Today’s readings: Click on today’s date at http://www.usccb.org/bible/
Finding God
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Palm Sunday, the Sixth Sunday of Lent
Mark 11:8-10
Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. Those preceding Jesus as well as those following kept crying out: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come! Hosanna in the highest!”
Ignatius of Loyola was a loyal servant of the Spanish crown. His leg was crushed by a cannonball in battle and he spent months in recovery at his sister’s home. Reading to while away the time, Ignatius discovered the consolation that grew and grew when he paid attention to his spiritual side. Eventually (in 1540) he founded the Society of Jesus, now called the Jesuits. The Jesuits were soldiers of the cross and defenders of the pope.
Ignatius also developed and wrote the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. These exercises include a prayer called the Examen, intended to be prayed twice daily. Ignatius occasionally excused his monks from Mass, but never from practicing the Examen. It was most important. It was like the heartbeat of God in each person praying – beating once, twice a day. Every day. To stop it was to invite spiritual death.
The Examen has five movements: Rejoice, Receive, Review, Repent and Renew. Come to God in gratitude and thanksgiving, invite and receive his presence, rummage through the last few hours looking for moments with God and moments without God, ask for and receive forgiveness, ask for God’s strength in the next few hours.
The Examen lets me use the present moment to examine the past and prepare for the future.
Would I have noticed Jesus coming into Jerusalem? Would I have cried out “Hosanna in the highest!” honoring the man on the donkey? How would I have recognized God in that moment of spiritual sun, or would I have noticed at all? Maybe I would have just shaded my eyes and sought the darkness again.
The Examen asks me to review my day, and look closely at how I saw God, and how I didn’t. In that very process I’m reminded in body and mind of God’s presence while I review. If I make my Examen today, I am much less likely to join the screaming condemning crowd just a few days hence, lustily crowing, “Crucify Him!”
Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1374
