The Ignatian examen
The examen is a five-point review of the day that Ignatius of Loyola set out in the Spiritual Exercises: give thanks, ask for light, walk back through the hours, face what went wrong, and resolve what to do next. Jesuits have kept it daily for nearly five hundred years.
The prompts the Ignatian tradition worked from
This is an adaptation and the differences are not small. The examen is a PRAYER: its five points are addressed to God, and two of them - asking grace to know one's sins, and asking pardon for them - have no version here that would not be a hollow imitation, so they are left out rather than emptied. What remains keeps the shape of the other three: thanks, the walk back through the hours, the resolution. It is also traditionally kept at midday and again in the evening; Steps asks in the morning, so it looks back at yesterday. If you are Catholic or Ignatian, keep the real one - this is not a replacement for it.
- What are you grateful for from yesterday? The first point: give thanks for the benefits received. In the original this is thanks given to God.
- Walk back through yesterday. Where did it turn - for better or worse? The third point: to ask account of the day, hour by hour - first thoughts, then words, then acts.
- What will you do differently today? The fifth point: to purpose amendment. In the original, with grace.
What it actually is
The examen is a prayer. Ignatius of Loyola set it out in the Spiritual Exercises around 1548, as five points:
- Give thanks to God for the benefits received.
- Ask grace to know one’s sins and cast them out.
- Ask account of the day, hour by hour - first thoughts, then words, then acts.
- Ask pardon for the faults.
- Purpose amendment, with grace.
Jesuits have kept it daily for nearly five hundred years, traditionally twice: once around midday and once in the evening. It is probably the most continuously practised daily review in the Western world, and it predates every journaling app by four and a half centuries.
What we kept, and what we did not
Three of the five points survive here: the thanks, the walk back through the hours, the resolution. Two do not. Asking grace to know your sins, and asking pardon for them, are addressed to God, and there is no secular version of them that is not a hollow imitation. Leaving them out is more honest than emptying them.
So this is the examen’s shape, not the examen. If you are Ignatian, or Catholic, or simply want the thing itself, keep the real five points - they are linked above, in Ignatius’ own words.
The order matters
Gratitude comes first, and not by accident. The walk back through a day is a great deal easier to do honestly when it starts from what was good, and a great deal more corrosive when it does not. The tradition puts thanks at the front and resolution at the back, with the hard part in the middle where it is held on both sides.
Keep that order. It is the part most modern versions drop, and it is the part doing the work.
Use it on paper tonight — or, once you are on Steps, paste this page's link into your thread and Steps sets these prompts up for you.
People who want a structured look back rather than a blank page, and who like a review that starts with what was good before it gets to what was not. It carries well for anyone drawn to the shape of the tradition, whether or not they share its faith.
Two warnings. If you are practising the examen as prayer, use the real five points and not this - what is missing here is precisely the part that makes it prayer. And the walk back through the hours can turn into rumination for anyone inclined to it: the tradition pairs it with pardon and resolution for a reason, and without them a nightly audit of your own faults is a different and worse thing.
Ignatius sets out the five points in the General Examination of Conscience in the Spiritual Exercises, completed around 1548. It has been kept daily in Jesuit practice ever since, and is still taught that way by Jesuit institutions today.
What this template is built on
Curated by Tiago Martins · Last updated: · How we write these
