MORNING FACE TO FACE WITH GOD:
Begin with Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Penance # 82-90 Read each # from The Spiritual Exercises first, and then the reflection on it: (After pondering each bullet point, express your sentiments in a short prayer)
• #87. Why do Penance? St. Ignatius answers this question in this number. The principal reason for performing exterior penance is to secure three effects: "1. To make satisfaction for past sins; 2. To overcome oneself, that is, to make our sensual nature obey reason, and to bring all of our lower faculties into greater subjection to the higher; 3. To obtain some
grace or gift that one earnestly desires."
Father, I am distracted this morning in many different ways. Help me focus on the task at hand and help me be attentive to the lesson. Even in these distractions there is fruit to gain.
• #82. There is Interior and Exterior Penance. Interior Penance "consists in sorrow for ones sins and a firm purpose not to commit them or any others." Repentance would be another name for Interior Penance. Exterior Penance helps curb the disorders of our flesh, and there are three different ways of doing this.
#83. Our eating habits will reveal much about our spiritual dispositions. To remain in a state of consolation, we need to remain in control of our eating habits, not the other way around. St. Ignatius says that when we do away with what is superfluous, it is not penance, but temperance. We do penance when we deny ourselves something of what is suitable for us. Such penance is good provided "we do no harm to ourselves and do not cause any serious illness."
Father, I have never viewed this as a form of penance but as temperance yet I can see that if offered up it is penance for my past sins if treated as such. Have mercy upon me a sinner.
#84. Sleep is another area for exterior penance. It is not penance when we do away with the superfluous in what is pampering and soft. "But it is penance when in our manner of sleeping we take something away from what is suitable." We should make sure to have enough sleep. Cutting back on the amount of sleep is good if we had the habit of sleeping too much.
Help me view the lack of sleep as another way to offer up in repentance of my past sins and for the sufferings of Christ.
#85 & 86. The third kind of penance is "to inflict sensible pain on it (body)." This kind of penance is foreign to our modern sensibilities. St. Ignatius was a man of his times when bodily penance was deemed appropriate. You can do penance by instilling its spirit in you: causing yourself inconvenience and constant self-control of your sense faculties and judgment in your service of others.
Father, there are many ways this can be practiced especially with what You know what my spirit desires. The distractions can be a form of exterior penance upon myself as long as I do not respond to them.
What is God saying to you?
Dear Father help me put these methods of penance into practice. I know You are the keeper of my soul and the Giver of all good gifts. I place my trust in You and ask that my will be replaced with Yours. I ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
Mary, Our Lady of Victory, Pray for us.
St Joesph, Light of Patriarchs, Pray for us
Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world. 1 John 4:4b
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