This week is so fulfilling and yet a meaningful one.

Fulfilling because I was able to practice spiritual

meditation, Spiritual Inventory and Spiritual reading. Meaningful because the fruit of this all revealed to
me intimately, that is I am loved by God.

Spiritual meditation: God speaks in Silence

For me it is not new to me and at least I practice this twice a week even before this course
because prior to this I had formations and spiritual direction. In my previous entry, I shared how struggle
am I to humble myself in praying. I always fast pace everything without emerging the silence. I
remember our priest told us that, “in silence, God speaks.” but young as I am, I rush things and just
being loud (mentally) in my prayer. Right now, I established good rapport and basic understanding of
what to do and what not to do.

On this particular spiritual meditation (Last Tuesday and Wednesday) I was just in my lotus
position, in front of me is my simple altar with candle, a soft-volume instrumental music and lights off (it
happened during vespers). Therefore, the external disposition aided my internal disposition to center
myself in silence. In the simplebooklet about pausing, silence, awareness and meditation, I was
refreshed about doing meditation or centering technique, and I remember Fr. Thomas Green in his
thoughts about prayer, that this centering technique is not an end itself; it is just a helping hand to
dispose myself to prayer mode. I remembered also that through the readings, that prayer is also a grace,
and God Himself initiates this grace or invitation to pray and the whole centering techniques flow in me
the sacred silence but ultimately this penetrating verbum (word) of love inside my soul. I was able to at
least half an hour of total silence and awareness.

Spiritual Reading: My context

My spiritual reading was taken from the Spiritual Exercise of St. Ignatius, it is all about humility.
on humility, Ignitian humility categorize into three, which are, humility for the sake of salvation, humility
for a detached life, humility for love of the poor. As I read this, I was able to recognize immediately
where I am now. I told myself that all of this, I wasn’t able to place myself wholeheartedly in the
description of humility and the readings keeps me on hope that I may somehow experience all of this
completely. The spiritual reading somehow gave me the content on where my spiritual meditation leads
me. Though based on my experience, sometimes God will lead you to other direction depending on the
circumstances I may in.

Spiritual Inventory: Scanning everything in my life

After the silencing and prayer for the Holy Spirit, I was immediately go through the spiritual
readings and meditated the word humility. My spiritual director gave me the spiritual readings (three
kinds of humility) and asked me to meditate the word humility in relation to my spiritual life. As I go
depth to the word humility, it was revealed to me my life in a nutshell. All the struggles and sacrifices I
had to go through was nothing to compare to the par excellence love of Christ in the cross. I was deeply
moved by this revelation that from incarnation to crucifixion and finally to resurrection all boils down to
the life of humility.
 With this, the fruit of meditation also recognized my own suffering. I was able to go through my
jobs I went and all the hardship, my inequities, my failures and even my success. I was able to recognize
my culpability of sinning, my humanity and a complete nothing. I was able to pin point my current
feelings towards my family, especially to my wife and my inner longing for more spiritual exercise. I was
drawn to the reflection that, I could not be humble in my own effort, that this authentic humility is a gift
from God. Asking for this grace is humbling enough and asking for it with confidence and love. It was like
a scan machine, scanning everything in my life.

Darryl Louie P. Labial