CHURCH NEEDS AN 'AWAKENING OF THE SOUL' Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr said that unless Christians rediscover the "bigger heart" and "bigger mind" of the mystical and contemplative tradition, the church will be unable to make positive change in the world -- or reform itself.
DOUBT AS A SIGN OF FAITH If we don’t accept both the commonality and importance of doubt, we don’t allow for the possibility of mistakes or misjudgments.
ENERGIZING SOULS William O'Malley, S.J. argues that if we want the next generation to be spiritually adult, then parents, teachers and pastors have to rediscover their own spirits.
GATHERING THE GRACES OF OUR SECULAR SAINTS As we come to the end of this [year], it might be worth our while to take some time with those for whom we mourn — to listen to their music, read their work or their biographies, watch their films and try to gather up for ourselves some of the graces they gave us.
GOD IN THE DETAILS It is in the nitty gritty details of it all that God is not less real, but more real. Gerard Manley Hopkins observed that the Son of God became locked into the ordinary world. He who was great focused on what was small.
HAPPY ARE THE SPIRITUAL A recent study suggests that people who are spiritual — religious or not — are a major part of the glue that holds a community together.
HOW CAN I LIVE OUT MY FAITH AT WORK? You don’t need to have an openly religious job for your faith to be relevant. Any honest and upright work is holy, and an opportunity to grow closer to God.
LOVE ONE ANOTHER? If I love all the selves housed within me, including the flawed, human, insecure ones, then why would I need to hate you?
MERCY ISN'T A CHURCH THING IT'S WHAT FAMILIES DO EVERY DAY - If God is love and love is mercy, which seem to be two keys ideas of the teaching of Pope Francis, then mercy is all around us.
NOT SETTLING FOR LESS Hope has been called the forgotten virtue of our time. Although we live in an era of considerable technological and scientific achievements, it may also be an age of diminished hope.
NUNS AND NONES; UNLIKELY PARTNERS TACKLE THE BIG QUESTIONS Global Sisters Report starts a three-part series on "Nuns and Nones," a movement that is bringing together experienced Catholic sisters and nonreligious millennials who share a passion for social justice, community and contemplation.
PARISH COMMUNITY AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The parish exists to help individuals carry out the mission that Jesus proclaimed; namely, to proclaim the kingdom of God and to become living examples of Christ in service to God and to one another.
SACRED INWARDNESS Why ‘secularism’ has no meaning. Secular is a term used within Catholicism to distinguish the world from the church, but the influence of the biblical insistence that God made the world and that he loves it seems to be very strong among religious traditions now.
THE SAINTLINESS OF FRED ROGERS If we had Protestant saints, Dietrich Bonhoeffer might be the first one, and Martin Luther King Jr. might be next. But after that could come Fred Rogers, the still, small voice of love and truth, crying out in the television wasteland.
WHERE THERE IS PAIN, THERE IS GOD The presence of suffering is the one thing that most challenges our faith. Human suffering will always be a mystery. But the presence of God will always reach deeper, further, and wider.
YOUR LIFE IS NOT ABOUT YOU One reason we Christians have misunderstood many of Jesus’ teachings is that we have not seen Jesus’ way of education as that of a spiritual master.
GOD CALLS YOU TO BE PRIEST, PROPHET AND LEADER As Catholics, our call is "to live as a member of the body of Jesus. We carry out that life by being priest, prophet and leader." That's a tall order. Bishop Thomas Gumbleton explains how we can do it.
THE SACRED TENSION OF SOLITUDE Just as each of us is made for togetherness, we all are made for solitude. This is a sacred tension of religious vocation. Let the silence teach you who are, and who you are meant to be.
SPIRITUALITY IN TIME OF DISRUPTION Perspectives on how the current era of growing economic anxiety and increasing religious disaffiliation affects our traditional understandings of spiritual practice, and what may emerge to support, displace, or replace them.
EVERYONE IS IN It’s easy to create unity by being against something or someone — by assigning a scapegoat. It’s difficult to create unity by being prepared to be the person who the others are going to throw out.
THE BLACK HOLE PHOTO A reminder that the are are some holy things beyond our vision: the closest we’ll ever come to a photograph of God.
FINDING OUR LIFE Mystical experience connects us and just keeps connecting at ever-wider levels, breadths, and depths, “until God can be all in all.”
TAKE YOUR PLACE AT THE TABLE All of creation [is] invited to sit at the divine table, to participate in the divine dance of mutual friendship and love.
PRACTICAL PARTICIPATION God moves toward us so that we may move toward each other and thereby toward God. The way God comes to us is also our way to God and to each other: through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
IMPLANTED HOPE The Indwelling Spirit is the ability of humanity to keep going, to keep recovering from its wounds, to keep hoping.
CROSS-CULTURAL DISCIPLESHIP If God is always Mystery, then God is always in some way the unfamiliar, beyond what we’re used to, beyond our comfort zone, beyond what we can explain or understand.
SMALL GRACES The closest one can probably come to understanding prayer is knowing that you don’t - A Meditation on Urban Prayer
GLEAMS OF LIGHT An hour-long discussion between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert, including how grief, properly understood, leads us to empathy and to deeper love for others.
WE'RE NOT MYSTICS The devout Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic,’ one who has experienced ‘something,’ or he will cease to be anything at all.
MARY UNDOER OF KNOTS Mary Undoer of Knots has come to serve as a touchstone in my daily life, assisting me whenever new knots arise.
WHY FAITH MATTERS Faith by its nature concerns itself with humanity’s deep, abiding and meaningful questions. It is a search for, and embodiment of truth, meaning, a well-lived life and similar earnest endeavors.
LOVE ENDURES ALL THINGS So begins the world’s most popular wedding reading, one we have heard so often it no longer grabs our attention. No longer profound or challenging, it just seems worn out.
THE FULLNESS OF TIME Encountering Death as a Daughter. Cathleen Kaveny reflects on death, memory, and Augustine's fullness of time.
TEACHING & PREACHING Preachers should emulate teachers at Mass, striving to be adaptable. To energize the faith, it's time to let more people — including women — preach.
THE EMPTY TOMB: OUR REASON FOR EXISTENCE We are gradually moving farther away from each other, enlarging the "empty tomb" in size and depth. Absence is slowly defining human life in a world wrapped in universal grief.
A RETREAT FOR A TIME OF ISOLATION This retreat has been prepared by the staff of Jesuit Communications for the use of people who have to isolate themselves for 14 days during the coronavirus crisis.
WAITING FOR THE SPIRIT: AN ONLINE RETREAT Spend the days between Ascension and Pentecost in prayer with the online retreat, Waiting for the Spirit - a nine-day online spiritual retreat series starting May 22, 2020, and conclude May 30, the Vigil of Pentecost.
THE ABUNDANCE OF GOD'S LOVE Every Eucharist is a celebration of uncalculating, over the top, love. God’s love is unrationed. This is just how God does things, profusely. It permeates his creation.
ACTIVE & CONTEMPLATIVE ORDERS There are paradoxes in the history of Christian spirituality and not the least of them is the apparent contradiction in the relation between the active and contemplative lives. (Original article by Thomas Merton, 1947)
WITH PARISHES CLOSED, FIND COMMUNION IN CREATION Where is God in this long stretch of not gathering for public worship as Catholics? What grace or growth might there be in this unchosen asceticism? The earth becomes our altar when Mass is suspended for the common good.
WORRY NOT As cases of the novel coronavirus rise again across the United States, we’re reminded of our mortal fragility, but also of God’s promise of eternal life.
WISDOM IN TIMES OF CRISIS Job’s story reveals that God cannot really be known through theology and law. God can only be related to and known in relationship, just like the Trinity itself.
PRAYER WITH OPEN HANDS Too often in our prayer, we do not trust God’s character but rather hope that God will negotiate, taking into account our best efforts and good intentions.
THE IMPORTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF DOING NOTHING In an age of constant distraction, of meaningless argument online fueled by hate and anger, of persistent pressures demanding every moment of every day be accounted for by some measure of productivity, the exhortation to "do nothing" is a welcome corrective.
CAN WE MAKE RETREATS BETTER? How modern Catholics are reinventing an ancient tradition. The term retreat implies an action that is also a location; we withdraw to some place away from our normal lives.
CREATING MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS ONLINE As we continue to explore virtual possibilities, we will learn more best practices about how to use the gift of technology to help people create meaningful connections online.
DISCERNMENT CAN BE HARD—BUT GOD DELIGHTS IN YOUR CHOICE Making a good choice does not mean that you will avoid all suffering or that you will be able to predict all outcomes. It means that you are using the gifts of intellect and will that God has given you and that in the very act of using them you are glorifying him.
THE AIR THAT WE BREATHE In spring we deepen our association with the element of air, and of wind, and its invitation to open ourselves to a God who flows in directions that we cannot predict.
GOD IS TRYING TO CATCH OUR ATTENTION We know that much of prayer is simply paying attention. A prayerful person learns how to tune in, more and more, to the details of daily life and notice where the Divine is showing up.
SEVEN WAYS TO USE THE IMAGINATION IN PRAYER Imaginative prayer invites us to place ourselves in Gospel scenes to deepen our connection with Jesus. Using our imaginations also allows us to create a better world as God calls us to do.
EVENING OF PRAYER FOR OUR NATION An Online event, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2020 AT 6:30 PM EST – 7:30 PM EST: Hosted by Adrian Dominican Sisters. Please join us for this live streamed Taizé Prayer Service.
FORGIVENESS IS FOR LOSERS Christian forgiveness is a revolution. It does what revolutions always do: it overthrows the old, decaying order and replaces it with something new. Political revolutions bring change by way of violent struggle, but God’s revolutions bring soul-altering change by way of spiritual renewal.
WHY SHOULD ANYONE CARE ABOUT THOMAS MERTON TODAY? We should care about Thomas Merton today because in many ways he reveals something to us about who we are: modern women and men, religious and laity, striving to connect the faith of Christianity with the particularity of our lives.
FAITH COMES THROUGH HEARING Some days, although we cannot pray—because we are too busy, or because we are in too much pain, or simply because the words will not come—a prayer utters itself.
THOMAS MERTON AT COMMONWEAL The Monk, Poet, and Social Critic’s Spiritual Writings. One of the most influential mystics of the 20th century, Merton was also a prolific Commonweal contributor. Here, they've compiled some of his most lasting spiritual writings.
THIS IS YOUR SOUL ON MYSTICISM Since Covid-19 stripped away many of the distractions with which we would normally fill our days and forced us to slow down, a renewed interest in contemplative practice has meant that more people have time to be open to mystical experiences.
A CLOSER LOOK AT THE PEACE PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS What will surprise many readers is that no serious scholar today, Franciscan or otherwise, would place the Peace Prayer among the authentic writings of Saint Francis. In recent decades it has become evident that the prayer originated during the early years of the 1900’s...
HOPE FOR 2021 AND THE LOVE OF GOD What is your hope for 2021? Maybe it’s that life will go back to normal. Maybe your hope is to return to an “in-person” life. Or to not just survive, but thrive? Hope is the underlining feeling of expectation or desire...
THOMAS MERTON AND THE LANGUAGE OF LIFE We all have a fundamental need to be seen and heard. A failure to be present can spiral downwards, feeding more failures, in the same way that fear can provoke more fear.
BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS It isn’t always comfortable embracing those who differ from us—and rarely is it convenient. Shedding our worldly selves for such a higher purpose doesn’t count unless it challenges us.
A LESSON IN PEACE FROM ST. FRANCIS Peace is a work of justice; it does not come about by a display of superior strength or military might. In fact, it can be argued that those who live among social outcasts... most truly effect the cause of peace and justice by changing society at its very roots: its people.
BREATHE IN THE SPIRIT One of the great blessings of technology is the easy availability of a wide variety of daily prayers. Through email, smartphone apps, and websites, we can find new ways to access the great spiritual riches of our tradition.
PENCIL PREACHING: PRAYER LIFE Jesus did not want his disciples to have a formal or fearful regard for God as a judge who had to be approached based on merit but experienced as an attentive parent who automatically cares for his children.
THE PASSION PATTERN There are many ways to express this passion pattern in our lives. Christians are called to be people of the Resurrection, people who are joyful, and aspire to be life enlargers, ready to spread their joy wherever life takes them.
THE WAY OF ST JAMES AWAITS For more than a thousand years, the Camino de Santiago been Europe’s most venerable pilgrimage route, carrying pilgrims to the cathedral that tradition maintains is the final earthly resting place of the Apostle St. James the Greater.
A STIRRING THAT WILL NOT BE DENIED The divine greening power calls us to embrace the mystery of growth and of transformation. It’s a process that’s exciting and mysterious and scary, all at once, especially for those of us who want to know.
WHAT WE’VE BEEN MISSING This year of physical separation from our loved ones has taught us in an unprecedented way what it means to hope for resurrection of the flesh.
AN EVOLVING FAITH INCLUDES DOUBT Doubt need not be the death of faith. It can be the birth of a new kind of faith, a faith beyond beliefs, a faith that expresses itself in love, one can save your life and save the world.
PRAYING THROUGH PAIN When you pray to God, mental and physical changes occur that help you with physical discomfort. A physician shows us how to pray through our pain.
PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM AND HIDDEN ACTS OF FAITH The kingdom of God, by its very nature, is something that can only be passed on through “indirect communication.” That is, through hidden, elusive, subversive means of communication, sneaking in through the cracks of our self-reliance.
MOMENTS OF DOUBT Counseling the doubtful is a spiritual work of mercy... is a concrete act and the first work of charity, interpreted as the ability to understand the difficulties of another person; it also gives meaning and direction to the other works of mercy.
IN SEARCH OF PERFECT JOY When we learn to love with something like the love God has for creation, we arrive at the end for which we are made. We grow into our Godlikeness. We live fully and richly.
CONTEMPLATION IN ACTION Contemplation in action is about learning how to be, learning how to see, and learning how to love.
THE SYMPHONY OF YOUR DAY We are invited to be still and listen for the sounds we’ve been too busy or too distracted to hear through the day. In the pauses between the movements of the symphony of our lives, we are invited to listen to God’s voice hidden behind the fanfare.
BREATHING AS PRAYER Breathing, then, within the context of spiritual resilience, is not only “the necessary” that St. Francis talks about, but it also helps us find what’s necessary—to do, think, feel, and become.
THE HARD WORK OF TRANSFORMATION Transformation is always a process of letting go, living in the confusing, shadowy space for a while, and eventually being spit up on a new and unexpected shore.
BECOMING RADICALLY OPEN We do not know where we’re going, how to get there, what it will look like, or how long it will take. And that might seem daunting to us at first.
LEONARD COHEN’S BIBLICAL VISION If Leonard Cohen failed to live at the center of righteousness, he maintained a sense of where that center remained, and of how to find it again in prayer.
OUT OF CONTROL BUT VITAL TO GOD We humans are straddling a precipitous moment of cosmic history. If we continue to ignore the signs of decline all around us, beginning with climate change, we will become an extinct species.
THE GIFT OF VULNERABILITY Jesus’ call to be servants is an invitation to embrace our vulnerability by serving one another. This is what brings a real sense of satisfaction in life. It transforms our anxiety over being vulnerable into joy.
GROWING MY TRUST IN GOD Actively looking for God during my day keeps my focus away from self and keeps God at the center. Keeping God at the center of my life gives me hope.
BREATH PRAYER HELPS YOU MEDITATE IN THE MOMENT To pray without ceasing means to pray while doing the dishes or the laundry, to pray while waiting for the bus or sitting in traffic, to pray in the middle of the night when we awaken filled with anxiety.
MARK, A GOSPEL FOR ORDINARY TIME Of the four Gospel writers, Mark is the one you would not want to invite to dinner. But he is the one who will challenge you to listen more carefully and to think more deeply about Jesus.
EARTH: ONE OF GOD'S FAILED EXPERIMENTS? Why would God create such a huge universe with so many possible sources of life if he did not want thousands of species to bloom? Do we think that God has so little imagination that we are the only possibility he could come up with?
FALLING IN LOVE WITH GOD To be in relationship with God means traveling on the two-way street of shared experience, opening ourselves up to God in a way that allows God into our lives.
HENRI NOUWEN: HOW TO (ACTUALLY) PRAY WITHOUT CEASING To pray does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God.
THE CREATIVE SPIRITUALITY OF THOMAS MERTON Thomas Merton was a man of contradictions. He was a deeply human man — down-to-earth, direct, and spontaneous. Those who knew him best recall the infectious humor, the belly laughter. But he could also be a restless spirit, questioning, provoking, pushing at the boundaries.
7 EASY TIPS FOR PERSONAL PRAYER We struggle to know how to pray or how to sustain ourselves in prayer. Whether you’re a beginner or more advanced in prayer, these seven tips will encourage you in your practice of prayer.
PRAYER AND SERVICE Prayer is an adventure that takes us through ever changing landscapes traveling through cactus patches, tranquil meadows, dry deserts, lone prairies, rolling hills... Each terrain has its own majesty and mystery.
SAYING ‘YES’ TO GOD God speaks through all creation. — Everything is gift. Grateful living is a celebration of the universal give-and-take of life, a limitless “yes” to belonging. Our challenge is to learn how to listen.
A FAITH PRAYED When we allow prayer to hold us steady in faith, we experience the ups and downs of daily life with significantly greater peace.
THE MAGNIFICAT: CANTICLE OF MARY The greatness of Mary’s Canticle is that it embraces the whole sweep of the Incarnate Word—and the whole sweep of Mary’s trust in God.
EMBRACING OUR OWN MORTALITY Living a deep, intentional, fully present, values-aligned life is also one of the most pleasurable and satisfying things you can do in the face of your mortality.
GOD IS GREATER FROM A CHILD’S POINT OF VIEW Childlike wonder is fragile and fleeting. If we become the right kind of small, we can recover a truly epic sense of wonder for the giant one who looms over us but is so often obscured from view.
HUMANIZING GOD We understand how our own hands are so important in expressing our love and care for one another—a touch, a protective hold. That image also tells us about God.
A CLOSER LOOK AT HEAVEN Eternity will be the revelation not only of all God’s love and goodness, but also of all that we have meant to each other.
AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE LORD Many of us grew up praying to what we considered the God of the Old Testament: This God rained pestilence on a defiant Egyptian pharaoh and directed Moses to lead the Israelites through the desert to the promised land.
BROKEN OPEN Sr. Simone Campbell talks about how the courage to confront our own brokenness can bring about personal and political healing in this fractured moment.
ST. FRANCIS AND PRAYER Francis was as much subject to self-doubt as any of us. His motives were purified in prayer; his ego became right-sized there. His prayer was both private and public...
MEDITATION MADE EASY They say prayer is talking to God. Meditation, on the other hand, is listening to God. Here are three simple steps for a richer, more meditative life.
CULTIVATING HAPPINESS The urge that drives people to seek a spiritual teaching has always been the simple yearning to experience more happiness. Happiness is the true experience we are constantly pursuing and trying to grasp.
FALLING AWAY TO GOD If we’re going to live peacefully with each other and with our God-given Earth, many of us are going to have to let some things fall away.
SERVICE AND SELF CARE GO HAND IN HAND Caring for others requires caring for yourself first—it’s what Jesus would do. When your light is rekindled and your battery recharged, you may go forth and serve.
PATHWAYS TO GOD IN EVERYDAY LIFE How can we more actively and securely follow Jesus’ guidance amid our daily tasks? People who had ordinary encounters with Jesus in the Gospels can aid our daily journey as disciples.
A GUIDE TO PRAYING WITH AN ICON From the archives: Icons are not just beautiful paintings. The purpose of icons is to help us pray. Jim Forest offers instructions for putting them to good use.
WHEN PRAYING IS DIFFICULT Let’s consider what we all run into from time to time in our journey from here to eternity. It’s the feeling that we no longer seem able to pray or that our prayers don’t really mean much.
FAMILY SPIRITUALITY BENEFITS EVERYONE Families don’t always include children. They could be a married couple, or a single mother and child, or an LGBTQ family. There are lots of different ways that people will define families for themselves, and we have to allow that.
SPRINGTIME WORKERS Sowing seeds: Teaching is always an act of great faith, but if we keep an eye on the teaching authority of Jesus, a great harvest will be there for the gathering.
INSIGHTS FROM OUR ANCESTORS It is impossible to measure the magnitude of the loss several generations of American youth have suffered from their contempt for the wisdom of the past.
THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE IS FOR EVERYONE It at first seems like a little bit of a contradiction: Our current age calls for more action and engagement, not for a retreat from the world. When the world seems topsy-turvy, Benedictine contemplation offers stability.
CORRECT GODLY VISION What men have believed about god has caused more wars and fiercer wars than any other thing whatever. Error about God cannot be a private affair. It can only end to a diminished and distorted life for everyone.
BUILDING A ‘CULTURE OF US’ The challenge of our time is to shift from criticism to construction – from fighting old wars to creating new institutions of shared flourishing.
SPIRITUAL REALISM IN A DIVIDED AMERICA The past few years have made evident a deeply discomfiting truth about contemporary American life: we may be a country, but we are struggling to be a people.