Ruth Workman, a spiritual director, describes how Ignatian prayer invigorated her prayer life: Next we were introduced to an Ignatian practice, a prayer of imagination. I was asked to read the passage where Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” I was then told to engage my senses. What did I see in [...]
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Here are some exercises to heighten your sense of gratitude. They were written by my friend Vinita Wright and published in her book Days of Deepening Friendship. Create a physical space in your life, in which you can focus on and enjoy creation. It could be a single potted plant or window box, a bird [...]
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Advent begins on Sunday. You might want to look at some of the very helpful material the team at Loyola Press has put together to help you and your family observe the season. An Advent Retreat is a printable guide through the Advent and Christmas seasons using Ignatian contemplation and scripture readings. You can follow [...]
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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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Rick Malloy, SJ, on what prayer is and is not: Prayer is not a competition, or a “goal” oriented activity. To pray is to already have “won.” Prayer is much more like making love, or hitting a baseball, or learning to play a musical instrument (sometimes loudly and badly!), then it is like getting a [...]
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This prayer by the Jesuit saint Robert Bellarmine puts a new spin on finding God on all things: What various powers lie hidden in plants! What strange powers are found in stones, especially magnetic stones and amber. What strength do we see in animals, such as lions, bears, bulls and elephants. How clever, although tiny, [...]
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Walter Ciszek, SJ, spent fifteen years in prison in the Soviet Union for doing clandestine missionary work. He describes his prayer: “Gradually too, I learned to purify my prayer and remove from it all the elements of self-seeking. I learned to pray for my interrogators, not so they would see things my way or come [...]
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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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This is a guest post by Daniel J. Harrington, SJ. Among dictionary definitions of imagination, two fit Ignatius very well. One says that imagination is the ability to form a mental image of something not present to the senses. In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius encourages exercitants to apply the senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch, etc.) [...]
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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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