Days 1 - 4
Theme
Discovering Gods love to all merciful and forgiving.
Grace/Desire
To know and hear Gods voice more clearly and to see how deeply God cherishes me as I am.
Prayer Material for Days 1 - 4
1. Ephesians 2:1-10 My whole life and self are Gods work of art. God chose to accomplish this. Sometimes I live as though I were not being called by God.
2. Prayer of Consideration: The Way Things Can Be
3. Luke 5: 1-11 Peters Call
4. Repetition
Prayer
Almighty and ever-caring God, You are powerful to give life and to take it away.
You order all things from end to end, beyond my comprehension, beyond my imagining. Your passionate hope is that every person be saved from selfishness and self-destruction. You want no one to perish, to live forever alone. Instead, You want a reign of love to rise from within our hearts, and embrace each human person and every thing on the earth. I praise You and I thank You that You teach me these things through
Days 5 - 7
Grace/Desire
To know and long more deeply for the God who cherishes me and seeks to fill me with deep life.
Prayer Material for Days 5 - 7
5. The First Principle and Foundation
6. Romans 7: 14-25 Paul found the same contrariness in himself that I find in myself. It is a force in the world. But God in
7. Prayer of Consideration: Active Indifference
Prayer
Lord, mighty God, You offer me so much. You give me so many days and years, so many strengths and abilities, so many rich things and splendid technological devices, and You surround me with so many whom I love. Teach me this one thing above all, Lord: How I am to choose. Then I hope to return to You as many wonders as You have poured out on me. Through
Another Prayer
Guardian God, guide us in our daily efforts. May the changing moods of our human hearts and the limits which our failings impose on hope never blind us to you. May the faith you have nurtured in us reveal the way of love and give us the promise of peace. We need your Spirit to remove any selfishness that blurs our vision of this faith.
--adapted from a Roman Catholic prayer of worship
For further Reflection and Consideration
Additional Scripture and Prayer Material
God creates you in concrete circumstances and with definite gifts and charisms. Without tyranny, God our Creator and Lord plants in you not only gifts and limitations that add up to some definite choices in your life, but also the desires leading to those definite choices. Your task as a creature is to find what God desires in you, down at the root of your self, and freely to enact your own deepest desires. When we do this, we are godlike. This is our profoundest joy and happiness.
1. You have thought about the truths that lie under the brief statements of the Principle and Foundation. You might read over that version of the Principle and Foundation that most resonated with you.
2. All human activity swings back and forth between delightful and tedious. These exercises are very likely sometimes to console you tremendously, and sometimes to seem like the most desolate wasteland you ever chose to wander through. When these swings happen, take them patiently; you can learn a lot about yourself and your world.
Have I grown in the awareness that my many talents are Gods gifts to me? If I realize that all that I have and all that I am is linked to Gods gifts to me, what should change in my attitude toward myself and others? Does the gift of being loved by God and others have a spill-over effect on every area of my life? How?
Do I control my life and teat it as my possession rather than to embrace it as Gods gift to me? Do I have non-negotiables in my life? About what am I not indifferent? Do I find that I am either not free or losing my freedom in certain areas of my life? What people, places, or things need to be chosen differently in order to acknowledge God as the source and end of my life? Am I have distractions in my prayer is God trying to say something to me through these distractions?
If we feel a disorder in our attachment to a person, to a job or position, to a certain dwelling place, a certain city, country, and so on, we should take it to the Lord and pray insistently to be given the grace to free ourselves from such disorder. What we want above all is the ability to respond freely to God, and all other loves for people, places, and things are held in proper perspective by the light and strength of Gods grace.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises [annotation#71]
I am called to be fully human; I am called to live in
A director always provides the balance for us, both in our times of exhilaration and of discouragement. The director is not the one who urges a particular decision
[rather, he/she] facilitates the movement of Gods grace within us so that the light and love of God inflame all possible decisions and resolutions about life situations. God is not only our Creator but also the Director of our retreat, and the human director never should provide a hindrance to such an intimate communication.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises [annotation #15]
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Jeremiah 1: 4-10 |
The reaction of Jeremiah could very well be our reaction at this point, and |
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Luke 24: 36-53 |
we might be filled with the incomprehension of the disciples with respect to the Principle and Foundation. But if we bring these reactions to Wisdom itself, our minds will be opened to understand the scriptures as God shows us how to wait for the power of the Spirit. |
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Hebrew 11: 8-10 17-19 |
Filled with this power, we shall believe and trust as Abraham did, so that what God has begun in us, God will be able to fulfill. |
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John 15: 1-8 16-17 |
God will personally do the pruning as the vinedresser does in order that we may bear more fruit. |
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Ephesians 1:15-23 |
God enlightens our vision and gives us the knowledge of the hope to which we are called with the same strength that God used in raising Jesus. |
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Ephesians 3:20 |
Gods power now at work in us can do more than we can ask or imagine. |
Is 65: 17-25 No more the sound of weeping or cries; the wolf and the young lamb will feed together.
Is 35 Be strong, do not be afraid... Here comes my God to renew and refashion
Is 40: 28ff God our creator never grows weary ...longs to strengthen and renew me.
Is 40: 1-5; 9-11 Comfort, comfort my people ... The Lord is coming ..He will take care of his flock like a shepherd.