What a winter! I have forgotten how often in the past few months I muttered the line from Shakespeare's Richard III: "Now is the winter of our discontent." I have enough self-knowledge to realize that my discontent would have lessened if I just stopped complaining and learned to appreciate the unique beauty of winter. But no! The path from self-knowledge to action is lengthy....
As you wave goodbye to the kids today, staggering under the weight of their 30-pound backpacks, stuffed with textbooks, iPads/ iPhones/iPods, healthy lunch (which they'll pitch as soon as you're not looking and head for the nearest cheeseburger), gym clothes (which are clean for at least one day this year), and various waiver forms, consider the investment that's climbing out of the SUV....
each question curls into itself - like the dog today on the snowbank?all winter long it lounged about the house - and laid back feet in the air eyes shut with pleasure when even strangers scratched her ears? and fed her scraps and this morning – what was the last time we saw a sky like that -- the half eaten carcass of a squirrel beside her - she lies on the snowbank and looks past us...
When the Jesuits accepted in 1918 direction of the newly established Campion College in Regina, they had no money whatsoever to run the institution. Everything depended on Thomas J. MacMahon, SJ, the first appointed Rector there. He had to raise the money within a three months' period, and it wasn't easy. He relied on giving retreats, missions, preaching, speeches, and he begged. By late August, he had scraped together barely enough to open the two rented houses on 13th Avenue for classes and for a Jesuit house. Not much fazed him, however, and certainly not the lack of money or the poverty-stricken living-conditions he and his fellow Jesuits shared. In time his fearless determination to make the college a success paid off....
As I write this reflection with just a few days to go before departing for the 34 day and 800 km walk across northern Spain better known as the Camino de Santiago de Compostella, I realize that I really don't have a strong sense of how it will go or what I will gain. Do I need to know? No, I say; like the 30 Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, it is better to leave it open ended. That said, following Ignatius, I can express a desire. And so, for the Camino pilgrimage, my desire is to know more deeply God's abiding presence with me as I experience the landscape and history of this ancient pilgrimage route, the people I will encounter - fellow pilgrims and natives, the physical challenge...
I wish to speak to all: those who know video games, those with only a passing familiarity, and those with no familiarity at all. Video games played an important role in my development: mine was among the first generations to experience electronic games in this way. It is possible for video games to have an incredibly toxic, pacifying effect on the human person, causing one to withdraw from reality. One the other hand, such games can also have an exceptionally beneficial effect, communicating ideas and promoting interaction between people in remarkably novel and nurturing ways. Video games, when part of a balanced life, are fuel for the imagination....
Often we have been congratulated at the Jesuit Centre of Spirituality here in Halifax because the new Pope, Jorge Bergoglio who is now Pope Francis, is a Jesuit. Of course we are delighted that he is a Jesuit. But membership in the Society was of no consequence in his choice and is no motive for congratulations. One point that certainly stood out for the cardinal electors was his lifelong dedication to the basic values of apostolic religious life as lived in the Society, and this was strong enough to counter arguments that he was too old....
Francis J. Devine, S.J., was rotund, very rotund in fact, a kind of chestertonian figure, and in many ways every bit as witty. He was nearly as tall as G. K. Chesterton, who was just shy of 2 metres, and Devine weighed every bit as much, in the neighbourhood of 130 kg....
It was August in Taiwan. Waking briskly through the university campus toward the library, I was close to being late for a morning meeting. Suddenly, someone from behind called out in English, "Are you a Jesuit?" Surprised, I turned around. "Yes," I replied. I thought to myself, 'he must have seen the letters 'SJ' on the back of my T-shirt.' He introduced himself. Juan was a student from Central America....
In the early 1990's, I began going out from time to time to Stony Mountain Correctional Institution for Mass on Saturday evenings. Eleven kilometres north of Winnipeg, Stony is a medium-security federal penitentiary (opened in 1877) which houses more than 500 inmates....
