The Examen and the Way of Love

by the Rt. Rev. Craig Loya, originally published in the ECMN email newsletter

“[They] who [go] about to reform the world must begin with [themselves], or [they lose their] labor.”
—St. Ignatius of Loyola

Beloved in Christ,

[On July 31] the church commemorates St. Ignatius of Loyola. I find the quote above to be particularly relevant for the days through which we are living. The world is so full of suffering large and small, injustice constantly compounds, and the fraying already present at the edges of our democracy seems to be working its way closer to the center. Anxious times such as these incubate activist sensibilities all around, and what we are witnessing is an ever-escalating contest for dominance between intersecting but thoroughly incompatible visions. 

The Jesus on whom we place our ultimate hope does not save the world by becoming one more actor vying for power and dominance on the global stage. Jesus offers a radically alternative vision of self-giving love. Our call as Christians is not to save the world through all our hard work, but to give ourselves over fully to be used as agents of God’s reign of perfect love washing over the world. 

If we are to be witnesses of love, and agents of justice and healing in the world, then we must first commit to the daily reformation of our own sinful hearts. We cannot be faithful and effective in showing the world the way of Jesus unless we are fully saturated in that way ourselves. St. Ignatius left us a variety of very practical, concrete ways to do this. One that I return to over and over again is the Examination of Conscience, often simply called the Examen.

This is a very simple way to tend to the way God is present in our living and our relationships every day. It has, over a number of years, provided a foundation for how I discern what God is calling me to, and how to make the decisions I’m called to make each day. 

As we seek to bear full and unapologetic witness to the way of love in these deeply troubling days, I commend this practice to you. May God so deeply reform our own hearts that we together might invite our broken, conflicted world more fully into the light of God’s perfect love, until that love is finally and gloriously done, on earth as it is in heaven.