“Father, I rejoice in Your love for me…”
So begins the Examen Prayer, a 15 minute silent prayer that the Sisters pray twice a day—at noontime and before Night Prayer. This prayer-time is not about listing your sins or scouring your conscience, it is about noticing. Taking time to find God’s fingerprints throughout the day, and rejoicing in His love for you.
In looking over the words of this prayer, composed of words that our Sisters have polished and put together, an urgency began to grow… a song began to form. We all need to know and be reminded of His love for us! We forget so easily. We all need to hear often that “He knows we need forgiveness.” We all need the encouragement of hearing, “look to the future with hope… He accepts you as you are.”
In piecing the words of the song together, one sister said, “The refrain needs to be all about his love… You need to repeat the fact the He loves us! It puts weight to it, and gives the Holy Spirit time to work in our souls.”
There is a great beauty in this prayer, this song. Unless we step back and let it sink in, how else will we “recognize and embrace the unexpected ways He chooses to renew our life?”
