📅 23 September 2026  |  👤  Fr  Keith D’Souza  SJ

The default mode of human consciousness is spiritual consolation. Circumstances and dispositions often steer us away from this basic grace. The daily Examen is a helpful spiritual exercise to create better conditions for the gift of integral wellness—and by extension, the wellbeing of our larger world of engagement and influence.

The traditional Jesuit Examen or “Examination of Conscience” has the following steps, oriented towards spiritual and moral growth:

1. Thanksgiving for blessings: Give thanks to God for the benefits and gifts received throughout the day.

2. Petition for God’s presence: Ask for the grace to know and root out your sins, and to see your day through God's perspective.

3. Review the day: Review the day hour by hour or period by period, noting specific events, actions, and where you felt God's presence.

4. Repentance: Ask for pardon from God for your faults, failures, or unloving responses.

5. Resolution: Make a firm purpose of amendment with God's grace to do better and look with hope toward the day to come.

This traditional “Examination of Conscience” has given way to a more comprehensive and less moralistic “Examination of Consciousness”. A contemporary rendition or adaptation of this new form of the Examen—oriented towards integral wellbeing—could be focused on three primary steps: Gratitude, Awareness & Petition (or the “GAP Prayer”). This daily prayer will enhance multifold reconciliation, reducing the relational and affective “gap” between you and yourself, others, the environment, and God.

Predisposition:

o   Bring yourself consciously into the presence of God, acknowledging God’s constant accompaniment in your life.

1. Step One: GRATITUDE (for things that went well):

• Recall specific moments, events, interactions with persons, etc., which brought you special joy during the day.

• Acknowledge the presence and action of the Divine in these instances of grace. Express gratitude for these special moments of joy, peace or consolation.

2. Step Two: AWARENESS (of dysfunctional dispositions, habits, relationships; or of disturbing events and experiences):

• Become aware of thought-patterns, emotional responses, relationships, work situations, habits, etc., in which you experience difficulty, limitations or desolation.  (Pay special attention to strong emotions which you experience in association with these limiting situations). 

• Consider the conditions or causes which perpetuate these experiences of difficulty or desolation. Do you see these conditions or causes—and the experiences themselves—to be influenced more by the “Spirit of Darkness” (promoting desolation, hopelessness, self-absorption, etc.) rather than the “Spirit of Light” (nurturing faith, hope and love)?

• What insight, learning or strategy could you use to align yourself more with the energy of the “Spirit of Light”? Pray for assistance in finding and employing effective and systematic strategies to overcome desolation and create better conditions for consolation.

3. Step Three: PETITION (for specific intentions or plans):

• Looking forward, what would you like to place before God in terms of intentions or petitions? The primary concern here is not “what would I like to see happen?” or even the more noble “what should I be doing for others and for God?”, but rather “what would God want me to be or do?”

• Keeping this in mind (not doing work for God, but doing God’s work), place one’s life, with all its relationships, projects and aspirations before God, asking for freedom and courage to follow Divine wisdom and guidance, and accompanying grace so that what is good and beautiful unfolds.  

Conclusion:

• Spend a few moments of silence in communion with the Divine presence (like a little child resting quietly in the comfort and warmth of its mother).

•  If necessary, end with an oral prayer (e.g., the ‘Our Father’ or any other spontaneous prayer).