Alicia and I would like to sincerely thank the community of faith here at St. Charles for all of your support, prayer, compassion and care during the past months after her recent diagnosis of a brain tumor. I would like to take some time to give the community an update on Alicia’s condition, as well as include a method of prayer entitled The Daily Examen which is meant to better hear God’s inner voice of love and follow His will more closely; a timely prayer for this great and happy Solemnity of Pentecost!
As most of you know, Alicia has been living with a brain tumor for several months after a recent seizure lead to a series of medical tests which discovered the tumor. Although there is no real way of knowing for certain, the doctors believe the tumor to be slow growing and have indicated that it could be up to 10 or more years before it affects her overall health and has to be removed surgically. Only upon removal of the mass will we know whether or not the tumor is cancerous. The original plan was to monitor the tumor closely with periodic MRI testing for progressive growth. That plan was put on hold for nine months due to the little baby growing in her womb. We now wait in joyful hope (and great anxiety) for the coming of our third child in early July. After the baby is born, Alicia will be imaged again in August which should indicate the status of the tumor after eleven months of what Alicia and I like to describe as 1) blissful ignorance and 2) a new level of trust in the Divine plan for our life. Alicia and I appreciate, more than anything, your continued prayers for her and our family as well as your compassionate concern about her condition. Please accept our sincere and heartfelt thanksgiving from our family at home to each of you, our wider parish family.
Speaking of trust and prayer, it’s recently been on my heart to give you a method of recognizing God’s inner voice of love for you in what’s traditionally been called: The Daily Examen. St. Ignatius of Loyola was given this method of prayerful listening to God to spread to the Church Universal. Does God speak to us directly? How can we hear from Him? Strange that I can hear my friendly, yet quite annoying, dog bark loudly each day at the mailman – but the voice of the Holy Spirit communicating love and encouragement to me is a wider mystery.
The Daily Examen:
1) Start by making the Sign of the Cross and remember that you are always in the presence of God. God is “Ipseum Esse Subsistens” in that He is Being Itself, and His presence does not crowd out the being of finite creatures as if we were in competition with the Divine Life jeopardizing our freedom. Instead God holds all being in existence, thereby causing and sustaining all that is.
2) Blessings: Recognize the blessings of your day; even ask the Holy Spirit to show you what to be thankful for and then praise and thank God for these blessings. The key here is to simply allow ones heart to roam about and settle onto the joyful consolations that have been given. We should also thank God for any crosses of purification that are also blessings.
3) Ask: Ask for a special grace from the Holy Spirit to recognize any sins in your life / day.
4) Kill: Recognize that these sins are what crucified Jesus, among other things. Gaze across the conscious hours of your day again and notice the “valleys” in which your heart drops into a state of desolation at your choices, sins, circumstances or experiences. God wants to come into those moments and redeem them – even though they are past. Then take all those sins and moments of desolation to Jesus, ask for mercy and forgive any others who have hurt you, including yourself.
5) Embrace: Allow Jesus to embrace you in His merciful love. Remember that when you take your sins to Jesus, you give Him the joy of being your Savior. Think of how consoling it is for Jesus when we simply let Him embrace us with His merciful love. If God reveals mortal sin in your life, make a resolution to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation as soon as possible.
6) Resolution: During this last portion of The Daily Examen, we observe what God has communicated to us in the consolations and desolations, and we look ahead to the next day with hope. We practically resolve to come against any choices that caused us desolation as well as to receive a greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit when God offers consolation and blessings, thereby becoming more fully alive and receptive to the Divine Life.
~Benjamin Darnell