Inner Peace in Divine Love Retreat
Week Four – Love in Service
Ex 18 – Every gift flows like water
Preparation
After slowly reading the prayer texts, I stand for a few minutes before the Lord of the spring rains. I allow Jesus, the living water, to wash through me.
Opening Prayer
I ask the Spirit for an interior knowledge of all the good I have received.
Desire
I ponder with deep affection how God is loving me.
Prayer
I see how all that is good and every gift descends from on high.
As waters flow from a fountain, I see justice, goodness, love, mercy, etc., flowing into all creation and me.
Conversation
I respond to God as a friend, beautiful creature, or lover.
With the Communion of Saints in support, I express my gratitude.
I consider what, in all reason and justice, I ought to offer and give God. I conclude saying, as one making a gift with heartfelt love:
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding, and my entire will,
all that I have and possess.
You gave it all to me; to you I return it.
All is yours; dispose of it entirely according to your will.
Give me only the grace to love you,
for that is enough for me.
Prayer Texts
Let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn;
he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.
(Hos 6:3)
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink”. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
(Jn 4:7, 9–15)
On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
(Jn 7:37–39)
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
(1 Cor 13:4–7)
Time: 35 Minutes
Preparation: 10 minutes. Opening Prayer: 1 minute. Desire: 1 minute. Prayer: 20 minutes. Conversation: 3 minutes. Listening Book: 10 minutes.
For greater guidance, depth and practical use of this exercise and retreat, source the First Spiritual Exercises here.
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