Books

The Lent-Easter Ignatian Prayer Adventure online retreat started yesterday, but you can join in any time.  Take a look. I thought I’d mention a couple of other Lenten resources.  A couple are out of the ordinary. Other6 Prays Lent is an online community that helps you find God in the ordinary course of daily life. [...]

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If you like to read novels about priests, Doris Donnelly of John Carroll University has six suggestions. My book group has read four of the six in recent years.  I’d say (and I think my fellow readers in the group  would agree) that three of them get an A+: The Power and the Glory, The [...]

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Some years ago I saw a manuscript in the British Library that is thought to have been written by Shakespeare himself in his own hand.  I was amazed and moved.  His art is unfathomable, yet here it was in ordinary ink on ordinary paper.  The experience was akin to viewing the relic of a saint. [...]

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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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Blogger Wayne Stratz found a book that helped his prayer life quite a bit.  It helped mine too. And youth minister Daniel Haugh, who works at the American Church in Paris, has a suggestion for the starting the new year.

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Anyone interested in the Spiritual Exercises should read Fr. Kevin O’Brien’s book The Ignatian Adventure. He talks about why he wrote the book in this short interview with Vinita Hampton Wright.  (Click here to watch it on YouTube.)

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Fr. Jim Martin stops by the Colbert Report to promote his new book, Between Heaven and Mirth. Laughter ensues.  (Click here if you can’t see the video.) The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

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The great river of Ignatian spirituality flows from The Spiritual Exercises, the guided conversion experience developed by St. Ignatius Loyola.  Most of the time Ignatius gave the Exercises as a silent retreat of about 30 days, and for centuries that was the way most spiritual directors offered them. That’s changed in recent years.  Most people [...]

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Jesuit jokes stand out in the realm of religious humor, so it’s no surprise that a new book on holy mirth is written by a Jesuit.  He’s Fr. Jim Martin, and his new book is Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life. There are lots [...]

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In America, Timothy O’Brien, SJ, writes about the poet and memoirist Mary Karr about the Spiritual Exercises and Ignatian spirituality: “If you live in New York City, where it’s 105 degrees, I have to walk out of this apartment wondering where I’m going to be of service.” I’ve written about Mary Karr before. Her memoir [...]

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