Spiritual Life
Spiritual Journaling
Spiritual practice · Common to several schools; Ignatian in method tradition
Keeping a brief written record of one's prayer — what was prayed with, what stirred, what was resisted — so that God's action can be recognized across weeks rather than judged in a single hour, and so that it can be brought to a director.
Instructions
Write after prayer, never during it, and write for two or three minutes only. Record four things: the date, the text or subject you prayed with, the grace you asked for, and what actually happened — including nothing, when nothing is what happened. Note any movement of consolation or desolation and what preceded it. Keep it plain and factual; this is a log, not literature, and it is not a diary of the day's events. Reread the last month before each meeting with your spiritual director, and mark the two or three entries worth discussing. Once a year, read the whole and look for patterns rather than incidents: what consistently draws you toward God, what consistently pulls away, which resolutions you keep making and never keeping. Keep it private, and feel free to destroy it — it is a tool, not an archive. Written under obedience to a confessor, the practice produced St Faustina Kowalska's Diary; St Ignatius of Loyola kept such a record for his own discernment and left part of it behind.
Background
The Catechism describes the humble vigilance of heart by which the movements of the soul are noticed and discerned. St Faustina wrote her Diary at the direction of her confessor; St John Paul II canonized her in 2000 and made her account of Divine Mercy widely known.
Practice kind
Other
Tradition
Common to several schools; Ignatian in method
Duration
About 5 minutes
Frequency
Daily, after prayer
Content subtype
other