Begin by acknowledging the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with you now in this moment of prayer. Breathe. Still the noise of the day. God is here.
Gratitude
Lord, tonight begins not with confession, but with thanks.
Begin with a moment of gratitude, and try to be specific. Think of something about the day just past, something in this life for which there is reason to give thanks. Not a vague, general thanks, but something particular.
A face.
A moment.
A mercy received unexpectedly.
A breath.
A meal.
A sorrow that didn’t break what it could have broken.
Let your soul rest in that gift for a moment.
Every good thing came from You, Lord. Every good thing.
Request for God’s Light
Lord, now comes the harder part: to look at this day honestly.
The light of God is most important in making the examination of conscience into genuine prayer, and not just another self-help technique done purely by human will power. Even the best of us has some areas we’d rather not look at and others we can’t stop gazing upon.
So the request is this:
Illuminate what self cannot see clearly.
Reveal where pride distorted the view.
Reveal where shame exaggerated it.
Ask God for wisdom and strength to make this examination a work of grace, fruitful beyond human capacity. Ask Him to reveal Himself and His will. Without that light, all that remains is a report card. With it, we have a conversation with the Living God.
Account of Actions and Attitudes
Now walk back through the hours.
Make an account of all actions and attitudes in the course of the day just past. This is likely to be the longest portion of the examination of conscience. Not just the what, but the why. Not just the actions, but the movements underneath them.
Was there patience today or irritation in the waiting?
Was there generosity or generosity that quietly kept score?
Was there courage or avoidance disguised as prudence?
If one perseveres faithfully, day after day in the Lord’s light, He will reveal patterns of sin as well as patterns of grace, like the times God’s grace protected you from jealousy or gossiping, and where impatience or anger started and how they grew.
Let the consolations of the day be named. Acknowledge the moments when love felt alive, when God’s presence was close, when the soul moved toward the good.
Let the desolations be named too. Recognize the dryness, the agitation, the distance.
Both belong to this prayer.
Chart Your Course
Lord, having seen the day clearly, one resolution is needed for tomorrow. Not many. One. Something specific. Something possible. A concrete turn toward You, however small it might be. Where did this soul drift furthest from You today?
That is likely where tomorrow’s grace must be aimed. Chart the course with honesty. Not heroism, but one faithful step, placed in the Lord’s hands before sleep comes.
Entreat for Energy and Enthusiasm
The final portion of this prayer is to ask God for the energy and enthusiasm to carry out the course just charted. We cannot save ourselves, no matter how hard we try, but we cannot fail if we take the help God is so eager to offer.
So the entreaty is simple:
Lord, do not let the resolution die with the closing of these eyes. Let it live in the morning. Let it survive distraction, fatigue, and the ordinary chaos of tomorrow. Send Your Spirit. Not to make tomorrow easy, but to make it possible. Into Your hands this night is surrendered. My soul rests. You do not sleep. That is enough.
Aware of the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — conclude with an Our Father.
More than a simple examination of conscience to identify sins, this prayer is a full survey of thoughts and emotions to see how God has been at work within you and how attentive you have been to His interior work. The result of frequently practicing the Examen is that we form the habit of viewing all of life’s activity through this lens in real time — not simply in retrospect. This influences how we act throughout the day, indeed throughout our life.
Here is tonight’s question to sit with before sleep:
Of the five movements of GRACE, which one did your soul resist most tonight, and what might that resistance itself be revealing?
Written using Truthly.ai