How the Examen Prayer Can Set Us Free
By Fr. Nathan O’Halloran, SJ
We all know the value of retreats—of withdrawing from the world for a short time to focus on our lives in Christ. Iñigo arrived in Manresa and retreated to a cave—for eleven months! It was a difficult but crucial time in which he learned a great deal about himself. He learned to distinguish between the inspirations of the “good spirit”—the Holy Spirit—and the temptations of the “evil spirit”—or Satan. He also learned to recognize how the evil spirit was trying to derail his determination to grow closer to God.
While living in Manresa, Iñigo underwent two profound temptations. The first attacked his future, and the second attacked his past.
Regarding his future, Iñigo began to hear a voice in his head asking him, “How can you stand a life like this for the seventy years you have yet to live,” a life of sacrifice and self-denial? He knew that this voice of fear and doubt was not from God; after all, he had gone to Manresa to begin a new life in the Lord. It’s a voice we ourselves have often recognized, inviting us to think the worst and to move out of the present moment into the unknown, worrisome future.
But through God’s grace, Iñigo not only recognized that this temptation was from an evil spirit, but he responded to it in a way that shows the growth he was experiencing. He answered the evil spirit, “Can you promise me even one hour of life?” He understood that the evil one could neither predict the future nor even promise him one hour. And so responding in this way, he “remained at peace.” He learned to remain in the present and not to dwell on the future, a land mine for so many of us.
Awakening from Sleep. The second temptation—relating to his past—was more sinister. It was so awful that Iñigo considered taking his own life to escape it. He was bombarded by thoughts of his past sins, and no amount of scrupulously confessing them would give him relief. One day when the scruples were especially intense, he determined to go to Confession yet again. But as Iñigo explained in his autobiography, he noticed that after making the decision to go to Confession, “as a sequel,” he was seized with disgust. “It was our Lord’s way of awakening him as it were from sleep,” he wrote. That unexpected feeling of disgust, which seemed out of context to the situation at hand, awoke him to the action of the evil spirit in his life.
Ignatius wrote that he “now had some experience of the different spirits from the lessons he had received from God.” From that moment on, he was free from scruples.
Notice how cunning the evil spirit is! Normally, we would think of disgust at the thought of going to Confession as a sign that we probably need to go! But in this case, it was the opposite: Iñigo saw that the disgust he felt flowed “as a sequel” to his decision and that the thought of Confession was actually coming from the evil spirit in order to further bind him in scruples. Iñigo’s freedom came from realizing for himself how the evil spirit was entrapping him. When he recognized what was happening, he was set free.
I want to highlight the importance of this point. What Ignatius learned for himself, we can learn through praying the Examen. Through this prayer, we learn to recognize for ourselves how the evil spirit attacks each of us particularly.
This is what happened to me. Several years ago, I found myself in a spiritual struggle of my own. I kept trying various solutions, and I could find nothing that worked. My wise new spiritual director asked me in our first meeting if I was praying the Examen. I said what I always used to say, which was “Yes,” and then, if pressed, “Sometimes,” and then truthfully, “No.” The truth was that I had abandoned the Examen prayer ever since my novitiate days, when a bell rang twice a day calling us to prayer.
So my new director told me to start praying the Examen again twice a day, at midday and night. I wondered, “Is that it?” I was going through a very difficult time! Like Naaman when Elisha instructed him to bathe in the Jordan River to cure his leprosy (2 Kings 5), I thought there ought to be something more dramatic! But no, I needed to start by correcting my “unexamened” life.
The Five Steps of the Examen. The is the method I began to use:
Step 1. “I give thanks for favors received.” The key for me here is not so much gratitude as identifying what exactly are those favors that I have personally received from the Lord. I cannot examine my sins until I have first uncovered and accepted the many ways in which the Lord has loved me this day. Early on, Step 1 often took me a while, but I knew that it is the foundation of the Examen.
Step 2. “I ask for the grace to know my sins.” The key here is grace. Uncovering sins in my day is primarily God’s action, not mine. Ignatius may have learned this from his battle with scruples. God knows what defects I need to see in my day better than I do. If I examine my defects without him and outside of the context of his love, I may start wallowing in self-pity or despair. But if his grace is in charge, I will see only those things he wants me to see today.
Step 3. “I examine my thoughts, words, and deeds from my rising to the present.” I have typically approached this third step in the mode of a similar exercise that Ignatius called the “Particular Examen”: to reflect on only one sinful habit or behavior. As Fr. Juan de Polanco, St. Ignatius’ secretary, put it, “In every person there is generally one or other sin or defect which is the source of many others.” I find that if I am just looking for sin “in general” in my day, I start drifting. I need to focus on a particular defect.
Steps 4 and 5. “I ask for pardon and resolve to amend with God’s grace.” Now I tell the Lord I am sorry. Through Step 1, he has already shown me that I am not alone and that he has been reaching out to me all day long. I resolve to root and ground myself in this love once more. I end with the prayer that Jesus taught us, which reminds me to await my daily bread from the Father who loves me and is already giving me everything I need today. He will always give me the grace I need to change.
The Value of the Particular Examen. As I mentioned earlier, for me the most effective way to pray through Step 3 is by using the Particular Examen. I have found that if I want to focus on a particular sin or defect, I must first be able to identify my “Lie.” Everyone’s Lie will be a little different because the evil spirit crafts our Lie from a careful scrutiny of our past, our wounds, our struggles, and our weaknesses. Our Lie is often rooted in a fear of abandonment or a deep insecurity or a fear of failure, and the evil spirit whispers this Lie into our ears from a young age.
For example, one person’s Lie might go like this: “One day everyone will leave me, and I’ll be left alone.” In praying the Particular Examen, then, she will look for moments in her day when she listened to this voice and grasped at human attention or affection rather than waiting patiently to receive it from the Father who loves her and will always give her the acceptance she needs.
Many people find that the more they are able to identify their Lie, the more the Truth of Christ’s love can set them free. I recommend that you take up the Examen once or twice a day, at midday and at night. There is tremendous value in pausing in the middle of the day to notice whether you are listening to the Lie or to the Truth.
Living a “Conscious” Life. For me, praying the Examen in this way was life changing. I slowly but surely identified my own fundamental Lie and realized how I was listening to it in small but significant ways. This was leading to behaviors that blinded me to God’s presence and were slowly beginning to destroy me. Just as slowly, God allowed me to see for myself the “unconscious” life I was living, and instead, I began to live a rigorously conscious spiritual life. What the Lord did for Iñigo, he also did for me, one of his poor sons. He awakened me to the importance of living an “examened” life.
Jesus wants to give you tools like the Examen prayer that will help open your eyes and set you free. He wants you to see for yourself how you are being deceived by your Lie. Unlike the young fish swimming in an environment they didn’t know was water, God wants you and me to live fully conscious and aware of his presence in our lives. This is the power of St. Ignatius’ Examen, and why it is still prayed by so many people today.
From The Word Among Us (July/August 2021 Issue)
Fr. Nathan O’Halloran, SJ. is assistant professor of religious studies and director of the Catholic Studies Program at Loyola University New Orleans as well as a theological advisor for The Word Among Us.
