The List is a weekly feature highlighting something remarkable, offbeat, or otherwise noteworthy from the world of the Jesuits and Ignatian spirituality.

Digital technology may not change the content of prayer, but it sure has expanded the forms of prayer. CDs, MP3 downloads, prayer websites, meditations in Flash–all these are a few clicks away.

For the past decade, Creighton University’s online ministries project has been in the forefront of new technology. Its website offers many choices: daily meditations, Lent and Advent prayers, retreats, and prayer resources of many kinds. The website gets millions of visitors from all over the world. It is deliberately unadorned by fancy graphics; many people, especially in poor countries, access it by slow dial-up connections. Andy Alexander, SJ and Maureen McCann Waldron maintain the site. They have written a good deal of the material.

Browse the site. Don’t miss resources for grieving, articles on practical spirituality, and the material on praying with the imagination.

You might want to check out some other Ignatian-inspired online prayer resources: Sacred Space, Pray-as-you-go, and the daily 3-Minute Retreat from Loyola Press.

The List is a weekly feature highlighting something remarkable, offbeat, or otherwise noteworthy from the world of the Jesuits and Ignatian spirituality.

The List this week features a website modestly titled Jesuit Stamps.  It’s an amazing place containing images of thousands of stamps depicting Jesuits, Jesuit institutions, and ”Jesuitica.”  The site is the work of Peter Fennessy, SJ, a theologian who is now a spiritual director at Manresa Retreat House in Bloomfied Hills, Michigan.

At right is a stamp issued by Taiwan in 1991 featuring a painting by Brother Guisipple Castiglione, SJ, court painter at the Imperial Palace in Beijing in the eighteenth century. That’s just a sample.  Fennessy has a whole section devoted to Jesuit Art and he has others on architecture, books, and Ignatian sites.  Jesuit Stamps is a great place to browse.

The List is a weekly feature highlighting something remarkable, offbeat, or otherwise noteworthy from the world of the Jesuits and Ignatian spirituality.

Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ has buried more than 140 of his young friends.  One of the toughest funerals was Chico’s.  After the funeral, he wrote, “I inform myself that I really must let this grief in.”

Too long, I had suspended my own profound sense of loss here, and dutifully placed it on my emotional back burner. I needed to be there for Chico’s family, his girlfriend, his homies. I gave myself permission then, to allow this pain into some cherished, readied place in my heart. Every homie’s death recalls all the previous ones and they all arrive at once in a rush. I’m caught off guard, as well, by the sudden realization that Chico’s burial is the eighth in a three week period.

That’s part of the ugly reality of working with members of gangs in Los Angeles, which Fr. Boyle has been doing for the past two decades.   About 500 people were murdered in gang violence in LA last year–a horrifying number, but it’s about half of the annual death toll 10 years ago.

When gang members look for a different way of life, many of them turn to Homeboy Industries, which Fr. Boyle founded in the late 80s.  Homeboy offers job training and placement and other free services.  But it’s best known for its small businesses, which employ former gang members who don’t have the skills or work habits necessary for regular jobs.  The businesses include a bakery, landscape service, a silkscreen shop, and variety store.  The newest venture is Homeboy Press, which publishes books and a literary magazine and teaches young people the skills of design and typesetting.

Young people from more than half of LA’s 1100 known gangs have sought a second chance at Homeboy Industries.  This video explains its work.

The List is a weekly feature highlighting something remarkable, offbeat, or otherwise noteworthy from the world of the Jesuits and Ignatian spirituality.

Gary Smith is a 72-year-old Jesuit who has spent the last several years in refugee camps in Africa. You might say that these are some of the worst places on earth, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But they are also places where grace abounds, not least through the ministry of Gary Smith.

Gary’s book They Come Back Singing is an account of his time working with Sudanese refugees in the Rhino Refugee camp in northern Uganda. The book is mesmerizing. It’s mainly a pastiche of letters and journal entries which have an overwhelming cumulative impact. At least it did for me. The book shows Gary Smith to be not just a good and generous man, but a mighty instrument of God.  His humility allows God to work through him.  The closest comparison I can think of is the dying young priest in Georges Bernanos’ novel Diary of a Country Priest, who becomes a channel of God’s grace presisely because he knows he can do nothing on his own.

An excerpt from the book in Company Magazine recently won an award from the Propagation of the Faith.

They Come Back Singing is Gary’s second book.  His first is Radical Compassion, a tender and inspiring account (with some hilarious moments) of his work among homeless people in Portland, Oregon.

Gary is now working with refugees from Zimbabwe in a camp in South Africa.  You can find out more about him at his website.

The List is a weekly feature highlighting something remarkable, offbeat, or otherwise noteworthy from the world of the Jesuits and Ignatian spirituality.

Pope John XXIII proposed the idea of Vatican Council II 50 years ago.  The debate about what happened there continues today.  Was the Council a break with the past?  Or did it reaffirm ancient traditions and doctrines?

Both, says Jesuit historian John W. O’Malley in his new book What Happened at Vatican II, though O’Malley emphasizes the way the Council opened the church to innovation and new thinking.  Reviews and commentators agree that the book is major contribution to discussion of the Council.  See these reviews in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Tablet.

O’Malley also wrote The First Jesuits,  my favorite book of Jesuit history.

The List is a weekly feature highlighting something remarkable, offbeat, or otherwise noteworthy from the world of Ignatian spirituality.

I’m not surprised to run into Jesuits with offbeat hobbies and unusual talents, but Ryan Duns, SJ, stands out.  He’s a master of the Irish tin whistle.  This is no mere hobby.   He plays professionally. Last semester he taught a course “An Introduction to the Irish Tin Whistle” in the Irish Studies department at Fordham, where he was studying philosophy.

Ryan has taken his art into cyberspace.  His 76 tin whistle videos on YouTube have been viewed more than a million times.   These include an entire course on learning to play the tin whistle.  Here is Lesson One.   Below, Ryan plays the classic “Wild Rover.”

The List is a weekly feature highlighting something remarkable, offbeat, or otherwise noteworthy from the world of Ignatian spirituality.

“A Franciscan, a Dominican, and a Jesuit walk into a bar . . . “

People tell jokes about rabbis, lawyers, blondes, Irishmen, Poles, and nuns among others.  And Jesuits.  Jesuit jokes are “niche humor.”  You don’t have to be Catholic to enjoy them, but it helps to know something about the Jesuit mystique. The jokes usually portray Jesuits as brilliant, worldly, ambitious,  cunning, and not very “spiritual.”

Get started with this video of a short Jesuit joke told by Fr. Jim Martin (a Jesuit, naturally).  Then enjoy some more Jesuit jokes.

The List is a weekly feature highlighting something remarkable, offbeat, or otherwise noteworthy from the world of Ignatian spirituality.

A friend sent me a link to this video last week.  I’ve seen lots of videos, but this one is something special.  It promotes a school.  Usually that’s a prescription for video tedium, but not this time.

The school is Washington Jesuit Academy, a tuition-free middle school offering quality education to disadvantaged boys in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades.  The schedule is intense.  The day begins at 7:30 a.m. and ends 12 hours later after dinner and supervised homework.  Only 13 percent of the students are reading at grade level when they arrive at WJA.  Three years later more than 90 percent do.  Virtually all graduates go on to demanding high school programs and eventually to college.

WJA exemplifies excellence in Jesuit secondary education.  It’s on The List, along with “Opening Doors to the Future,” which tells its story.