Young Family
As we transition into the new year, let’s try an Examen prayer of our previous year. It’s really pretty simple: the Examen helps us reflect on a past period of time—usually we reflect prayerfully over the previous day or the previous few hours. But I believe we can apply these principles to the past calendar year as well.
Step One: Become aware of God’s presence.
One way of doing this is to ask the Holy Spirit to help you review the year with a holy perspective—with wisdom, grace, and faith. Ask for the grace to tear yourself away from your own patterns of thinking and seeing so that you can see your life more as God sees it. Of course you will see your failings—but God sees you as a beloved daughter or son who has a future and a hope. Of course you will see your accomplishments—but God sees your deeper self, the person behind all the activity, a person made in God’s image.
Step Two: Review the year with gratitude.
As you use this holy perspective to review the year, pay attention to the good gifts from the year ending. Name specifically those that come to memory now, and thank God for them.
Step Three: Pay attention to your emotions.
Think over the year again, and notice your emotional reactions. What memories speak most loudly to you? What events, conversations, relationships, or activities bring up the most emotion now, as you remember them? Ask God to help you linger with these emotions, whether they are pleasant or disturbing. Ask for help in understanding why you feel as you do. What can you learn about yourself or about your situation as you dwell in your emotional responses?
Step Four: Choose one feature of the year and pray from it.
While you are lingering with your memories and emotions, settle on one feature. Perhaps it is a single event, or maybe it’s a pattern of your own behavior that has come to mind as you reviewed the year. Whatever it is that has emerged, allow it to fuel your prayer. Don’t worry about the many other aspects of the year that you could think about right now; stay with the one thing that has come to you with the most power and pray from those thoughts and emotions.
Step Five: Look toward the new year.
Imagine what challenges and blessings might await you in the coming year. Think of important relationships, major (and minor) decisions to be made, skills to learn, habits to build, healing to seek, good work to accomplish. Make a simple list of highlights—matters that you expect to take prominence in your life in the new year. Bring them to God now, and ask for the graces you will need.
End your prayer, thanking God for love and life and holy possibilities.
The post Examen Prayer for the Year appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.
Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday
The days before Ash Wednesday are the time of carnival. In many cities of the world, there are parades with floats and gaudy gold, purple and green decorations. People wear crazy costumes and are very playful before the serious business of Lent begins.
People often wear brightly decorated masks as a way to show that Lent will be a time to put aside our ways of hiding who we are and what we really think. It may be difficult to stop pretending, so before Lent begins we relax and poke fun at ourselves with silly maks and practical jokes.
In the past, adults gave up eating meat for the whole of Lent. The word "carnival means "good-bye to meat" in Latin. So Carnival, especially the last day before Ash Wednesday, was an opportunity to finish off your supply of good meat and gravy and rich pastries.
SO, plan a Mardi Gras Party and invite another family to join you. It could become a great tradition. See the suggestions under DO for your mardi gras!
The days before Ash Wednesday are the time of carnival. In many cities of the world, there are parades with floats and gaudy gold, purple and green decorations. People wear crazy costumes and are very playful before the serious business of Lent begins.
People often wear brightly decorated masks as a way to show that Lent will be a time to put aside our ways of hiding who we are and what we really think. It may be difficult to stop pretending, so before Lent begins we relax and poke fun at ourselves with silly maks and practical jokes.
In the past, adults gave up eating meat for the whole of Lent. The word "carnival means "good-bye to meat" in Latin. So Carnival, especially the last day before Ash Wednesday, was an opportunity to finish off your supply of good meat and gravy and rich pastries.
SO, plan a Mardi Gras Party and invite another family to join you. It could become a great tradition. See the suggestions under DO for your mardi gras!
Plan a Mardi Gras Party
Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday is on Feb. 9th this year. Here are a few ideas for your party:
Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday is on Feb. 9th this year. Here are a few ideas for your party:
- Have supplies for making masks. These can be bought at craft stores or cut out from a template. Provide costume jewelry gems stones, feathers, markers, etc. Invite guest to make a mask as they arrive.
- Make a supply of ALLELUIA banners on 11X17 paper. Invite everyone or each household to decorate a banner by coloring in the letters, adding flowers, butterflies, grass, animals, birds, etc. All of these are signs of LIFE. At the end of your party provide a piece of yarn or ribbon, roll up the alleluia's and tie them shut. Remind people that they will not use this word again until Easter, and then they can unroll theirs and hang it up at home.
- Your menu can consist of foods that you are considering giving up for Lent. A tour house we had no pizza or ice cream during Lent so we had LOTS of pizza and ice cream at our mardi gras.
- Provide slips of paper, one per person, and invite everyone to think of some personality trait that you would like to work on to improve yourself during Lent. Lent is about a "change of heart". Gather these together and at the end of the night throw them in your fireplace or step outside and burn them. Just like the ashes we will wear tomorrow, these can remind us of our human nature.
- After the slips are burned and the banners rolled up we depart ion silence to begin the work of Lent, the work to change out hearts.
