Month of May devoted to Our Lady

Mary our Mother Pray for us...

RE-LIVING OUR DAILY LIFE IN ITS FULLNESS

(EXAMINATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS)

We get in touch with God through our daily Experiences. If we look back to a particular day's experiences, we would realize that we have had ever so many experiences. Who can count them?

Our experiences give birth to our personal history. Experiences come in the form of feelings (such as joy, sorrow, anxiety, expectation, spiritual dryness, spiritual consolations...etc.), ideas, questionings, doubts, temptations, inspirations, insights, actions, interpersonal relationships, various other interior movements, participation in spiritual exercises (such as personal prayer, Eucharist, receiving the sacrament of reconciliation, adoration , thanksgiving...etc.)...

It is important to be aware of these experiences in a prayerfully reflective way... To re-live such experiences means that we love ourselves in a Christian way...

When we re-live our daily experiences we recognize that many of our experiences have a positive orientation towards faith, hope and love. They stimulate us to live a better and more constructive life.. Such experiences are surely life-giving, life-affirming and life-protecting in a holistic way.

But, we also realize that we knowingly or unknowingly go through several experiences that have a negative or life-denying orientation. They, in fact, have a tendency to destroy our life of faith, hope and love and leave us in total darkness.

The saying, "An unexamined life is not worth living", assumes lots of significance in this context. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, in his spiritual classic known as "The Spiritual Exercises" (#43) gives us some guidelines as to how to re-live our daily life-experiences in the context of Prayer.

What I propose here is an adapted form of that method. His guidelines regarding this are known as "Examination of Consciousness". Spiritual writers used to refer to this as "Examen / Examination of Conscience".

But it is not merely or only an examination of Conscience. It has much wider and deeper perspectives...

A fruitful re-living of our daily experiences (good and bad, positive and negative, neutral, life-affirming and life-denying) in the context of prayer may include the following steps:

1) Choose a convenient time to pray. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen! Spend a few moments of quietening oneself in silence...

2) Gently become aware of the way of breathing in and breathing out... no force... Just become aware of the way I breath in and breath out...

3) Become aware of the Divine presence in me and around me... (If God is with us, who can be against us?)

4) Focus my memory, understanding and will on the various experiences of the day...

5) First, let me re-live the positive experiences of the day right from the time I got up in the morning to the present moment... Re-live as many experiences as possible... As I re-live the experiences, allow the heart to whisper a prayer of thanksgiving to God who has been present in that experience/s empowering me and moulding me into a new person according His image and likeness...

6) Then, I take up the negative experiences, the so-called life-denying ones... No need to be anxious here... God is present in the negative experiences too, challenging me to accept them and transcend them. God's love will burn them and purify them... Becoming aware of the negative experiences means I accept my responsibility in letting them into my life without discerning them... Asking the Lord pardon and forgiveness for the negative experiences is a step in the right direction...

7) Surrender all experiences (life-affirming and life-denying ones) to the healing touch of the Lord with great faith, hope and love. Believe that this great act of spiritual surrender, of course with God's grace, would transform me into a new person. I can confidently face life again precisely because God is love, and He is present in the whole universe, in my brothers and sisters and in me.

End with reciting the prayer, "Our Father". @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Contact: vmalpan@gmail.com

Say it with flowers

We are grateful to God.

We have no list of complaints.

Peace in conflict situations

Does this flower of Cactus Plant in the heights of Kenyan Summer inspire you?

Does Jesus still carry the Cross in us and among us?

The way to peace

is

to hold on

to the Divine in the midst of

conflict, struggle, tension, pain

and what have you!

++++++++++++++++++++ VATICAN : In midst of conflict, church can bring peace, pope says at audience By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY (CNS) Working in areas of conflict and misery, the church has an important duty to be an instrument of peace and reconciliation, Pope Benedict XVI said. But countries also must recognize the right of their citizens to share in their nation's wealth if there is to be truly lasting peace, he added. The pope used his April 1 general audience in St. Peter's Square to review his March 17-23 visit to Cameroon and Angola. Even though his first papal trip to the African continent was limited to two nations, the pope said he "ideally wanted to embrace all of the people of Africa and bless them in the name of the Lord."Today, the church is accompanying a new Africa, which is working "to strengthen its political independence and national identity in a globalized world," he said. "Being in the midst of numerous and dramatic conflicts that unfortunately still torment different regions of the continent, the church knows that it must be a sign and instrument of unity and reconciliation by putting into practice the teachings of the Gospel so that all of Africa may together build a future of justice, solidarity and peace," he said. Angola is one country that has just emerged from a long civil war and is in the process of rebuilding and healing divisions, said the pope. "But how can this reconciliation and reconstruction be made authentic if they come at the expense of the poorest who have the same right all people do to share in the resources of their nation," he asked. For this reason his apostolic voyage to Africa was also meant to be a sign of encouragement for those promoting the common good in society, he said. "All is lost with war; everything can be revived with peace. But tremendous moral stamina is needed to rebuild a nation and here, once again, the role of the church ends up being important as it is called to educate by working thoroughly in renewing and forming consciences," he said. Only Christ can truly transform people and society, Pope Benedict said; "therefore, returning to God, converting oneself to Christ means moving forward toward the fullness of life."At the end of his general audience talk, the pope met with two Italian nuns who had been held captive for more than 100 days in Kenya. Sister Caterina Giraudo, 67, and Sister Maria Teresa Oliviero, 61, were seized by armed men Nov. 10 in northeastern Kenya near the border with Somalia and were freed unharmed Feb. 18. Pope Benedict had appealed twice for their release. Cardinal Severino Poletto of Turin, who accompanied the sisters when they greeted the pope, thanked the pope for his appeals. The nuns are from Cuneo, near Turin, and are members of the Contemplative Missionary Movement of Father Charles de Foucauld. They have both served in Kenya since the early 1970s. - www.catholicnews.com --------------------------------------

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