How to Pray the Examen: Five Steps for the End of the Day

The Examen is a short prayer for the end of the day in which you look back over the last twenty-four hours with God. It has five steps: give thanks, ask for light, review the day, ask pardon for what went wrong, and look toward tomorrow. It takes about ten minutes and comes from Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises.

Most of us end the day by scrolling through it or worrying over it. The Examen offers a third way. You go back through the hours slowly, in company, looking first for what was given. People who pray it for a few weeks often say the same thing: the days stop running together.

What is the Examen prayer?

The Examen is a daily review of your day made as a prayer. The word is simply Latin for an examination or a weighing. It is sometimes called the examination of consciousness, the daily Examen, or the evening review.

Two things set it apart from ordinary reflection. You are not alone in it; every step is addressed to God. And it begins with gratitude, before anything else is looked at. That order matters. You examine the day as someone who has received a great deal, and only then ask where you fell short.

Where does the Examen come from?

The practice of reviewing the day before God is ancient, but the form most people use comes from Ignatius of Loyola, the sixteenth-century Spanish founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. He set down the basic framework of his Spiritual Exercises at Manresa in 1522 to 1524 and refined it over the following years. Pope Paul III approved the book in 1548.

The Exercises are a manual for a retreat of about thirty days, arranged in four "weeks." Near the beginning, Ignatius gives a "method for making the General Examen," and says it contains five points:

1. Give thanks to God for the benefits received.
2. Ask grace to know your sins and cast them out.
3. Ask an account of your soul from the hour of rising to the present, hour by hour or period by period: first thoughts, then words, then acts.
4. Ask pardon of God for the faults.
5. Purpose amendment with his grace. Then an Our Father.

Ignatius treated this prayer as something to keep after the retreat was over. He made it one of the few fixed rules of prayer for Jesuits, who were to make the Examen twice a day, at noon and at the end of the day. The same book also describes a "particular examen," a way of tracking one specific fault or habit through the day. The general Examen described here is the wider and more common practice.

What are the five steps of the Examen?

Modern guides tend to soften Ignatius's vocabulary while keeping his sequence. One widely used version, from the Jesuit-sponsored site IgnatianSpirituality.com, puts the five steps this way. The table sets it beside the original.

The two lists do not line up row by row. The modern wording moves gratitude into the review and gives more room to noticing feelings, which Ignatius valued elsewhere in the Exercises as signs of where a person is being drawn. Both begin with God and both end facing tomorrow.

The guide below stays close to Ignatius's own order: thanks, light, review, pardon, tomorrow.

How do you pray the Examen in 10 minutes?

Choose a regular moment near the end of the day. After the dishes, before you plug in your phone, or once you are sitting on the edge of the bed all work. Sit, rather than lie down, if you tend to fall asleep.

1. Give thanks (2 minutes)

Begin by remembering that you are in God's presence. Then name three or four things from today you are grateful for. Be specific and small: the coffee, a text from a friend, the fact that a hard conversation went better than you feared. Thank God for each.

2. Ask for light (1 minute)

You are about to look at your own day, and none of us sees ourselves clearly. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you the day as God sees it. The Psalms already hold the words for this request.

²³Search me, God, and know my heart.
Try me, and know my thoughts. ²⁴See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the everlasting way.

Notice who does the searching in that prayer. You are not asked to dig. You are asking to be shown.

3. Review the day (4 minutes)

Walk through the day from waking until now. Ignatius suggests going hour by hour or period by period; it can help to move from place to place instead, from kitchen to commute to desk to dinner table. Do not try to recall everything. Let scenes come.

As they come, notice two things. Where did you feel alive, grateful, patient, drawn toward God or toward other people? And where did you feel closed, irritable, anxious or evasive? You are not grading the day. You are noticing where you said yes and where you said no.

4. Face what fell short (2 minutes)

Something in the review will probably sting: a sharp word, a task avoided, a person overlooked. Choose one or two such moments and bring them to God plainly. Say you are sorry. Ask for forgiveness, and receive it. If you owe someone an apology, decide when you will make it.

This step is honest but brief. It takes its tone from the first step, and it is the confession of someone who has already been counting gifts.

5. Look toward tomorrow (1 minute)

Turn to the day ahead. What is on the calendar? What are you dreading or looking forward to? Ask for the specific help you will need, and make one small resolution if one suggests itself. Scripture gives a reason for hope here that does not depend on how today went.

²²It is because of Yahweh’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed,
because his mercies don’t fail. ²³They are new every morning.
Great is your faithfulness.

Close with the Our Father, as Ignatius does.

Is the Examen an exercise in guilt?

It can turn into one if the fourth step swallows the other four. If you notice that happening, give more time to thanksgiving and limit yourself to a single regret each night. The prayer is meant to end in trust.

For some people, a nightly review reliably feeds anxious rumination or keeps them awake. If that is your experience, shorten the prayer to thanks and tomorrow, move it to an earlier hour, and talk with a pastor or spiritual director. If the distress persists, a counselor or doctor can help. A prayer practice is not medical advice and does not replace professional care.

How can families and children pray the Examen?

Children take to the Examen quickly because it is concrete. It works at the dinner table or at bedtime, and it needs no special words.

• Ages three to seven: two questions. What was the best part of today? Was there a part that was hard or that you are sorry about? Then one sentence of thanks and one of sorry, said together.
• Ages eight to twelve: add a third question. What do you want to ask God for tomorrow? Let the child lead the closing prayer some nights.
• Teenagers: offer the five steps in full and leave room for silence. Sharing can be optional. A teenager who only listens is still praying.

Parents go first and answer truthfully. A child who hears an adult say "I was impatient with you this morning, and I am sorry" learns the fourth step better than any explanation could teach it.

How does the Examen work with a journal?

Writing keeps the prayer from blurring into half-sleep, and over months it becomes a record you can read. Three lines a night are enough:

1. One thing I am thankful for.
2. One moment I want to bring to God, good or bad.
3. One thing I ask for tomorrow.

Every few weeks, read back. Patterns show up that no single evening reveals: the same person in the gratitude line, the same hour of the day in the second line. Those patterns are often where the practice becomes most useful, and they are good material to bring to a pastor, confessor or spiritual director.

Emmaus includes an evening examen alongside its prayer journal, so the review and the written line can live in the same place. What you write there stays on your device.

Is the Examen only for Catholics?

The Examen is a Catholic prayer by origin, and Jesuits remain its chief teachers. If you come from another tradition, you will still find little in it that is unfamiliar. Giving thanks, asking God to search the heart, confessing and hoping are the common inheritance of the Psalms.

Other churches have their own forms of the same evening instinct. The Anglican office of Compline, in the Book of Common Prayer, places a confession of sin near its opening. Orthodox evening prayers ask forgiveness for the sins committed that day in thought, word and deed. Many Protestants keep an evening quiet time of thanksgiving and confession without giving it a name. If one of these is already yours, the Examen can sit inside it as a simple structure for the looking-back part.

It also pairs well with other practices. Some people pray the Examen at night and read Scripture slowly in the morning; Lectio Divina is one way to do that. Others follow the Examen with a Psalm before sleep; see Psalms for sleep and night prayer.

What if I miss a night?

Then you pick it up the next night. The Examen covers the time since you last prayed it, however long that was, and it starts where it always starts: with thanks. Missing a day is simply one more thing to bring to the fourth step, lightly, before turning to tomorrow.