IgnatianSpirituality.com is starting a newsletter about, you guessed it, Ignatian spirituality. It will be full of ideas, resources, links, and news. It’s called E-Magis. The first issue will be in your e-mailbox by the end of the month. Sign up for it here. E-Magis adds to Ignatian spirituality’s online presence. It joins this site and blog, a Facebook page, Twitter feed, and Paul Campbell’s blog People for Others.
One of my favorite movies is The Mission, a film inspired by the Jesuit missions in South America in the eighteenth century. One of the many memorable features of this movie is the splendid soundtrack by the Italian composer Ennio Morricone. The scene below shows a Jesuit, played by Jeremy Irons, making contact with Indians who had killed a fellow Jesuit and were likely inclined to kill him. The contact comes through music, an extraordinary […]
Lisa Kelly on cleaning the slate. Aaron Pidel, SJ, on so-called progress in human knowledge (“The most recently founded fields of study. . . often show a peculiar and youthful zeal for proving the obvious.”) Fr. Robert Barron on the sci-fi movie “District 9.” (“It explores, with great perceptiveness, a problem that has preoccupied modern philosophers from Hegel to Levinas: how to relate to ‘the other.’”) Paul Campbell, SJ, on funny movies.
A couple of interesting new bloggers have set up shop lately. Convert Webster Bull writes the blog “Why I am a Catholic.” The title of each post begins with the word “Because” (Because Gerard Manley Hopkins Was a Catholic, Because We Live in a Dark, Dark Time, Because I Have Daughters, etc.) The blog is thoughtful and well-written. A Protestant pastor named Brian Rice demonstrates the long reach of Ignatian spirituality with his new blog “Evangelicals […]
This week classes start at 22 US high schools that are part of the Cristo Rey network, an innovative and highly successful model for urban education. Cristo Rey schools serve the urban poor. 99 percent of their graduates go to college. The schools are partly financed through their students’ paid internships at local businesses. Many of them are Jesuit high schools, and the original Cristo Rey school was developed under Jesuit sponsorship and direction in […]
This week’s Ignatian song is the hard rock classic “Livin’ on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi. It’s about a working class couple “livin’ on a prayer” as they struggle to make ends meet. Lyrics here. But it’s this performance rather than the lyrics that makes this song an Ignatian classic. These are Jesuits on the campus of Boston College. It compares pretty well to the Bon Jovi music video that’s been viewed nearly three million […]
People who work as administrators grumble about it all the time. “Another meeting.” “Another performance review.” “Another crisis.” Yet administration is on St. Paul’s list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12. Ann Garrido, an academic administrator in St. Louis, asks, “Why not reconceive administration as a potential spiritual pathway by which good people can become better people, distinguished by a certain translucence and vitality that extends beyond themselves and into the institutions they serve?” […]
Here is a fascinating conversion story by a blogger named Webster Bull. The decisive moment in his spiritual journey came when he wandered into Borders and picked up a copy of My Life with the Saints by Jim Martin, SJ, the bestselling memoir about the author’s personal attachment to 24 saints. I began attending mass the morning after I bought the books, by which time the fire in my heart had burned away any trace […]
Prayer using the imagination is a pillar of the Ignatian spiritual tradition. In its most common form, you take a passage from scripture, usually one of the gospels, and immerse yourself in it imaginatively using all the senses. You feel the heat of the day, smell the livestock and clouds of dust on the road, listen to Jesus’ words, watch his actions. It’s a way to engage the gospel personally, with all of our faculties. Creighton University’s online ministries […]
Several readers asked where they could see the the lovely stained glass window created by Dennis McNally, SJ, featured here last week. As far as I can tell it’s not installed anywhere. Fr. McNally says that the window is “partially realized.” I certainly would like to visit a church where it’s installed. Fr. McNally is professor of fine arts at St. Joseph University in Philadelphia. He’s a prolific artist, as you can see by browsing […]
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