Blogger Wayne Stratz found a book that helped his prayer life quite a bit.  It helped mine too.

And youth minister Daniel Haugh, who works at the American Church in Paris, has a suggestion for the starting the new year.

Jesuits in St. Louis have developed a special series of seven Examen prayers for the last week of Advent.  They are based on the seven messianic “O Antiphons” prayed during this week. The seven titles attributed to Jesus in the antiphons are Wisdom, Ruler of the House of Israel, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Rising Dawn, O King of all the nations, and Emmanuel. Today the O Antiphons are most familiar to us in the hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” in which each verse of the hymn parallels one of the antiphons.

The Examen prayers begin on Saturday, December 17 and continue through Friday, December 23.

St. Ignatius said that you begin an Examen by coming into God’s presence.  That’s not as easy for us as it was in Ignatius’s time, Fr. Joseph Tetlow, SJ, says:

Today a prior effort has to be made. I have to become present to myself in God. In my culture I am constantly dragged away from myself. The phone, lights, emails, noise—everything is going on to drag me away from myself. So the first thing I have to do is come present to myself as an individual whom Almighty God has chosen as his own. I belong to God and I have to become aware of that now and that means becoming aware of the gifts that God is giving to me and that’s the first point of the Examen actually.

Never, never start examining yourself until you have thanked God for the gifts that God is giving to you—not in general, not in the past, but right now, today. That’s how you start The Examen. I think people who can keep the Examen up often do that.

Read the rest of Fr. Tetlow’s introduction to the Examen here.

Here’s a fine overview of the Examen by Canadian Jesuit Artur Suski.  (Click here to watch it on YouTube.)

How would you depict something as abstract as the Examen prayer?  That was the challenge for artists vying for a commission to make a statue of St. Ignatius for Fairfield University.  The winning idea came from New York artists Joan Benefiel and Jeremy Leichman.  Their statue, “Examen,” was unveiled this week, picture above.

Two identical figures of St. Ignatius, made from the same mold, face each other.  Their gaze is intense; it’s no simple glance in a mirror.  The feet are abnormally large, signifying the saint’s journey.  The hands are large as well, signifying a man ready to go to work. The idea was to erect a statue that would encourage young people to reflect–one of the goals of Jesuit education.  You look at the statue and realize that you’re reflecting on a man reflecting.  That’s part of what you do when you pray the Examen.

Certainly the statue is open to many interpretations.  What’s yours?

I am in China with my family on a heritage tour, a pilgrimage of sorts.  Those familiar with my book Longing to Love know that my daughters are Chinese, so we have returned here in order to see their orphanages and learn more about this land and these people.

This has been holy time.  I mean that not in an overly pious way, but rather to suggest that in carving out space in our lives to focus so wholly on our daughters’ origins, we have reoriented our daily existence around the great desire to practice love as a family, and thereby live out our vocations.

In preparing for the trip, we all agreed that there would be highs and lows, times of exhilaration and times of stress.  All of these times, good and bad, would knit our family relationships, so that even the most insignificant or most difficult experiences might yield some fruit.  Yesterday, for example, we met some of the earliest caregivers of one daughter.  The experience ranks as one of my life’s high points, seeing the love and tenderness that one ayi (“auntie”) in particular showed for her, now ten years removed from my daughter’s life there.  Today, a comparatively slow day, was no less blessed, though, because of the two hours of charades that we four played in the hotel room while the weather was bad.

So now I ask myself: why don’t we live like this every day?  Why can’t we bring the same attentiveness to highs and lows, with an eye to the big picture, the unfolding life for which God has created us?  Is not every day a part of the life of pilgrimage?  Cannot all our life’s moments, from the most mundane to the most sublime, be part of that life of grace?  Surely the answer is yes, and surely in our prayer we allow God to remind us of that grace.

Photo of the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth courtesy of giopuo under Creative Commons license.

Something to think about | Our examen teaches us, above all, to live in the present. Our days typically unfurl in frenzied preoccupation with the next meeting to attend, errands to be done, dinner to be prepared, and a hundred other tasks that crowd an efficient day. The monk Thich Nhat Hanh points out that we humans are great at planning and willing to sacrifice today to save for cars and houses tomorrow, “But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.” So he exhorts us to the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, being fully and consciously aware (or mindful) of the present moment. The examen, by briefly pulling us out of our daily maelstrom, can help reorient us to the present. When we get it right, as Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, “Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity.”

Learn from the past; envision the future; live in the present. It’s a challenging life model to master, but the examen helps us do so.

Chris Lowney
Heroic Living

During Lent we published six audio-visual guided examens that introduce the Ignatian examen prayer.  These were very popular, and they now have a permanent home here on this site.  There’s a whole page on the examen on IgnatianSpirituality.com.  For even more, read my book, A Simple, Life-Changing Prayer.

If you’re interested in prayer, browse the resources on the page The What-How-Why of Prayer. Start with William Barry’s article, “Why do We Pray?”

We pray, then, at our deepest level, because we are drawn by the bonds of love. We pray because we love, and not just for utilitarian purposes. If prayer has beneficial effects—and I believe that it does—that is because prayer corresponds to our deepest reality. When we are in tune with God, we cannot help but experience deep well-being.

Our sixth and last Lunchtime Examen goes online today. This week’s question is “What shall I do?” It’s about the final step of the traditional Ignatian examen–the action we take to love God and other people in the day ahead.  Click on the button above. (Click here if you can’t see it.)

These Lunchtime Examens have been introduced every Wednesday in Lent, but they’ll be permanently available here at IgnatianSpirituality.com.

Our fifth Lunchtime Examen goes online today. This week’s question is “What does the Examen have to do with being honest with God?” Click on the button above. (Click here if you can’t see it.)

These Lunchtime Examens will still be available on IgnatianSpirituality.com after Lent is over. We’re working out the details now.