By: James F. McElhone, CSC
This step-by-step guide on how to make a Particular Examen is rooted in the five wounds of Jesus and includes prayers, sample format, and predominant faults to avoid in prayer, work, study, and recreation. As most of us struggle with the same assortment of sins, these targeted reflections will assist you in conquering your faults.
This reprint of the 1952 classic contains prayers for each topic from the traditional Roman Missal that help you foster the proper spirit of mind and unction of heart for fruitful meditation.
Here is a valuable resource for any Catholic — priest, consecrated, or lay — wishing to develop a plan for spiritual holiness. It provides self-inventory questions for each vice to help determine angles of attack and addresses misconceptions about each vice. You will learn ways to defeat your vices, and thus serve God more wholeheartedly, and will find rules for practicing fraternal charity by contemplating the cardinal and theological virtues.
If your root sin is a type of pride, this book will show you how to cultivate the corresponding virtue of humility by meditating on the lives of Jesus and Mary. By the same token, if your predominant fault is avarice, the biblical references provided will bolster your resolve and engender thoughts of poverty in spirit instead. Penetrating reflections are offered to overcome lust with purity, anger with meekness, gluttony with temperance, envy with common sense, and sloth with zeal.
You will also acquire tips on how to:
- Read the Bible more efficaciously to reflect on Christ and grow in union with God
- Thank God for His goodness and the many graces He showers upon you and others daily
- Ask the Holy Ghost for self-knowledge, growth in virtue, and the seven gifts
- Determine your dominant sin and assess your progress daily through the Particular Examen
- Practice the presence of God in imitation of Our Lady in every circumstance
- Develop personal and practical resolutions and a firm purpose of amendment
Hidden saints embolden the Church in times of persecution. Take up your cross. Defend your faith for God’s glory and the salvation of souls.
