Philip Shano, SJ

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

    13 Apr

    Among the martyrs of the Roman Catholic Church, there have always been committed lay people who have worked closely with priests and vowed religious and have paid the ultimate price because of their shared commitment to spreading the Gospel in hostile and unwelcoming territory. Two of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America were young laymen who offered their services to the Jesuits of New France. One is St. René Goupil, a surgeon; the other is St. Jean de Lalande. Both were referred to as donnés....

    13 Apr

    Jesus reminds us in the Gospel to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Men and women who engage fully in their work of serving the Lord benefit from that mixture of innocence and wisdom. Such was the example of Saint Charles Garnier, one of the eight seventeenth-century Jesuit Martyrs of North America....

    13 Apr

    The superior of the Jesuits in New France wrote to the Jesuit General in Rome, in March 1649. He describes Fr. Anthony Daniel, a Jesuit who had served in New France and was attacked and killed in July 1648: "a man of great courage and endurance, whose gentle kindness was conspicuous among his great virtues." St. Anthony Daniel was the second to be martyred among the eight Jesuit Martyrs of North America, the first of the group to die in Huronia....

    13 Apr

    Many saints share our human fears, but have an ability to resist fear and remain in challenging situations. Saint Isaac Jogues, one of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America, overcame his natural, and well-founded, fears and hesitation. He knew first-hand the tortures that were possible, but he also knew that his place was with the native peoples of Huronia. Nothing could separate him from the mission he felt he received from the Lord. The story of Jogues is moving and memorable....

    13 Apr

    Gabriel Lalemant was born on October 31, 1610 in Paris, the third of six children of a gifted French lawyer. Religious commitment ran deep in the family. Five of the children entered religious life. After his mother was left a widow, she brought up her children with a strong sense of dedication. She herself, after her children had grown and after Gabriel died a martyr's death in New France, joined a religious community and devoted her last years to prayer and seclusion....

    02 Apr

    In his spiritual exercise on the Resurrection of Christ our Lord, Saint Ignatius of Loyola invites us to "consider the divinity, which seemed to hide itself during the passion, now appearing and manifesting itself so miraculously in the most holy Resurrection in its true and most sacred effects." We know how fleeting our experience of Resurrection joy and consolation may be. It may take mere hours for us to forget Easter joy and return to the ordinary humdrum existence of our lives. That is especially the case if our experience of the joy of the Resurrection is kept to ourselves and not manifest in how we live....

    29 Mar

    Rosemary Haughton, a British Roman Catholic theologian, uses a wonderful phrase to describe what is happening in the healing accounts in the Gospels. She suggests that Jesus was able to "liberate the divine energy in people." This happens because of the encounter between Jesus and the one being healed. This is an apt description of one of the effects of the resurrection. One dimension of divine energy that can be liberated in us is the gift of the imagination....

    29 Mar

    I am the Jesuit superior of a large community that includes René Goupil House, our Jesuit infirmary just east of Toronto. This is a home where up to 24 Jesuit priests and brothers receive nursing care, either because they are of advanced age or are infirmed. One of the practices we started here some years ago was keeping vigil with the Jesuits who are in their last days. We sit with them as they prepare for their final journey, preparing to meet God face to face....

    09 Mar

    It's Lent again! How is this year's celebration of Lent going to differ from last year's celebration? Ponder the ashes on Ash Wednesday. They are the burnt remains of the palms leftover from last year's Passion (Palm) Sunday. The cycle has come full circle. How am I different at the start of this Lent than I was at the end of Lent a year ago?...

    22 Feb

    I am the Jesuit superior of a community with an average age of just over 82 years. In three years in the role I have seen a wide range of attitudes toward peoples' approach to the end of their life and the diminishment of their mind or body. Some accept the situation with serenity and are grateful for more time to pray and read....

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