Blue Eyed Ennis: Feast of St Ignatius LoyolaThis Sunday 31st July 2011

Feast of St Ignatius LoyolaThis Sunday 31st July 2011

The Feast of St Ignatius Loyola on Sunday 31^st July will be celebrated by followers of the Ignatian tradition the world over.

There are a multitude of resources on the web but this one in particular caught my eye today.

In my inbox I received this article from the Online Journal of British Jesuits written for the Ignatian jubilee year in 1991.

Philip Endean SJ compares Ignatius with another 16^th century figure in whose tradition millions of Christians continue to practise their faith: Martin Luther.

How did these two contemporaries find themselves on differing paths?

This is not the sort of thing that normally appeals to me at all but the name Endean rang a bell as I know that Philip Endean has run retreats on the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises at the excellent St Bueno's Ignatian Spirituality Centre in Wales - and that certainly does interest me so I threw caution to the wind and read it.

It is a very long read but if you can make the time it throws up all sorts of fascinating aspects and if you can't find the time I have put these nuggets of gold from the final part of the article which are deeply relevant to what many of us are struggling with in the church today.

"Ignatius and Luther had different answers to the problem of authority and conscience. But they faced basically the same question, and with an acuteness that was quite new, arising from their personal experiences of God’s mercy.

How does one adjudicate between two voices which are always liable to come into conflict: prophetic conscience and ecclesiastical authority?

Neither Ignatius’s nor Luther’s solution is as one-sided as they first sound. We should not take from them a simple preference for one answer over the other, but rather a challenge: a challenge to find a deeper understanding of the ways in which God’s spirit moves within the whole Church.

If we can achieve that, then maybe we can reconcile the truth and discard the nonsense contained within both positions.

Ongoing Reformation

This has been an article about the sixteenth century. What should it mean for us today?

It does not mean that we can all become one Church tomorrow, but rather, I suggest, that we are ourselves in the throes of a cultural shift just as radical, if not more so, than that which occurred in the sixteenth century, throwing up Ignatius, Luther and many others as models of a fundamentally new way of being religious.

The real question for us is this.

Are we prepared to let God mould us anew, as he remoulded the medieval Church through figures like Luther and Ignatius?

Are we prepared to let God be who God will be for us in a radically new way?

If so, we do not know where we shall be led.

But, if we accept God’s new calling, we might come to discover more fully the unity we in one sense already possess – in the one whom Ignatius loved to call Creator and Lord."

Other Events and the Chance of Winning
a Free Book

The blog of dot Magus Ignatian Spirituality.com is a must visit for anyone interested in St Ignatius and some of you no doubt have been enjoying their month long Ignatius fest which is ending on Sunday.

To mark the day, Loyola Press are giving away a copy of Paul Coutinho’s book An Ignatian Pathway to one lucky dotMagis reader.

To enter for your chance to win, you just leave a comment on their post here before the end of Sunday, July 31.

For an additional chance to win, visit People for Others, which is giving away its own copy of An Ignatian Pathway

and you can follow along here with the final days of 31 Days with St. Ignatius.

If you have the strength and inclination, here is a video on the life of St Ignatius.

2 comments:

Phil Ewing said...: Yes, it is far beyond my financial means too !
But I have been lucky as a few years ago I undertook two years spiritual direction from a woman who worked at St Bueno's ( she did part time retreats there -don't know if she still does) and she was excellent. I went once a month.It was a gifted time.

Living in Cornwall has drawbacks as St Bueno's is a long distance away.
I think Liverpool offers a training course but again that is miles away and too expensive. I wish they did a fast track course as I have already got counselling qualification. I also travel more now since Colin and I have retired so committing to a long course like this would not fit in easily any more.

Thanks for comments Claire- always welcome ! :-)
Blessings; 2 August 2011 at 09:21
grilly said...: I stopped at St Beuno's some years back and found there several books by Margaret Silf. I have been dreaming to do a retreat, or a training in spiritual direction there. Too expensive... C'est la vie :-)
I am very indebted to Ignatius and the Jesuits who taught me Ignatian spirituality. My life woudn't be what it is, had I not met him and them :-)
Thank you, Phil!; 2 August 2011 at 09:21

More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

Feast of St Ignatius LoyolaThis Sunday 31st July 2011

Ongoing Reformation

2 comments:

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Feast of St Ignatius LoyolaThis Sunday 31st July 2011

Ongoing Reformation

Related articles: anything about donkeys is a keeper !!

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