The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [43]
“Is your ministry coming up in your examen much?” he asked.
It wasn’t. Since my primary work was studying, I said, I was more focused on that. In my examen, I would carefully review what experiences I had in my classes, during my study time, and over lunch and dinner with my Jesuit friends in community. The work with Wanda and the other clients was an afterthought. Or not even a thought at all.
“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 present moment holds infinite riches beyond your wildest dreams but you will only enjoy them to the extent of your faith and love. The more a soul loves, the more it longs, the more it hopes, the more it finds.
—Jean-Pierre de Caussade, S.J. (1675–1751),
The Sacrament of the Present Moment
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