences. George Aschenbrenner, S.J. has explained and developed this prayer
technique in a way that is appropriate to people living in our contemporary
society in an article entitled "Consciousness Examen" (Review for
Religious, Vol. 31, 1972, pp. 14-21). The consciousness examen of St. Ignatius is NOT an examination of
conscience. It is not an attempt to make long and detailed lists of all our
sinful actions. It is not meant to be a way of preparing for the Sacrament
of Reconciliation. Rather, this prayer form is meant to help us better
recognize the many ways in which God is constantly drawing and inviting us
into deeper union with God's self in the midst of the ordinary people,
events and circumstances of our day to day lives that we might better know,
love and serve God in all that we do. For St. Ignatius, the examen was to
tool to help people find and respond to God in all things. Fr. George
Aschenbrenner, S.J. describes the examen in this way: "The formal examen
should be a time of prayer about how much God has loved me in the very
existential details of my day and how that love could have blessed me even
more in certain situations if my inner spiritual decisiveness and external
presence had been a bit different." Quickening the Fire in Our Midst, p.
180 The goal of our lives is holiness - to become what Matthew Kelly calls
the best version of ourselves that God calls us to be. We can attain
holiness only if we listen to God and respond to God's constant invitations
to draw nearer. At every moment of our lives, God is making God's presence
known to us through external things, through the people, events and
circumstances of our lives that are outside of us and also through our
interior lives, through our instincts, feelings, moods, urges, desires,
longings, daydreams and dreams. These spiritual movements, our instincts, feelings, moods, urges,
desires, longings, dreams and daydreams are often calls to action, calls to
speak, to act, to behave in some particular way. They have spiritual
significance in that if we pursue them and translate them into action, they
will either build up or tear down our lives of faith, hope and love. Some
of these interior movements are what I call God moments, and they will lead
us to God as we act on them. Some of them are not of God, what I call devil
moments and come from what St. Ignatius calls the evil spirit. These
movements will lead us away from God if we act on them and will tear down
our lives of faith, hope and love. It is important for us to develop the
ability to recognize and correctly discern the origin and direction of our
interior movements so that we can cooperate with those that are from God
and so that we can say no to those that are not from God. The point of this
prayer is to help us develop a continually discerning heart that will
enable us to find and respond to God in all things.
As you know, our lives are often filled with a lot of busyness and
activity. You can easily get on the escalator at the beginning of the day
and keep going and doing things from morning until night. The danger is
that you will have done or accomplished a lot, but you will also have no
awareness of what all the things you did meant and where God was present or
not present in those events. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not
worth living. We can go through our lives being very busy and productive
but without any awareness of what it all means, where it is all going and
where God was present or not present in the people, events and
circumstances we encountered.
This way of praying helps keep my life from becoming isolated from my
prayer, i.e. I pray, and then I go and live my life in a way that indicates
that my prayer made no difference at all in the way I live in the world.
The examen is a way of praying that allows me to look back on my day to see
where God was present in that day, drawing me and inviting me, and how I
responded or did not respond to the invitations of God. It allows me to
become aware of interior movements which were not of God and how I co-
operated with them and allowed them to lead me away from God. Then with
this perspective, I go back into the world with a greater attentiveness to
how God invites me to love God and love my neighbor as myself and with a
greater sense of my blind spots, and those things that I need to avoid lest
they lead me away from God. In this way, I bring my prayer into my daily
life. Prayer and life thus become intimately linked. I seek to live out in
my daily life what I became aware of in my prayer. So important was this way of praying to St. Ignatius that he urged his
Jesuits to faithfully practice it every day. For Ignatius, even if one is
too sick to meditate, one does not omit the daily examen.
Dr. Steven Covey, author of the book The Seven Habits of Highly
Effective Families, offers the example of a pilot flying from one place to
another. Before taking off, the pilot files an ideal flight plan with the
FAA. Then he takes off for his destination. In the course of the flight,
the plane will be off course up to 90% of the time due to weather
conditions, wind and other air traffic in the area. The key to a successful
flight is for the pilot to continually self-correct. If the pilot does
this, then he will arrive safely at the destination.
Jesus had flight plan, a mission statement of his own that he
articulated in Lk. 4:14-22. Every decision he made was in harmony with his
mission statement. Ideally, we all have a flight plan of our own, a
personal mission statement, in terms of our own unique spiritual journey.
The examen is a way to daily check on how we are doing in terms of our
flight plan, our mission statement and to self-correct when we have gotten
off course. This is why the examen was so important to St. Ignatius. He did
not want his Jesuits to get off course.
There are five parts to this prayer. It generally takes 10-15 minutes
to do the five steps. Depending on how you are drawn, you may spend more or
less time on any given day on any of the different parts. The best time to
pray the examen is at the end of the day. It allows you to review in a
prayerful way all the people, places, events and circumstances of the day
in a way that allows you to discover where God was lurking and how God was
seeking to invite you to newness of life through them. Or if you are not a
night person, then the other good time to pray this is in the morning
before you begin your day.
THE FRUITS OF THE IGNATIAN EXAMEN 1. The examen is one way to help me to develop the ability to find and
respond to God in all things. What will begin to happen as I use this
prayer on a regular basis is that I will develop a discerning heart, the
ability more and more to discover and respond to the invitations of God as
they occur, with greater immediacy. Instead of looking back with hindsight,
I will more consciously be aware of how God is drawing and inviting my
response in the immediacy of the present moment. 2. You will find that you always have something to pray about. For a person
who does this kind of prayer at least once a day, there is never the
question: What should I talk to God about? 3. This prayer helps us get over our Deism. Deism is the belief in a God
who does indeed exist but does not have much, if anything, to do with his
people's ongoing life. The God we have come to know through our Jewish and
Christian experience is far more present than we usually think. 4. It develops in us the habit of gratitude which is a wonderful antidote
to self-pity, whining and complaining, being grumpy and negative. Every
morning as I get up, I try to name four or five things that I am grateful
for. I begin my day with gratitude. 5. We also find things to bring to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We
stumble across our sins without making them the primary focus of our
prayer.
IGNATIAN EXAMEN 1. PRAYER OF GRATITUDE:
Silently name any moments or experiences in the day just completed where
you experienced a grace, blessing or a gift from God. Seek to become more
aware that all is gift. It is easy to miss, to be blind to or to take for
granted the many gifts and graces of God. Invite the Holy Spirit to surface
within you those moments of grace and gift that God might want you to be
aware of and thankful for. Can you see the giftedness of your life? Allow
gratitude to take hold of you and express your gratitude to God.
2. PRAYER FOR ENLIGHTENMENT:
Silently pray in your own words that God open your mind and heart to