Examen Helps SJA Students Come ‘Back to the Table’

Students at St. Joseph’s Academy in Baton Rouge, like their peers, are having to make major and daily decisions in the midst of a world packed with distractions. Where to go to college, whom to date, what career to pursue … 

Throughout the day, God sends students reminders that he is with them; some they notice, some they don’t, because they are just so busy.

To provide a space in their day to pause and see God’s work in everything, SJA began the school year by introducing a new tradition that honors the charism of its founders, the Sisters of St. Joseph, through an ancient form of prayer, the Examen.

Throughout the day, God sends students reminders that he is with them; some they notice, some they don’t, because they are just so busy.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, developed the Examen. Father Jean-Pierre Medaille, a Jesuit priest, shared this form of prayer with the Sisters of St. Joseph, whose charism is based on Ignatian spirituality. 

The sisters prayed the Examen in 1650 around a kitchen table in France to help guide them in keeping their daily actions rooted in an intimated encounter with the living Christ. 

The Examen goes back to the roots of the founding of the Sisters of St. Joseph congregation, according to Sister Chris Pologa CSJ, pastoral care minister at SJA. The sisters came into the original kitchen and quietly contemplated and listened to how God was speaking to them … “How can we go out and serve our dear neighbor?  What is the best way to do this?” Sister Chris said.

In keeping with that tradition and as an invitation to “come back to the table,” at the end of seventh period each day SJA students, faculty, staff and community pause to review the day with God, grow in faith and become aware of God’s sustaining presence in their lives. It involves a six-step process: quiet yourself, be grateful, notice God, notice where God felt absent, look ahead and then close with a prayer to St. Joseph.

Jan Breen, SJA president, said the sisters always drew the students’ attention to “look for where God is” throughout the day and to see where they saw him, or upon reflecting, missed him. The introduction of the Examen tradition is a way of formalizing it and putting some structure into it.

There has been a positive response among students, faculty and staff and the wider SJA community, said SJA principal Stacia Andricain. She said coaches are using it to build team spirit and teachers are incorporating it into their classroom lessons.

Becky Eldredge, spiritual director and SJA alumnae who helped with the strategic planning to introduce the Examen, explained the prayer prompts students to let the Holy Spirit guide them in their choices.

“We’re not inviting the girls or anybody in the community to an empty silence. It’s the silence of knowing we are not alone that guides us … that it all matters so that God can be with us in the moment, God can be with us discerning what our next step is,” Eldredge said.

SJA leadership talked with excitement about the purposeful intention of taking a time of quiet contemplation. They said it was a movement of the Holy Spirit among the SJA community.

Sister Chris said, “It (the Examen) can work for us today. It can work for our students in their lives and our goal is that all of us continue to do this outside of the school day in our lives. We hope the young ladies share this with their families, their friends and it continues to go out to the community.”