• In his book The Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola suggests a number of ways of moving into a time of prayer. One of them is quite simple, but is also likely to sound strange the first time you come across it. “Consider,” he suggests, “how it is that God our Lord looks at you.” What’s your first reaction to hearing this invitation?
• There are a number of places in the gospels where we are told that Jesus looked hard at people, as if to weigh them up. But his look was always compassionate, never harshly judgemental. Maybe that helps you to see what Ignatius has in mind. So try it. Take a moment or two, now, to consider how it is that God looks at you.
• Jesus is God with a human face. It is literally possible, therefore, to imagine the look on Christ’s face as he catches sight of you, and then fixes his attention upon you. How would you describe that look to a friend who asked you about it?
• Let Jesus continue to gaze at you like that as you listen to the words Zechariah spoke after the birth of his son, John, who prepared the way for Jesus.

• Zechariah’s prophecy starts by looking backwards, to Abraham and to all that God has done since his day to fulfil the promises God has made to the people. During this retreat you have looked at some of those people whom God used to achieve his plan. As the retreat nears its end, how are you left feeling about the ways in which God works through the people he chooses?
• God’s ways have not changed. Even today he is working though other people to shape your life. He works through you, too, to shape the lives of others. Where are you most conscious of this shaping taking place at the moment?

• Before we end this retreat, it is good to look back and notice what stays with you, and what it would be useful to carry forward in the next few weeks and months. Start, then, by picking three words that you could use to describe this year’s Advent retreat, as you have experienced it.
• Is there one of the prayer sessions, or one of the scripture readings or images, that particularly stays in your mind right now? If so, what is it? It’s worth taking a few moments to re-live that prayer, insofar as you can, and notice what goes on in your mind and heart just now as you recall that experience.
• Perhaps you can notice some change in yourself, or in your prayer, over the weeks since the retreat began. Maybe you had been asking God for some particular gift, and you have an idea that the gift has been given, in whole or in part. It is possible that God has given you much more than you were able to ask for, or even imagine, when we set out on this journey together. Take some time to thank God for all that God has done with you over this period.

Ephesians 3:14-21

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.