In this six-part series, Kevin Burns selects a book for each week of Lent. Each book speaks to one of the great traditions within Catholic culture. Each book also shows how its author integrates that tradition. Six different approaches to the same journey through the desert of Lent to the Easter promise of resurrection. Week One: Thomas Merton encounters the severity of the Trappist Lent....
Have you ever wondered about the source of the ashes that we receive on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday? Nowadays, most parishes probably order them from religious goods suppliers. But I'm sure there are still a few parishes and communities that produce them the old-fashioned way. When I was a Jesuit novice in Guelph, Ontario in the late 1970s, the community sacristan was an old Jesuit Brother named Brother Eugene McLaren....
To mark the beginning of Lent 2014, Greg Kennedy has written a poem for Shrove Tuesday....
At the end of his blog entry - "Surviving Catastrophe" - Kevin Burns wrote: "What Philip Shano's article on the Restoration of the Jesuits provoked in me, and why I waded through these details, was that in addition to wanting the get the history clear in my mind, I wanted answers to another question. After 41 years of invisibility, how was it that the Society of Jesus managed so quickly to re-establish itself around the world?" . . how did the Ignatian vision live on? Today, Phil Shano, SJ responds to those questions....
Facebook recently celebrated its tenth birthday, thus entering its tween years. Tools such as the networking site have been around long enough that we've started to make judgments about whether this whole new world is healthy or unhealthy. What's it doing to us? I tend to read articles and books about the trends in culture. I know that there's an increasing amount of thought out there on the pluses and minuses of social media. Let me add my two cents! Spoiler alert: I stand with Pope Francis!...
What's it like being a religious in the 21st century? Not many people ever ask me that question so directly, but you can sort of tell that they want to. Many people really don't get it....
Our contemporary world is driven by four basic narratives. Narratives are those stories in which we try to understand our lives. The narratives of our post- modern age are security, meaning, liberty, and belonging. God enters those four basic narratives and opens them to a path of radical inclusivity where everything will be integrated in the love that is God. That entry of God into the human story is called Incarnation....
As Fr. Joseph Tetlow S.J.--among others--has pointed out, the Examen spiritual exercise has come through hard times. While a number of authors over the years have tried to revive and enhance the exercise, no single approach has proven satisfactory in bringing it back to the important place it was meant to have according to the mind of St. Ignatius....
At the end of his blog entry - "Surviving Catastrophe" - Kevin Burns wrote: "What Philip Shano's article on the Restoration of the Jesuits provoked in me, and why I waded through these details, was that in addition to wanting the get the history clear in my mind, I wanted answers to another question. After 41 years of invisibility, how was it that the Society of Jesus managed so quickly to re-establish itself around the world?" . . how did the Ignatian vision live on? Today, Michael Stogre, SJ writes in response to those questions....
Prayer is a raising or lifting of our minds and hearts in a loving conversation with god. For most of us, the usual topic of this conversation is asking for something from God. We were encouraged by Jesus to do so fr He assured us to "ask, and it will be given to you"(Mt. 7:7): :And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith" (Mt. 21:22). His prayer to the Father during the agony in the garden was asking the Father to be released from the need for suffering. But Jesus added a condition that we must include in our own asking--"not my will but thine be done" (Lk. 22:42)...
