The Examen is an exercise in prayer created and taught by St. Ignatius. It is recommended that this prayer become a habit done at the end of the Day and is a foundational practice and prayer of all Jesuit Priests. Much more can be discovered about it but below is a simple outline to follow.
Review the day
*Thank God for the blessings big and small
*Ask for forgiveness for my sins
*What I did
*Opportunities I denied
Ask God to reveal his presence.
*Pray for the people I encountered
*The plans I have
*The work I do
Ask for the grace to grow and love better.
There is no right way or wrong way to practice The Examen as long as the basics are covered. Reviewing the day, starting from the morning and drifting through the days events till I reach the day’s ending point. Just going back and recalling anything significant that happened and trying to see God’s presence. As I do that I notice all that I am grateful for and praise God. My gratitude is counter balanced with humility as I see ways in which I was unlike Christ and ask God to reaffirm his forgiveness to me. I continue to review my day and ask God to reveal his presence in the people I encounter, that my plans are His will, and the work I do is in His will. Whatever today has left unresolved, I can sleep peacefully knowing that tomorrow holds the opportunity to resolve any matter with my loved ones, friends, neighbors and enemies.
Why do I think this is important?
I think that this is important because there is so much that I can learn from what has happened to me in just one day. By not taking the time to review and examine the days events and how I responded to them, so much is lost. I have observed that most of what has happened has affected me in some way. So by taking the time to bring the day as it unfolded, before God, I am able to get closure on what otherwise may still be swirling around my head waiting for me and interrupting my thoughts the next day. String a week of that together and there are hundreds of unresolved thoughts and emotions swirling around my presence. Imagine years of that and the anxious distracted mess that I would be. Yet that is how most of us live our lives. Perhaps that’s why a subject can be brought up and someone can almost immediately become emotionally charged over what may seem like an insignificant slight that didn’t even happen to them. Its because they are reliving a moment when perhaps the same thing happened to them and they never resolved it and those emotions and memories just stayed in their presence and attached themselves to other unresolved input. Now the slightest thing that resembles their past hurt triggers a flood of emotion because this one event has affected so many events and there are so many more like that that everything inside our brains and hearts has become a tangled mess.
By coming before God and reviewing my day and taking an honest inventory of my reaction to things, I can resolve my anger, hurt and indignation and let it go. And perhaps it may resurface a day or two later, then I can examine that.
I think that I am attracted to this because of the healthiness of it as I just described. But I also like the rhythm of it. It is like cleaning the kitchen and running the dishwasher before going to bed. The comfort of hearing the muffled swish of the dishwasher as I am reading before bed and knowing that I am waking up to a clean kitchen in the morning. I am not carrying dirty dishes over to the next day. I am waking up to a new day with yesterdays mess all tidied up. Its that feeling of finally organizing that pile that has built up and now everything has been put back into its proper place and we can find what we need when we need it. Keeping our stuff organized is the most unexciting activity we can possibly do. That is not what makes us feel good about organizing. It is the relief of the anxiety we feel when things are out of order. When I know there are some important papers that I am going to need to find at some point but I don’t know where to look, that anxious thought never leaves my subconscious. It stays there infecting every other thought. But when I put that important document in a folder, with a label, in a filing cabinet organized alphabetically that is relief! My inner super nerd is flexing haha.
Imagine all the paperwork and documents that I would need in my life (and this now includes electronic as well) mixed up in piles. Nothing is organized or put away. If I ever need to find something I have to hope I remember which pile it is in and sift through that pile till I find it. the stress of that is overwhelming. Imagine trying to sell a car or a house. Trying to find the documents needed would cause me to never sell anything. This is how I imagine it to be with a life’s worth of unresolved thoughts and emotions scattered about my brain getting mixed up and ending up in piles of unresolved thoughts and emotions that I may have to sift through if I ever want to resolve inner conflict that I feel.
Bringing the events of my day before the Father, is not just about organizing and bringing to closure the happenings of that day. It is taking the time to see where God was present in all my day but I didn’t see it while it was happening. The hope of this practice is that eventually I will learn to see God’s presence in all things as they are happening. Training myself to be aware of the Father. I like to think about life in this way: We are all on a journey back to Eden. Our journeys begin and end in Christ. Eden, metaphorically is the place where God is ever-present in our everyday happenings. We are in rebellion against God and therefore not living in Eden. It is when we follow Christ that we begin our journey back to Eden. But as we are journeying, we realize that we are in God’s presence all along.
“We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete. 2Corinthians 10:3-5
“O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my wants. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, You know it all….
For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.
How precious also are You thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way. Psalm 139
“For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man(consciousness) which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.”
1Corinthians 2:10-13