Years ago, Austen Ivereigh, executive editor of The Tablet made a 30-day Spiritual Exercises retreat when he was a Jesuit novice. He spent most of the time in a state of desolation. “I grasped the paradox at the core of this desolation: you can only know God through simplicity of heart, yet I could not, [...]
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If you don’t know Viktor Frankl’s work, read his book Man’s Search for Meaning–one of the most important books of the 20th century. Below is a short video of a presentation he gave at a 1972 conference in Toronto, in which he offers a basic thesis about psychotherapy that applies more broadly to life: we [...]
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Susan Stabile, an Ignatian spiritual director and law professor, distinguishes between the desire that causes pain and the desire that motivates us: Attachment (what might be called disordered desire) always feels tumultuous, unsettling and lacking in peace. Deep desire has an element of peace in it and it pulls us generally forward rather than roiling [...]
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I’m all for finding God in the silence. For me this means taking lots of naps, especially during the winter with its protracted darkness and chill. Never mind that I also nap during the summer to escape sunlight that has become entirely too fierce. Truth to tell, I often feel called to nap throughout the [...]
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Where is Christ being born today? It certainly isn’t where we expect, if history is any guide. Where, today, is that stable at the obscure roadside inn in the little backwoods burgh? Perhaps it is in Malawi, where Ambition’s imagination shapes clay like the hands of God. Perhaps it is in your town. He is [...]
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Advent is the season when we remind ourselves of what we are waiting for, keeping at bay the voices which tell us that our waiting is fruitless. In one of the texts from the Office of Readings for Advent, St. Ephrem writes: Keep watch; when the body is asleep nature takes control of us, and [...]
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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 aware that there is much more in the world than we can possibly [...]
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At every moment of my life I have two options. If I allow it, God will form my heart more and more in the image of his Son. I will act in faith to let God lead me into an unknown place, a place that I cannot know and cannot guarantee I will fully understand [...]
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Several months ago two Jesuits and I published a book about an Ignatian approach to making decisions–What’s Your Decision? How to Make Choices with Confidence and Clarity. I was delighted to read a blog post yesterday by a woman who found it helpful. Michele Campbell’s post includes a fine five-point summary of the decision-making process: [...]
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