A Year-End Examen

As 2023 draws to a close, I first of all want to express my heartfelt thanks to you for joining me on this journey of prayer these past few months. So much of prayer is just showing up, and I want to thank you for showing up and opening these emails and praying along with me. I’ve got some exciting ideas on the horizon for 2024 to help you continue to come alive and live in love with Jesus, and I’m excited to keep you in the loop! Thank you for your support. As always, my inbox is open for feedback, conversation, and general encouragement about prayer.

Today, December 27th, marks the third day of Christmas. On the church calendar, we celebrate twelve days of feasting, celebration, and rejoicing that after all the waiting of Advent, Christ has come both in history and in our lives today.

This, along with the natural ending of our Western calendar and the space many of us find this week from work and responsibility, makes this the perfect time to reflect on the deeper Christmas question:

How is Christ being born in a new way in my life this year?

To get at this, I like to practice what many call a prayer of examen to reflect on my year.

This way of praying comes from the 16th-century saint Ignatius of Loyola, and according to contemporary Jesuit priest Father James Martin, it is “a prayer designed to enable believers to find God in their lives.” It is meant to be practiced daily, and according to St. Ignatius it is so important that even if a Jesuit should forget all other prayers during the day, “they should never neglect this one” (James Martin, SJ, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, p. 87).

Perhaps this is because Ignatius's spirituality is indelibly marked by incarnation — the theological truth that God became flesh and dwelt among us — the very theological theme that we are meant to reflect on during the twelve days of Christmas.

To live with an incarnational spirituality means believing that God can be found not just in our hearts, in spiritual moments like prayer or worship, but in the very stuff of life. To truly honor the reality that our God became human flesh and bones means that the very things of our life have dignity and are an access point for us to encounter the living God.

Every Friday night when my family cuts into a fresh loaf of sourdough bread and pours a glass of wine (and milk for the kids), we are setting our intention to find God in the real things of our lives. God is not out there somewhere, he is here. And this is what the incarnational spirituality of these Christmas days is meant to teach us.

Thus, a prayer of examen to review our year and to notice where God was at work in the highs and lows is the perfect way to both lean into the incarnational spirituality of Christmas and get at answering that question: how is God being born in my life in a new way this year?

I’ll be the first to admit that there are probably more proper ways to do a prayer of examen, but I’ve found it helpful to simply it to these four easy steps.

So, I’d love to invite us today to a prayerful posture of examination of our year. This is designed to be done as quickly as the five minutes you have to read this email, or perhaps you could save this and take as long as a half-day or even a full-day retreat to work through these steps.

First, I’d love to invite us to take some deep breaths. As we breathe in, pray “Come,” and as we breathe out, pray “Holy Spirit.”

1. RELAX into gratitude

As we breathe in and out, we begin to posture our hearts in gratitude to God. Remember that Paul encourages us that walking in Christ is an invitation to be “abounding in thanksgiving” (Col 2:7, NRSVUE). Begin to call to mind specific events from your year for which you are grateful.

I find it helpful at this point, in between steps 1 and 2, to pull out my phone and open my photos app. This was recommended to me by a pastor a few years ago, and I have found it to be the most helpful way to relax into gratitude and begin to review my year.

Once we have our photo app open, start in January, scroll through your photos, and begin to list out 50-100 memories, people, or events from the year that you are simply grateful for. Write out as many as you have time for!

2. REVIEW your year

Now, we want to start to practice that incarnational spirituality. We want to look at the events of our year, the people, the places, the highs, and the lows. Look at your list, and simply want to ask two questions:

When did God feel close?

When did God feel distant?

Perhaps list out two or three events, situations, or relationships where God felt particularly near to you or particularly distant from you. The goal isn’t to judge or evaluate, it’s simply to name them in the presence of God.

3. REPENT for any way you walked away from God this year

Classically, a prayer of examen includes an element of repentance: is there any way that we knowingly took ourselves away from God’s nearness this year? Is there any relationship where we haven’t held up our end of the commitment? Is there any area of failure that we want to acknowledge before the cross of Christ to allow him to come and cleanse us, renew us, and refresh us?

Receive afresh the cleansing power of the cross as we prepare to end this year and begin another.

Also, while we are meditating on the forgiveness of the cross at this transition moment, we also want to ask: is there any painful point from this year, any unresolved tension in a relationship, or any area of unfulfillment or even loss, that God might be inviting us to see as a death or a crucifixion? How does the cross empower us to reframe our losses, pains, and unresolved tensions as necessary deaths on the path to resurrection?

4. REORIENT for the year to come

Lastly, we want to take all of this and set an intention for the year to come. For this step, I want to ask the question again: How is Christ being born in my life in a new way? Are there any moments that God came close this year that feel like the beginning of a new chapter? I love the question that Pete Scazzero asks about new beginnings: “What is standing backstage of my life ready to make its entrance?”

Are there any relationships, events, or situations that God has felt distant in, but perhaps in this time of reflection God is reorienting us towards a new beginning? Is there anything on the horizon that feels like an invitation from God to lean into? Is there anything that was a death in 2023 that you sense might be the pathway to a resurrection in 2024?

Is there a word, phrase, or Scripture passage that we feel drawn towards to help name this new birth? Pick a word, phrase, or Scripture passage and simply hold it before God as you breathe in and out.

I hope these are helpful steps to reflect on your year. Once again, thank you again for joining me on this journey of prayer this year. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Best,

Ryan Murphy