Apostleship
of Prayer
History of the Apostleship
of Prayer
John L. Vessels, SJ
Part Three
EVENING EXAMEN
This brought up the second prayer that was affected by this morning offering,
in the sense that, when they came to the end of the day and made their
evening review of the day, their prayer was enriched basically by shifting
the point of attention from themselves as the centre of the day to God
as the centre of the day.
So the question they would ask themselves in the evening was not "What
did I do wrong today?" but rather "What has God done with the gift that
I have given him at the beginning of the day?" God gave the day to me and
I have given it back; now what has he done with the gift that he gave me,
which he is totally in control of, totally in possession of? He is the
owner of my day. I have given it to god. I have acknowledge is ownership
of this day. I have lived my day supposedly as an instrument of his love,
his peace and truth and justice. Now let me look back and see what has
he done with me. I know its good because God only does good things. I know
it is holy, I know he has made this a holy day as God is holy. Where do
I see holiness in this day? What was important to God? What was the most
important thing in my life today that I can see was important for God?
Eventually they discovered that just as the Morning Offering, their
own personal human prayer, was elevated to the sacramental and the divine
level by the Eucharist, so too the evening examen , which was their way
of becoming constantly more alert to what God was doing. They could just
discern the pattern of God's activity; they could become much more fully
aware of what God was doing; they could see; they could perceive the threads
of the Spirit working, the pattern of the Spirit's relationship to each
other, their values, their attitudes. They could see God at work in all
of this.
To be continued
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