One of the conditions for praying is a conviction of our dependence on God. If people are not praying, it could be a sign that they feel quite self-satisfied, self-confident, self-assured. For those who fit this life style, "self" seems to be quite sufficient....
Haven't you at times told God something that didn't match up with your heart? How about reciting a prayer to simply appease your guilt or instigate your piety? I've been there – done that – time and time again. But prayer is not supposed to be a bed of roses. Thankfully, the Good Lord can be very blunt with me and he is constantly disabusing me of my spiritual opulence. Lately, Christ has been back at it again. This time, he drove me to some mountains in Brazil to invite me to ruminate on the power of prayer. This meditation has taken flesh in some questions: How does prayer affect us? How does it transform our hearts and our lives? What happens to us as we draw near to the living Lord to speak to him of the movements of our hearts? How does God mold us as we discern his presence in our lives? How does prayer change the pray-er?...
Every now and then a development come along which shakes up our smugness. The discovery of the Americas did this to sixteenth century Europe and, eventually, so did the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. So did geologist Charles Lyell in the 1830's who argued that earth was much older than the Seventeenth Century Bishop Ussher's scripture-based determination that the earth's creation had occurred on Sunday October 23, 4004.B.C. And let's not get started on Charles Darwin!...
Many Canadian Jesuits began their religious life on 15th August, but nowadays the anniversary is usually marked on 31st July. This year the solemn Mass of St Ignatius Loyola was celebrated at St Isaac Jogues Parish, Pickering, and on behalf of the class of 1964, Fr Michael Czerny S.J. preached the homily after readings about Elijah meeting God at Horeb (1 Kings 19:4-9a, 11-15a), Knowing Christ and pressing towards the goal (Philippians 3:8-14), and Tips for following Christ (Luke 9:57-62)....
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, was a pioneer of commercial aviation. He flew in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. He loved flying. He also loved writing about friendship and love. Because of this, he was nicknamed the 'winged poet'. In his book Airman's Odyssey, de Saint-Exupéry wrote about how love transforms us. When we encounter love, it refashions our lives. Love invites us to contemplate a new horizon, the place where our hearts encounter the heart of the beloved. Love incites us to contemplate and to journey towards that horizon because intimacy is beyond fear. As de Saint-Exupéry states, "Love is more than gazing at each other. It consists in looking outward together in the same direction."...
The contemporary refrain of protest against the loss of global forests speaks something more fundamental, more central than that encompassed by standard environmental impact statements. I sense that we are reacting on a more visceral level to a sense of loss that is difficult to grasp, probably impossible to measure, but nonetheless real at a most basic level....
There are times when even the thought of praying seems overwhelming. One does not have to be in a hospital recovering from a serious operation to fel that praying just now seems too difficult. One is too weary for anything. Perhaps it was such a situation that the master of praying, St. Ignatius of Loyola, had in mind when he proposed a method of praying he called "A Measured Rhythmical Recitation."...
During a sabbatical several years ago, I walked the 800 km of the famous Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain. When I completed my Camino experience, I lamented the fact that such spiritual pilgrimages weren't so easily found in Canada. Thus I was intrigued when I heard of the efforts by Martyrs' Shrine and local Trail groups to establish a Canadian Camino, the destination being Martyrs' Shrine. I thought, "Of course! It makes perfect sense!" For the Canadian Jesuits, there is no space that rivals Martyrs' Shrine and Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons as being a place of sacred history. As well, the history of this region in Ontario is a key part of the history of this country....
For Pentecost Sunday, we post this poem by Gary Bowron, a Catholic layman, husband, father and teacher, and a member of the IJC Earth Institute, the ecological committee at Ignatius Jesuit Centre at Guelph....
In an interview with an Italian journalist, Pope Francis said: "Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense." With these words, is the Pope telling us not to evangelize? Well, no. Pope Francis often talks about, and encourages, evangelization. He did so, for example, in his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel. There must be a difference between proselytism and evangelization, then....
