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Greetings From The Arrupe Coordinator
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Welcome everyone to our new-look newsletter. The structure and content is similar to previous newsletters, but the layout is new and fresh. Thanks to Ardent Communications for all their work and to JISA for their wonderful support. We hope you enjoy it!
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“A life of patient suffering, such as I am sure yours must be, dear Miss Dickinson is a better poem in itself than we can any of us write, and I believe it is only through the gates of suffering, either mental or physical, that we can pass into that tender
sympathy with the griefs of all of mankind which it ought to be the ideal of every soul to attain.”
These profound lines were penned by the American poet Anne Reeve Aldrich in a letter to Emily Dickinson. Both suffered greatly in their lifetimes, and both turned their personal suffering into great art.
It is very challenging to say anything about suffering, without being misinterpreted, as it is so personal, so individual in its manifestation; and yet, it is a universal experience. Everybody suffers, but everyone suffers differently. There is the personal pain that can be suffered at greater or lesser intensity (childhood neglect, abuse, disability, loss of a loved one etc.), and there is social pain (created by social structures, war, disaster etc.). It is really no exaggeration to say, we live in a world full of suffering. But we also live in a world where that suffering is transcended, and thereby turned to gold. Many will be familiar with the Japanese art of repairing broken objects with gold lacquer (Kintsugi – which literarily means “join with
gold”). The lacquer is used to piece the broken shards together, thereby creating an even more beautiful object than the original.
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Kintsugi - A Metaphor For Life And Our Journey With God
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This is an apt metaphor for our journey with God. Life hurts, and sometimes breaks us, but if we submit ourselves to the healing hands of the ‘Master Potter’, we find that our broken lives begin to heal with the gold lacquer of her love, so that we can become even more beautiful. The pain of the injury doesn’t magically disappear, but something more powerful than that pain takes up residence within; that mysterious and wonderous thing called love.
I can’t think of anyone past or present whom I deeply admire who didn’t suffer deeply for their art, their vision, their beliefs, or their action in the world. One of those individuals is Tomáš Halík who has just made a visit to Australia. He was condemned as an “enemy of the regime” in his native Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and therefore barred from receiving any academic position. He was ordained clandestinely in 1978 and subsequently became an active dissident all through the 80s. After the ‘Velvet Revolution’ in 1989 he became an advisor to the new president Václav Havel. My introduction to his life and work was through his book Patience with God. I found it to be a compelling read. His words are so truthful they cut right through
to the heart of the matter. His work should be read by atheists and believers alike – each will be deeply challenged by his reimagining of the meaning of faith and unbelief. Chapter 6 of this book (‘A Letter’) deals head on with the theodicy question: “how can a loving God exist in the face of the horrific suffering that we witness either in our own lives or in the world at large?” It is a profound, nuanced and deeply humane reflection, mercifully free of pat answers and predictable clichés. Witness this cogent reflection on the compassion and solidarity of God:
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“But the God of the Bible is not a cold-blooded director of our destinies, hidden somewhere behind the scenes of the historical stage. He personally entered the history of our misfortune and drained the cup of our pain to its dregs; He knows all too well the weight of our crosses! Why revile a God who does not intervene in our lives like a deus ex machina in the dramas of antiquity, a God to whom we have access solely through the one who took upon himself the fate of a servant, “who came in human likeness,” who “was accustomed to suffering”? After all, Christianity does not offer us a God who is to provide us with a life without adversity
or who will immediately provide satisfactory answers to all the painful questions that adversity raises in our hearts, nor does it promise days that will not be followed by night. All He assures us is that, in those profoundest nights, He is with us, so that this assurance itself should give us the strength not only to bear their darkness and burden, but also to help others to bear it, particularly those who have not heard or accepted His assurance.”
(Excerpt From Patience with God by Tomáš Halík)
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In this edition you will find a variety of resources, all of which view the problem of human suffering through their own unique lens. I hope you will discover consolation, hope, and uplift through your encounter with at least one of these resources. I leave you with a thought from Madeleine LEngle, who expresses poetically a similar perspective to that of Halík. "I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally”, she declares,
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I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.
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Pedro Arrupe SJ: His Writings, His Inspiration
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Excerpt From: “Eucharist and Hunger,” Pedro Arrupe (1976)
https://jesuitportal.bc.edu/research/documents/1976_arrupeeucharist/
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Before the International Eucharistic Congress held in Philadelphia in 1976, Pedro Arrupe delivered the following address. Arrupe’s remarks describe the “problem of world hunger” as a “moral, a spiritual problem.” That is why he stresses the “tremendous significance,” in the context of world hunger, of the ‘social dimension’ of the Eucharist’
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We are one body with those who perish of hunger.
Lord, it is good for us to be here. It is good to be with you and share with you this wonderful celebration. … But suppose the hungry of the world were also here with us this morning. Let us think only of those who are going to die of starvation today, the day of our Symposium of Hunger. There would be thousands of them, probably more than all of us who are gathered in this hall. Let us try to see them: their bodies weak and emaciated, their outstretched hands, their weak and fading voices, their terrible silence: “Give us bread … give us bread for we are dying of hunger!”
And if, at the end of our discussions on “the Eucharist and the Hunger for Bread,” as we left the hall, we had to pick our way through this mass of dying bodies, how could we claim that our Eucharist is the Bread of Life? How could we pretend to be announcing and sharing with others the same Lord who said: “I come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly”?
It matters little if these starving people are physically before our eyes here and now or scattered throughout the world: on the streets of Calcutta or in the rural areas of Sahel or Bangladesh. The tragedy and injustice of their death are the same wherever it takes place. And wherever it does take place, we who are here this morning have our share of responsibility. For, in the Eucharist, we receive Jesus Christ who will one day ask us: “I was hungry, did you give me to eat? I was thirsty, did you give me to drink? … I tell you solemnly, insofar as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these my brothers, you neglected to do it to me.”
Yes, we are all responsible, all involved! In the Eucharist, Jesus becomes the voice of those who have no voice. He speaks for the powerless, the oppressed, the poor, the hungry. In fact, He takes their place. And if we close our ears to their cries, we are shutting out His voice too. If we refuse to help them, then our faith is indeed dead as St. James tells us so clearly: “If one of the brothers or one of the sisters is in need of clothes and has not enough food to live on and one of you says to them, ‘I wish you well; keep yourself warm and eat plenty,’ without giving them these bare necessities of life, then what good is that? Faith is like that: if good works do not go with it, it is, quite dead.”
Brothers and Sisters, let us be honest! Most of us here this morning are well fed and in reasonably comfortable circumstances. God grant we may not merit the condemnation St. James reserves for the selfish rich, whether individuals or nations, who refuse to give bread to the hungry or to raise up the poor! “Start crying, weep for the miseries that are coming to you…. On Earth you have had a life of comfort and luxury; in the time of slaughter you went on eating to your heart’s content. It was you who condemned the innocent and killed them; they offered you no resistance.”
Signs of the Times: Resources are not lacking
It is over 10 years since the Second Vatican Council made the following shameful comment on our modern world: “Never has the human race enjoyed such an abundance of wealth, resources, and economic power. Yet a huge proportion of the world’s citizens is still tormented by hunger and poverty….”
Two years ago the United Nations World Food Conference explained more precisely what “a huge proportion” consists in. “On the most conservative estimate, there are well over 460 million of such people in the world today and their number is increasing. At least 40 per cent of them are children.” And what is meant by “such people?” The same UN document goes on to describe them as “people who are permanently hungry and whose capacity for living a normal life cannot be realized.”
I’m sure there is not a single person here this morning who doesn’t know these and many other facts about world hunger as well as or better than I. We have been bombarded, perhaps to saturation point, with tapes, slides, film-strips, charts, books, speeches and resolutions on hunger. In the United States alone there are hundreds of organizations, groups and agencies directly or indirectly trying to eliminate it. In Rome, where I live, the United Nations employs over 3,000 people engaged full-time in studying and trying to fight hunger throughout the world.
Yet the situation seems to be getting worse as the world grows richer and richer. At the beginning of his presidency, John Fitzgerald Kennedy set two goals before the American people: the first was to get a man to the moon before the end of the decade; the other was to help eliminate hunger “within our lifetime.” It is a sad comment on the values of our civilization that the first technical and scientific goal was magnificently achieved, whereas the second more humanitarian and social one has receded ever further from our grasp.
What is the reason? Is it that the problem is too big for us? There is no doubt that hunger and malnutrition are widespread and caused by a whole series of factors ranging from unpredictable weather to rapidly increasing populations. But, on the other hand, the experts tell us that food resources could in fact be made available to feed even greater numbers of people. Is it that we don’t know how to set about a solution, where to start? Here again there are many complex socio-economic, political, and even cultural factors that have to be taken into account if a lasting solution is to be found to the problem of world hunger. However, to get a man on the moon, to arm and defend ourselves and our allies, we have made such a dazzling display of resources, of
technology, of human ingenuity and of social engineering, that we cannot say, with a clear conscience, people are hungry simply because we do not know what to do or how to do it. What is basically lacking are not resources, technology, or knowledge. What is it then?
It can only be our will to do something; our determination to marshal the resources, technology, and knowledge we have to satisfy not only what we consider to be our own needs and interests, but also what in fact are the most basic needs of others. Whether we come from rich or poor countries, we do not seem to have sufficient motivation to turn us towards the needs of those most in want and to translate our concern often sincere but vague and ineffectual, into concrete deeds. The problem of world hunger is not primarily an economic, a social or even a political one. It is basically a moral, a spiritual problem.
The world’s hunger for food will only be satisfied when man learns to live not simply for himself, but for others, as Christ did. It will be satisfied only when the inner law of love, and not merely self-interest, greed, or ambition, governs our individual and collective existence, inspires our policies and regulates our social structures and institutions. The world’s hunger for food will only be satisfied when man learns to hunger for God: for His love and His justice.
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Brothers and Sisters, the world we live in is full of injustice, hatred, and violence. Everywhere we look we are confronted by what the Synod of Bishops described as: “a network of domination, oppression and abuses which stifle freedom and which keep the greater part of humanity from sharing in the building up and enjoyment of a more just and more fraternal world.” Yet we have an answer which gives us hope and joy. It is the Eucharist, the symbol of Christ’s love for man. The task of this Congress is to share that love and translate it into effective action. Without some action, such as that I have proposed, will our Eucharistic Congress have any real message for the world? A message, that is, which modern man will listen to and believe in? Without some
tangible evidence of our concern for others, what witness can we give?
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There was a time when the new land of America was able to say to other countries across the sea:
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Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp besides the golden door.
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Today the majority of the world’s tired, poor, homeless, or hungry may never set eyes on the Statue of Liberty. But they need and have a right to what it stands for: a right to freedom, to justice, to eat. They need and have a right to just and generous international policies which call for enlightened leadership by this and other wealthy countries. They need and have a right to a new international order of things.
And if this calls for sacrifices on our part, will we hold back? Is not this precisely what fasting means? It is the Lord himself who tells us:
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Is not this the sort of fast that pleases me
—it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks—
to break unjust fetters
and undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and break every yoke,
to share your bread with the hungry
and shelter the homeless poor,
to clothe the man you see to be naked
and not to turn from your own kin?
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This is what the full celebration of the Eucharist means in the world of today. Let us not forget that it is only when, in faith and love, we give away the little that we have—a few loaves and fishes—that God blesses our poor efforts and in His omnipotence multiplies them to meet the hunger of the world. Let us not forget that it was only after the widow had given Elijah some food, even from the little she possessed, that God came to her rescue. And Elijah was a complete stranger to her, from another country and worshiping a different God. In the same way, it was only in sharing their bread with a stranger that the two disciples on the road to Emmaus
recognised and found the Lord.
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Podcasts On The Theme Of Suffering And Hope
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Each of these podcasts offers a powerful reflection on suffering. Each is very special, and each communicates something uplifting and enlightening on the experience of suffering, as well as the generation of hope.
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The Body's Grace with Matthew Sanford
This interview comes from the On Being archive and is a beautiful and inspiring conversation with Matthew Sanford. Matthew has been paralysed from the chest down since a car accident in 1978. But he likes to say that his experience is only more extreme, not so different from that of everyone else. He’s written, “We are all leaving our bodies — this is the inevitable arc of living. Death cannot be avoided; neither can the inward silence that comes with the aging process.” This is a special (and mesmerising) interview with a truly inspiring individual. It was recorded in 2006, just after he’d published his book Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence.
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Healing Beyond Reason with Caroline Myss
How can we deal with suffering and wounds in our life? One of the most challenging questions we all face. Caroline takes a counter-cultural view that makes great sense. She is practical, down-to-earth, and honest in her approach. Expect to have your assumptions contested, but you will get to end of this interview and be very glad you listened to it.
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Finding Meaning in Our Grief with David Kessler
In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with David Kessler about how our relationships transcend death and how we can all continue to love and cherish those we’ve lost. They also discuss David’s friendship and work with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross; misconceptions about the five stages of grief; finding meaning as the sixth stage of grief; why all grief does not have trauma, but all trauma has grief; making the decision to participate in life after loss; the importance of telling our stories, and why our grief must be witnessed in order to be healed; creating a grief-literate society; why “what we avoid pursues us, what we face transforms us”; how our lost loved ones can move forward with us in life; being with and there for someone in grief; our “continuing bonds”
with those we’ve lost, and how death can never end our relationships; and more.
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Poems On The Theme Of Suffering And Hope
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How difficult it is to choose one poem about the experience of suffering – so I chose two! In truth, almost all poems are, to some degree at least, born of some experience of human suffering. Each of the two poems I have chosen was penned by poets who turned their suffering into timeless art. The first is by John Clare who spent the last 20 years in an asylum. The first three verses pull no punches; they are raw and evince a profound existential anguish. But even though his sense of abandonment and isolation is all-consuming, he doesn’t lose the sense of his own dignity; the words “I am” are at once a cry, and an assertion, of his unique personhood
and dignity.
Emily Dickinson’s “I measure Every Grief I meet” is a compassionate, generous, and insightful reflection on universal human suffering. Her own suffering draws her out to wonder about all the different faces of suffering in the world. It is playful, probing, and worth the effort of staying with her sense of wonder, her ruminations, which take her ultimately to the foot of the Cross.
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I Am!
By John Clare
I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
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I measure every Grief I meet (561)
By Emily Dickinson
I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes –
I wonder if It weighs like Mine –
Or has an Easier size.
I wonder if They bore it long –
Or did it just begin –
I could not tell the Date of Mine –
It feels so old a pain –
I wonder if it hurts to live –
And if They have to try –
And whether – could They choose between –
It would not be – to die –
I note that Some – gone patient long –
At length, renew their smile –
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil –
I wonder if when Years have piled –
Some Thousands – on the Harm –
That hurt them early – such a lapse
Could give them any Balm –
Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve –
Enlightened to a larger Pain –
In Contrast with the Love –
The Grieved – are many – I am told –
There is the various Cause –
Death – is but one – and comes but once –
And only nails the eyes –
There's Grief of Want – and grief of Cold –
A sort they call "Despair" –
There's Banishment from native Eyes –
In sight of Native Air –
And though I may not guess the kind –
Correctly – yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary –
To note the fashions – of the Cross –
And how they're mostly worn –
Still fascinated to presume
That Some – are like my own –
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Books On The Theme Of Suffering And Hope
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When it comes to reflections on human suffering there are many classics to guide us. We think of When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, which was published more than thirty years ago. Further back we have The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis, though A Grief Observed goes much more affecting as it feels more personal and real; it speaks in Lewis’s own grieving voice and has all the rawness of a deeply loving and faithful soul attempting to make sense of the shattering grief he is experiencing. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is also a powerful exploration of
intense suffering and the ways in which one can maintain a sense of personal identity even if every effort is made to strip you of that dignity and humanity.
One of my own personal favourites is Walter Cizeck’s He Leadeth Me, an extraordinary and profound meditation on intense personal suffering viewed through the lens of an intimate personal relationship with God. Similarly, there is The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day, and Fragments of my Life by Catherine De Hueck Doherty. The books I have chosen here are more contemporary and take different approaches to the mystery of this universal experience.
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Walking with God through Pain and Suffering
By Timothy Keller
This is a kind of “all you ever wanted to know about pain and suffering” book. It is philosophical, theological, historical, and personal. It is very well researched and contains many gems of understanding and insight. Lest you think this description too ‘heady’ or ‘intellectual’, it is written with a pastor’s sensibility and in a down-to-earth style. Keller possesses the precious gift of being able to get you to walk with him through his experiences and reflections, and in so doing helps you to walk with Jesus through these experiences with greater hope and assurance. You can watch Timothy Keller speaking about suffering HERE
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Everything Happens for a Reason – and other Lies I’ve Loved
By Kate Bowler
Kate Bowler embodies some extraordinary gifts, chief among them being her humour. She was a theology professor at the school of divinity at Duke University in the United States and had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart after years of trying; however, after experiencing excruciating pain for several months she was finally diagnosed with Stage Four colon cancer. This is her story – and she really is a gifted storyteller because you believe you are walking with her through this very painful experience. Yet, all along the way, she infuses the narrative with her inimitable brand of laid-back, self-deprecating humour. It is intelligent, witty, and honest; but it is also a sophisticated and profoundly thought-provoking theological/spiritual reflection on
the nature of suffering and the meaning and mystery of this precious gift we call ‘life’. Hear Kate being interviewed HERE
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My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
By Christian Wiman
My Bright Abyss is a moving meditation on a faithful encounter with personal suffering. Wiman is a gifted wordsmith and poet, and he reflects on his experience with an artist’s sensibility. It is a painful, beautiful, and consoling journey. Listen to him speak on this podcast: “How does one remember God”: HERE
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Articles On The Theme Of Grief And Suffering
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Spiritual Directors in a Time of AIDS: Bearing Witness to Suffering and Grace
By Susan S. Phillips
“In the presence of suffering, spiritual directors hope to stand in faith while openly regarding that suffering in all its reality. … A key element in spiritual direction is that of bearing witness … to the twin realities of suffering and the hope that is found in faith. … The act of looking at suffering is significant. It is painful to bear witness to suffering, and especially so when the suffering is extreme and widespread, and when our ability to ameliorate it so small. … Spiritual directors bear witness to suffering in all its dimensions. Even suffering that is expected, chosen, or allowed changes us. We may be strengthened by suffering, or we may be debilitated, mutilated, and scarred.”
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Resurrection faith in the midst of grief: Where is the one that I love?
By Janet K. Ruffing
“… 'consider the office of consoler that Christ our Lord exercises and compare it with the way in which friends are wont to console one another' (Exx 224). The place of entry into these mysteries may well be the retreatant's willingness to allow the Risen Christ to accompany him or her in this place of grief and mourning precisely as consoler. To do so requires emotional honesty, self-presence and acceptance of the painful feelings associated with the particular loss. …”
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Sensitivity to Suffering
By Ron Rolheiser
“Pain will flow into us more deeply when we take God seriously not because God wants it or because pain is somehow more blessed than joy. None of these. Suffering and pain are not what God wants; they’re negatives, to be eliminated in heaven. But, to the extent that we take God seriously, they will flow more deeply into our lives because in a deeper opening to God we will stop falsely protecting ourselves against pain and become much more sensitive so that life can flow more freely and more deeply into us. In that sensitivity, we will stop unconsciously manipulating everything to keep ourselves secure and pain-free. Simply put, we will experience deeper pain in our lives because, being more sensitive, we will be experiencing everything more deeply.
…”
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YouTube – "Why This Text Matters"
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Why This Text Matters … and informative and engaging YouTube series launched by the University of Chicago Divinity School. The Marty Center partnered with the Undergraduate Religious Studies Program to design “Why This Text Matters” as a series of videos to help faculty prepare for courses, their students, and anyone generally curious about important texts in the study of religion. In the space of about 30 minutes, viewers can gain a deeper understanding of the context, themes, and significance of texts taught by experts at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Here are two samples: The inimitable and expert of experts on all things mystical.
Here he is informing us about St Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs. The second sample is a reflection on Dorothy Day’s autobiography The Long Loneliness by Kristine Culp.
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Bernard McGinn presents St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs
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Kristin Culp presents The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
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Companions |
If you are a giver of the Spiritual Exercises, please consider joining Companions, which is a formal association of Givers of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. Remember, you can also take out student membership if you are an Arrupe Candidate.
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Ignatian Spiritual Accompaniment |
Be accompanied in a confidential, non-judgmental, one-to-one relationship, to connect more closely with God, yourself, and others. An Ignatian Spiritual Director gently guides you into paying attention to how God might be speaking to you in your ordinary life experiences, reflections in prayer and discern how to make good choices.
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| EXPLORE |
Silent Directed Retreats 2024 |
JISA teams of Spiritual Directors warmly welcome you to come and rest, contemplate, pray, and discern, in our Ignatian Silent Directed Retreats.
Retreats are available in Sevenhill in South Australia, Pymble in Sydney, Kew in Melbourne, and Ormiston in Brisbane. There are retreats of 2 days (2 nights), 4 days (5 nights), 6 days (7 nights) or 8 days (9 nights).
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IM24 - Song Of The Senses |
A unique and rarely seen focus on the mysterious ‘Prayer of the Five Senses’ of St Ignatius Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises. Sight – Touch – Scent – Hearing – Taste. Experience five new spiritual Ignatian exercises, learn five different Ignatian prayer methods, have five small groups conversations with new international friends, get ready for five hundredfold graces.
SAVE THE DATES – Online May 2024
Sun 5th, Mon 6th, Tue 7th, Wed 8th, Thu 9th May 2024
Five two-hour sessions, a different sense each day
Two Options Each Day:
10am–12noon OR 6.30–8.30pm AEST
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| EXPLORE |
Seeking God On the Way – Online Five Mondays fortnightly |
Explore a variety of ways we encounter God who meets us on the way each day. Find a deep sense of companionship with those who travel alongside you, a deeper way to connect with your own experience, and share with others.
6 May, 20 May, 3 June, 17 June, and 1 July 2024
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| EXPLORE |
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“More than ever I find myself in the hands of God.
This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth.
But now there is a difference;
the initiative is entirely with God.
It is indeed a profound spiritual experience
to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands”.
- Pedro Arrupe SJ.
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