Take five to ten minutes at a fixed hour, before you are too tired to be honest. 1. Place yourself in God's presence and ask the Holy Spirit for light — self-examination without grace becomes either flattery or despair. 2. Give thanks for the day's real gifts, naming them. 3. Walk through the day in order — morning, midday, evening — and ask where you loved and where you failed, in what you did and in what you left undone. Use a printed examination until the habit forms; the U.S. bishops publish several, keyed to the Ten Commandments and adapted for children, young adults and married persons. 4. Make an Act of Contrition, or the Confiteor. 5. Choose one concrete resolution for tomorrow — one situation, one person, one hour. Note any grave sin so that it is not forgotten before your next confession. Keep it brief and unsentimental: this is a nightly audit, not a rumination. It is the ascetical practice of self-examination, and it is related to but distinct from St Ignatius's Examen, which is prayed at midday and aims first at noticing God's action rather than at cataloguing faults.

Reconciliatio et Paenitentia sets self-examination within the Church's whole ministry of penance and conversion; the Catechism places the humble vigilance of the heart at the centre of the battle of prayer.

Examen

The common ascetical practice of the Latin Church

About 10 minutes

Nightly

examen