Ep 200 - The Debrief Your Soul Has Been Waiting For: The Daily Examen

James Caldwell: This is the Manly Catholic, the podcast that calls you out of the shadows and into the fight. Here we forge men into warriors for Christ, husbands, fathers and leaders who refuse to kneel to the modern world's lies. No more passivity, no more excuses, no more lukewarm faith. This is your battle cry, your call to arms. The time for weakness is over. It's time to fight. Welcome to the Manly Catholic. Let's get to work. Hello all welcome back to another episode of the Manly Catholic. This is James your host and today gentlemen, we're going to the briefing room. Now here is something that maybe most of you have never heard about or didn't know about. As one of the most elite military units in the world. The debrief is not optional. After every mission Navy SEALs sit down and tear apart their last mission. What went right? What went wrong? Where the gaps were? Where the enemy got through? where a man maybe had frozen or hesitated or made a call that cost the team. It doesn't matter if the mission was a success, you debrief every single time. In SEAL culture, skipping the debrief isn't laziness, but a liability because a team that doesn't examine its performance is a team that will repeat its mistakes. And in that world, repeated mistakes can get someone killed. Now I want to ask you something. When was the last time that you did a debrief on your soul? I mean a real intentional structured review of your interior life where you won, where you've lost, where the enemy got through and what you're going to do differently tomorrow. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, let us search and examine our ways and return to the Lord. This is one verse that was written by a man sitting in the ruins of Jerusalem. He writes in Lamentations and it contains the entire logic of what we're going to talk about today. The church has had a concrete method for doing exactly this for nearly 500 years. Sagan and Maceius of Loyola called it the Examen or the Daily Examen, a daily prayer of consciousness, not just conscience, and is one of the most underused weapons in the Catholic man's arsenal. But before we dive into that PowerPoint of the debrief, let us begin with a St. Michael prayer. Start in the of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And to thou, prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God cast in hell, Satan, and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. In the the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Before I teach you about the examen, I need to tell you who invented it because as you guys know, context matters. Because the man who gave us this tool was not a monk who grew up in a cloister. He was not someone who came to God easily or gently or from a place of security. Ignatius of Loyola was a soldier, a Basque nobleman, vain, ambitious, obsessed with military glory and the kind of honor that gets carved into stone, a legacy, if you will, especially about the world standards. By his own account and his autobiography, he spent his early years chasing women, dueling and dreaming of battlefield glory. He was in the language of our show, the kind of man who was fully engaged in the wrong war. In 1521 at the Battle of Pamplona, a single cannonball severely damaged both of his legs. He was bed bound for months as they healed. This was a miracle in and of itself as normally back then, this could easily have led to an infection or an amputation or have even cost him his life. And while he was laying there recovering, leg badly set, rebroken, reset again, months of agony. He had nothing to do but read. In fact, going back to his pursuit of glory and his vainness, if you will, there was a story I was looking up that he he wanted his leg reset because he was worried of how it would look in his nobleman attire, especially the tight fitting legs and wraps and things like that. He was worried how it would look. I don't know if that's true, but that was a funny story I came across. So only books that he had to read were A Life of Christ and A Collection of Lives of the Saints. And he read them and something happened. Not immediately, of course, but all good things happen slowly, right? In the long silence of convalescence, Ignatius began to notice something. When he imagined his old dreams of military glory, he felt a short-lived excitement that left him flat and empty, as I'm sure many of us have experienced as well. When he imagined following Christ, he felt a different kind of movement, a consolation that lingered, that observation, that interior movement of his soul became the seed for everything. The spiritual exercises, the society of Jesus and the examine. Here's what I want you to catch. Ignatius didn't develop the examine from a position of spiritual comfort. He developed it from a hospital bed in pain, stripped of everything he thought made him into a man. He was forced to go inward because the outward had been taken from him. And what he found inward ended up changing the world. The examine was born from a wounded soldier learning to pay attention, learning to surrender everything over to God. And that is exactly what it asks of us as well. The Catechism states in paragraph 1779, deep within his conscious, man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself, but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. His conscious is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths. The reason elite military units debrief after every single mission is not for punishment or to blame someone. The debrief is built on a specific assumption that there's always something to learn, always a gap between how you performed and how you could perform and that the gap will never close unless you examine it honestly. Jocko Willink, who I'm sure some of you have heard of, he's a former Navy SEAL commander and author of an awesome book I recommend to everyone called Extreme Ownership. says something along the lines of the debrief is not optional. A team that doesn't examine its performance honestly will repeat its mistakes. And in that world, repeated mistakes can get people killed. The room after the mission is where warriors can get better. St. Ignatius would have understood that totally and completely because exactly what the examine is designed to do. It is the debrief of the soul, so to speak. And like the seals, it only works if you are ruthlessly honest. Before I walk you through the exam and though I need to clear up some misconceptions that you might be even running through your head. Because I know how men think and I know what some of you are already assuming. First, the exam is not a guilt session is not 15 minutes of telling yourself what a terrible person you are that how many times you have failed and that you'll never get better. Men who try to pray the exam in that way usually quit within a week because self flagellation without hope is just torturing yourself. And that is not what Ignatius designed it for. He was explicit. The examine begins not with accusation, but with awareness of God's presence and from that place with gratitude. Second, and this is a distinction worth getting right. The examine is not the same thing as examination of conscience that you do before confession. They are related and they share the same DNA, but they serve different purposes and they are not interchangeable. Ignatius himself distinguished between these two. He said the exam is more precisely an examination of consciousness, a daily prayer of awareness in which you express gratitude to God, reflect on where he was moving in your day and ask for light going forward. The pre-confession examination of conscience is a focused moral inventory, a deliberate search for sin. Think of it this way. The pre-confession examine is the full vehicle inspection before you go on a long road trip. While the daily examine is checking your mirrors every few miles while you drive. Both are essential. Both keep you safe. Both will help you grow, but neither replaces the other. And here's a bonus. Here's a kicker. The man who prays the examine daily will find that his confessions become far more specific, far more honest and far more fruitful. The daily debrief feeds into the sacrament. Third, the examine is not passive. And I want to push back hard on the idea that interior prayer is somehow less masculine than exterior action. See, I'll spend enormous amounts of time in mental rehearsal. an interior simulation of scenarios and what sports psychologists call visualization. That interior discipline is considered essential to their performance. The examine is a mental and spiritual discipline of the same order. It is rigorous. It requires honesty. Most men are not accustomed to and is anything but soft. Fourth, the daily examine is not optional for a man who is serious about the interior war. Last up. So we talked about Acadia, the spiritual indifference that sets in when man stops paying attention. The examine is one of the primary antidotes. You cannot drift into Akkadia if you are daily examining where you are with God. The light of honest prayer kills the slow fade. Now get into the actual exam in itself. It has five movements. I'm going to walk you through all five conceptually, not as a formula to memorize, but just as a framework to help you understand. At the end, I'm going to give you one challenge to do all five tonight or today, wherever you are in 15 minutes with no phone in your hand. Think of these five movements the way a seal thinks about a mission debrief. You don't just dump everything at once. You move through it in order and there is a reason for the structure. So take that seriously. One note before we begin those, while Ignatius considered the examines so essential that he required his Jesuits to pray it twice in one day, once at noon and once before bed. As we've talked about in the past to noon, the noon day demon. think that was a reason that he had his Jesuit order do it twice and one at noon, especially he told the early society of Jesus that if they found themselves unable to do any form of prayer, any other form of prayer, excuse me. They should never let a day pass without the examine. That is how seriously he took it. We're starting with once a day, but I want you to know this is not a minor devotional saying this just treat it as pretty much a non negotiable. Coffee and prayer, it's the perfect blend. Mystic Monk Coffee isn't just another cup of coffee. It's handcrafted by the Carmelite monks of Wyoming, roasted with care and infused with prayer. Whether you're starting your morning or fueling your day, Mystic Monk Coffee has you covered. It offers rich, bold flavors that are as divine as their mission. By choosing Mystic Monk, you're not just enjoying exceptional coffee, but you're supporting a community of monks dedicated to their work, to prayer, and to the church. is coffee with a cause. So what are you waiting for? Visit mysticmonkcoffee.com and experience the brew that's fueling faith and flavor. Movement one, presence. Place yourself before God, before anything else, before gratitude, before review, before contrition. Ignatius says, become aware of God's presence. Consciously place yourself before Him. This sounds simple, but it is not. Most men move through their entire day without once deliberately acknowledging that they are standing in front of the living God. I know I I'm very guilty of that. The examen brings begins by stopping you dead in your tracks. You're not alone in this room. You're before the God who made you who knows you and who loves you. The God whose voice as a catechism teaches echoes in the deepest core of every man's conscience. Now this is if you have a Eucharistic adoration, this would be a great place to actually place yourself before the Lord in adoration if you're able to do so. Psalm 139 puts it in the starkest possible terms. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? The answer of course is nowhere. We cannot escape God. The exam and simply asks you to stop running from that presence and to simply sit in that. In military terms, you are reporting for duty, right? You are acknowledging command. You are not a freelancer operating without accountability. You're a soldier in an army with a commanding officer. Movement one is your salute to that commanding officer. Movement to gratitude, giving thanks for your day. From that place of awareness, Ignatius moves immediately to gratitude, not vague generic gratitude, but specific. Because specificity is key. What happened today was good. Where did grace land? Where were you carried by something beyond your own strength? In this debrief, you don't just catalog failures, you identify what worked as well. What worked? why it worked and how to repeat it. Gratitude in the exam is the same motion and it serves the same strategic purpose. A man who names God's goodness in his day is a man who is training himself to see God in real time, not just in retrospect. This is not a warmup exercise. It is a reorientation towards God. You're reminding your soul who is actually in command and that the commanding officer has been present and active in your day, whether you noticed it or not. There's one thing if you keep harping yourself on I failed at this. did this wrong. I keep doing this. Why? Why? Instead of looking at, today was actually a good day. And I noticed in the morning I got up and I did my prayers right away. I got my cup of coffee and then I was much more patient with my family versus I woke up today and I got my phone instead and I was scrolling and then I was more impatient. Sometimes too our body too will respond more positively to the good things that happened then to the negative things. Right? So now movement three, so much from presence. getting the presence of God to gratitude. And now we're shifting into review and walk. Now you're walking through your day, honestly. And this is the heart of the debrief, right? The heart of the exam. You walk back through your day, not frantically, not rushing, not with guilt already loaded, like I know what's coming, but with the same methodical attention that a SEAL team brings to reviewing their mission footage. Where were you consoled? Where were you disturbed? Where did you feel God's presence and where did you pull away from him? Where did you act with courage in your marriage with your kids and work? And where did you retreat? Where did the enemy find a gap? Where do you, Katie, whisper? Why bother? What are you doing? And that you actually listened and fell into it. Because again, going back to the misconceptions, this is not an exercise in shame, It is an exercise in being honest with yourself. Because the man who cannot look at his own day clearly is a man who cannot grow. The seal who pretends that the mission went fine when it didn't will get people killed. The Catholic man who pretends his spiritual life is fine when it isn't loses ground and he doesn't know how he's losing because you're either moving closer to God or you're drifting away from him. And it's important to hear that you are specific. Ignatius was not interested in vague spiritual impressions. He wanted men to name the actual moments, the actual conversation where they lost patience, the actual temptation that they entertained, the actual grace that they received and said thank you for. Specificity is what turns review into transformation. Write it down if you have to. It will be hard at first, of course, but it's worth it. Just like every new skill that you learn. It's going to be painful at first. It might take you longer than 20, then 15 minutes. because you're clumsy, you're clunking through it. But continue to be patient and practice with it and fruit will be born. Now movement four, contrition. Own what needs to be owned. Here's where the examine differs from the seal debrief in the most important way. In a military debrief, you own your mistakes, identify causes, and you move to solutions. That's good as far as it goes, but the examine goes further because now you can bring those failures to God. You don't just acknowledge them. but you offer them to him. This is contrition. Contrition is the act of a warrior who knows he is accountable to a commanding officer who loves him. You say, failed here. I chose poorly here. I did not bring everything I had into this moment, and I am sorry. And then, this is the crucial point. You receive the mercy that has already been offered. Pope Francis emphasized that the antidote to spiritual drift or to moving away from God is not crushing self-criticism, but the patience of faith, leaning on Jesus here and now in the actual moment of failure. This is what Movement Four does. It keeps you honest without destroying you, without shaming you. And here's also where the examine and the confession become inseparable because movement four is not absolution for that. You need the sacrament of course of confession, but as the daily practice of the examine that makes a man ready to go to confession and mean it. The main who has been examining his day honestly for a week shows up to confessional with specifics, not generalities. And I know again, I am guilty of this as well. He knows exactly where he fell and when he knows exactly what grace he refused. And that confession is a different. experience entirely because you're brutally honest with your confessor. And finally, movement five is resolution. What is the next right step? The debrief doesn't just end with a review, it ends with a plan. How can we actually improve? This is the errors that we identified. Now how can we build upon it? Sales don't just walk out of a debrief without adjustments, right? They change tactics. Communication protocols get updated. Man who was weak in a particular area gets additional training. The debrief produces action. Movement five is your action, man. One concrete resolution for tomorrow. Not a massive overhaul of your life because that can be overwhelming and you're not going to do it anyways. Just one small thing. Where did the enemy find a gap today? Close it. What grace did you almost miss? Position yourself to receive it. What did your wife or kids need that you didn't give? Name it and plan to show up differently. This is a self inventory of what you need to do to get better. Nothing to to keep in mind is are you taking care of the basics of your needs as well? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you hydrating? Are you eating the right food? Are you staying up binge watching Netflix or the NHL playoffs? Guilty is charged. Ignatius recommended ending the daily exam in within our father, not as a ritual, but as a reminder that you ARI-SAN. The mission continues and tomorrow you go again. So if this tool is so powerful guys, if it's been transforming soldiers, priests, fathers and warriors for five centuries, why don't more Catholic men do it? Why don't we utilize this incredible skill that we have at our fingertips? And I think there are three honest reasons, right? The first is just time, right? Men are busy, 15 minutes at the end of the day, it feels like 15 minutes that you just don't have, but as everything else, we know that we have 15 minutes, right? It doesn't even have to be 15 minutes, guys. Just do five minutes of this. But no matter how much time you spend, you know that you have the time, right? You're spending it somewhere on your phone, watching a show, scrolling, doom scrolling on YouTube with the reels. The examine is a choice to spend that 15 minutes differently. It's not a time problem guys. Let's be honest about it. It's a priority problem. And the second is discomfort. Looking at yourself honestly is not pleasant. The CLD brief is famously uncomfortable. Mistakes get named in room full of peers. There is no hiding. The examine does the same thing, but the privacy of your own soul and the presence of a God who already knows everything you're about to say anyways. Guys, we do not surprise God. He made us. So why are we so afraid to be honest and vulnerable with him? Because the discomfort is real, right? It's also the point of a warrior who can't face his own failures is a warrior who will just keep making them over and over. Are you tired of confessing the same thing over and over and over again? And the third reason I think that most men won't admit is that we're afraid of what we're gonna find. It's the same thing with spending time in silence. The data examined done honestly reveals the gap between what who we think we are and who we actually are. And that gap can be humbling. It can be painful and it can feel like we are failing. But here's a reframe I want to offer you gentlemen. The seal who discovers in the debrief that he missed something, made a wrong call or let the team down. That seal is not a failure. He is a professional doing the hard work of becoming better. And the Catholic man who examines his conscience every single day and find sin. Drifting away or indifference is not a failure. He is a warrior doing the hard work of becoming a saint. The daily exam doesn't reveal your failures to condemn you. It reveals them so you can hand them to God and to close the gap. We listen to this lie constantly men that if we are vulnerable with each other, with God, there was somehow failing as a man. It's just simply not true. How many men when they were really vulnerable with you? that you actually had greater admiration for them. You had greater respect for them. You're like, wow, I had no idea you were struggling with that. Thank you for telling me. And the people who brush you off or it's like, how could you do that? How could you say that? Or I'm nothing like you. Those are the people you don't want in your life anyways. If someone's just gonna judge you for making a mistake. You don't want them in your life anyways. Because man, the greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and that we miss it, but that is too low and we reach it. So here's your challenge for the week. And I'm going to be specific because vague challenges produce vague results. Whenever you listen to this, I want you to do it tonight. If you listen to more, you maybe do it at noon. When the house is quiet or like I said, if you can go to adoration, please do that. I want you to try 15 minutes. Of doing this daily examine, move through all five movements. Can start with presence, close your eyes, still yourself and consciously place yourself before God. Then move into gratitude. Two or three minutes, one minute, just name something specific from today that you're grateful for. Then review your day, walk slowly through it, noticing where God is present, maybe where you pulled away. Step by step by step, then contrition, name what needs to be named, receive the mercy that God is already offering, and then let that go. And then finally resolution, one small thing. one concrete thing that you can do differently tomorrow and then close within our father. That's it. 15 minutes, 10, five, whatever. Do one minute of each. Five movements, one minute each. And if you want to get a bonus challenge, do it for seven days in a row. seven days is long enough for you to feel the shift, feel a movement in your soul. Because men who practice the daily exam for a week consistently report the same thing. They just start to notice God in their day in real time, not just in retrospect. For having trouble becoming aware of God's presence, we can see as we reflect, we can then start to see God's movement in our day as the day is happening, not just at the end of the day. Because our confessions become more specific, Our marriages become more intentional and our prayer gets less mechanical. We can feel the presence of God moving within us. The debrief can change the operator. Seven days start today. Men, the daily examine is not a new idea. It is 500 years old. But I Catholic men are hungry for practices that actually work that have been tested that have been produced that have produced Saints and soldiers and fathers and martyrs saying nations of Loyola started on a hospital bed with two shattered legs in two books He ended up finding one of most influential religious orders in church history. He didn't do it by accident guys. He did it by paying attention daily Humbly, he paid attention and you of course can do the same Not because you're saying nations, because you serve the same God and he has a plan for you. At this episode landed for you share with one man this week, text it dropping a group chat. The man who needs this exists in your life and you already know who he is. If you feel so called, please support the show at buy me a coffee link is in the show notes and consider leaving a review if you haven't already. It helps more men find the show. Thank you all so much for tuning in and until next time. Go out there and be a saint. Brothers, thank you for listening, but do not let this end here. this episode stirred something inside of you, do not keep it to yourself. Share it with a brother who needs to hear it, a man who is tired, a man who's drifting, a man who's under attack and does not even know it. This podcast exists because the battle is real and souls are at stake. If this work has helped you, please support the channel so we can keep fighting. Your support will help ignite the mission to keep us going. We need your help, brothers. I know you will come through for us. Pray for us because we need it as well. The enemy does not rest and neither can we. Now go and live this. Be a saint, not tomorrow, but today. Choose the hard thing, reject sin, get back up. Go to confession, pray your rosary, love your family, and carry your cross without complaining.