What is the First Point for Making the General Examen? [43] First Point

March 16, 2023

excerpt from my spiritual journal on March 17, 2023

As I prayed the Rosary with my husband this morning, Jack leading us in prayer...

We came to the last decade of our Rosary, where we pray the 5th Mystery of the Luminous Mysteries, and we pray for the Grace of Thanksgiving to God.  And it came to me that on earth there is no other Thanksgiving To God that is greater than this.

At our Mass, our Eucharistic Celebration, we offer on the altar the body and blood of Christ on the altar, the Crucifix is there, we offer in Thanksgiving this sacrifice of God, His Only Begotten Son, and Jesus offering himself up for us,  And God gives us His Son, the Body and Blood of Christ, to us, to consume, that we may be conformed to his Son.

All of our Thanksgivings for all the Lord does for us are important, we should live lives of Thanksgiving. But the Greatest Thanksgiving of all is the Mass, the Eucharistic Celebration, where we offer on the altar, the Priest being Christ himself, the Holy Sacrifice of His Body and Blood, and God returns his Son to us under the appearance of bread and wine, that we become one with Christ in this Sacrifice of Thanksgiving which is the Mass.

Thank you Lord for this beautiful understanding of the Holy Eucharist.

continued May16, 2023

What has come to me today is: The Greatest Gift of Thanksgiving to God...The Holy Eucharist.

We should run to the Eucharist, run to Mass, if you can't, then go online.

This is the Greatest Gift of Thanksgiving we can offer to God.

It is so great that we should continually offer Thanksgiving to God for everything, every thought, every gift, for all comes from above.

Thank you Lord should be our daily word to Him.

Amen.

I am touched to tears with this new understanding.

Thank you Lord for this gift.

[43] METHOD FOR MAKING THE GENERAL EXAMEN

It contains in it five points.

First Point. The first point is to give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits received.

Second Point.  The second, to ask grace to know our sins and cast them out.

Third Point.  The third, to ask account of our soul from the hour that we rose up to the present examen, hour by hour, or period by period; and first as to thoughts, and then as to words, and then as to acts, in the same order as was mentioned in the particular examen.

Fourth Point. The fourth, to ask pardon of God our Lord for the faults.

Fifth Point.  The fifth, to purpose amendment with His grace.

Our Father.

Source:

DRAW ME INTO YOUR FRIENDSHIP

A Literal Translation and A Contemporary Reading of The Spiritual Exercises

David L. Fleming, S.J. 

The Institute of Jesuit Sources, Saint Louis 1996