Over the next seven days, we will see ordinations at Our Lady of Lourdes in Toronto, the great Feast of Pentecost around the world, and in Rome on Saturday the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero. In today's post, Bert Foliot, SJ writes:"In beatifying Romero, the Church is offering us all a model of how, by listening to the Holy Spirit, we too can be transformed."...
Ordinations are beautiful events. I usually leave the church with the feeling that I've just participated in a hope-filled celebration and a wonderful statement about church: the joyful family and friends, the words of the ordination ceremony, the carefully-chosen scripture readings, the music and singing, seeing friends I haven't seen in a while, and so on. I'm sure that there are people attending who are disturbed at yet another statement about a male, hierarchical structure. But that seems to fade away for a day....
The scenario is always the same. It's early in the semester, just a few days into my Introduction to Theology class. We are discussing the existence of God, which has always struck me as a logical place to begin a class about, well, God.I want to ask you a very personal question," I begin, "but you have to agree to answer it before I tell you what the question is. Any volunteers?"" This article originally appeared in The Jesuit Post (thejesuitpost.org) on March 5, 2015....
A few years ago, an electrical grid failure left most of Europe in darkness. Over the next week, one could watch night time satellite photographs of Europe go from almost dark to rather bright, as the system was being repaired. Similar pictures taken over Africa would show huge dark areas which are always dark! We regularly receive news of the economic woes in developed countries, but can easily forget the constant struggle the poor in Africa have to survive. Such poverty is certainly unjustified in a world of instant communication. We see material and people move all too quickly into war zones, hopefully to correct evils. Would that the bearers of Christ's peace be able to move as efficiently!...
A relatively new aberration is gaining strength. It has resulted in a confusion between popular opinion and "sense of the faithful" (sensum fidelium) on matters of faith. Extensive reporting on the discussions that took place last autumn during the first session of the Synod on the Family seemed to foster the notion that something could now be regarded as true and followed in the Church because it was accepted by a majority of the Synod on the Family then in session. And apart from any synod, it could be held as approved if now a majority of members in the Church followed such a belief....
The Universal prayer intention from the Holy Father for the month of May deals with the need to care for the suffering: That, rejecting the culture of indifference, we may care for our neighbors who suffer, especially the sick and the poor." I cannot imagine that there is a person on the face of the earth who doesn't know something about this intention."...
We need to remember, even and especially, the things we know to be permanent. We need to remember what we're living for, what's worth fighting for. We need to remember our fundamental call to love and to serve and we need to ask for the grace necessary to fulfill it. For this, we need time and space. We need renewal and rest. The article was originally posted on The Jesuit Post (thejesuitpost.org) on January 27, 2015 and it is reposted here with permission. (thejesuitpost.org) on...
The dews at Richmond's Eastern Catholic Church parking lot that crested on the green blades of grass were still glistening. They were quite content to bask in the warm sun that embraced them on a Saturday morning last September 6 2014. Quietly. Little did they know that their somewhat unknown church was about to open its doors to the second Jesuit Alumni Group's retreat for the Ignatian community to celebrate in one faith, in one love and in one God....
I see cura personalis as our attempt to imitate the intensely personal, specific, wild and oceanic love which God has for each human being, a love so unimaginably great that he joins himself eternally to us as one of us and so persisting that he continues in the Eucharist to give food to our body and spirit and to intoxicate us with his love, his cura personalis....
