Ignatian Retreat in Daily Life

                                                                     (Printable version in Word)

Theme

Discovering more surely how I am constantly embraced in God’s forgiving, freeing and renewing love.

 

Preparing for the period of prayer

 

1.  I consciously bring myself into the presence and loving gaze of God. I keep in mind that God looks upon me with longing, and I ask for God’s blessing on my efforts at this prayer.

 

2.       Then, I compose myself in my real world. I consider how I live surrounded by conflict, violence and anger, in a deteriorating environment steeped in self-deception, untruth, and error, marred by poverty, hunger, terrorism and war. I have to make my way through all this.

 

3.   And now I ask of God what I yearn for, the grace/desire for today: That God will continue to reveal to me the enormity of the mystery of sin so that I seek more and more to surrender into the forgiving and renewing love of God.

 

4.  I address this prayer of desire, first to God the Father, then to Mary, the mother of Jesus, then to Jesus, himself. Or,

 

5.  I address this prayer of desire, first to God the Source of Life, then to God the Source of Wisdom and Goodness, then to God Creator and Comforter.

 

6.  Then read slowing, Romans 5:6-11  Jesus died for us in our sin; we can trust Him.

 

7.  Continue below.

 

 

During This Period of Prayer

 

I read slowly, the material below, asking God to help me notice, with God’s eyes, the movements that stir within me. And I talk with God about what I notice.

 

Jesus pulled his legs free. The rusty nails that held his feet captive fell clanking below the cross. It was not difficult now to free his left hand, then the right one. He slid easily down from the full-size wooden cross in the sanctuary of an inner-city church in Indianapolis.

 

Next he walked into the adjoining parish hall. He passed by Catherine Coombs of the altar guild who fainted. Jesus washed in the men’s room – he got the blood off his body – and left the building, walking toward the city’s hub, Monument Circle.

 

It was a hot day, so he felt okay in his loincloth.

 

Jesus had a bit more difficulty disengaging himself from a gold processional cross in an East Side church in Manhattan, yet within just a few moments he was free …

[Jesus] headed south toward Rockefeller Center. A cab driver moving along Madison Avenue saw Jesus, who was still wearing his crown of thorns. Before he knew what he was doing, the driver had smashed his cab into the plate-glass window of an art gallery …

 

It was inside a church in Moscow that an altogether new phenomenon was first observed. Katerina Palov had been absorbed in her private devotions inside the Moscow church. Now she looked toward a cross … but to her amazement … Katerina discovered that a young black man was firmly nailed to the wood. He did not look like Jesus. He was fully dressed in some kind of a striped uniform.  Investigators discovered that the young black man on the cross was a convict who was serving forty years in a South African prison…

 

It was 3:45 p.m. when Clara Morris stopped off for a moment of prayer in a church on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. She was startled to see a body upon a cross, for she was aware that now all crosses were empty. Drawing close, she saw a brown woman and heard her crying. The woman was identified as an “Untouchable” who lived in Bombay.

 

Twelve hours later inside a church in Addis Ababa, a white youth was found nailed to an altar cross that had previously borne Jesus. The youth told the Ethiopian Red Cross that he lived in Evanston, Illinois … There were scars of beatings on his body and his left eye was swollen shut.

 

So people began to see.

 

 

Then,

I consider with God other, contemporary images, similar to the above, that touch my own life world. I converse with God about the interior movements that this stirs in my heart.

 

 

Concluding this Prayer

 

 

Then I make my colloquy with Jesus on His cross, letting the three questions rise in me:

What have I done for Christ? 

What am I doing for Christ?

         What ought I do for Christ?

End with the Lord’s Prayer. ♦

                                                               (Printable version in Word)