Inner Peace in Divine Love Retreat
Week Three – Love at work
Ex 13 – I see how God dwells in me
Preparation
After slowly reading the prayer texts, I stand for a few minutes and imagine the Spirit living in me, creating a home and sacred place, making me holy. I allow God’s unconditional love 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 God dwells in me, giving me being, life, and sensation,
consciousness, and understanding.
I see how the divine majesty makes a temple of me,
how I have been created in God’s likeness and image.
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
Do you not know that you are God’s temple
and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
(1 Cor 3:16–17)
It was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
(Ps 139:13–15)
The Lord fashioned human beings from the earth,
to consign them back to it.
He gave them so many days and so much time,
he gave them authority over everything on earth.
He clothed them in strength, like himself,
and made them in his own image.
He made them a tongue, eyes and ears,
and gave them a heart to think with.
He filled them with knowledge and intelligence,
and showed them what was good and what evil.
He put his own light in their hearts
to show them the magnificence of his works,
so that they would praise his holy name
as they told of his magnificent works.
(Sir 17:1–3, 5–10, NJB)
We are the temple of the living God;
as God said, “I will live in them and walk among them,
and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
(2 Cor 6:16)
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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