LENTEN EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE | Fr. Ed Broom, OMV Oblates of the Virgin Mary

Following are some questions that will force us to look at our lives with sincerity and honesty and humility that will motivate us on the road to conversion from sin to love of God. Why not accept the challenge—- how are you in the practice of the following virtues?

1. MERCY? God is slow to anger and quick to mercy and forgiveness. Are you slow to anger and quick to mercy or quick to anger and
slow to mercy?

2. TEMPERANCE? Do you eat what you like or do you eat what is healthy for your body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit and tabernacle
of the living God? Do you eat to live or live to eat?

3. DILIGENCE? As soon as the alarm-clock rings do you bolt from the bed and start your morning offering or do you hit the “Snooze-button”
and take a few extra winks? The Founder of Opus Dei terms this moment the “Heroic moment!”

4. PURITY? Do you entertain bad thoughts or do they entertain you?

5. CHARITY? Are you looking to be served by others as your rule of life or are you on the outlook to serve others?

6. JOY? Do you rejoice at all times in the Lord Jesus and His Holy Spirit or always have reasons and manners to complain about the problems of life?

7. PATIENCE? Are you the epitome of patience or want things your time, your manner, your schedule? Is this your prayer? “Lord I beg you to give me patience and right now!!!

8. OBEDIENCE? Are you ready to obey God’s will through rightful authority, the Church, and circumstances or always on the defensive to
defend your “precious and inviolable rights”?

9. MORTIFICATION? Are you ready and willing to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow the Lord Jesus or are you always looking for the easy way out and the short-cut?

10. MEEKNESS? Do you try to imitate the Master who said that He was meek and humble of heart or are you brusque, cutting, demanding,
and sharp towards others?

11. FAITH? Are you a man or woman of faith ( the faith that could move the mountains) or a person whose faith totters, vacillates and
changes like the weather and wind?

12.TRUST? Do you trust the Lord as your rock and fortress or follow the voluble and sentimental path of your feelings and emotions?

13. CHARITY? Do you love God with all your heart, mind and soul or allow selfishness and egotism to dominate you and enslave you?

14.HOPE? Is your hope in God at all times and places or give into despair when confronted with the trials and setbacks of life?

15. FORTITUDE? Are the crosses and sufferings of life too much for your shoulders or do you willingly carry the cross with Jesus to
Calvary that ends in the glory of the Resurrection?

16. HEAVEN? Do you look constantly to the earth and worldly values or is your mind, heart and soul raised up to your eternal
destiny— Heaven!!!

17. HELPER? Are you ready to be of instant help to all—especially at home with the family—or always on the search and lookout for
others to help you?

18. PRAYER? Is prayer the very breath of your soul, the lifeblood of your inner being or is your prayer life mediocre and declining like the sinking sun?

19. KNOWLEDGE? Is your life a constant yearning to grow in the knowledge and love of God or has your knowledge of God become stagnant, insipid and dormant?

20. PRINCIPLE AND FOUNDATION AND PRIORITIES? Is God the Principle and Foundation of your existence? Is God always the first in your hierarchy of values and the first of your priorities?

21. FORGIVENESS? Have you forgiven in all times and places in your life or are there still remnants and residual traces of persons that you
still hold on to resentments and grudges? Maybe it is for this reason that your soul is not at peace.

22. HUNGER? Jesus said that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. What do you hunger for? The five P’s? Power? Pleasure? Prestige? Personal Vanity? Put me first? Or do you hunger for God? “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything else will be given beside!”

23. SUFFERING? Is suffering a source of complaint, anger and bitterness on your part? Or do you unite your suffering to the Passion of Jesus and allow suffering to sanctify you? In other words: “Does the cross make you better or bitter?”

24. JESUS? Is Jesus your beginning and end, alpha and omega, your Way, Truth, and Life, your Light, Sustenance, and meaning in
life? Or do you have false gods and idols on the altar of your life? Money? Pleasure? Porn? Drink? Drugs? Vanity? Prestige? Gambling? T.V./INTERNET and electronic media as sovereign to God Himself? Why not make a serious examination of conscience.

25.MARY? Is Mary absent from your life like that of a spiritual orphan? Or is Mary your life, your sweetness and your hope? Is Mary the Mother in whom you can entrust your whole life: your joys and sorrows, successes and failures, temptations even falls?

EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE. Why not spend some quality time in silence in front of the Most Blessed Sacrament where Jesus is truly and substantially present or in the quiet of your room and enter into the very depths of your heart and life and examine your life in the light of these provocative questions?

Despite our many failures God’s mercy always far transcends our guilt. As the Apostle to the gentiles Saint Paul highlights: “Where sin abounds the mercy of God abounds all the more.” Jesus pointed out to Saint Faustina constantly that His greatest attribute or virtue was that of His Divine
mercy. The greatest sinners of the entire world can be the greatest saints under one simple condition: TRUST, TRUST, and TRUST!!! They must trust in the Infinite Mercy of our all-loving God! JESUS I TRUST IN YOU!