Examen ~ GregJ

To review: (1) God enables my pursuit of virtues. (2) God equips believers with virtues including hope, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and forgiveness. (3) I pursue these virtues and gain experience and discernment. (4) People of like mind help me discover and deploy one or two specialized aptitudes which help the group serve people. Specialty virtues include seeing things from God's point of view, serving, teaching, giving, organizing, and mercy. These are just examples. God enables other spiritual gifts as he wishes.

God's people have long pursued these virtues.  Some do so with simple openness to God's direction. Some people are more systematic. Thus, the Wesleys’ 22 questions urge a person to ask of themselves daily probing questions: Can I be trusted? Am I enjoying prayer? Am I humble? Do I obey God in all things? Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography included his secular self-improvement program concerning 13 virtues, focusing on just one virtue per week. Other personal constitutions have been published, several since 1989 based on Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

We mentioned Covey but did not list his 7 habits. They are:  Be proactive (take responsibility).... Begin with the end in mind (have a plan and vision).... Put first things first (Prioritize).... Think win-win (Seek mutual benefit).... Seek first to understand, then to be understood (Listen with empathy).... Synergize (Value diverse opinions).... Sharpen the saw (Seek continuous improvement)....

Personal constitutions are essentially a list of virtues or desirable practices. New Year's Resolutions are another such a list.

The Single Question of Highly Effective Saints

We now turn to a Christian personal constitution that is not a list of questions, virtues, habits, or resolutions. I find in it some issues. Still in its way it can touch every situation of life. Millions have followed it daily since Iñigo (aka Ignatius) from the town of Loyola in Spain, first published it in 1522: This is The Examen.

With Ignatian Examen, I would take time once or twice a day to read scripture and pray, focusing gratitude and dependence on God for direction. These alone are worthy activities.

Next, I iterate through my memory of events in my life since the previous Examen. An event can be an experience, my thoughts, my feelings, or my action: admiring the sunrise, worrying about a conversation, eating breakfast, something I read.

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I review each event for a few seconds with a single yes or no question:
 
          Did this event move me closer to God? 

Of course to answer this, I need a sense of what God wants.

• What does God want? That’s why Examen starts with scripture and asking for Holy Spirit’s insight.
• For the illiterate, “Teachings of the Church” (and its leaders) and parents might substitute.
  
• Examen groups I’ve visited meet with experienced Spiritual Directors (aka Givers) to discuss what “closer to God” can mean and to encourage one another.  
• Awareness Examen requires that I not linger in reflection on each event, but move on like a farmer counting cows or chickens while alert for individual health problems.
• Particular Examen is the kind of review exemplified by the Wesley 22 questions or the Franklin 13 virtues.

After my review of my events, I wrap up with prayer to God. I can log discoveries and resolutions.

Elegant, right? No 110 rules, 22 questions, 13 virtues, or 7 habits.

Though simple, there are weaknesses in the Ignatian Examen. I won't see the significance of some events in my life. I might over-emphasize some events. What feels like a humbling downer for my pride might be a step toward God’s way. I might judge illogically: by immediate effects, not considering likely consequences.  I might obsess over defects that God is already forgiving and healing. What seems like an opportunity to serve may be over-reaching. What seems like punishment may be opportunity.

Ignatius recognized such issues. His original book on Examin is 150 pages long. In his “Second Week” instructions Ignatian identified supporting activities before and after the central review.

1. Read God’s word in quiet.
2. Having prayed that the Holy Spirit will help me, Receive God’s Holy Spirit. Psalm 139 is such a request: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any evil in me, and guide me in the way everlasting.” So is Romans 8: “In certain ways we are weak, but the Spirit is here to help us. For example, when we don't know what to pray for, the Spirit prays for us in ways that cannot be put into words.”
3. Review each event (my experience, thoughts, feelings, and actions) since the previous Examen. Don’t dwell on perceived success or failure. Instead, consider God’s activity in, around, and through me. Most important, decide: Did this event move me closer to God? Relish events that blessed me. Thank God. Repent of shortcomings or failures that the review found. Request God’s forgiveness and help with these needs.
4. Resolve to live righteously in concrete ways by God’s grace.
5. Recite a closing prayer such as “Our Father”.

Jesuit teachers call the above typically daily steps the Awareness Examen. If emphasizing thoughts and feelings (instead of experiences and actions), this is Consciousness Examen. If focused on a particular virtue or habit, this is Particular Examen. If focused on identifying and dumping sins, this is General Examen of Conscience and is a recommended preliminary to Confession.

In his Spiritual Exercises for the Second Week, Ignatius considered several complications and how to avoid them. These tend to involve feelings. The Second Week comments address puzzlements not clearly covered by scripture, by the teachings of the Church, or by the counsel of wise believers. Who should I marry? What work should I pursue? Where is my hairbrush?

A more controversial activity associated with Ignatian Examen is Imaginative Prayer.

This begins as above: Read scriptures and pray. Additionally ask that the Holy Spirit work through my imagination. We want to turn up imagination of the senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell…  Memory works through connections, and the idea is to enhance scripture memory and insight via sensory connections, even just imagined ones. Thus, selected scripture could be a gospel event or stories in which I might have participated had I been there: Jesus being born. Jesus healing the lame, feeding the crowd, celebrating Passover,… these contain sensory impressions waiting to be enhanced. Imagine chatting with other Judean spectators, hearing of their anxiety and fatigue before Jesus gave them bread and fish. Imagine being the blind man who fumbled his accustomed route in darkness until Jesus gave him sight.

Having mastered these safe imaginations, you can level up to Examen Contemplation and Examen Colloquy.  In these you approach Jesus on the cross and ask him how he can forgive—and he answers you. He tells you how you can forgive. Or buzz by a TARDIS on your way to creation and ask Father God about quarks or hell or raising children. Prompted by Psalm 139, ask God about his creation of you.  Discover that God loves you. Certainly, ask something of a saint—Mary the mother of Jesus is always popular. What are those things she hid in her heart? How did Jesus act at funerals?

Of course, the problem is not asking questions. The problem is not fanfic and Mary Sue. The problem is imagining a reply from Jesus, God, or Mary. Does that reply come from the Almighty or from my hopes or fears? From the Holy Spirit, or from the tempter? Holy Holodecks, I could fantasize Jesus confirming my stupid desires: Verily, Robin Hood, do rob that bank; just give some to the poor. Safeguards against wayward imagination are the Examen's prescribed use of the Biblical precedent, the "Teachings of the Church", and Spiritual Directors. Google, "AI", and social media can bring you trustworthy sources, opinions, or confident lies.

Toward the end of Spiritual Exercises, under the heading Greater Discernment of Spirits (p 169 in the pdf), Ignatius deals with many possible insights discovered in Examen. His advice is to recheck your current position and especially your current trajectory. The first rule: continuing in serious sin is bad, even if you feel good about it. “In the persons who go from mortal sin to mortal sin,… the enemy commonly proposes to them apparent pleasures… The good spirit uses the opposite method, pricking them and biting their consciences through the process of reason.”

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Compare with the third rule: “the evil angel enters the devout soul with good and holy ambitions; but then little by little he aims at drawing the soul to his covert deceits and perverse intentions.” In other words, “It’s a trap!”

In many Psalms, David and others requested justice or vengeance. Jesus gives us even more confidence to come to God (Hebrews 4:15-16). But there’s such a thing as presumptuous prayer (Psalm 19). So be extremely careful with imagined directives. Seek external confirmation. I’m not a 100% cessationist; but I know that words from God tend to be on his initiative and through his means, confirmed by his miracles to certify his truths in his time.

Supporting Ignatian Examen, there is a sizable stack of devotion books, Apps, and web sites . They offer preparatory scriptures, canned prayers, suggested music, discussion prompts, and other customizations for students, athletes, business people, mothers, fathers, etc. You just bring your experiences, thoughts, feelings, and action. Most I’ve seen are decidedly Roman Catholic. Jesuit retreat centers sponsor weekends or longer retreats saturated in Ignatian Examen. Practically all weekend you will be in silence except for chapel prayers and singing. Can’t go to a retreat? Some monasteries and churches offer Ignatian groups via Zoom.  Several non-Catholic church groups conduct spiritual direction retreats that are mostly Ignatian Examen but basically Biblical. There have been secular outfits that claim connection with Christian spirituality, but watch out: “It’s a trap!”

At its heart, the Ignatian Examen shines a flashlight on each of my events today, and asks, “Did this event move me closer to God?”  Other Christian contemplative methods tend to add a few more questions. They are not hard to find.  Here is one such Examen core from a Franciscan community:

• If I truly wanted to live God’s dream for humanity, or to live and act as Jesus did, What must/should I do in response to this text?
• How would it change my life? 
• Is it possible for me to respond at this time of my life?
• Is there anything I can do, right now, which would begin my journey of response to this text?

The Seven Spiritual Weapons of Saint Catherine of Bologna

A method of Christian spiritual growth might not use questions. Instead, it can spotlight values or goals or “Life Verses”. These are a little like Franklin pursing his 13 favored secular virtues.

Catherine was an inspiring painter and musician in Bolagna, Italy. No introspective wimp she. From about 1463, she lists her weapons of integrity and progress.

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• “The first weapon I call zeal in doing good, since the Holy Scripture condemns those who are negligent and lukewarm in the way of God.” “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”  (Revelation 3.15-16)
  
• “The second weapon is mistrust of self: that is, to believe firmly and without doubt that one could never do anything good by oneself, as Christ Jesus said: “Without me you can do nothing.” (John 15.5).
  
• “The third weapon is to put one’s trust in God and for love of him to fiercely wage battle with great readiness of spirit against the devil and against the world and one’s own flesh which is given one in order that it might serve the spirit.    [GJ adds reference from Proverbs 3, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.”]
  
• “The fourth is the memory of Christ Jesus, the glorious pilgrimage of that immaculate lamb, and especially his most holy death and passion, keeping always before the eyes of our minds the presence of his most chaste and virginal humanity.    [GJ notes Hebrews 12:2, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”]
  
• “The fifth weapon is to remind oneself that we must die….  And so, Paul the glorious apostle spoke well: “Let us do good while we have time.” (Galatians 6.10)
  
• “The sixth weapon is the memory of the goods of paradise which are prepared for those who lawfully struggle by abandoning all the vain pleasures of the present life in accord with the saying of the most holy doctor Saint Augustine: that it is impossible to enjoy present goods and future ones too…. "Those who are just await me until you reward me." (Psalm 142)
  
• “The seventh weapon with which we can conquer our enemies is the memory of Holy Scripture which we must carry in our hearts and from which, as from a most devoted mother, we must take counsel in the things we have to do. And with this weapon, our savior Christ Jesus conquered and confounded the devil in the desert, saying: “It is written.” (Luke 4:1-13)