There have been rumblings about director Martin Scorsese making a film of Shusaku Endo’s magnificent historical novel Silence, about Japanese martyrs of the 17th century. Now it seems that the rumor may become a reality, according to Spero Forum. In a preface to Endo’s book, Scorsese writes perceptively about faith: How do you tell the [...]
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As I enter into an annual silent retreat with students, I am mindful of how great is the gift of silence. We think too much; we speak too much. We argue about concepts of God, we use limiting words for God. To slightly modify a famous phrase from Meister Eckhart: I pray that God would [...]
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This week we are republishing some of the most popular posts from dotMagis. The word “God” is a pronoun whose antecedent we do not know. When we are struck by beauty, when it lays claim to our attention and nearly takes our breath away, or when beholding the beautiful makes us for a moment deeply [...]
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Dean Brackley, the late Jesuit educator who spent many years teaching in El Salvador, wrote a beautiful meditation on what it feels like to fall in love because of the ministry of the poor. The text comes from a piece he wrote in 2000 for Salvanet, “A Publication of Christians for Peace in El Salvador,” [...]
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Dorothy Day’s 1934 Letter to an Agnostic is republished in this week’s America Magazine. In it, she writes about her own struggles with belief and unbelief, sounding this very Ignatian note: We are taught that our souls never exercise just as our body does, otherwise it will never be healthy and well, and if it [...]
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The last straw which led to Saint Augustine’s conversion to Christianity was the voice of a child, playing a game in which he chanted “take and read, take and read.” The voice led Augustine to pick up the Bible and read a passage from Romans which made him look upon himself and the world in [...]
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The French philosopher Pierre Hadot has studied the origins of spiritual exercises among Greek philosophers. There seems to be a straight line from Hellenistic philosophy and its influence on Church fathers like Ambrose and Augustine, to the early monastic tradition, to the medieval monks who influenced Ignatius of Loyola. (At one point Ignatius wanted to [...]
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In his forthcoming book Catholicism, Fr. Robert Barron makes the passing observation that Jesus was a layman: he was not trained in one of the formal rabbinical schools, or a priest or scribe of the tribe of Levi. Jesus was not, to use contemporary language, part of the religious “establishment.” Some would make him therefore [...]
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Please keep the pilgrims at World Youth Day (WYD) in your prayers. I am at the Jesuit-run Colegio Nuestra Señora del Recuerdo with hundreds of young people who went on the Magis Program in advance of WYD, and they are bursting with stories of how they have been transformed by experiences of pilgrimage, service, vigil, [...]
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I am in China with my family on a heritage tour, a pilgrimage of sorts. Those familiar with my book Longing to Love know that my daughters are Chinese, so we have returned here in order to see their orphanages and learn more about this land and these people. This has been holy time. I [...]
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