IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK TWO – SESSION 15
THE EXAMEN AND THE GENERAL CONFESSION
Annemarie: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and greetings of the holiday in the US. What one is it? Tell me.
Student: Memorial day.
Annemarie: Memorial Day. Happy holiday. Blessed holiday. We’re going to be looking this evening at the examen and at confession—general confession in the exercises. Before we do that, I’m going to invite Trevor to lead us in a time of prayer this evening. Thanks, Trevor.
Trevor: Good to see all your faces again. Missed being with you last week, and it’s good to be with you this week. Let me explain now before you switch off your videos what I’m going to do so that you can really be relaxed while we do [00:01:00] it. I’m going to lead you through an examen and I’m very aware that it’s in the morning for some of you and for some of us perhaps later in the day and so the kind of period for our examen would be, maybe the last few days, the last three or four days—a kind of wide angle examen on these days.
What I’m going to do is to build the examen around five words—five simple verbs, and these verbs will lead you, I hope into an actual experience.
A very real experience for you now with God as you do the examen So my invitation is to switch off the videos and as you do that, [00:02:00] to just in your own way, relax where you are and take a few moments to become aware of God’s loving gaze or maybe God’s loving touch, or maybe God’s loving listening as you become quiet.
So, take your time, become comfortable where you are, and you will do that in a way that by now you know what is best for you.
So, before we come to the verbs, just deepen your awareness of that love in which you are held—that [00:03:00] great love, that knows you by name, calls you by name, and is present with you in the here and now.
The first verb that I want to offer to you is the verb notice. Perhaps you can take some time with God to notice some of the gifts that God’s love has made possible for you these past few days.[00:04:00]
Notice some of those gifts through which God’s love and God’s goodness has actually touched your life, and as you notice, I invite you to savor those gifts, to relish them, and in the deepest place of your heart to express your gratitude and to say thank you.[00:05:00]
The second verb that I want to give to you is the verb ask. Perhaps quietly you can ask God now for the strength and for the insight to make this examen a real work of grace that is fruitful far beyond our human capacity.[00:06:00] Ask God for an insight and a strength that will make what we’re doing now a real work of grace that is fruitful far beyond our human efforts and human capacities. And so, in your own words to ask for that.
The third verb that I offer to you is the verb reflect. [00:07:00] Maybe you can just reflect on some of the strong stirrings of the heart, the dominant thoughts that you have had over these past few days, to reflect on some of those heart stirrings, and some of those dominant thoughts that have been very present with you.
You want to reflect on those that have led you in a Godward direction, those [00:08:00] perhaps that have led you away from God, those that have deepened your consciousness of God, those that have lessened your consciousness of God. You may also just want to reflect on your choices in response to those hard stirrings. and to those dominant thoughts. How have you responded to them?[00:09:00] [00:10:00]
The fourth verb is open. Take a few moments now to open your own heart to the healing forgiveness of God that flows into our heart covering the mistakes, the failures of these past few days. Often our deepest failures are failures in loving, conscious opening of [00:11:00] your heart and your mind to the healing forgiveness that flows towards us from God’s heart.
The last verb that I offer you is the verb look; maybe to look now towards the next 24 hours, the next day or [00:12:00] two. What are you needing most from God to live these coming hours well and deeply and richly? Is there one creative action that you can intentionally plan that with God you can embark on in the next few hours, the next day or so—specific creative [00:13:00] action that is in tune with God’s loving desire for your life, and for the life of others. So, as you look to the next 24 hours or so, what do you need most? And is there an action of creative love that you can plan and live.[00:14:00]
Now we come back to that deep awareness of God’s love for us, with which we started the examen.[00:15:00] And with that awareness, we re-enter this moment with each other and with this awareness of God’s love, we listen to the input that Annemarie will be sharing with us. Amen.
Annemarie: Amen. Thank you, Trevor. You’ll remember that we’re in a bit of a journey at the moment around the first week of the exercises. We started two weeks back with Trevor sharing with us a sense of the big picture of the first week at that ongoing process of repentance, that journey. And then last week, we were introduced to a lot of terms and quite a bit of the structure that Ignatius has in the text of the exercises, looking at those five key meditations.[00:16:00] and there was a lot of content that we grappled with around that process.
Today we’re going to look at the particular examen, the general examen, and the general confession. Next week, Brenda will do the kind of application, how do we do this in our own context with our retreatant—a bit of modern-day contemporary understanding of how to approach the first week. Then we will come in with Adri-Marie looking at the rules for the discernment of spirits for the first week. So, we’re building it block by block.
So just a reminder that we’re putting another piece in place today. Last week there was a lot of content to remember. This week it’s a bit simpler. I think we’ve got a bit of a less content heavy session tonight, so maybe just to relax and just be able to soak in some of this which will be already a bit familiar to you—certainly, some of the examen stuff [00:17:00] I’m sure you will already be quite familiar with.
So, I hope that you do have your text of the exercises with you because we are going to dip in so have it to hand and we’re going to start with something that you may not be so familiar with, which is called the Daily Particular Examine. The Particular Examine, okay? And you will find that in paragraph 24 of the Spiritual Exercises. For those of you using Fleming, it’s on page 28 and I want to read to you a little bit of the original text, the literal version, because you get a sense of what Ignatius’s original was and Fleming adapts that quite liberally in his version of the contemporary reading. I think it is something that does need to be adapted, but it’s interesting to see what Ignatius was doing originally. So, I’m going to [00:18:00] just start there. If you look at the literal version of the particular and daily examen, it says that it contains in it three times and two examens. So, three times of the day in which it’s done, and two of those times are mini examens. It says,
The first time is in the morning, immediately on rising, when one ought to propose to guard him or herself with diligence against that particular sin or defect which he or she wants to correct and amend.
So, it’s about choosing, honing in on one particular area of struggle, or sinfulness; something that we grapple with on a habitual basis and trying to really have a bit of a zoom lens in on that particular thing in our particular examen.
The second time is after dinner. By dinner we mean lunch, what we would call a midday meal when one is to ask of God our Lord, what [00:19:00] one wants, namely grace to remember how many times he or she has fallen into that particular sin or defect, and to amend him or herself in the future. Then to make the first examine asking an account of their soul of the particular thing which they want to correct and a amend.
Let him go over hour by hour or period by period, beginning at the hour he rose and continuing up to the instant of the present examen, and let him make in the first line of the G , , , as many dots as were the times that he has fallen into that particular sin or defect.
So, it’s almost like he draws a little column, and it’s quite interesting. The first line of these series of lines is quite thick because he imagines that they’re going to fall into that fault or defect a lot of times the first time.
And later in the day, maybe fewer times. So, the line gets smaller underneath and the line underneath that gets smaller, hoping that you’re going to not need so much [00:20:00] space to make a little note of where you got tripped up into that particular thing.
Then let him resolve anew to amend himself up to the second examen which he will make. And then after supper, the second examen will be made in the same way, hour by hour, commencing at the first examen and continuing to the present second one. Let him make in the second line as many dots as were the times he has fallen into that particular sin or defect.
So, Ignatius, I think, was a one on the Enneagram. There’s a bit of a, kind of a perfectionist streak in all of that. He’s trying to really focus in on trying to get rid of anything that might get in the way of that freedom, that particular gift of freedom—almost as though you’re taking one thing at a time that you’re struggling with and focusing in on that thing.
That was Ignatius’s kind of perspective on this particular examen, [00:21:00] and then he has some little helps or additions around this. So, if you look to the next part of the paragraph, you can see that he’s got a couple of additions. The one is that it can be helpful to have a symbolic action of putting one’s hand to one’s chest every time one falls into that particular sin; just kind of noticing, “Oh, I’ve done it again. I’m sorry, Lord.” moment.
And then three other additions, which are kind of about noticing; Is there an improvement? Did I fall into this pattern less times in the last bit than I did the bit before? Am I progressively becoming freer of this particular thing?
Now, I think there are some dangers with this approach. I think that, for some people it could become quite mechanical; quite like a kind of self-perfection exercise that doesn’t really connect with their relationship with God. It might start to feel something that’s a bit [00:22:00] about my own effort and not about God’s grace. Now, Ignatius was so strong on God’s grace that I think this exercise in the context of how strongly he was aware of everything being God’s initiative wouldn’t have been a danger for him, but it might be a danger for some of our retreatants or for us.
One of the things that I think is really interesting and helpful is a contemporary adaptation of this particular examine, and it comes in this little book called The Personal Vocation by a guy called Herbert Alphonso. If you haven’t read this book, I suggest—it is one of the “must have” books. It’s brilliant. It’s a tiny little book and it is an absolute gem.
It really talks, first of all, if you don’t know the book, about each person having a personal call, a [00:23:00] personal vocation in life, and that being the particular and unrepeatable, distinctive way that I am made and called by God. I am called to give and receive love; my particular way of being that God made me for in the world—my own special name.
Part of the process of the exercises is about becoming really clear about what our personal vocation is. But people generally have some sense of who am I? Where am I called to be in the world? And as we become clearer about that, the particular examen can become a way of checking in several times a day around, am I living my own particular personal vocation?
So, I don’t think about everything that’s going on in my life. That’s a more, more general examen, but I just think about. Am I being faithful to that [00:24:00] particular call of God to me, that particular name that God has given me? And one of the other ways of doing this that’s related to this particular examen that Alphonso suggests, is that at several anchor points in the day, deliberately putting on with an intentionality the attitude of my own personal vocation.
For example, if my personal vocation would be summed up in the word compassionate presence, I might decide on three times in the day when I really remind myself of that and I ask myself, am I living my compassionate presence in this moment? So maybe as I brush my teeth in the morning, could be one time. Maybe as I step out of the car to go into the office. Maybe as I park my car in the driveway before I go inside in the evening. So, it’s a very short thing. It’s a moment of checking in on one particular [00:25:00] thing. Am I in tune in this moment with my own particular personal vocation and perhaps intentionally trying to put on that attitude again, that way of being reconnecting with it so that I’m living into it more and more faithfully and more deeply.
And Alphonso talks about the fact that if we do it this way, there’s something so enlivening about this way of doing the particular examen. It can become the pulse of the spiritual life. I’m like checking my pulse. Am I still living out this way of being in the world? Am I still tuned in to that?
Saint Ignatius is said to have practiced his own particular examen on the sin of pride or vainglory for the last 25 years of his life. That was the one that he struggled with most, and he honed in on that. You just check in with that every [00:26:00] day.
What’s quite interesting about that is that his personal vocation might have been something about doing everything for the greater glory of God. He started out wanting glory for himself. If you think back to the autobiography, how much he was really wanting to be famous and to have that sense of being seen, to have that glory and that focus on himself. And perhaps the particular examen was the way that he was able to shift, over time to that real sense of everything for the greater glory of God, not for my greater glory, but for his greater glory, which was something that he really lived out of so deeply.
That’s perhaps a take on the particular examine that might be helpful in terms of the retreatant and your own life, perhaps do not to say, this is irrelevant, or it doesn’t necessarily help, but to [00:27:00] see, is there a way that there is something specific that I want to be checking in on? And could that be something to do with my own distinctive personal vocation?
Okay, so that’s the particular examen, and that’s the very first thing in the first week of the exercises after the
Principle and Foundation, which, remember, technically comes under the heading of the first week. So, it’s the very, very next thing, the particular examen.
You might also find it helpful to read Fleming’s contemporary translation around the particular examen. So, what he highlights here is that sometimes in the retreat context, the particular examine can be important in relation to something that the retreatant is struggling with in the retreat itself, something that they are battling to be faithful to or consistent with, you know, trying to just hone in on, am I remembering to [00:28:00] apply the additions? Am I remembering to find myself that quiet space?
There might be something that the retreatant is grappling with and not finding easy to remember and it might be helpful to say to them, just for the next week it might be really good to just every day check in on that particular point. Have I remembered to ask for the grace every time I enter into prayer? So, it’s that checking back in on things. Okay, so that’s that.
So, then we get to the general examen of conscience, which is paragraphs 32 to 43 in your text. Moving away from the particular examen, Ignatius introduces the general examen, or the daily examen. I’m going to talk about what he says first, and then how it’s shifted over time, and how we look at it now.
He starts giving a bit of background, a bit of [00:29:00] context, talking about three areas that we might be just conscious of as we are doing the examen of conscience—the general examen. He talks about the first one being thoughts, the second one being words, and the third one being deeds. So, Ignatius is holding all of these different things.
Thoughts are often connected with the promptings of the good and the bad spirit; the thoughts that come into our minds. So, he’s alerting us to the importance of thoughts and that we can resist bad thoughts. We can allow them in, and he says, entertain them a bit sometimes, and sometimes we consent to sinful thoughts, and we invite them in to be part of our reality.
He does a whole thing about words, and he talks about oaths and swearing and speaking idle words and spreading gossip and defaming others, [00:30:00] and degrees of seriousness of these various things. Then he talks about deeds. To Ignatius, action is always very important. Have I acted against the commandments, the precepts of the church, the recommendations of my superiors? So, he gives this as a bit of a backdrop. He’s giving a little bit of a kind of scaffolding there. You can go and have a look at that.
That’s just building up to the method that he then proposes. So, his method has five basic points, okay? You will find those five points if you just move on and go to paragraph 43. I wouldn’t get too hung up on the thoughts, words, and deeds part. That’s Ignatius in his context, in his time, giving a little bit of a kind of a backdrop of some of the theological ideas [00:31:00] around sin that were there in that time particularly. But that can be helpful to just read through.
We get to his method, and we get to the first point of his method. The first point is to give thanks to God our Lord. for the benefits I have received. And what happens often is that people jump over that part too quickly and move into the rest, but this part is very, very, very important for Ignatius.
For Ignatius, gratitude is very significant—gratitude to God for the blessings in my life, that that is our starting point. It’s only in the light of gratitude for God’s creative and sustaining love that we can really fruitfully engage the rest of the exercises. It connects with that whole idea of finding God in all things, that we really want to spend time on thanksgiving, on gratitude, on the awareness of God present in our day. [00:32:00] So not to see that as a kind of an intro point and jump over it.
The second point is to ask for grace and light to know my sins and reject them. So, we can’t know our sins on our own. God is the one who reveals sin to me, so I ask. I ask for grace, and I ask for light. You picked up that verb that Trevor was using, that second verb that he used in the examen that he led us through.
The third point is to ask an account of my soul from the hour of rising to the present examen, hour by hour from one period to another: first with regard to thoughts, then words, then deeds. That’s where he picks up on the thoughts, words, and deeds that he put beforehand to give us some ideas about. We should be asking where we have responded or failed to respond to God rather than to [00:33:00] look simply for right or wrong actions, and this brings the discernment of spirits into daily life.
The fourth point is to ask God for pardon for my sins, so that thing of sorrow and asking God’s forgiveness. The fifth point is to resolve to amend with his grace ending with the ”Our Father.”
So, we look backwards so that we can then move forward in a way that is responding more to God’s desires for me. So that was his original kind of version of the general examen as it’s called.
Now, our understanding of the examen has grown and it has developed. The people who have really immersed themselves in the writing of Ignatius, in the tradition of Ignatius, who have looked at his theology, his way of understanding God in some depth, have helped [00:34:00] us to kind of grow that gift of the examen into something that I think is much fuller and much richer and which really honors the discernment of spirits that’s so key to Ignatius.
There’s a chap called George Aschenbrenner, a Jesuit, who wrote a very important article on the examen in 1973. He really changed the whole way that we do and that we approach the examen. He distinguished what he was talking about by calling it the examen of consciousness.
So, Ignatius talks about the general examen, and he takes us a step further and he introduces us to the examen of consciousness, and he distinguishes it from the examen of conscience. So, I don’t know about where [00:35:00] in the different church contexts your experience might lie with this, but as a Catholic girl growing up in a Catholic school, they were very big on you have to do an examination of conscience every day. You have to think about where are my sins, and look for your sins, so that the next time you go to confession, you’ve got a nice list, and you keep track. It was very much something that was part of the kind of Catholic ethos.
But here, going into Ignatius’ examen—the general examen, Aschenbrenner says, no, this is not really supposed to be something that’s so close to an examination of conscience. It’s got a whole lot of other elements that we need to develop and understand in more depth, and he talks then about the examen of consciousness.
The examen of consciousness is concerned not about [00:36:00] morality, about sins, about what I have done and what I haven’t done. Yes, that comes into it, but it’s not the main focus. It’s about the way that God is affecting me and the way that God is moving me deep in my own affective awareness and consciousness. How am I experiencing the drawing of God in my life?
It’s something that is very different from a kind of sin looking at morality. It is something that is looking at God’s action, God’s invitation. How am I responding to that? How is God drawing me in and through the events of my daily life—the experiences of my daily life?
In a sense, it is an experience of faith. an experience of growing sensitivity to the unique and special [00:37:00] ways that God’s Spirit approaches us and calls us. The examen really assumes a very powerful value when it becomes a daily experience of renewing our own unique spiritual identity, of coming to a greater awareness of who I am and who God is calling me to be.
I’s a prayer that looks to a God who is present to me, who is interested in my daily life, who’s interested in the finer details of my life, who I meet, what I talk about, what gives me joy, what makes me laugh, what makes me cry, all the different things that move my heart. It helps us to develop a reflective way of being in the world that’s constantly attuned to God’s presence and responsive to God’s leading.
We [00:38:00] can’t disconnect it from the rest of our prayer. The examen of consciousness—its effectiveness and its depth is dependent on the relationship between our continuing contemplative prayer and having this time of examen. These both have to come together.
So, if we do our meditations and our gospel contemplation without doing the examen, it can become compartmentalized. We can fail to allow it to seep into our life. One has to feed the other, and if we don’t allow the stuff from the examen to feed back into our prayer, then our prayer is not rooted in our everyday life and our everyday experience.
Aschenbrenner says something that I think is really helpful and powerful. He says that the examen gives our daily contemplative experience of God real bite into all our daily [00:39:00] living. So, it really hones it into what it is that we are experiencing.
Aschenbrenner says when he talks about the examen of consciousness, that there are two what he calls, spontaneities or movements that happen within us. One that is orientated towards God and leads us towards God and another that leads us away. That we have these spontaneous feelings and movements going on within us all the time and we want to be able to intentionally choose those ones that are being prompted by the good spirit, but we have to learn to feel what is of the good spirit and what’s not of the good spirit. We’ve gotta get a kind of a sense of that, and the examen is a daily school of discernment, of developing a discerning heart and a discerning vision.[00:40:00]
So, to remember again that the prime concern in the examen of consciousness is not the morality of our actions, but how God is moving us, how God is calling us, and it’s a time of prayer. I think very often we can fall into the trap of the examen becoming a time of introspection, a kind of solitary; let me look at my day and how it went and what happened and what to do better tomorrow.
It’s not a time of solitary introspection. It’s a time with God, developing a discerning vision for my life, trying to tune in every day to where is it that God is drawing me, nudging me, inviting me, and course correcting, and trying to just really more and more be faithful to that path.
Aschenbrenner [00:41:00] takes that general examen of Ignatius and he develops it in this examen of consciousness. He talks about five important elements of the examen of consciousness. He says there’s no particular time allocation that has to go to each one. So, you might find on a particular day that you spend 15 minutes doing your examen of consciousness and 12 of those minutes are given to step one, because that’s where you are. That’s where you need to be.
He gives these five steps. In his version of the examen of consciousness, step one is a prayer for enlightenment. He says you could do the thanksgiving first. Those two could be swapped around, but he suggests praying first for light—to remember and look at my day and ask the spirit to give me insight into the mystery of my thoughts.[00:42:00]
Then step two is reflective thanksgiving, letting our hearts rest in genuine gratitude to the Father for the Father’s gifts. Sometimes we don’t see or fully appreciate God’s gifts in the moment and it’s only in this exercise of reflective prayer that we start to see the events in a different perspective, so we come to that moment of thanksgiving.
Step three is a practical looking back, a remembering of the substance of our day. What happened? So, the question is, what has been happening to and in me since my last examen? And how has the Lord been working in me? What has the Lord been asking of me? Allowing ourselves to notice the interior feelings and moods and urges because God works with us in the depth of our affectivity.[00:43:00]
Then we move on to contrition and sorrow. Here we’re aware of God’s love and inadequacy of our response to that love. So, you remember we talked last time, and Trevor mentioned it the time before, about that cry of wonder, that we hold the sorrow that we feel for our sin alongside that amazement that God continues to love me and sustain me in life, and that all of creation does that. So that sorrow and that contrition come in that context.
Step five is this hopeful resolution for the future, and hopeful, I think, is an important word. That we come to the end of what we’ve realized, what we’ve noticed, the insight the Spirit has given us, and in the light of that discernment of our immediate past, how do we look to the future? And there should be in us this great desire to face [00:44:00] the future with renewed vision and sensitivity.
I think St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians expresses very well the spirit of that conclusion. I leave the past behind and with hands outstretched to whatever lies ahead, I go straight for the goal. There’s the sense of this forward movement, this forward thrust that is important for us in the examen of consciousness.
Now, just a reminder that this is an exercise that so focuses and renews our specific faith identity that Ignatius was so strong on it, he said we should be even more reluctant to omit our examen than our formal contemplative prayer every day. It’s such a key to both finding God in all things and at all times. which is so much the Ignatian vision, but it’s also the key to living a discerning life, to beginning [00:45:00] to understand how the good spirit and the bad spirit works in me, in the experience of my daily life. When we go through the first and the second week, we come to understand it more when we look at things like the two standards meditation, when we look at other key meditations, when we look at the rules for the discernment of spirits that this is where it becomes really practical, really down to earth, because we’re actually doing the examen with the stuff of our own life, and so that’s where we learn how to discern.
There are one or two more things to just remember. The examen is a resource for the whole of life. So, it’s hopefully going to be continuing long beyond the exercises. But it’s that thing that we introduce people to, and we want to introduce people to it early on in the process. Ignatius suggests just at the very beginning of the first week. These days we [00:46:00] have those disposition days, those introductory days, but I would suggest we introduce that examen of consciousness far back, right towards the beginning when we start meeting our retreatants so that it is something that they really get into the pattern on. It’s important for us to ask about the examen, because it helps to notice what are the movements that are going on both in the prayer and in everyday life.
Particularly when I give the 19th annotation retreat, I’m interested to hear what happened in the time of prayer, but I also want to know the movements of consolation and desolation that happened outside of the prayer itself, because that’s also important, particularly when we’re building up to maybe a big decision or a big election. So, we want to be asking about how is the examen going? Did anything significant emerge from your examen in the past week? Don’t forget to ask about the [00:47:00] examen.
So, I’m wondering how you feel about the examen of consciousness. It seems to me that most people, myself included, find it pretty difficult to sustain a very regular ongoing practice of the examen. When we came on the call Trevor teasingly asked me if I was going back to renew my commitment to the examen having prepared this presentation, and I think there is something about that because we fall off the wagon as it were, and we do it for a while and it’s great and then we let go of it.
I think that part of the reason why we sometimes let go of it is that we can become bored with it, and the reason we become bored with it is we’re not really doing it in the way that it’s meant to be done. It falls into that pattern of, I’m thinking about what happened in my day, and that’s not particularly exciting. But, if I am looking with God at my day and seeing, [00:48:00] Wow, what’s been happening in terms of discernment? What’s happening in terms of my own deepest desires? Then it becomes something exciting, interesting, because we can be surprised and consoled and gifted with new insights and awarenesses that we did not have when we sat down to do the examen. Our life experience, a new layer of it is revealed, and often that is an incredibly exciting, energizing, life giving thing if we’re really doing it well.
I’m going to move on because we’re running short on time. There are some wonderful resources. There’s a book by Jim Manney called A Simple Life Changing Prayer. I’ll write all these down for you, so don’t worry. Timothy Gallagher’s book on the examen is also excellent. It’s called The Examen Prayer. It’s a really good one. And then Mark Thibodeaux wrote a book called Reimagining the Ignatian [00:49:00] Examen. So, I suggest, go and read up. There’s also a wonderful APP based on that book called Reimagining the Examen that you can get.
So, maybe if you’ve kind of lapsed in your doing of the examen, this is an invitation to come back to really experience it so that before you meet your retreatant, you are really in the flow of your own examen.
As part of the exercises towards the end of the first week, Ignatius encourages the person to make a confession of the sins of their life to a confessor. Now obviously Ignatius is embedded in a Roman Catholic context himself, where sacramental confession was very important, and he had that very powerful experience himself of making a confession of his whole life when he was in Montserrat you’ll remember. It took apparently three days. [00:50:00] If the autobiography is to be believed on that.
Before we just unpack this a little bit more, I just wanted to share one or two experiences, and just maybe, Trevor, if I could invite you, maybe if you would be willing to share your experience of confession in the context of the exercises.
Trevor: Well, just to say that when I did the exercises, I had never formally made a confession before. I grew up in the Methodist tradition. That was my background. And when we came to the end of the first week, Father Andrew asked whether I was up for a general confession, and he gave me a choice I remember as to whether I wanted to do it with him or whether I wanted to go to someone else and I was very happy to do it with Father Andrew [00:51:00] himself.
We made a time, and I remember he gave me a few guidelines. There were two or three things he emphasized. He said, when you bring whatever you want to confess to confession, ask God to bring to mind what you need to bring. I remember that emphasis quite clearly. And also, by the time I did the general confession, I had identified my core kind of disordered tendencies. The two words I had for them were pride and on the other hand deception. And so, he invited me to just see how pride or arrogance or deception—not so much in telling lies, but much more in terms of kind of not showing up as Trevor—you know, [00:52:00] putting on a mask, pretending to be someone else. He asked me just to become aware with God’s help of how that had happened in my own history. So, he was taking me beyond sin as action only, but into the expression of my disordered attachments.
I also remember just before doing it that I read Richard Foster’s chapter on confession, because I’d never done this kind of thing. One of the things Richard suggests in Celebration of Discipline is to divide your life up into seven-year periods. And so, I took a few days with each period of my life, asked God to bring to mind what I needed to confess and where had my disordered attachments—how had they expressed themselves—and to be quite specific around that.
I remember going with all my [00:53:00] yellow pages. I wrote them out on yellow pages. I think I had about four or five yellow pages that I took with me to go see Father Andrew. We went into a chapel. We knelt together. There was a crucifix before me, and he invited me to share with the crucified and risen Lord all that was on my paper, and I simply read through what was on the paper. At the end of that, I remember Father Andrew laying his hands on me, and I remember him expressing very powerfully the gift of God’s forgiving love, inviting me to receive that more deeply into my life. It was a very, very powerful experience.
Then he said, I’ve got some penance for you, and I was quite eager to see what he was gonna say. He said, Trevor, I [00:54:00] want you to read Psalm 103 ten times and I want you to do that before the day is out. That was my penance, and that psalm also became part of an expression of God’s forgiving love in my own life. So that was the first moment of general confession in my own pilgrimage of faith.
Annemarie: Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Trevor. I think in my own experience of the first time that I made the exercises, I was invited by the Jesuit who took me through them. It was a retreat in daily life to make a confession of my life, and I was pretty nervous about it. But the feeling that was really, really powerful at the end of that was an experience of absolute joy and freedom. It was the most [00:55:00] incredible feeling.
I remember coming out and one of the people who was working in the chaplaincy saying to me, “You look so happy. What’s happened?” And I said, “I just made a confession of my whole life.” And they said, “Gosh.” They couldn’t believe that was the thing that was making me just so radiantly happy but just the sense of joy in being able to let go and be assured of God’s grace and God’s forgiveness in a very tangible way and that was really powerful.
In the second time I made the retreat, my director didn’t suggest it at all, and I didn’t feel the lack of it either. I didn’t feel like it was something that I needed at that particular moment or that would have been particularly helpful for me. It felt as though the grace came in a different way in that moment. So, I think that sometimes it’s really helpful and really important for people. Sometimes, it’s something that you may or may not want to suggest, and sometimes you suggest it and people may or may not take [00:56:00] it up.
I think there’s something about, I guess the communal aspect, that there’s a sense of the assurance of grace that comes as we journey together as sinful, fallible people in community. So, although I can confess my sins to God, and I’m doing that all the way through the exercises, there’s something about Richard Foster’s thing of this is a corporate discipline. It’s something that is part of the whole, part of the community. I found this lovely quote from Bonhoeffer. He writes that
a person who confesses their sins in the presence of a brother or sister knows that he is no longer alone with himself. He experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. As long as I am by myself in the confession of my sins, everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother or sister, the sin is brought into the light.
So, I think that’s part of why it can be a really helpful kind [00:57:00] of space.
Ignatius talks about this in paragraph 44. I know we’re running a little bit over time, but I’ll just keep an eye on it. You’ll see it there. He talks about there being no obligation. So, people don’t have to. There’s no must about this. There’s no must about making a general confession. And by general confession, we mean a confession, not just since the last time I might’ve gone to confession, but a confession that might spend a longer period, might even spend my whole life.
He’s saying that the end of the first week is such a graced time to make a confession if you’re going to do that in your life because you’re so prepared. You’re so ready. Your heart is so open because you’ve been praying to receive a deeper awareness of God’s grace, God’s mercy, and my own falling short.
He says,
It is good to make such a confession somewhere towards the end of the first week so that [00:58:00] I approach the sacrament not in haste or in turmoil over the recognition of my sins, but rather in accepting myself as one in need of radical healing, who acknowledges that God alone is my savior.
The invitation is to come into a prayerful, formal space with a chosen person to speak out the patterns of sin that might have emerged as I’ve been praying the material of the first week. Some of those sins might have been previously confessed, but in the light of that deep prayer, the person might have a greater appreciation of the impact of their sin, of the roots of the sin, and especially the desire to experience God’s mercy in a very tangible way and confession can offer that. If the person hearing the confession can listen deeply with acceptance and with love and receive what the person brings and offer some words that assure the person of God’s mercy and God’s love.[00:59:00]
For those who are Catholic or Anglican or part of a sacramental tradition, confession is often a valued part of a person’s tradition, something that they’re very familiar with but it may not always be the case. So, if you have a Catholic that you’re accompanying through the exercises, don’t assume that they’re necessarily comfortable with confession or that they’re going to want to do this. It’s not necessarily the case. Some Catholics have had difficult experiences and might not want to do it at all.
At the end of the first week, you may want to gently say, this is a moment when they might find it helpful to celebrate God’s merciful love in the sacrament. If they’re from a sacramental tradition, you might suggest that they find someone that they really trust, a confessor that they know is good or you might offer to help them find someone and someone who’s a giver of the exercises and who knows the exercise as well; who’s also able to hear their confession is often ideal because they [01:00:00] understand what the person has been praying through and the fact that this is a big thing—an important moment, a very sacred moment.
And because this kind of confession tends to take longer than the normal 10 minutes in a confession line, it’s usually best to set up an appointment with someone to make that confession, to have an hour that’s set aside for it. Some people might ask you if you will do it for them as their director.
So, in the Catholic and Anglican traditions, for it to be recognized as a formal sacrament for the person to receive absolution, the confessor would need to be a priest. But for other people who don’t maybe worry about that, and for people in other traditions who don’t have that kind of sacramental system in place, that might not be an issue at all. They might want to confess to you as a lay person, or as a minister, or to some other wise person that they trust; anyone who they feel would really be able to receive their story and hear it. [01:01:00]
So, if you’re going to hear someone’s confession, the main kind of elements or aspects would be a word of welcome, making the person comfortable, an opportunity for them to share what’s on their heart, sometimes a prayer of sorrow. You can invite them to make a prayer of sorrow if they would like to. You might ask them as Trevor’s confessor did for him, to do an act of penance, of love. It could be to say a prayer or to do something simple. That’s kind of a sign of that desire to do things differently, and then a prayer of assurance and forgiveness.
In the 30-day retreat, sometimes particularly those that are hosted in the Catholic tradition in Catholic retreat houses, towards the end of the first week is often a communal reconciliation service. So, people come together and there’s a reading of a scripture text, maybe a little few words about God’s forgiveness and [01:02:00] grace—a kind of little sermon, a little homily—and then as part of the service, people will go away to different rooms to make their own individual confession. Then everyone comes back together for a closing thanksgiving and sometimes an absolution that is given to everyone who’s there.
You can be quite creative about a ritual of confession. You can find ways to make it special. Maybe inviting the person to choose a scripture that speaks to them of God’s mercy and their experience of God’s mercy. You might put the cross on the table between you. You might want to use symbols of water as cleansing; get them to wash their hands. You might use fire to burn sins that have been written on paper.
You want to adapt and offer a ritual that would be meaningful to this particular person, bearing in mind their faith background, their denomination, what’s most helpful for them. I’d encourage you to, if you [01:03:00] think it might be helpful, to offer it and to explain what it’s about—not to make a big deal of it, certainly not to force anyone into it. But to know that it can be a liberating and helpful experience for many people. I’d say about 50 percent of the people that I take through the exercises choose to do something of a ritual of confession.
Okay, so we have gone over time, so we’re going to stop right here. We will come back in 10 minutes, at 18 minutes past the hour. I’ve sent you the reflection questions on a separate email. So, if you can just look at those and I will also put them into the chat. And we will see you back here in 10 minutes. [01:04:00]
Annemarie: Okay, welcome back, everyone.
We are going to have a chance to chat as normal, but just before we do that, I just want to mention a couple of things that might be important to know. Can you all see me? You’ve all gone blank on my screen.
Adri-Marie: We can still see you.
Annemarie: Oh, okay. I can’t see any of you. All right. Okay, let’s continue. Just to say that we have put [01:05:00] you into supervision groups and Pam will be sending out that list of supervision groups today.
So, you will get that, and your supervisor will be contacting you to set up a time for your group. I’ve tried to take into account time zones when putting you with different people who will be supervising, so just to keep an eye on that as best we can. Then you can start seeing your directee if you have one anytime from now onward and you will be meeting with your supervisor in June sometime.
Your supervisor will be sent the list with the names and the contact details for all of that. Can you still see me? Can you hear me?
Liz: Yes. You can? Yes.
Annemarie: Okay. It’s very strange because I can’t see any of you. Okay. We’ll just [01:06:00] try and see how this works. So, we’re going to open the screen now. And yeah, if anyone would like to make a comment, ask a question, Please feel free to dos. MaddyChristine.
MaddyChristine: I think we all had similar discoveries in our group. What happened for me, the examen wasn’t really focused on all that much for me and neither was confession. So, I feel it’s a very missed opportunity. And I sense much desire to focus on this and perhaps go through the process of finding someone to do confession the way Trevor explained it. I don’t think it’s necessarily an easy thing but very beautiful and so lots of desire happened.
I think like a very important shift for me with the examine—it always felt like [01:07:00] another big “to do.” It feels overwhelming, and I think it’s shifted to, “this is a love story. This is invitation. This is God’s desire for me to experience his love,” so there’s a huge shift that happened for me. Like, I feel it on my face; wow, there’s desire there now. Even though I’ve been reading books about it and I’ve known about it, I think there was an important shift.
Annemarie: How wonderful. Yeah. That really breaks my heart because in that sense of just in bringing a longing for those gifts that are there, that are available. I think that shifted in your own experience. Yeah, that’s wonderful. I’m really delighted that there’s that sense of desire [01:08:00] that’s coming.
MaddyChristine: And I think a better sense of now being able to explain to retreatants what we’re doing with this. I don’t think I was able to do that prior, other than oh, this is what you do, which is never a good message.
And I have a question if I may? I’m also wondering. I can imagine for me what it’s been like during desolation. It’s really hard to notice how God has been with me, and I can imagine that it’s really hard for retreatants to engage with the examen when they’re in a time of desolation so I can imagine encouraging them like, I know you don’t feel God. I know God seems absent and I know there’s a little bit of returning, remembering. when God was present, right? Like the times of consolation, but can you say anything more to people in [01:09:00] desolation and then really struggling with examen? Is there more to say to that?
Annemarie: I think that sometimes when people are in desolation, I would tend to try and put the emphasis on looking for those glimmers of light in the darkness, those little moments that, even in a time where it’s a real struggle and it’s hard to feel God, to experience God, to sense God, there’s often a way in which, if you are attuning yourself to looking for the gifts in the day that sometimes that begins to shift the desolation because you start to notice tiny moments. When that focus comes on those tiny moments of grace or goodness, or somebody just smiling at you or passing a flower that’s beautiful and stopping to notice, it almost sometimes allows [01:10:00] the person to more deliberately try and tune in to some of the gifts and the graces even though it’s a struggle overall.
So, I think that sometimes the examen can help the person to gradually find a way through the desolation because one is looking for the tiny glimmers of light in the darkness; almost like the stars that you’re trying to find—those small moments. I think people often think they need to find big moments or big movements of consolation and sometimes they’re just very, very small things that are just so helpful.
But I’m wondering if Trevor or Brenda or Adri-Marie or anyone else would like to say something there. Trevor.
Trevor: I think, really to add to what you’ve already said, but you know, sometimes allowing my moment of desolation to nudge me towards consolation; I think that [01:11:00] last part of the examen can be quite helpful in the sense of just, what do I need in terms of grace in this moment of desolation? What do I need for the next 24 hours to maybe live a little bit more lightly? So, I really think the glimmers of light and maybe also just what am I needing at the moment in my desolation to perhaps live a little bit more lightly and freely in the next period of time, and to maybe be quite specific around that grace.
Annemarie: Thank you, Trevor. Thank you so much. Anyone else want to add on that, Brenda?
Brenda: Yeah. Annemarie, I’m just conscious when I’m [01:12:00] accompanying people that sometimes in the desolation, they’ve forgotten what consolation feels like. And so, when I’m listening to them, I’m listening for a moment where I can hear a glimmer, like you’re speaking of that small moment and stopping them and inviting them to notice.
So sometimes they actually need help to connect with a feeling, and so as you’re listening, by stopping and inviting them to unpack what’s going on, and then once they can connect with the feeling, they’re more able to pick it up themselves. So, we can help them do that.
Annemarie: Thanks, Brenda. Adri-Marie?
Annemarie: I think in all of this, I’m so just reminded that in the beginning of the examen, we’re asking for light and that gift [01:13:00] to be able to see with God. I think in the beginning, if somebody’s not familiar with the examen, often just that reminder “this is not work I must do and I must now see all the good stuff:” and like, it’s a gift to receive. So as a giver, that is perhaps introducing the examen to somebody to just remember that dynamic, that those moments are gifts that are shown, You know, kind of God is doing the work with us. I don’t have to look so hard.
Annemarie: Thanks, Adri-Marie. Does that help, Maddy Christine?
MaddyChristine: I don’t know if you can see me. I was nodding my head, yes. Thank you.
Annemarie: Thank you. Yes, I think my internet connection is a bit unstable, but I can see you all at the moment, which is great. It comes and goes. Hopefully it will stay. [01:14:00] Anyone else?
Shirley: It’s Shirley. May I ask a question?
Annemarie: Yes, of course, Shirley. Go for it.
Shirley: My, my experience is extremely limited with whole life confession—evangelical tradition. My little foray into it as I was thinking about it has been with the 12 step program, and I was just wondering if you have any other resources or places to explore, either writings or podcasts, I don’t know, but is there any other places that I can just gain some further understanding of how to take someone through this because in my context, the people that I will be leading through most likely will not think that they can go to a Catholic priest to do something like this.
How do you look for [01:15:00] somebody? What are the steps, that kind of thing? If you could give me some information on that, I’d appreciate it.
Annemarie: Yeah, sure. I have quite a long list of books and resources around this topic. It’s something that’s fascinated me. And so, I’m very happy to share some of those names of really good books and resources that might kind of help to just have a sense of how I would do this for someone, how would I help them to access this if they wanted someone else to be able to do it.
I think that one of the things that’s really important is to choose a confessor or someone to hear one’s confession with great care. Not everyone has that gift. And so, it needs to be someone that one really has confidence in, who’s a Christian of a lot of maturity and [01:16:00] depth, who themselves has a sense of themselves as someone who is sinful yet loved by God.
I think that there’s a very important piece there around choosing the right person, whether you’re coming from an evangelical background that wouldn’t be into the formal sacramental type of thing, or whether you’re coming from a very sacramental tradition.
Not all Catholic priests are good confessors, I can tell you for sure. Some of them are absolutely appalling confessors. So, you really want to find somebody who has that gift and that ability to listen deeply. I would take a lot of care in terms of finding a couple of people in my environment who I really trust. So, I have a number of names on my list of people, a few Jesuits that I know, a few people who are from other Christian traditions, some lay people, some women who [01:17:00] I consider people who would be really good in terms of hearing confession. And so, when I’m guiding someone, I’ve got a couple of people in my mind.
Maybe some of the resources that I can give you can give you a sense of what are the qualities and attributes that one is looking for, and then to look around your environment for who would be good people. But also, it’s a gift that sometimes we are called to develop in ourselves, I think. To become people who can hold the sacredness of very, very vulnerable stuff that people are sharing. I think it’s one of the most sacred things that one can do to really hold the fragility of someone sharing their brokenness, their sinfulness, their struggles, their times where they’ve experienced a lot of shame or struggle. That’s really important.
Also having a kind of a process or a journey, a ritual that you can go through. By ritual I mean, words and [01:18:00] actions that create a space for the person that is safe. Design your own kind of ritual of reconciliation or confession that has an opening prayer, or a welcome for the person. It could be spontaneous, or it could be one that you work out—a few scriptures that you might have that you can offer maybe to read for the person, thinking about how you set the room up, having some tissues there, having some water, if you want to use water— whatever symbols you might want to be using for them.
You want to have a prayer that’s very clear at the end that is saying that God forgives your sin. God is merciful. God is loving. God is gracious. In some churches, there’s a formal words of absolution of forgiveness that gets spoken. But if you’re not in one of those traditions, you can make up a prayer that does that.
I will send [01:19:00] a list of some books and articles and things that would be resources that you can look at and read through with pleasure.
Shirley: Thank you. Thank you.
Trevor: Can I add one thing?
Annemarie: Yeah.
Trevor: It’s just something that Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, and maybe I can recommend, and you quoted from it Anne Marie, the chapter on confession in his little book, Life Together, which is really quite beautiful. But I think the one thing that struck me when I first read it was, he said “the danger of listening to someone else’s confession when I’m not myself in a place of confessing to someone else” and that has always been a very helpful word for me personally.
Annemarie: That’s really, really important. Thank you, Trevor. [01:20:00] Ann and then Angela.
Angela: Thank you. Oh, did you want me to go?
Annemarie: That’s fine, Angela. I’ll come to Ann in a moment.
Angela: Okay. I’m going to go back to the examen and if that’s okay, and something that Adri-Marie said really sparked what became an awareness for me, and that was the idea that the examen was to be received as a gift, and I’ve sat with that for quite some time. I think that takes a while to sink into my heart, but I’m more often in that place in an examen now, and because of that, I value it. And when I sit with other people in the examen, I can feel when the person I’m sitting with is in their head and trying to make it all happen and so I was curious if any of you guys have helpful hints around things that [01:21:00] we can do to hold that space in such a way that it makes it more conducive to being received. I think a lot of what you gave us today is helpful in that, but I didn’t know if there was anything specific maybe just even some of the other reading, but I feel like I’m always wanting to help somebody get to the point where they can just receive it as a grace.
In other words, not what do they want to think but what might the Holy Spirit, and I usually use the word surprise. The Holy Spirit might surprise you with what comes into your heart. in the examen today and notice the surprises instead of where we get stuck. I don’t know if you guys have anything more that you might want to add on that could be helpful. Thank you.
Annemarie: Thanks, Angela. Yeah, I think the word surprise in itself is a really helpful one. I think that there’s got to be a way of helping people to see that this is something that is really relational, that that’s where the idea of being received comes [01:22:00] in, and sometimes just imagining God or Jesus or the way that I engage with God sitting beside me on the couch at the end of the day, just engaging with me and gently looking back over the day can be helpful. There’s a sense of I’m not doing this on my own. I think that’s where people get stuck when they start to see it as something that they’re doing as an exercise, rather than something that’s happening as this love relationship.
And so I think the act of the presence of God at the beginning is really important to just try and get that sense of, how is God present to me in this moment as I come into this examen, which is a different space to the examen I did yesterday or the examen that I did the day before—that I am different and God comes to me as God is in this moment. Maybe sometimes that can bring it alive a [01:23:00] bit. I don’t know if Trevor or anyone else has got another thought there before we go to Ann.
Trevor: Angela, I think maybe it could be helpful even to do an examen with the person, kind of actually almost doing it together and you leading them through it in a way that is kind of where the initiative is with God and you are almost making that quite explicit in the way and then maybe after you’ve done it with them to ask them, how was that for you?
Angela: Thank you both. That was helpful and I really like what you said Annemarie about coming differently today; that was that’s really helpful. Thank you, Annemarie.
Adri-Marie: Annemarie, [01:24:00] I’ll add just a little but, especially again in the beginning as we’re learning to do it. I think just one of the phrases sometimes that one can offer is to say when one remembers the day to do that without judgment, without that peer measuring from the start, because that kind of leaves the—it’s just in general, people confuse the examen with, it’s an exam and you’re gonna get points for it versus remembering. So sometimes just meeting somebody in their language could already become legions.
Annemarie: Thanks, Adri-Marie. Yeah, and just building on what Adri-Marie is saying there, even calling it daily awareness prayer or the daily discerning [01:25:00] prayer or whatever; it might be more helpful for someone than examen. Anne.
Anne: Thank you. I just want to say that I spoke to a religious sister once, and she said, at the end of the day, I do a check in with God. How was my day? And she went through the various steps. So just to add on to what Adri-Marie was saying.
But the thing I wanted to say a while ago was talking about the general confession. I had a very complex situation because I was taking someone from another country through the exercises and she wanted to make a confession. I asked her if she knew anyone in her country and she said no. I then thought and thought and prayed and eventually came up with a person, an Anglican priest, and she went about it so beautifully.
He contacted this person via [01:26:00] zoom and they had a meeting so that she wasn’t a completely strange person and then when she was actually coming to South Africa and this priest organized to meet her to have coffee and it was just perfect for this person because she was quite timid and so just having that sort of pre- introduction, pre-chat was really helpful for her.
Then the priest took her through such a meaningful, almost like a liturgy of confession, which really moved her very, very deeply. I just wanted to say there’s so many ways. and God works with that even.
Annemarie: Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that, Anne. It seems like there was just so much care taken to make that an experience [01:27:00] of real grace for that person.
Anne: And then to end, she wrote her name down in a book—a confessions book. And she said, “today, on this day, you made your general confession.” And that was also really meaningful. I think it cemented it for her and I was invited to be a part of some of it, but not all of it. So, I participated and then left as she made her confession. It was very beautiful.
Annemarie: Thank you, Anne. Anyone else?[01:28:00] I’ve lost you on the screens again, so I’m hoping that you all still have me.
Adri-Marie: We see you, Anne Marie.
Annemarie: So, is there anyone else with their hand up? Does anyone want to say or share anything about whether you had the opportunity or were offered the opportunity for a general confession, or if it’s something that you think you might have valued or if it’s something that just feels like it wouldn’t be so helpful for you.
We’ve got a few things [01:29:00] in here, just in the chat as well.
Thanks for that recommendation, Adri-Marie, of the other book with the examen. That’s a brilliant one.
Dennis, Matthew and Cherie-Lynn. That’s a wonderful book. All of their books are amazing.
And Doreen says, my spiritual director would often say, how about if you look at this topic, question review of the day, some tendency with a friendly curiosity. It’s beautiful. Thanks, Doreen.
Becky: This is Becky, and there’s two little things that I might want to say. One is the tension that I hold, some of it is because of my context about Protestant and Catholic, if I could say. I have some—and it’s the generation older than I am, so it’s my [01:30:00] older generation of particularly one stream of Protestantism where confession is just so Catholic for them that it is just completely off limits. So, I have been asking God, wanting a reimagined word that can gently move them into that with almost that they don’t really quite know so they can understand the beauty of it. Sometimes you have to carry, and you have to gently move them; perhaps on a different path of language with that.
And then the other little thing—and some of this is because I am well versed in the Enneagram is that there is three of the six numbers tend to look at the world through shame and so a confession [01:31:00] is even more scary and fearful for those three numbers, if I could say that, and so, If you come up against those, which I have, just being able to be so gentle because a confession for them can produce just so much shame for them that it hard, so how you hold that is really important.
Annemarie: Thanks for that Becky. Can you tell us which three numbers they are about as a matter of interest?
Becky: I will. It’s twos, threes and fours. Two, three, fours of that tribe.
Annemarie: That’s right. I think your thing about language and finding another word, I think is really important. In the Catholic tradition, we’ve moved away from using the word confession to using the word reconciliation, [01:32:00] a right of reconciliation. I don’t know whether reconciliation has a different feel, but it’s emphasizing that thing of that bond and that friendship, that reconciling love of God. But that might still not be a helpful word.
So, I wonder whether you’ve had any ideas, Becky, of any words that feel…..
Becky: Reconciliation is much better. That’s a very inviting word. It’s a curious word in some respects, and it moves people at least a forward in that. I will definitely use that one.
Some of it is I tend to move in with almost the examen and try to just begin to allow them to perhaps unwrap their day in the presence of God and to make that more [01:33:00] acceptable then and then we can move, you know, with that.
Annemarie: Yeah, and I think it’s always about doing what’s helpful for the person, and for some people, there may be so much baggage, negative connotations and stuff around confession being so linked with the Catholic thing that it’s going to take quite a big leap, for that, and it’s okay.
You don’t have to include it within the exercise’s context. It’s not essential. It’s just a gift that for some people may be helpful. So, use what helps and just hold it freely and lightly. And what doesn’t help, we don’t need to push people into, but I think I like the sense of wanting to find ways that don’t trigger people in unhelpful ways but offer something that might be valuable and helpful. So, I’ll be interested to [01:34:00] see what other words you might come up with, Becky.
Trevor: I wonder if I could offer a picture?
Annemarie: Yeah, please.
Trevor: I was preaching a few weeks ago and I just spent the whole message just inviting people, picturing Jesus knocking on the door of their house, and sometimes we are in the house, but we don’t allow him into different rooms. We keep those rooms closed or in those rooms, we keep certain cupboards closed. Sometimes it’s helpful to go into a room with Jesus and with someone else so you don’t have to be too scared and open up, a cupboard or a drawer or a room.
I was quite struck by how many people wanted to do that—actually wanted to allow Jesus more fully into their life [01:35:00] experience. And I think they were, in fact, I think for some people it’s been a profoundly confessional journey. Yeah. Just wanted to offer that little picture.
Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor. I also remember that story you tell of just offering your community the opportunity at one point.
Trevor: I was just really struck, and I did it a few times after that, but I was in a Methodist church on one lent, and I just asked the congregation if they wanted to make confession, I’d be in the chapel. I think I said I would be there from six to seven o’clock in the evening, and if they wanted to come and share anything that was on their heart with Christ and with me, I’d be there. I think I left the chapel that evening just after 11 o’clock. I was there for just on five to [01:36:00] six hours and this was a Methodist community that never had done this thing before. I was just overwhelmed.
Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor.
Well, we will pause it there for this evening. I see Denise is asking about notes. The notes are not really in a very shareable format, but what I will do is try and just send you some of the resources that I’ve taken the notes from that I can share with you that I think you’ll be able to use in a way that’s helpful.
So can I ask Adri-Marie if you would just lead us to the end. Thank you.
Adri-Marie: So, friends, as we remember that tonight was about an invitation to let God show us some light and discernment of the day, and also an invitation to greater [01:37:00] freedom. I am going to read a blessing for you. I’m going to read it twice. It’s from Philippians, chapter 1 verse 9 to 11. So, we’ll just read it very slowly and I’m going to read it twice for you to receive and remember.
May your love abound more and more in knowledge and depths of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and [01:38:00] praise of God.
May your love abound more and more in knowledge and depths of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
Annemarie: Amen. Thank you all. Don’t forget to look out for your supervision allocation. If there is any problem, like you are in the same group as someone that you are [01:39:00] directing or something like that please right back to Pam immediately because I will be going off to Spain in a week’s time and we want to just iron out any of those kind of hitches before I’m gone if possible.
So, Russell and I will both be in Spain in Jesuit country, and we look forward to seeing you when we come back. I’ll be back in three weeks, and we’ll leave you in the capable hands of the rest of the team. Many blessings and take care.