The Knitting Theologian

Yes, I know it’s already 2010 and I ought to have done this post a couple of days ago. I say better late than never. Technically I’m more than a month behind, anyway, since the church year begins with the season of Advent. I was even on retreat at the beginning of December, which offered a great opportunity, but other things happened on that retreat and somehow I never got to a review of spiritual commitments.

I have daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly spiritual commitments. Here’s what they are and how I did.

Daily

1. Liturgy of the Hours: review the readings from Office of Readings and say Morning Prayer. Not 100%, but probably darn close. I doubt I missed more than 10 days.
2. Lectionary: review the readings for Mass, and take some time to reflect on the Gospel. Again, not 100%. I’m very good about reviewing the readings, less so about reflecting on the Gospel, because I don’t always read slowly enough to allow God to get my attention.
3. Mental prayer: 20 minutes. Not 100% but very very close. Mental prayer has become so necessary for me I can feel the difference when I don’t do it.
4. Rosary: maybe about 60%. I do pretty well saying the Rosary during the week but less so on the weekends because I haven’t found a good time for it.
5. Nightly Examination of Conscience: maybe 10% if I’m being generous. I just haven’t been doing it, and I know the reasons I don’t are just excuses.

Weekly

1. Liturgy of the Hours: say Evening Prayer at least once a week. I’d say about 50%. It’s easy to do when I meet with the prayer group, less easy to do when I’m on my own. I added this commitment in Lent and have kept it going. As the year went on I was up to about 3 times a week pretty regularly.
2. Daily Mass: I’d say about 40% here. I cannot attend Daily Mass every single day because of work commitments, but I tried to make a point of going when I could. It got easier after my dog died.
3. Holy Hour: ooh. Not very well here at all. I had trouble finding a time I could work into my schedule. I maybe made about a dozen Holy Hours, but recent experiences have shown me the tremendous healing power possible.

Monthly

1. Confession: maybe 75% here, because this particular sacrament is becoming  more and more important.

Yearly

1. Retreat: check. And it was a good one.
2. Review of spiritual commitments: well, I’m doing it now.

Next time I’ll post on the fruits of my reflection on this list of commitments and what I plan to add/change/delete for 2010.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 5:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.