USA Today profiles Jim Martin, SJ. (”Everyone needs a medium. Mine is popular culture.”)
A suggestion for imaginative meditation.
William Barry, SJ, on having a friendship with God this Lent.
An exhibit about the Passion in Art at St. Louis University.
Lisa Kelly ponders what wasn’t said. (”It can be the most powerful message of all.”)
{ 0 comments }
Today is the traditional beginning of the Novena of Grace in honor of St. Francis Xavier, a nine-day devotion that has been popular for centuries. The first Novena of Grace dates back to 1634, when the intercession of St. Francis obtained the miraculous cure of another Jesuit. The novena ends on March 12, the date on which Francis was canonized in 1622.
The novena prayers can be found here on the Sacred Space website. Go here for background on the novena.
{ 0 comments }
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
As I gain some distance from my immersion in watching the Winter Olympics, I’ve been distilling in my mind the lasting impressions. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Olympics–it’s part Greek history, part supreme athletic comptetition, part incredible storytelling, part national/international pride. Underneath all the corporate sponsorships, the sometimes not-so-latent nationalism, the training programs that look more like crass professionalism than true amateurism–there are many human stories, and the best of these concerns the beautiful Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette.
The picture above was taken at the conclusion of her short program, the first of two skates that each competitor must undertake. Many of you already know why she looks the way she does: her mother died suddenly just days before her competition. Yet she skated beautifully, both in the short and long programs, earning a bronze medal.
Many today wonder whether happiness is possible in a world where there is suffering. I am compelled by Aristotle’s answer, that it’s a way of being at work virtuously toward an end or purpose. I saw a hint of that on the ice: Joannie pursued her goal even in the face of a terrible grief.
I think collectively our biggest mistake is to confuse happiness with pleasure. I’m certain that Joannie did not have a good time on the ice. I’m sure she was already nervous about executing her routine, terrified of the billions of people watching her, distraught that her mother could not be there, scared for her father’s having to deal with everything, and so on. It was not, I’m sure, a pleasurable experience. And yet I hazard to guess that she was happy, in Aristotle’s sense: she knew what she had to do; she persevered through the trauma, and she did it.
Ignatius writes that we are created to praise God. Joannie did that, and continues to do that, I think. I understand Ignatius to mean by “praising God” living with a beautiful purpose, and being willing to live it in the face of difficulty.
{ 1 comment }
I was inspired by this video by Greg Pierce, a Chicago businessman who is a gifted speaker and writer. Here is the YouTube link.
This video is part of an online Lenten retreat that is underway at the Days of Deepening Friendship website. Pierce has just published a new book The World as it Should Be: Living Authentically in the Here-and-Now Kingdom of God and he refers to it in the video. The retreat and book are both from Loyola Press. Both are excellent and are well worth your time.
{ 0 comments }
This Lent, says Fr. Jim Martin, SJ, take the time to “bother.” He points out that the people who angered Jesus were people like the two guys who ignored the wounded man in the parable of the Good Samaritan. These are people who didn’t bother to love. He goes on:
So this Lent, instead of fasting, why not bother? Instead of a negative Lent, how about a positive one? Instead of giving up chocolate for the umpteenth year in a row, or trying to kick your smoking habit, why not bother to call a friend who’s lonely? Instead of turning off your TV, or going to the gym, bother to donate money to the poor in Haiti. Instead of passing up potato chips, bother to visit a sick relative.
In the Gospels Jesus says, “It is mercy I desire, not sacrifice.” Here’s a novel idea for Lent: why not take Jesus at his word?
{ 2 comments }
Anthony Lusvardi, SJ, thinks that repetitive prayer is often just what we need:
While these “formal” prayers are often learned in the most mundane settings—before going to bed as children, in catechism class—once they become a part of our spiritual language they often become the prayers we fall back on in the extreme moments of our lives, moments of fear and anxiety. . . . There are times when we know we need to pray but we can’t think of what to say. The important thing in such cases may not be the words themselves but our need for God.
{ 1 comment }
The Spiritual Exercises are “a crash program for centering our hearts on God,” said Anthony de Mello, the famed Jesuit psychotherapist and spiritual director who died in 1987. De Mello said this in 1975 in a series of talks on the Exercises that he gave to small group of Jesuit spiritual directors. These talks were taped and laboriously transcribed–and then the transcripts were stored in an archive for 30 years. But they were unearthed, and they are the basis for a new book, Seek God Everywhere: Reflections on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.
The book preserves the informal, conversational style of De Mello’s talks, and shows his talent for saying things in a fresh and striking way.
Let us not pain ourselves again and and waste a lot of spiritual energy. The new life is a gift of God. There has to be a flowering that comes from within our very self, from deep down inside us. When we suddenly flower and bear the full fruit of what a human being really is, then we go out to another completely. If we try to produce this otherwise, we are in for trouble. . . . We should not try to produce it by ourselves. Rather we must desire it and relax: the Lord will give it to us.
{ 0 comments }
Ann Boyd on the benefits of the Examen (“It connects my seemingly irrational emotional life with the workings of God”).
An Evangelical compares the Ignatian charism to Rick Warren’s and Bill Hybel’s (and Francis’s, Dominic’s, and Benedict’s).
Running the Catholic numbers: Catholics, bishops, priests up; women religious down.
Jake Martin, SJ, on snark (“the glorification of the mediocre”).
Vincent L. Strand, SJ, asks if modernity or postmodernity is the greater threat to Christianity.
{ 0 comments }
John O’Malley, SJ, is the featured speaker in the first of a series of videos on the Spiritual Exercises produced by Georgetown University. The series looks at the dynamics of the Exercises and examines new ways that they are being given. Other speakers in the star-studded lineup include Jesuits George Aschenbrenner, John Padberg, and William Barry.
{ 0 comments }
I recently saw this article What Prayer Is written by Thomas Green, SJ, more than 30 years ago. It’s a preface to his book Opening to God. It’s excellent. I recommend it for your Lenten reading.
Hearing or listening is a good metaphor for prayer. The good pray-er is above all a good listener. Prayer is dialogue; it is a personal encounter in love. When we communicate with someone we care about, we speak and we listen. But even our speaking is responsive: What we say depends upon what the other person has said to us. Otherwise we don’t have real dialogue, but rather two monologues running along side by side.
{ 1 comment }
Sign up for dotMagis updates in an RSS reader
Sign up for dotMagis updates by e-mail