I've been a Jesuit for over 35 years. Most Jesuits have something unique about their personality, but the older Jesuit Brothers are true characters. I'm speaking of an older sort of Jesuit Brother, a man who didn't pursue an education and spent his life in menial labour and daily tasks. Nowadays, brothers can be scientists, astronomers, retreat directors, administrators, and so on....
For Pentecost Sunday, we post this poem by Gary Bowron, a Catholic layman, husband, father and teacher, and a member of the IJC Earth Institute, the ecological committee at Ignatius Jesuit Centre at Guelph....
Saint Ignatius of Loyola invites us to pray for an "intimate knowledge" of Jesus Christ. He is not inviting us to research Jesus Christ on Google until we get to the very heart of who Jesus is. This knowledge is not about the mere accumulation of facts. A person can read theology books and every word of sacred scripture, but if that person is without a heartfelt understanding, they don't really have knowledge of God.A wise person once reminded us that the longest journey in the world is from the head to the heart. The smartest person in the world is not necessarily able to grasp divine truths and have a real appreciation for the surpassing greatness of God. Knowledge is one of the seven traditional gifts of the Holy Spirit, gifts that we celebrate with Pentecost....
If the only Jesuit you ever met was a character in a work of fiction in a library collection, what would this individual tell you about Jesuit life?In this series, IgNation blogger Kevin Burns, who is not a Jesuit, takes a look at some of the works that come up in a large urban public library when he entered the search term "Jesuit" and filtered it through the genre of "Fiction". The novels that popped up include some familiar names and some not so familiar Jesuits.This week: Sebastian Rodrigues S.J., the main character in Shusaku Endo's Silence...
I am a Creole of African descent. My ancestors came to Mauritius as slaves to the French settlers in the early 18th century, either from Mozambique, Madagascar or Senegal. They worked on large sugar cane plantations and sugar mill belonging to those settlers. Slaves of the same tribe were scattered over different plantations on the island to prevent communication and revolt. Slaves on a particular plantation had to imitate their master's language, i.e. French, to communicate, thus developing a patois language called Creole....
Looking towards Pentecost, today's poem is by Gary Bowron, a Catholic layman, husband, father and teacher, and a member of the IJC Earth Institute, the ecological committee at Ignatius Jesuit Centre at Guelph....
In an interview with an Italian journalist, Pope Francis said: "Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense." With these words, is the Pope telling us not to evangelize? Well, no. Pope Francis often talks about, and encourages, evangelization. He did so, for example, in his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel. There must be a difference between proselytism and evangelization, then....
C. S. Lewis once remarked that the scriptural account of the Ascension of the Lord "presents greater difficulties to the modern mind than any other part of Scripture". We tend, he explained, to see it in terms of "primitive crudities", what with "the vertical ascent like a balloon, the local Heaven, the decorated chair to the right of the Father's throne". Our basic embarrassment with the Ascension is perhaps reflected in the fact that we rarely explicitly include it when speaking of the Paschal Mystery: the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus often ends abruptly just there. In Canada, the Ascension is no longer celebrated forty days after Easter but has been removed to a Sunday. All in all, there is a vague discomfort with the whole idea that is never articulated but often just below the surface....
If the only Jesuit you ever met was a character in a work of fiction in a library collection, what would this individual tell you about Jesuit life?In this series, IgNation blogger Kevin Burns, who is not a Jesuit, takes a look at some of the works that come up in a large urban public library when he entered the search term "Jesuit" and filtered it through the genre of "Fiction". The novels that popped up include some familiar names and some not so familiar Jesuits.This week meeet Charles Matthieu Beuvron du Luc S.J., a character in Judith Rock's The Rhetoric of Death...
You may not have made a retreat in a long while–perhaps you've never made one–but something seems to be stirring within: a longing to deepen your relationship with God, or the need to face some changed circumstance in your life. An announcement at the back of the missalette catches your eye, "Ignatian Retreats, Guelph, ON." You contact the registrar, make the arrangements, and, despite your misgivings, you actually show up!...
