This project sets out seven weeks of prayers to recognize and counter personal and systemic racial injustice. Each week focuses on several Stations of the Cross and offers a reflection, commentary and resources to enrich the Examen.
On seven Monday evenings at 7:00 p.m. (February 22, March 1, March 8, March 15, March 22, March 29, April 5) all participants will gather by Zoom to pray and share together our experience. The Zoom link for each session will be available in the Bulletin.
The Examen is a prayer based in the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. It is a simple, prayerful process that invites one to look at the events of their lives, shining a light on those aspects that are to be celebrated and joyful, and those that may need further attention, and those that may need amends or a change of heart. The prayer ends always with hope—that as we move forward in life, we give thanks for the awareness gained from the prayer and look forward, trusting that God is with us as we continue on our journey.
Thank God for the insights you have gained from this Examen; know that God is with you as you resolve to move forward with your action.
Week 1 – Awareness of Self. Focus on the presence of God in my life, especially the place of social justice in my life.
First Station: Jesus is Condemned to Death
Second Station: Jesus Carries His Cross
Week 2 – Complicity. Falling on My Cross. How do I recognize racism or implicit and unconscious bias in my heart? How have I been complicit in reinforcing racism or implicit and unconscious bias?
Third Station: Jesus Falls the First Time
Fourth Station: Jesus Meets His Mother
Week 3 – Accompaniment in Sorrow. In the context of my faith, how do I experience the oppression – the suffering – of others? In the context of my faith, how do I experience systemic racial oppression?
Fifth Station: Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus to Carry His Cross
Sixth Station: Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus
Week 4 – A Powerless Community in Shock and Grief. What is my experience of stunned communal powerlessness, communal shock and grief? And in the context of systemic racial injustice. What are the racial dynamics in my life? What does it mean to be anti-racist? What does it mean to be/have an ally for racial justice?
Seventh Station: Jesus Falls the Second Time
Eighth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
Ninth Station: Jesus Falls the Third Time
Week 5 – Walking Through the Valley of Darkness. Experience the night of total desolation, aloneness, humiliation. The racial injustice of lynching, incarceration.
Tenth Station: Jesus’ Clothes are Taken Away
Eleventh Station: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
Twelfth Station: Jesus Dies on the Cross
Week 6 – My Road to Pentecost. Experience what it is to pick up the pieces – for me individually and as part of a community. What are my deepest longings for racial justice?
Thirteenth Station: Jesus’ Body is Take Down From the Cross
Fourteenth Station: Jesus’ Body is Laid in the Tomb
Week 7 – Resurrection. Walking With the Wind. On the road to Emmaus, what is Jesus calling me to do?
First Station: Jesus is Condemned to Death
Second Station: Jesus Carries His Cross
Pray the Examen
Third Station: Jesus Falls the First Time
“Christ Jesus was in the form of God; yet he laid no claim to equality with God, but made himself nothing, assuming the form of a slave. Bearing the human likeness, sharing the human lot, he humbled himself, and was obedient. Even to the point of death, death on the cross.” Phil.
Pray the Examen
Fifth Station: Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus to Carry His Cross
Sixth Station: Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus
Seventh Station: Jesus Falls the Second Time
Eighth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
Ninth Station: Jesus Falls the Third Time
Commentary
Jerusalem just before the beginning of Passover is teeming with people. As they rushed to make preparations for the feast, women and men are drawn to the sounds and tension of a growing group of people. Armed soldiers clanging their swords and armor, loud jeering intermingled with keening cries of sorrow, Jesus moaning with each fall. Simon of Cyrene straining under the cross he dragged for Jesus. A spectacle of death that froze people in their steps whether they were close by or in the distance.
Reflect on how institutional, system racism and the oppression of communal powerlessness affects black and brown people? What have I done in the face of that oppression? How have I participated in the spectacle that is racism in America? What am I prepared to do going forward?
Reflect on how oppressed communities find the strength to stand up amidst their lamentation and carry on? How have I experienced the sorrows of the Daughters of Jerusalem?
For whom have I wept who has succumbed to the sin of racism? Why? Why Should we weep for those individuals and the causes they represent?
What are the racial dynamics in my life? What does it mean to be anti-racist? What does it mean to be/have an ally for racial justice?
Resources
Tenth Station: Jesus is Stripped of His Garments
Eleventh Station: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
Twelfth Station: Jesus Dies on the Cross
Thirteenth Station: Jesus’ Body is Taken Down From the Cross
Fourteenth Station: Jesus’ Body is Laid in the Tomb
Thirteenth Station: Jesus’ Body is Taken Down From the Cross
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“That same day two of them were on their way to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem., talking together about all that had happened. As they talked and argued, Jesus himself came up and walked with them; but something prevented them from recognizing him. He asked them, “What is it you are debating as you walk?” They stood still, their faces full of sadness, and one, called Clopas, answered, “Are you the only person staying in Jerusalem not to have heard the news of what happened there in the last few days?” “What news?”, he said. “About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied, “who, by deeds and words of power, proved himself a prophet in the sight of God and the whole people; and how our chief priests and rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and crucified him. But we had been hoping he was to be the liberator of Israel. What is more, this is the third day since it happened, and now some women of our company have astounded us: they went early to the tomb, but failed to find his body, and returned with a story that they had seen a vision of angels who told them he was alive. Then some of our people went to the tomb and things just as the women had said; but him they did not see.
How dull you are!” he answered. “How slow to believe all that the prophets said! Was not the Messiah bound to suffer in this way before entering upon his glory?” Then starting from Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them the whole of scripture the things that referred to himself.
By this time they had reached the village to which they were going, and he made as if continuing his journey. But they pressed him: “Stay with us, for evening approaches, and the day is almost over. So he went in to stay with them. And when he had sat down with them at table, he took bread and said the blessing; he broke the bread and offered it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; but he vanished from their sight. They said to one another, “Were not our hearts on fire as he talked with us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?”
Without a moment’s delay they set out and returned to Jerusalem. There they found that the eleven and the rest of the company had assembled, and were saying, “It is true: the Lord has risen; he has appeared to Simon. Then they described that had happened on their journey and told how he had made himself known to them in the breading of the bread.” Luke 24: 13- 35 .
Reflection