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...
the tarnished silver of the Queen Anne's lace in the winter light tinkle as the first trains go by last night's frost has made them brittle this long loneliness rushing past will not last...
The early Celtic Christians had a wonderful saying that reflects their Easter faith. Their goal and vocation in life was to "wander this earth seeking their place of resurrection." This evocative idea is reflected in the lives of some famous Irish saints including St. Patrick. Most Irish saints seemed to know when their hour of death was near. So when Patrick's time came he wanted to be buried in Armagh, his Episcopal centre. His guardian spirit from the time of his teenage captivity pointed him in another direction and ordered him to "return to the place from which you came."...
An English Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) was not widely known as a poet until after he died; his collected poems were first published in 1918 at the instigation of his friend Robert Bridges, who was at the time the Poet Laureate of England. Hopkins was both an observant lover of natural beauty and a deeply faithful man who suffered from depression, themes that reoccur in many of his poems. As a poet, he was also an experimenter, relying on alliteration, innovative meter, and created words, as well as on traditional forms such as the sonnet....
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....
Of all the stories in the Gospels relating the appearances of the resurrected Christ to His disciples, surely that of the two disciples meeting him on the way to Emmaus may well grip us the most, At heart it is a very human, simple story, packed with pathos and sadness, but too, overflowing with Eucharistic celebration and spiritual joy through faith in the risen Christ. As this story reveals to us, such joy is part of faith, but faith can also be revealed to us in sadness and troubling moments...
St. Ignatius, in his Spiritual Exercises, invites us to use our imagination and place ourselves within the story that we are contemplating. In this instance, I imagined Jesus having an "out of body" experience after his physical death. He saw all that occurred in being taken down from the cross and buried; he witnessed the grief of his mother and disciples; he was a aware of Peter's sorrow for his denials and of Judas' regret and despair for his betrayal; he even had an instantaneous review of his entire physical life....
Benjamin Alire Sáenz ( 1954 - ) born 16 August 1954) is an award-winning American poet, novelist and writer of children's books. He was born at Old Picacho, New Mexico, the fourth of seven children. In 1972, he entered St. Thomas Seminary in. He studied Theology at the University of Louvain in Leuven, Belgium. After ordination, he was a priest for a few years in El Paso, Texas before leaving the priesthood. He continues to teach in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas at El Paso....
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....
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....
