Pausing to Review the Graces We Have Received

Guide: Taking Stock

In the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius urged directors of those making the Exercises to remind those making the retreat that it was important to “remain” where they “find fruit.” These past several weeks of the retreat have offered powerful graces. This review week does not take up new material. The material for this week’s reflection is the graces we have received over the past several weeks.

Following upon our experience of being loved as a sinner, we have had the grace of being invited to follow Jesus. We remember our personal response to follow him and our growing desire to know and be with this one who loves us so much. We have begun to let him tell us the story of God’s plan and his life. We reflected on his own call and how God prepared for his coming throughout the story of the covenant in the Hebrew Scriptures. We entered into the story of his parents, and those around them, as he came to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Finally, we find ourselves there in the stable as he is born for us. This week of retreat is an invitation to remain there a while. Perhaps we have been too busy to take it all in. Perhaps we were not able to make the connection between his coming into the poverty of that stable and his coming into the poverty of our lives.

As we wake each morning this week, we will return to some grace for which we are grateful. It may be one grace all week. It may be simply making our home in that stable to be with Jesus there.
The grace we desire this week is to be drawn more deeply into the person of Jesus. The resources for this week will help us get started, take us deeper, and help us find words to pray.

We will let our reflections find their way into the background of our everyday lives. Whatever we face, each day this week can become part of the mysteries we have been contemplating, if we let it all in. Any human experience is the human experience Jesus came to enter into. This week we see and love that coming more deeply.

Finally, each evening this week, we give thanks for the new graces we are receiving this week. For even a few moments — perhaps as we are undressing for bed — we can experience gratitude for the movements of our day that connect us with Jesus, who has come into our world — to be one with us in our human experience and to invite us to join him in his mission.

Consider sharing the graces you have received
this week with others making the retreat.

Listen to each week of the Online Retreat
on a CD or on your mp3 player.