You have completed the Third Week, covering the following:
- Sorrow and compassion for Jesus’s suffering
- Spiritual practice of empathizing with others
- Coming to terms with one’s own suffering and death
- Greater willingness to suffer hardship for sake of advancing God’s good work.
You also practiced:
- Imaginative contemplation
-Bethany to Jerusalem Contemplation
Before moving on to the Fourth Week, take the next several days to contemplate your experience of the Third Week. Look back over your journal and/or other sign posts. Ask God to bring to the surface what is most important for your spiritual process. As you reflect, keep prayer at the center (not just an intellectual or meditative review). The goal is always connection with God.
- What emotions and desires arise as you reflect on your experience of the Third Week?
- What stands out to you the most? (e.g. Recurring patterns? Specific images or Scriptures?)
- What is something you have discovered about Jesus that you didn’t notice before? How does it affect you?
- What are practical ways you can imitate Jesus’s self-sacrifice? Where do you find it difficult to do so?
- Where are you at in your ability to empathize with others, including those who are difficult to love or that you don’t know well?
- How has your prayer been going? Are you talking openly with God during your retreat time about what you are experiencing? What kind of things is the Holy Spirit impressing on you?
Before we are truly free to do whatever God might invite us to do, we need to be willing to die with Christ. As we empathize with the suffering of Jesus and others, we begin to see that our endurance of hardship is not for the sake of an abstract “martyr complex.” Rather, we sacrifice ourselves to foster goodness and well-being for others. We cease to care only for our own comfort and desires, and widen our hearts to include the needs of those around us. Do you feel the Third Week has accomplished its purpose? Talk with your Spiritual Director about where you are at.