In September and October of 2013, a number of Jesuits and their lay collaborators attended media training workshops in Toronto and Regina offered by Mr. Ian Hanna. The purpose of the workshops? To familiarize the participants with ways of best dealing with the media to present our message in today's mass mediated world....
We know that power is shifting from West to East and North to South, from presidential palaces to public squares, from once formidable corporate behemoths to nimble start-ups and slowly but surely, from men to women. But power is not merely shifting and dispersing. It is also decaying. Those in power today are more constrained in what they can do with it and more at risk of losing it than ever before....
It is impossible to look at the history of Canada without considering the life of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America. Today, in Canada, we celebrate their feast (it is celebrated in the United States on October 19). These eight men from France travelled to New France in the seventeenth century and worked mostly with the Huron people (the Ouendat). The most well known are the priests Jean de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues. The other six who were canonized with them in 1930 are Fathers Gabriel Lalemant, Anthony Daniel, Charles Garnier, Noël Chabanel, and two lay volunteers – René Goupil and Jean de la Lande. All eight are celebrated at Martyrs Shrine in Midland, Ontario....
From time to time, over the next few months, as part of the "Our Culture" section, , igNation will post poetry written by Jesuits. Poems from Gerard Manley Hopkins and St. Robert Southwell will appear as well as poems by contemporary Jesuits. Today's poem -a reflection for the vigil of the Feast of the North American Martyrs - is by Greg Kennedy, SJ...
From time to time, over the next few months, as part of the "Our Culture" section, igNation will post poetry written by Jesuits. Poems from Gerard Manley Hopkins and St. Robert Southwell will appear as well as poems by contemporary Jesuits. Today's poem is by Eric Jensen, SJ, who works in the Spiritual Exercises ministry at Loyola House, Guelph....
Pope Francis surprised the church with his far-ranging interview with Jesuit publications. He makes many comments that were almost shocking in their candor, honesty and openness about the church and his own life. It's not a format we are used to with popes or most leaders. What stayed with me in my reading of the interview is summed up in the very Ignatian word discernment....
On Thursday, September 19, 17 Jesuit magazines around the world simultaneously published an in depth interview with Pope Francis. Main stream media has been abuzz with analysis of this interview. Today igNation reprints an excellent article from The Jesuit Post about the interview and the media's reaction....
As many of you may know, Seamus Heaney, the greatest Irish poet since W.B. Yeats, passed away in Dublin Friday morning, August 30, at the age of 74. His funeral mass took place in Dublin, September 2nd. Later that day he was buried in his native County Derry, beside his brother Christopher, whose memory he immortalized in one of his most beloved poems, Midterm Break. Like the arrival of news of any death, Seamus's death was greeted with shock and then, of course, profound sadness. The sense of sadness is not just particular to Ireland, however. Indeed, our own Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star both have extensive articles on the death of Seamus Heaney....
Jordan Sinder is a Grade 12 students at St. Pul's a Jesuit HIgh School in Winnipeg. Manitoba. He writes about his experience of the school as community enriching his life in so many different ways....
When I finished walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostella in late May 2013 I soon resumed the regular busy routine and rhythm of a Jesuit priest - my work at the Jesuit Novitiate, attending an important meeting of the social apostolate of the Jesuits in English and French Canada, getting reconnected with people who come for spiritual direction, working with a committee that plans courses for novices from various religious orders based in Montreal, spending a month in Denver, Colorado on a program for Jesuit novices, celebrating the first vows of a newly vowed Jesuit and at the moment getting to know new group of six novices that joined us in the late summer....
