In a natural, personal way, we grow in our awareness of the Lord’s accompanying presence in our lives.

Amid the multitude of little things to be done and important decisions to be taken, being aware of what is happening in our deeper self and how the Lord is accompanying us in our daily life is a source of inspiration and strength.

This awareness touches the deep guiding orientation and central options of our personal salvation history, transformed with time, in a personal vocation as a response to the Lord’s call. It comes to be part of our being and identity, lived in simplicity amid our work routine, our personal relationships and commitments.

Still, from time to time, and for a variety of reasons and circumstances, we become more conscious of our interior reality and processes; where we are and towards what the Lord is leading us to. The Lord’s accompanying presence it is not to be taken for granted, for it is pure grace and is a great help in our lives and spiritual growth.

Through this interior awareness, our relationship with the Lord becomes more personalised

Christian spirituality is a concrete way of living the Gospel day by day; of being in contact with interiorised evangelical values and attitudes.

The small, daily repeated actions, consisting of sorting desires, building personal relationships, befriending the work we do and keeping new and old commitments are all is inspired and discerned in Jesus of Nazareth, in the light of faith and mission.

A 10 to 15-minute consciousness exercise at the end of every day helps to better guide the deep hidden sense of our daily living. It helps us build our integrated unity as a person: body and mind, desires and anxieties, fears and attractions, things to do tomorrow and long-term desired or planned projects.

Throughout all this process, and in a natural, personal way, we grow in our awareness of the Lord’s accompanying presence in our lives. For the believer, all things continue to be same and yet, at the same time, all things change.

This has nothing to do with simply reviewing our day to draw up a sort of balanced budget, or to record our successes, however trivial. It has even less to do with just trying to forget negative experiences, or worse still, trying to forget or deny happenings.

Rather, the interior spiritual awareness exercise – the Consciousness Examen as it is traditionally called in the Ignatian tradition – centres on the Lord accompanying me in my daily work and obligations, in my relations and moments of leisure, and in my deep wishes and desires that many times are not easily expressed in words, not even to myself. It takes us very far from naïve affirmation to express in faith that, “We are never alone…the Lord accompanies us”.

I will describe how to go about the Consciousness Examen in practice.

Imagine and make present the face of the Lord in real scenery all along the day that has just ended. Perceive the Lord as silently and perseveringly listening to, helping and accompanying his disciple.

He is the subject of this short prayer. Make Him present with the help of this interior spiritual awareness process. Make yourself conscious and feel with your interior senses how He accompanies, blesses and helps you discern your lived daily spiritual intuitions. Be aware of them.

The five-step Ignatian awareness examen of the day is to:

• become aware of God’s active presence;

• review the multiple of lived experiences with gratitude;

• pay attention to your emotions and interior movements with a discerning heart;

• ask forgiveness for your sinful attitudes and actions; and

• look toward to tomorrow with hopeful plans.

Through this interior awareness exercise, our senses are evangelised day by day; our intimate relationship with the Lord becomes more personalised; our lives as believers become more natural, we are more ourselves; gifts of the Lord are experienced in our daily reality and our faithfulness is strengthened.

edward.merciecasj@gmail.com

Fr Mercieca is a member of the Society of Jesus.