What is the Examen?
Try me, O God, and seek the ground of my heart :
prove me, and examine my thoughts.
St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), was a big advocate for gratitude and for presence of mind. His Jesuits were to pray for the grace to find God in all things and thus become “contemplatives in action.” Their primary method was to pray the Examen, a (twice-)daily reflection.
I recommend the Examen all the time. In a particular way, I’d like to recommend it to the readers of The Dominic Option. Taking the Dominic Option means engaging with the world in so far as it is good, and living in your own space in so far as it is good. There is no better prayer to help you balance this.
St Ignatius mentioned the Examen for the first time as a side note in a guide for retreat directors. He never gave any more concrete guidance, but he did expect that all of his Jesuits would pray it twice a day, for fifteen minutes, and that it would be the most important prayer of their days. If I’m going to stand behind his bold claims, I should also tell you how to benefit from them. So, I give you here five different versions of the Examen:
Ignatian Examen
Ephrem Examen ← The best place to start
Secular Examen
Salesian Examen
Out-Loud / Group Examens
That said, there are many more ways to pray the Examen. In fact, there’s a book called Reimagining the Examen, by Jesuit novice director Fr Mark Thibodeaux, SJ, which contains 30 different Examens (see this link for the book and the free app). I totally recommend doing one occasionally. The variety will enrich your spiritual life and your regular Examen practice.
By the way: Focus on gratitude, the most important step. St Ignatius once wrote that:
ingratitude is the most abominable of sins and that it should be detested in the sight of our Creator and Lord by all of His creatures who are capable of enjoying His divine and everlasting glory. For it is a forgetting of the gracious benefits, and blessings received. As such it is the cause, beginning, and origin of all sins and misfortunes.
So I suppose we can put down one last, simplified version:
Gratitude journaling.
Some context: I used to be a novice for the Jesuits. Despite having left, I continue to spread the pro-Examen propaganda. It’s good stuff!
1. Ignatian Examen
Here is a translation of the Examen, as given by St Ignatius of Loyola himself, in his 1522 Spiritual Exercises:
It contains in it five Points.
First Point. The first Point is to give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits received.
Second Point. The second, to ask grace to know our sins and cast them out.
Third Point. The third, to ask account of our soul from the hour that we rose up to the present Examen, hour by hour, or period by period: and first as to thoughts, and then as to words, and then as to acts, in the same order as was mentioned in the Particular Examen.
Fourth Point. The fourth, to ask pardon of God our Lord for the faults.
Fifth Point. The fifth, to purpose amendment with His grace.Our Father
Fr Mark Thibodeaux suggests remembering it with five Rs, as follows:
Relish the moments that went well and all of the gifts I have today.
Request the Spirit to lead me through my review of the day.
Review the day.
Repent of any mistakes or failures.
Resolve, in concrete ways, to live tomorrow well.
This is the most basic Examen, and is the one on which all others are based. By the way, most Jesuits switch the first and the second points (Relish and Request) in the Ignatian Examen. I personally do too - it seems to make more sense to me. But figure out what works for you!
2. Ephrem Examen
Although the alliteration certainly makes it attractive, this Examen is my recommendation because of its simplicity. It was taught to me by a friend of mine, Brother Ephrem Upart (hence the name), who was having trouble getting through the Ignatian Examen every day:
List five (or more) things for which you’re grateful that day. Relish in them.
List three (or more) sins or mistakes from that day. Ask for forgiveness and resolve to do better.
List one request for tomorrow. Think about what the day will look like. What grace do you need to do well?
The big innovation here is to have numbers on all of these steps, which makes it a lot easier to follow by yourself without going off on a tangent. I personally combine this one with other variants to help me focus.
3. Secular Examen
Chris Lowney spent six years with the Jesuits, then left and became an investment banker. He has written frequently on the lessons the business world can learn from the Jesuits (I recommend his book Heroic Leadership). One of the lessons he most values is the Examen, as he writes about in this Harvard Business Review article:
The English word examine roughly conveys the concept: to examine your day and take stock. With apologies to my spiritual father Ignatius, I often refer to it more colloquially as a “mental pit stop.” I recommend two of them daily — one at midday, for example, and one at the end of the day — completely dedicating at least five minutes to each one. (Sorry, multi-taskers — listening to sports radio, texting, or listening to cell phone messages would not qualify for completely dedicated.)
During those few minutes, do three things. First, remind yourself why you are grateful as a human being. Second, lift your horizon for a moment. Call to mind some crucial personal objective, or your deepest sense of purpose, or the values you stand for. Third, mentally review the last few hours and extract some insight that might help in the next few hours. If you were agitated, what was going on inside you? If you were distracted and unproductive, why? Those who are spiritually inclined might also reflect on how God (or a higher power) was present in the people and challenges you encountered over the last few hours.
I really value this “Secular Examen” because the practices of the Christian faith are often best practices even when it comes to entirely human goals. So I can pass on something valuable from my tradition to people who would otherwise never think about praying!
4. Salesian Examen
St Francis de Sales was a big fan of St Ignatius and the Jesuits. While he was inspired by Ignatian spirituality, his main goal was to make it more digestible for laymen. So his Examen is a tad simpler than Ignatius’s, and more moralistic:
As to the examination of conscience, which we all should make before going to bed, you know the rules:
1. Thank God for having preserved you through the day past.
2. Examine how you have conducted yourself through the day, in order to which recall where and with whom you have been, and what you have done.
3. If you have done anything good, offer thanks to God; if you have done amiss in thought, word, or deed, ask forgiveness of His Divine Majesty, resolving to confess the fault when opportunity offers, and to be diligent in doing better.
4. Then commend your body and soul, the Church, your relations and friends, to God. Ask that the Saints and Angels may keep watch over you, and with God’s Blessing go to the rest He has appointed for you.Neither this practice nor that of the morning should ever be omitted; by your morning prayer you open your soul’s windows to the sunshine of Righteousness, and by your evening devotions you close them against the shades of hell.
5. Out-Loud / Group Examens
It can be tough to stick to the steps of the Examen. I find myself going off on tangents.
A great way to do it is to allow others to guide you through out loud - for example, a podcast narrator: America Magazine publishes one on Spotify.
I have also done Examens in small groups, where everyone shares out loud (for example, a family praying over their days together, or a board reflecting on a meeting together), and in larger groups, where a leader guides everyone through the steps mentally.