First Weekend Repetition
March 8, 2014
It is not always easy to go back to something we have left behind, but the exercise of returning to a meditation or a grace that we have received during prayer can be immensely helpful. It is also a practice highly regarded by St. Ignatius himself, who says that “it is not much knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul, but the intimate understanding and relish of the truth.” On Saturdays during Lent, we will give you an opportunity to do precisely this. We invite you to go back over the prayers from the week that is ending in order to see where there is perhaps deeper fruit to be gleaned from the meditations, reflections, passages, and questions of the week. We hope that this is an exercises that will become second nature to you by the end of Lent, and—just like the twice-daily Examen—a weekend repetition can be an excellent way of coming to see more clearly where God has been moving and where we have been standing in his way. Let us then return to one of the meditations below and see what the Lord has to offer us. Again.
- Tuesday: Beginning the Spiritual Exercises
- Lord, you come to us as we are and invite us to something beyond ourselves. You know our innermost being, and you call forth from us a deeper relationship with you over the forty days of Lent. Help us to be open to the workings of your grace in our lives, that all that we do might be for your greater praise and service.
- Wednesday: The Joyful Light of God
- Lord, you have made us for yourself, and you invite us to share in your own life of joy. Bring your light into our hearts that we might see you more clearly as the source of all good gifts and the way to the lasting happiness you intended for us when you made us in your own image in the Garden of Eden.
- Thursday: Created for God
- Lord, you give all things to human beings in order that these things might help us to know you and love you with our whole heart. When we misuse these gifts, we sow the seeds of our own destruction, and so we call upon you for help that you might teach us how to love you in the things you have created and not the things you have created apart from the One who has created them for us.
- Friday: The Examination of Conscience
- Lord, grant us the grace to see ourselves as you see us. Help us to put aside our worldly concerns and preoccupations in order to focus on the love that you have for us in every moment of every day. Help us to look honestly at our own hearts, that we might see you at work in them, making them more like the heart of your Son.