Something to think about | Discernment presupposes an ability to reflect on the ordinary events of one’s life, a habit of personal prayer, self-knowledge, knowledge of one’s deepest desires and openness to God’s direction and guidance. Discernment is a prayerful “pondering” or “mulling over” the choices a person wishes to consider. In his discernment, the [...]
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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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This week we are republishing some of the most popular posts from dot Magis. Today’s jolt arrived mid-afternoon when I hauled out a (paper!) calendar to jot something down. The square for September 1st remained unadorned by red heart and sparkling star stickers. Nowhere on my calendar had I written “anniversary!!!” in big purple letters [...]
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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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No kid stuff to plaster all over my refrigerator with fruit magnets, just stuff that has captured my attention. Mostly images, snippets of scripture, prayers. Some stuff, like the laminated Sacred Heart of Jesus card from a funeral back in 1996 has been posted on at least three different refrigerators since then. The chart with [...]
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Lisa Kelly says that consolation is sometimes painful: On the surface, we fun-seeking humans will do lots of things that are not of God to avoid feeling bad, to avoid the aches of the heart. We shop. We eat. We yell. We procrastinate. We deny the reality before us. But while each of those may [...]
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How can we distinguish God’s voice from the other “voices” that buzz in our heads? Becky Eldredge has some thoughts. A sample: St. Ignatius teaches us to be aware of our emotions: to be aware of the moments where we give and receive love AND to be aware of the moments where we do not [...]
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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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Fr. Adolfo Nicolás, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, spoke to Belgian Jesuits in September 2010 about a “globalization of superficiality,” a result of a surfeit of information (Click here if you can’t see the video.) I am mindful of Eliot’s lines from “Choruses from the rock”: Where is the wisdom we have lost [...]
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