Contemplative Foundation for Young Men

Week 2 Attention

Prayer & the Examen

Reviewing your day with God instead of sleepwalking through it.

The One Big Question

What does it mean to mourn rather than numb out? What will you find when you look back over your day?

Take turns reading a section aloud, then pause for its question. You can answer about an example; you don’t have to share a personal story.

IThe Scripture

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Lamentations 3:19–26 (NIV)

Historical Background

Lamentations grew out of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army in 587/586 BC. A long siege brought hunger and death; the Temple was burned, and many survivors were carried into exile. Jewish and Christian tradition attributes the book to the prophet Jeremiah, who lived through this crisis, but the poems never name their author. Many scholars understand them as the work of one or more unnamed poets. These five poems gave the devastated people of Judah words for communal mourning; they are prayers and laments, rather than a letter to a named recipient. Chapter 3 speaks through a suffering individual whose grief belongs within that shared disaster. In verses 19–26, he remembers his misery and then deliberately recalls God’s mercy. The passage invites honest grief, renewed trust, and patient hope while the losses are still real. Background on the book.

Christians have heard these poems in several ways through the centuries. In the medieval Western church, Lamentations was chanted during Tenebrae, the Holy Week services of darkness and mourning: Jerusalem’s sorrow became a way to contemplate Christ’s suffering and the Church’s grief. The history of Tenebrae. During the Reformation, John Calvin’s commentary on 3:22 emphasized that God’s mercy itself has not run out, giving afflicted believers grounds for hope. Read Calvin’s interpretation. The book still gives Christians words for mourning today: the Church of England includes Lamentations in its Holy Week readings. Holy Week readings. These Christian uses grow from a text first voiced in Judah’s catastrophe. For our Examen, its movement suggests a practice: name what hurt, remember where mercy met you, and bring both to God. Hope can begin before grief ends.

Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Pause & talk

Imagine your friends leave you out of something and it bothers you all day. What could you say to God about it when you look back over your day?

IIThe Opposite Passion

Akēdia

Acedia

The Noonday Demon — restlessness of the whole soul

Spiritual numbness and listlessness — a frantic escape from the reality of the present moment.

Acedia is the desert word for that restless, two-o’clock feeling — bored, can’t sit still, can’t focus, want to be anywhere but here — so you reach for the phone, the snack, the game, anything. The monks called it the noonday demon, because it hits hardest in the flat middle of the day, and the flat middle of any commitment. It is the enemy of every practice in this course, because it whispers, ‘this is pointless, go do something else.’

‘Blessed are those who mourn’ is the strange opposite. Instead of escaping what you feel, you stay present to it — even the sadness — and find that you get comforted. The Examen is the trained opposite of acedia: it makes you stop and actually look at your day instead of numbing out of it.

Pause & talk

When you get that restless ‘I need to be doing something else’ feeling, what do you usually reach for?

IIIFrom American History

One moment when this week’s verse met a real life on this soil.

September 6–14, 1901 · William McKinley

President William McKinley and his wife, Ida, already knew deep grief: both of their daughters had died as young children. Ida also lived with epilepsy, a condition that caused seizures. McKinley helped care for her and supported her participation in public life. At formal dinners, she sat beside him so he could help if she had a seizure. Read about Ida’s life.

Before her marriage, Ida had worked in her father’s bank, taking charge when he was away, and had traveled through Europe. Illness later limited her public activity, but she continued to discuss politics with William and offer him advice. She supported women’s voting rights and made crocheted slippers for charitable auctions. Their life together included both profound loss and ordinary, continuing acts of care. The National Park Service tells her story.

On September 6, 1901, McKinley was greeting visitors at the Pan-American Exposition, a large fair in Buffalo, New York. An assassin shot him twice at close range. One bullet grazed his chest; the other entered his abdomen. Doctors operated, and for several days they thought he would recover. But the tissue around the wound began to die, a complication called gangrene. He died early on September 14, eight days after the shooting. The National Library of Medicine explains what happened.

The treatment shows the limits of medicine at the time. Surgeons operated in the exposition’s small hospital and repaired his stomach, but could not find the bullet. An aide arranged for Thomas Edison to send an X-ray machine; it arrived but was never used. The doctors’ optimistic reports had encouraged his family and the public. His decline brought a terrible reversal of those hopes. The autopsy found gangrene along the bullet’s path. Read the account of his treatment.

Did he quote Luke as he was dying? Accounts report words of trust in God, but their exact wording varies. One newspaper account, crediting his doctor, Matthew Mann, reports: ‘It is God’s way. His will be done, not ours.’ The familiar version is ‘It is God’s way. His will, not ours, be done.’ These words echo Jesus’ prayer in Luke 22:42; they do not establish that McKinley was deliberately quoting that verse. Read the 1901 newspaper report.

The same newspaper describes Ida holding William’s hand during their last conscious time together, and friends and officials leaving the house in tears after his death. Public mourning followed: crowds gathered along the funeral train’s route, and church bells rang as it passed. Trust in God and visible sorrow appear side by side in this account. Read the contemporary account of the mourning.

How does this connect to prayer? Lamentations gives words to grief while reaching for God’s mercy. McKinley’s reported prayer offers a related example of entrusting an uncertain outcome to God; we have no evidence here that he was drawing on Lamentations itself. The words below come from Jesus’ prayer before his arrest, when he asks to be spared suffering and yields to the Father. In the Examen, you can practice that honesty in an ordinary hard moment: pause, name what happened and how it felt, ask for help, and place the outcome in God’s hands. Then consider one act of care you can offer tomorrow. Prayer makes room for both sorrow and a next step.

“Nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.”Luke 22:42

Pause & talk

McKinley’s words were about trusting God with what he couldn’t control. Before a big test or game, what’s one thing a guy could put in God’s hands?

IVFrom the Fathers

Voices from the desert, the cloister, and the long line of men who walked this road before you.

“Prayer is the laying aside of thoughts.”

Evagrius Ponticus · On Prayer 345–399

“If you are a theologian, you will pray truly; and if you pray truly, you are a theologian.”

Evagrius Ponticus · On Prayer 345–399

“The time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; in the noise and clutter of my kitchen… I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees.”

Brother Lawrence · The Practice of the Presence of God c. 1614–1691

“The end of every monk and the perfection of his heart is unceasing and uninterrupted perseverance in prayer.”

John Cassian · Conferences c. 360–435

“In all that happens, my one desire and my one joy should be to know: ‘Here is the thing that God has willed for me. In this His love is found.’”

Thomas Merton · New Seeds of Contemplation 1915–1968

Pause & talk

Brother Lawrence prayed while working in the kitchen. What’s one ordinary part of your day where you could talk to God?

VThe Practice & The Skill

Prayer  •  the skill of the prayer of examen

Most of us run a whole day on autopilot. Something goes badly at nine a.m. — we don’t deal with it, we just carry it — and it bleeds into the next thing, and the next. The Examen is the off-switch for autopilot: an ancient daily prayer that walks back through your day with God.

Remember four steps: PRAY — Pause, Reflect, Ask, Yield.

Pause: Put distractions aside, take a slow breath, and remember that God is with you. ‘God, I’m here.’

Reflect: Walk back through your day. Notice one good moment and thank God for it. Notice one hard moment and name what you felt.

Ask: Talk to God about what you noticed. Ask for help, forgiveness, or courage for a next step. ‘Help me make things right with my friend.’

Yield: Place tomorrow and what you cannot control in God’s hands. Yield means letting God lead you. ‘God, I trust you. Help me follow you tomorrow.’

Why ‘mourn’? Because the Examen makes you honest about the hard parts too — the day that flopped, the way you blew it. Jesus doesn’t bless the man who pretends he’s fine; he blesses the one who lets himself feel it, and gets comforted. You can’t be comforted for a wound you won’t admit.

VIFor Your Life Today

A word for you, the one who leads — how this lands in a thirteen-year-old's real week.

Guys get handed about three acceptable emotions: fine, fired-up, and angry. Everything else gets stuffed. The Examen gives them words for what’s underneath — I was actually anxious about that test; I was actually hurt when they left me out. Naming it is the first step to it not running the day from the shadows.

The hardest steps for teens are specific gratitude (push them past ‘thanks for today’ to one real moment) and honest reflection. Acedia, in their world, looks like the bottomless scroll and quitting on anything hard. The Examen is the small daily rep that trains the opposite.

The Practice of the Week
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Week 2 · Student Handout

Prayer & the Examen

Prayer · the skill of the prayer of examen

What does it mean to mourn rather than numb out? What will you find when you look back over your day?

Scripture

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. — Lamentations 3:19–26 (NIV)

Historical Background

Traditionally attributed to Jeremiah, Lamentations is anonymous poetry for Judah’s grieving community after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple in 587/586 BC. In 3:19–26, a suffering voice recalls God’s mercy amid real loss, inviting honest lament and patient hope.

Medieval Christians chanted Lamentations in Holy Week to contemplate Christ’s suffering. Calvin stressed God’s unexhausted mercy; Christians still read the book during Holy Week. In the Examen, we too can bring both pain and remembered mercy to God.

Talk: Imagine your friends leave you out of something and it bothers you all day. What could you say to God about it when you look back over your day?

The Opposite Passion · Acedia Akēdia

Spiritual numbness and listlessness — a frantic escape from the reality of the present moment.

Acedia is the desert word for that restless, two-o’clock feeling — bored, can’t sit still, want to be anywhere but here — so you reach for the phone. The monks called it the noonday demon: ‘this is pointless, go do something else.’ Mourning is its exact opposite: stay present to what you feel, and be comforted.

Talk: When you get that restless ‘I need to be doing something else’ feeling, what do you usually reach for?

From American History · September 6–14, 1901 · William McKinley

William and Ida McKinley had lost both their young daughters, and he helped care for Ida through her seizures. On September 6, 1901, an assassin shot the president at a fair in Buffalo. Doctors hoped he would recover, but he died eight days later. Reports of his dying words express trust in God: ‘It is God’s way. His will, not ours, be done.’

“Nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” — Luke 22:42

Why this verse? Accounts differ in their exact wording. McKinley’s reported words echo Jesus’ trust in Luke 22:42, but do not establish that he was quoting Luke. In prayer, we too can name what hurts and ask God for help.

Talk: McKinley’s words were about trusting God with what he couldn’t control. Before a big test or game, what’s one thing a guy could put in God’s hands?

From the Fathers

“Prayer is the laying aside of thoughts.”
— Evagrius Ponticus · On Prayer (345–399)

“The time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; in the noise and clutter of my kitchen… I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees.”
— Brother Lawrence · The Practice of the Presence of God (c. 1614–1691)

“In all that happens, my one desire and my one joy should be to know: ‘Here is the thing that God has willed for me. In this His love is found.’”
— Thomas Merton · New Seeds of Contemplation (1915–1968)

Talk: Brother Lawrence prayed while working in the kitchen. What’s one ordinary part of your day where you could talk to God?

The Practice of the Week · The Daily Examen: PRAY

At day’s end, walk back through your day with God: Pause, Reflect, Ask, Yield. Take ten minutes, or start smaller.

  1. PAUSE — Set distractions aside. Breathe slowly: ‘God, I’m here.’
  2. REFLECT — Remember one good moment and thank God. Notice one hard moment and name the feeling.
  3. ASK — Ask God for help, forgiveness, or courage for your next step.
  4. YIELD — Let God lead. Place tomorrow and what you can’t control in his hands: ‘God, I trust you.’

Each day: Short on time? Take one breath, remember one moment, ask for help, and say, ‘God, I trust you.’

May you stop running from your own day long enough to find God already in it.

Week 2 of X · Ora et Labora