Philip Shano, SJ has many years of rich and varied experience working with Ignatian spirituality: teaching, writing and using it in his ministry. He resides in the Jesuit community in Pickering, Ontario.
581 posts
The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beats; and the Angels waited on him. This experience of Jesus, related on this opening Sunday of Lent, has often intrigued me. Yes, he was the Son of God. However, he was also a human being....
I've been looking back over my past posts for igNation and have realized that this is the third consecutive Ash Wednesday I've written about. I was tempted to ask the blogmeister if he could find someone else to write for this year's start of Lent. Then I thought that I shouldn't give up so easily. Perhaps, unbeknownst to him, he is being used by God to get me to dig deeper into what I am being offered by my honest entry into this season....
The Jesuits in English Canada have long had a ministry to prisoners. Such a ministry is very much in fitting with the Judeo-Christian scriptures. . . It's good for all of us to reflect on prisoners and how we can help them to maintain their dignity. The Pope's Universal Prayer intention for the month of February deals with prisoners: "That prisoners, especially the young, may be able to rebuild lives of dignity."...
I saw an interesting sight in my neighbourhood on December 26, the Feast of Saint Stephen. The household across the street had their discarded Christmas tree on the sidewalk, ready for pick-up by the city. It caused me to wonder when most people think that Christmas ends. Some people are pragmatic about taking down decorations and assume Christmas ends on the day before we head back to work or school. Fair enough!...
With the first Sunday of Advent on November 30, 2014, the universal Church began the Year of Consecrated Life. The observance will end on the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple on February 2, 2016. Pope Francis issued a letter in which he underlined the aims of this special year, namely to look to the past with gratitude, to live the present with passion and to embrace the future with hope....
We celebrate several things on January 1: the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, New Year's Day, and World Day of Peace. Pope Paul VI established a day for peace in 1968. He asked that, "every year, this commemoration be repeated as a hope and a promise, at the beginning of the calendar which measures and outlines the path of human life in time, that peace with its just and beneficent equilibrium may dominate the development of events to come."...
We are sometimes half asleep, almost in a slumber – whether with our physical or spiritual exercise. I find that Christian helps wake me up, at least when I am at Goodlife. Part of the gift of a spiritual director is that he or she can wake me up spiritually. Just the fact that I'm meeting with her will make me more attentive to what is happening in my interior life. I might speak of a movement in my interior life to my director and he asks a subtle question that causes me to look at my situation in a new way....
Ms. Jenny Cafiso, the Director of Canadian Jesuits International (CJI), wrote a wonderful Christmas appeal this year. The appeal is headed with a verse from the Gospel for the Midnight Mass for Christmas: "She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn."...
Women and men around the world find solace in Mary, the Mother of God. Our prayer to her cuts across cultures, lifestyle and age. I know many people who would say they do not practice faith, yet so often when someone close to them gets sick or dies, they grab a rosary and start a simple prayer. There is comfort in the simplicity and rhythmic pattern of the beads. Perhaps it gives them peace at a time when worry comes so naturally. We place great hope in Mary's intercession in our lives or in the lives of those close to us....
Some years ago, I was presiding at the Wednesday evening Eucharist at Ignatius Farm Community in Guelph, Ontario. It doesn't exist anymore, but the Farm Community was very much in the spirit of L'Arche, the international network of communities for the handicapped. The Farm Community had its roots in a desire to provide a safe environment for men who had come out of prison. It evolved over the years and comprised of two houses for a diversity of women and men who needed a welcoming community....
