This is the second time  “Gabriel’s Oboe” has appeared in our occasional “Best Ignatian Songs” feature.  (The first time is here.)   The occasion is the opening of a musical based on the movie “The Mission,” a great film inspired by the Jesuit missions in South America in the eighteenth century.  The musical opened this week in Seoul.  It will go on world tour to China, Japan, Italy, and New York.

“Gabriel’s Oboe” was an instrumental piece in the movie.  Here, Daniele Gatti sings it.  (If you can’t see the video, click here.)

Authors are all over YouTube talking about their books.  This interview with Bert Ghezzi about his book Voices of the Saints is one of the best author videos I’ve ever seen.  The book is a terrifically informative and entertaining look at 365 saints, classified in themes (examples: humility, joy, twenty-something saints, married saints, saints who changed history). Click here if you can’t see the video.

What does Halloween mean?  Why does All Saints Day follow the next day?  Jim Martin, SJ, explains it all.  (Click here if you can’t see the video.)

The story St. Ignatius has been told many times, usually with great solemnity as befitting one of the church’s great saints.  Here’s a different way to do it.  The narrator of this animation is a stuffed Spanish olive.  It’s a delightful production from the Fairfield University Media Center. (If you can’t see the video, click here.)

A friend of mine, whose son was born with Down Syndrome, turned me on to Natalie Merchant’s song “Wonder.” I think it’s a song especially about disabled children,  but it applies to all children.  Maybe that’s why it came to mind today, when my wife and I are in New York visiting two of my kids. 

O, I believe
Fate smiled and destiny
Laughed as she came to my cradle
Know this child will be able
Laughed as she came to my mother
Know this child will not suffer
Laughed as my body she lifted
Know this child will be gifted
With love, with patience and with faith
She’ll make her way

Full lyrics here.  They’re worth reading.

John Predmore, SJ, says that Jim Croce’s classic ballad “I Got a Name” “best reflects the events in my life that have led me to trust more fully in God.” He says that the lyrics extol Ignatian freedom.

And I’m gonna go there free
Like the fool I am and I’ll always be
I’ve got a dream, I’ve got a dream
They can change their minds but they can’t change me
I’ve got a dream, I’ve got a dream.

Full lyrics here.  Here is Jim Croce singing the song in 1973.  I love the 70s hair, the bell-bottom jeans, the acoustic guitars, the nostalgia.

Stephen Colbert interviews Lisa Miller, author of a new book on heaven. Watch the video here.

The Best Ignatian Song feature of this blog has been on the shelf for some months.  I’ve dusted it off to feature the “String Quartet No. 1: Good Friday Meditation” by Andrew Leonard, a recent Boston College graduate who is spending the summer with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.  Leonard, a pre-med and music major, says the piece was inspired by his experiences in the BC Urban Immersion volunteer program.

Listen to the piece here.  It’s performed by the Hawthorne String Quartet, resident at Boston College.

(Here is another BC music group, playing a very different kind of music.)

When I listened to Leonard’s quartet, I thought it sounded familiar.  Sure enough, it’s influenced by the third movement of Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor, Opus 132, one of the most moving pieces of music I know.  Beethoven wrote it after recovering from a near-fatal illness.  He titled the third movement “A Convalescent’s Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity.”  Listen to part of it in this video.

A stirring look at community service work by students at Loyola High School in Los Angeles. (Click here if you can’t see the video.)

Fr. Jim Martin, SJ, thinks so. (Click here if you can’t see the video.)