The Examen: Prayer At The End Of The Day Series

March 8, 2023

The second in a Lenten series on Prayer

Hope Lutheran Church

Rev. Mary Erickson

Psalm 139:23-24; Romans 12:2

The Examen:

Prayer at the End of the Day

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

The philosopher Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

This evening we consider an ancient prayer tool which helps to examine the inner workings of our heart and mind. It’s known as the Examen. The name Examen comes from the Latin term for the small tongue on a balance. As the two pans move up and down in relation to one another, the small pointer indicates where the balance between them lies.

The Examen is a prayer tool developed by St. Ignatius in the 16th Century. It illuminates the forces within that shape our thoughts and actions. It helps us identify what these hidden influencers are. Then we can more closely align ourselves with God’s good and gracious intentions for us.

So the Examen is a tool of discernment. As Paul said in our reading tonight from Romans, our desire is to achieve a renewal of our minds. In the Examen we prayerfully undergo the discernment of our hidden interior so that we can be transformed.

The writer of Psalm 139 wrote, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

In the Examen, we ask God to sift through our day so that we might be transformed.

The Examen is meant to be used at the end of the day. It’s a brief exercise in which we review the day. It has five basic steps to it. You can see them on your handout for tonight.

The first step: LIGHT. We invite God’s light. We ask the Holy Spirit to shed light on our inner thoughts and yearnings. Illumination comes from God. We begin our prayerful examination by asking the Holy Spirit to accompany us on this interior journey. We pray that the Spirit will shed light on what remains hidden within. And this gives us consolation and courage. We know that when the Holy Spirit is with us, we don’t make this journey alone. Knowing this gives us the confidence to look within.

The second step, then, is THANKSGIVING. Trace through the steps of your day. Begin with your waking and track through all your comings and goings. Go from place to place and be mindful of the small graces you experienced. The Examen begins with this foundation of gratitude. We ground each day with prayers of thanks.

So far, everything is gift. We pray for the Holy Spirit to be our guide; we take note of all that is good, every reason we have to say thank you.

With this as the foundation, now you can look more deeply in the third step. As you course through your day once more, take note of your FEELINGS. What were you feeling? There are a lot of emotions: excitement, boredom, anger, compassion, regret, judgmental, uncertainty, doubt, apathy, hope, resentment. So many emotions we feel in the course of a day.

Feelings tip us off to what’s going on inside. And they’ll fall into two categories: consolation and desolation. Feelings of consolation will warm and cheer. They move us closer to God. But the feelings of desolation move us away from God. Take note of your consolation and desolation.

In the next step, you FOCUS on one of the emotions you felt. One of these moments of your day will present itself to you. It’s a sign that something important was going on there. Focus on this one moment and what you were feeling. It may be a moment of consolation or of desolation. The point at this step is to unpack the moment to see what was going on inside of you. And as you do so, remember that the Holy Spirit is going to bring illumination into this moment. We don’t walk alone.

Let your prayer be centered on this moment of illumination. It may lead to praise, or confession, or a petition for help. Lift it up to God - for healing, for help, for gratitude.

When you’ve finished our examination of the day, then the fifth step leads into the FUTURE. Take a brief look forward at what tomorrow may bring. What feelings present to you as you consider each task: Joy? Dread? Eagerness? Self-doubt? Lift it up. It gives you a bit of understanding into your tomorrow.

So that’s it. Five steps, just like you have five fingers: Light, Thanksgiving, and then three F’s – Feelings, Focus and Future.

When we consider prayer, we might think that it’s our way to influence God. But really, it’s the other way around. Through prayer, God shapes us. And that’s certainly the case with the Examen. As we practice it day after day, it begins to reveal all that lies hidden. And gradually, we’re transformed, by God’s grace, into all that God had in mind for us to be.