The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything (11 page)

“Maybe one reason that the work seems dull is because you’re not bringing it up before God in prayer,” said Dick.

“No,” I said, “it’s dull because it’s dull.”

Dick reminded me that when we feel resistance to something in prayer, it’s often because we’re resisting God’s invitation to growth. So the next day after I spent some time at the center with Wanda, I promised myself that I would remember her during the review part of the examen.

That night I settled down in the chapel of our Jesuit community and began my examen. After a long day, I recalled the events related to my studies and community life. Then, when I reached the part of the day spent at the community center, I reminded myself to pause. It was strange to feel resistance, but I forced myself to remember the faces of the people that I had seen that day: the unshaven homeless man who had struggled with being out of work for many years; the wheelchair-bound, middle-aged man who had been searching for a job for months; and, finally, Wanda.

Wanda and I had spent an hour that day preparing for an interview that might not come for months, or might never come. Suddenly in my prayer I saw her face and was filled with an intense sadness that nearly overwhelmed me. Things seemed so hopeless for her. It was as if I had tapped into an endlessly deep well of pity. Before I knew it, I was crying for someone I barely knew.

The next week I told Dick how surprised I had been. “Perhaps you were feeling God’s compassion for her,” he said. “How else would God communicate his hopes for Wanda other than to work through you?” It was not surprising, Dick suggested, that I had earlier felt resistance to thinking about those with whom I worked—perhaps out of fear of the strong emotions that lay just beneath the surface.

The next time I met Wanda, it was like meeting someone holy, someone God loved in a special way. Of course God loved all the people at the community center, but prayer reminded me that Wanda was the one for whom God had asked
me
to care, even if in a small way. That one step of the examen—the review—changed the way I related to my ministry, changed the way I related to the people with whom I worked, and, more important, changed the way I related to Wanda (whom I would never see again after my time in Chicago ended). It had helped me to see God not simply in retrospect, but in the moment.

As Margaret Silf writes in
Inner Compass,
“You will quickly find that you start to look out for God’s presence and his action in places you would not have thought to look before.”

The fourth step of the examen is asking for
forgiveness
from God for anything sinful that you’ve done during the day. Catholics may feel the need to follow this up with the sacrament of confession if there has been a grave sin. You may also recognize the desire to seek forgiveness from the person you offended.

Asking for forgiveness for our sins can be freeing, reminding us of God’s desire to welcome us back—like the father in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son—no matter what we’ve done, if we are truly sorry. In theology studies, one of our professors, Peter Fink, S.J., told our class that the emphasis in confession needs to be not on how bad I am, but on how good God is.

Finally, in the last step of the examen you ask for the
grace
of God’s help during the next day, and you can close with any prayer you like. Ignatius suggests the Our Father. Those who aren’t Christian might want to close with a prayer from their own tradition.

E
XAMEN
(
S
)

Even though Ignatius told the Jesuits never to omit it from their day, the examen doesn’t need to be followed slavishly. For Ignatius the examen went like this: gratitude, awareness of sins, review, forgiveness, grace.

But Jesuits pray it in a variety of ways. For me, it’s hard to identify sinfulness without first reviewing the day. It’s also easier to ask for forgiveness after thinking about my sins. So my examen goes like this: gratitude, review, awareness of sins, forgiveness, grace.

Others find that the steps overlap. Some run through the review and, in the process, recall something sinful and immediately ask for forgiveness.

The examen was meant for everyone, not just Jesuits. Dorothy Day, the American-born founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, talks about the examen in her journals, published as
The Duty of Delight
. “St Ignatius says never omit 2 examens, 15 minutes each,” she writes on April 11, 1950. Then she gives her own way of doing it.

1. Thank God for favors.
   
2. Beg for light [that is, the grace to see clearly]
   
3. Survey
   
4. Repent
   
5. Resolve
   

Day found the examen not only reminded her of the simple joys of life, but goaded her to self-improvement. “We all do too much talking,” she wrote in 1973, at the age of seventy-five. She had been complaining and gossiping too much, she felt. “I must stop.” The examen led her to action.

“There is no ‘right’ way to pray,” as David told me. So pray it in whatever way draws you closer to God.

There is, however, one common pitfall: doing the examen as if it were simply a list to be completed. Many Jesuits (including me) fall prey to this temptation. For busy people it’s tempting to plop down at the end of the day and race through the day on their own: I did this, then I did that, then I did this, and so on.

To guard against this, you might remind yourself that you’re doing the examen
with God
. Recalling this makes it not only more prayerful but more like a dialogue and less like a task that needs to be completed. Sometimes just recalling that you’re in God’s presence is enough.

Y
OU
S
HALL
S
EE
M
E
P
ASS

The examen builds on the insight that it’s easier to see God in retrospect rather than in the moment. To highlight that insight, let me tell you a story.

A few years ago, I edited a book called
How Can I Find God?
in which I asked the famous and not-so-famous to address that question. Somewhat boldly, I wrote to the superior general of the Society of Jesus, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, and was delighted when he mailed back a concise essay. His approach accented the practice of “looking back” to find God.

Father Kolvenbach recounted the story of an abbot in the Middle Ages who would speak to his monks every day “on finding God, on searching for God, on encountering God.” One day a monk asked the abbot if he ever encountered God. Had he ever had a vision or seen God face-to-face?

After a long silence the abbot answered frankly: no, he hadn’t. But, said the abbot, there wasn’t anything surprising in this because even to Moses in the Book of Exodus (33:19–20) God said, “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” God says that Moses will see his back as he passed by him.

“Thus,” Father Kolvenbach wrote, “looking back over the length and breadth of his life the abbot could see for himself the passage of God.”

The examen helps you see God in retrospect. And what Father Kolvenbach said about the search for God could be applied to this daily prayer. “In this sense, it is less a matter of searching for God than of allowing oneself to be found by Him in all of life’s situations, where He does not cease to pass and where He allows Himself to be recognized once He has really passed.”

Likewise, while we frequently ask God for help in specific areas of life, we just as frequently fail to recognize God’s help when it comes. Sometimes the examen can help answer the question, “Why doesn’t God answer my prayer?”

Suppose you start a new job, enter a new school, or move to a new town and are feeling lonely. You ask God for help: Help me feel less lonely. Help me find friends.

Typically we expect a dramatic change: an instant new friend the next day. Normally, that doesn’t happen; real friendships don’t progress that quickly.

Instead you might start to grow friendly with a few people, very slowly. Perhaps the day after your prayer someone offers a friendly remark or asks if you need help. If you’re looking only for that “instant friend,” perhaps something as small as a kind remark will go unnoticed. The examen helps you notice that God often works gradually—which reminds me of one of my favorite images of God.

God, an elderly Jesuit once suggested to me, is something like an old carpenter in a small village in Vermont. If you ask the townspeople where to turn for carpentry work or repairs, they will say, “There’s only one person to call. He does excellent work. He’s careful, he’s precise, he’s conscientious, he’s creative, he makes sure that everything fits, and he tailors his work exactly to fit your needs. There’s just one problem: he takes
forever!
”

With the examen you’re less likely to overlook that slow work of God.

Over time, you’ll also begin to notice
patterns
of God’s activity in your life. Maybe you recall every night that you’re happiest when helping others with their physical needs—say, helping an elderly neighbor clean her house. You may think,
That’s interesting. I’ve never noticed that before. Maybe I should do that on a more regular basis
. Or you notice that every night you thank God for the same person in your workplace.
That’s interesting,
you think.
Maybe I should tell him how grateful I am for his friendship
.

Finding God in your examen makes you more likely to look for him during the day. You become more aware of where God
was
and where God
is
. Gradually you realize that God is active every moment of the day. Finding God by looking behind you makes it easier to see God right in front of you.

The examen can also be used to contemplate the presence of God over the long term. In her book
Inner Compass,
Margaret Silf tells of a leisurely driving trip she took in the Scottish countryside with her relatives, when they came upon a sign that said, “This is the source of the River Tweed.” In just a short time they watched the stream, which began as an insignificant spring, spread and grow, finally becoming a “stately presence in the valley town,” a great river spanned by a bridge, fished in by fishermen, a source of beauty in the countryside. By car they traversed the path of the river in a few minutes.

Silf asks us if we consider our lives in this way. Can we use the examen to look backward, to find the hidden sources of the “landscape of your circumstances”? What parts of our landscapes resisted the flow of water, and what encouraged them? (Remember Félicité, the heroine of “A Simple Heart”? Flaubert describes her as every morning recalling “the days gone by and the smallest details of unimportant events, without sorrow, quite serenely.”)

Put another way, can we use the examen to look back over our entire life? You might call this the “life examen.”

B
EAUTIFUL
Y
ESTERDAYS

The daily examen is of special help to seekers, agnostics, and atheists. For them it can be altered into a “prayer of awareness.” The first step is to be consciously aware of yourself and your surroundings. The second step is to remember what you’re grateful for. The third is the review of the day. The fourth step, asking for forgiveness, could be a decision to reconcile with someone you have hurt. And the fifth is to prepare yourself to be aware for the next day. Gradually they may begin to connect the events of their lives with God’s love, presence, and care for them.

A few years ago, I started to lead large groups in this prayer. Most were familiar with Christian spirituality. But even people who had never prayed before were enthusiastic about the examen. And around the same time, as I mentioned, I was invited to work with a group of actors putting together an Off-Broadway play. The summer after the play closed I was invited to their summer workshop, where they staged brand-new plays and offered courses on various facets of theater arts. Most “guests” were asked to offer the company a workshop on something like Shakespearean drama, or voice, or movement.