Recently I was called upon to celebrate a Mass of the Resurrection in a nearby parish church. The priest had a difficult decision to make, whether to take the funeral or cancel a long-standing commitment. When he asked if I could help him out, knowing something of his busy schedule, I was pleased to lend a hand....
As we look back in this Year of Faith to the Second Vatican Council, a question that inevitably arises is, "What did the Council change?" Implicit in any answer to this question are notions of what the Church was like both before and after the Council. Much of the time, however, we are presented with overly-simplistic narratives about the pre-conciliar--and increasingly the post-conciliar--Church. It is a worthwhile exercise to examine these narratives, as a sort of propaedeutic to understanding Vatican II....
For many years when responding to questions of security surrounding credit cards, when the question, "What is your favourite city?" appears, I write in "London". Of course I could write in several other cities, Rome, New York, and so forth. Yet in the end, it is always London. Why that city rather than any other--it surely doesn't matter to the credit card company--is not easy to explain except that in my mind London remains a "civil" city, one where courteous behaviour in public still seems important, where people still know the phrases, "Pardon me", "Excuse me", "Sorry"....
We had the luxury of seeing Dialogues des Carmelites at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, a few weeks ago. In the heart of one of the more secular cities in North America a dramatic and theological portrayal of prison discipleship and martyrdom was being rendered. What was strikingly ironic was that the content, the vicarious sacrifice of the lives of these Carmelites nuns, was front and centre for a 21st century Western audience....
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, Philip Chircop, SJ writes about his 25th anniversary of ordination....
It was back in 1969, when a 14 year old girl, Rita Kelly, and her boyfriend, Jeff Doerr, volunteered to sing and bring their electric music into St. Ignatius Church in Winnipeg. This was soon after Vatican II, when the Church had just opened its doors to the cultures, languages and artistic expressions of contemporary society. When these volunteers and the priests all said "yes' to an electric Sunday night Mass, it did not take long before every Sunday night at 9:00pm, they were attracting close to a 1,000 young people to the Church....
One of the words that has been used a lot to describe Pope Francis since his election is the word humility. What is humility? It might be helpful to name some of the words we use for its opposite – pride, vainglory, self-centredness, and narcissism. I knew a man who ended a long narcissistic monologue by saying, "Well, enough about me! What do you think of my decision?" I hoped he was teasing, except everything I knew about him told me he was rooted in an obsession with himself and his self-importance. He could have benefitted from C.S. Lewis's reminder that "humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less." That's actually a very good definition because another opposite of humility is having too low a view of yourself, often described as false humility....
Ten years ago a brain tumour left me hearing impaired. After a few years, my hearing loss was deemed severe enough that I qualified for a cochlear implant. Those few years of being more deaf than hearing taught me a great deal about listening and how difficult it is to truly listen to another person, even for those whose physical hearing is perfect....
This past weekend I had the rare opportunity to be alone in my yard, with no responsibilities other than to weed my garden. Weeding is a very therapeutic endeavour, because as you eliminate what you don't want, you also allow space and soil and sun to reach the plants you do want to nurture. It is a task which (though it doesn't seem so at the beginning) has an actual ending, after which time you can look out and see the fruits of your labour. True, there will be more weeds, but just then – when you complete your patch – then at that moment it's a tiny little sense of having contributed to part of God's beauty in creation....
To come to know the saints of our Church is to discover their strengths, but also their human frailties and limitations. Faith provides these holy men and women with the courage and perseverance to go forward, regardless of their pain and suffering. St. Noël Chabanel is no exception. Despite success in his native France, the man who would become a seventeenth century Jesuit martyr met anything but success in New France. Chabanel struggled with the Native language, felt useless, and experienced great disappointments in the mission activity of New France. It would have been natural to give up and return to France. Chabanel saw this as a temptation and stated, "I must serve God faithfully until death."...
