Marian Servants of Divine Providence

I celebrated Mass this morning with some of the Apostleship of Prayer staff and four women who are members of the Marian Servants of Divine Providence.  The Mass was part of a re-commitment ceremony in which that group made promises to continue as Servants for one year.

The Marian Servants are a Private Association of the Christian Faithful that was recognized by Bishop Robert Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg in 1997.  A flyer that the Servants shared with me states:

"The mission of the Marian Servants is this: to bring Christians to a deeper understanding of their vocation and mission in Christ, in the Church and in the world. The Marian Servants realize that Spiritual Direction is a vital component in carrying out this mission. Therefore the Marian Servants minister to the Mystical Body, the People of God, through Spiritual Direction by utilizing the Ignatian form of praying Scripture and seeking the designated graces."

The main community house in Clearwater, Florida offers retreats and courses in spiritual direction designed to prepare people not only to provide spiritual direction but also to guide others in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.

Each local community has its own unique ministry and name. After a period of discernment, the
Milwaukee group decided to call itself "The Marian Servants of Jesus Christ Lord and King."  Providentially, the small chapel where we celebrated Mass today has a statue of Christ the King.

Some Labor Day Thoughts

The last of St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises is called "The Contemplation to Attain the Love of God." One of his "points" is:

"This is to consider how God works and labors for me in all creatures upon the face of the earth, that is, He conducts Himself as one who labors. Thus, in the heavens, in the elements, the plants, the fruits, the cattle, etc. He gives being, conserves them, confers life and sensation, etc. Then I will reflect on myself."

Figuratively speaking, according to Genesis, God worked for six days in creating the world and then rested. Humanity is made in God's image and likeness and so we are made to work and labor with God for the good of creation.  We are stewards of God's creation.  God cares for creation through us. 

The Gospel at Mass today (Luke 4: 16-30) is what many have called Jesus' "Inaugural Address" in which he announces his plan of action as he begins his active ministry after his "hidden life" of work at home and with his foster father Joseph.  But the people who hear him do not have the eyes of faith and so they reject him and his words. They cannot see how God will accomplish the great works promised by the prophet Isaiah through Jesus. 

We are called to have eyes of faith. One of the goals of the Apostleship of Prayer and the Daily Offering is to offer our daily work to God. Such an offering will, with time, help us to see our work with eyes of faith. By offering our work each day and then reflecting upon the daily work that has been offered, our eyes become more sensitive to seeing God at work through us.  In that way, more and more, our daily work will play a hidden or sometimes more explicit role in the work of preparing creation to receive Jesus in his second coming.

The first Mass reading today (1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18) speaks of that second coming when Jesus will raise all people to new life in the Kingdom of God.  Our lives are meant to prepare the world for that day.  Our work plays a role in that preparation. 

In the Our Father we pray "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done."  When we follow God's will by making an offering of our day with its work, we are allowing the Kingdom of God to break into our lives and the lives of those around us.  Little by little Christ reigns in us and over us. As he reigns, God's work is accomplished in us and through us.  May we have the eyes of faith to see and believe this!

Pope Francis and St. Therese

Fr. Bernard McGuckian, S.J., the Apostleship of Prayer director for Ireland, has been visiting me for the past few weeks.  In the course of various conversations he said that for the first time in his 76 years he can say that he understands the particular spirituality of the pope. The reason is that Pope Francis was formed in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius as was Fr. McGuckian and every other Jesuit, including myself.  Now, as I read various homilies and talks of Pope Francis, I look for threads of the Spiritual Exercises.

Recently, another friend of mine, Maureen O'Riordan who has a marvelous website about St. Therese of Lisieux, blogged about the connection between Pope Francis and this saint who is the second patron of the Apostleship of Prayer.  When he was a cardinal visiting Rome, Pope Francis was in the habit of going to a Franciscan church where he would stop at a statue of St. Therese and pray.  You can read the rest of the story here.

As time goes by and we approach the month of the Sacred Heart I'll be eager to learn more about Pope Francis' devotion to the Heart of Jesus and his involvement with the Apostleship of Prayer which is an apostolate of the Jesuits in Argentina and throughout the world.  

The Examen

I'm going to try to piece this post together from my faulty memory. I like to tell people that I have a steel-trap mind, shaped like a sieve. Last Sunday I gave a talk at St. Catherine Laboure Parish in Glenview, IL, a suburb of Chicago. The talk was part of a monthly series on the topic of discernment, and my talk was on finding God in the details of the day. Unfortunately, I misplaced my folder with notes and materials for my talk, and friends are now joining me in prayers to St. Anthony to find it for me.

From 1984 to 1988 I was the vocation director for the Jesuits of the Wisconsin Province, a seven state area in the upper Midwest. You could call it the "W Province" because it stretches from Wisconsin in the east to Wyoming in the west. As vocation director I helped people discern their vocations. In some cases that led to men applying to and being accepted into the Jesuits. In other cases, just as much "success stories," I helped young men discern that God was calling them to other vocations, including marriage. In fact, a couple years ago at a parish in Minnesota, I met a woman who told her two daughters that I was responsible for their birth! I had helped her husband discern that God was calling him to marriage and in following that call he was given a wonderful wife and beautiful daughters. One of the things I highly recommended to people discerning their vocations was the practice of the Daily Examen or what we at the Apostleship of Prayer like to call the Evening Review.

The idea is this: we don't discern in a vacuum. In order to make a major decision, in order to discern God's will in regard to a vocation, it's important to develop the habit of looking for signs of God's presence and activity every day. This helps us to have a discerning heart, one that is tuned into God's wavelength and better able to see the directions that God is giving us every day.

But before we can do this, it's important to become more familiar with how God operates. We have a record of that, a record of God's activity in the lives of individuals and nations. It's the Bible. Thus, to develop a discerning heart it's important to spend a little time every day prayerfully reading the Bible. In this way we will become familiar with the ways that God works. By trying to enter into the mind and heart of Jesus in the Gospels--what He was thinking and feeling, how He acted--we can receive direction for our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.

When we look at Jesus in the Gospels, especially in the Gospel of Luke, which will be the focus for the Sunday Gospels in the coming year, we see that Jesus often spent time alone at night in prayer. I think that part of that prayer involved looking back on His day and seeing how God the Father was present, walking with Him and speaking to Him. Just look at the parables that Jesus told. They were drawn from every day events. He drew lessons from watching a farmer sowing seed in the field and seeing it fall on different types of soil. He saw the Kingdom of God in a woman baking bread and using a little yeast to make a large amount of dough rise. He saw the Provident care of His Heavenly Father in the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. He heard the news of the day--a tower falling on some laborers and killing them--and used this experience to teach. Yes, Jesus certainly must have gone over the events and people of His day, finding in them the presence and love and direction of His Father and ours.

From this basis, then, we can commit ourselves to reading the Bible of our lives. God didn't stop speaking to us when the last page of Scripture was written and the books of the Bible were officially approved. The God who spoke throughout history, whose activities and words are recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, and who spoke definitively through His Word made flesh, His only-begotten Son, continues to speak to us through the events and people of our lives. Sometimes the word He speaks is an affirming word. Sometimes it's challenging. Either way, we won't hear it unless we take some time each day to listen, to look back on the events of the day in order to discern what God was trying to tell us through them.

So the first thing to do, in the words of a commercial, is to "just do it!" Schedule time every day for a review of the day. St. Ignatius Loyola felt this was so important to the members of the order he founded, the Jesuits, that he told them that apart from the Eucharist and the required prayers of the ordained, this is the one devotion or prayer that they ought never omit. Through the daily examen they would be able to seek and find God in all things.

There is no magic in when the examen is to be done. I find that in the evening I am often too tired or too distracted to do it and so I make it part of my morning prayer. With a cup of coffee at my side I look back on the previous day and I write. I find writing helps me to focus. Others may find taking a walk after supper and reflecting on the day helps them to not not only exercise the body but also the spirit. At the Apostleship of Prayer we have an Evening Review CD that people pop into their car on their way home from work and this leads them through a prayerful review of their day.

Is this the Examination of Conscience? I've heard that the word that we translate as "conscience" has various meanings in other languages. Strictly speaking, an examination of conscience focuses on our weakness and sins, what we've done wrong, what we are sorry for. We make such an examination when we prepare for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. But this examination or examen is broader and so it has been called the "Awareness Examen" or the "Examen of Consciousness." Fr. George Aschenbrenner, S.J., in a 1972 article, popularized this approach. A condensed version of that article can be found on a web site that's sponsored by Loyola Press.

There is also no magic in how the examen is to be done. Different individuals and groups offer different approaches or steps. The following is one five step method:

1. Spend a moment slowing down and being aware that you are in God's presence. St. Paul, quoting a Greek poet, said that in God we live and move and have our being. God is always present to us, but we are not always present to God. We are often distracted and so we begin our brief period of prayer pausing to reflect on God's presence.

2. Spend a brief period of time in thanksgiving. What are you thankful for at this very moment? This prayer of gratitude puts you in a positive frame of mind that allows you to be more open to God's presence in your day. It "primes the pump" for your review.

3. Ask for the help of the Holy Spirit to see yourself as God sees you. Most people tend to see the glass as half empty rather than half full. If I tell someone nine very positive things about him or herself and one negative or critical thing, that person will tend to go away thinking only about the one negative thing. You need the Holy Spirit to have perspective, to see yourself with honesty and also with love, unlike the one whom Scripture calls "the Accuser" who loves to disturb you by leading you to focus only on what is negative.

4. Review your day. Imagine you are watching a video of your day, seated on a couch with Jesus. Some parts you may fast-forward through, but other parts you will pause at in order to savor or reflect upon: what was God telling you through that event or person? How did you feel? What do those feelings tell you? Was God affirming you or challenging you through that moment of your day? You may want to fast-forward through some parts but Jesus may want you to pause so that with the help of the Holy Spirit at that moment He can teach and guide you. This part is the core of the examen.

5. Have a heart-to-Heart talk with Jesus. What comes to your mind as you finish your review? How do you feel and what do you want to say to Jesus? Are you sorry for anything? Are you grateful? Are there any signs in your day that point in a specific direction for the major decision you are making? You might write those down and keep an ongoing record of them to share with a spiritual or vocation director. Finish your prayer with a resolution or act of faith, hope, or love, committing yourself to following the Lord as best you can in the next day that God is giving you.

At the Apostleship of Prayer we encourage people to not only make an offering of their day with a Morning Offering, but, when the day is over, to review the offering that one has made. Doing this will help you to be more sensitive to God's presence and direction in your daily life. It will make you more aware of the many opportunities to renew your offering during the day and to seek God's will in the events of your life.

"Take Lord, Receive"

Today is the feast day of the founder of my religious order, the Jesuits. It's the feast of St. Ignatius who was so in love with Jesus and so wanted his companions to share that same love, that he called his congregation the Company or Society of Jesus. He did not want it to be named after him. His disciples were not to be followers of Ignatius but followers of Jesus.

I'm at the Jesuit Retreat House in Lake Elmo, Minnesota and I can't think of a better place or way to be celebrating the feast. One of the great gifts that God gave to the world through St. Ignatius was his retreat manual which was based on his own spiritul experiences. It's called, simply, "The Spiritual Exercises." I'm giving those "Exercises" to a group of 56 men and in giving them I'm blessed to be experiencing as well their grace.

"The Spiritual Exercises" are the basis for what we call "the simple and profound way of life" that is the Apostleship of Prayer. It really is very simple. The "Exercises" help me to know that God loves me very much and has given me everything that I am and have. How should I respond to such love? With all my love, giving all to God in a return of love for love. The "Exercises" end with a simple prayer of offering which in Latin is known as "The Suscipe." It's one of my favorite prayers and I use it every morning along with a few others when I wake up and before I get out of bed. The version I use goes like this:

Take Lord, receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire will, all that I have and hold and possess. You have given all to me; to You, O Lord, I return all it. All is Yours. Dispose of it wholly according to Your will. All that I ask is for Your love and Your grace. With these I am rich enough and want for nothing more.

This prayer is basically the culmination of the "Spiritual Exercises." It is an offering of love that can be renewed every day with the Daily or Morning Offering Prayer. Thus the daily offering spirituality of the Apostleship of Prayer flows naturally from "The Spiritual Exercises" of St. Ignatius and it should be no surprise that the Apostleship was founded by a Jesuit.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary

It’s natural that the feast in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus should be followed by a feast in honor of His Mother’s Immaculate Heart. For without that Immaculate Heart, there would have been no Sacred Heart. The Son of God from all eternity would have existed, it’s true, but He could not have taken flesh and become human without Mary’s acceptance of God’s will into her Heart. It's been said that Mary first received into her Immaculate Heart what she then conceived in her womb--the Word of God, Jesus.

In honoring the Heart of Mary we commit ourselves to having hearts like hers. That means hearts which are free of sin, free of any obstacle to God’s grace, pure and totally committed to the will of the Father. It also means having hearts which ponder the events of Jesus’ life, keeping “all these things” in our hearts as today’s Gospel (Luke 2: 41-51) says Mary kept them in hers.

In the “Spiritual Exercises” whenever there is a particularly important grace that St. Ignatius wants us to pray for, he invites us to use a Triple Colloquy or intimate, heart-to-heart conversation. He explains: “The first colloquy will be with our Blessed Lady, that she may obtain grace for me from her Son and Lord….” Then having asked the intercession of Jesus’ Mother and ours, we go to Jesus Himself and ask for the grace. Thirdly, we go, as it were, with the Mother and the Son, to the Father and ask for the grace. Such conversations—with the Mother whose Heart was completely open to the will of the Father and with the Son who was obedient unto death to the will of the Father—will prepare us to approach God the Father with the same desires of the Sacred and the Immaculate Hearts. I think the lyrics of a U-2 song apply here: "Two Hearts Beat as One." The Hearts of Jesus and Mary beat as one in their total surrender to God's will. Our devotion to the Two Hearts should lead us to have hearts that are also purely devoted to the will of the Father in our lives.

Homily for Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

On Saturday, April 10, I was honored to preach at a special Mass honoring Fr. John Hardon, S.J., during the annual conference of the Institute on Religious Life. The readings were for Saturday of the Octave of Easter: Acts 4: 13-21 and Mark 16: 9-15. Here is what I said:

I am grateful and deeply consoled to be preaching in honor of my brother Jesuit, Fr. John Hardon. I only met Fr. Hardon once, and briefly at that. It was at a fund-raising dinner for Mercy Academy, a small, private, Catholic school in Milwaukee. I remember his talk as though it were today. He said that in the future Catholics, if they are going to be faithful Catholics, will have to be ready to be martyrs. It was a striking statement which, as I thought about it, rang true to me. In the more than ten years since, his words have proven to be true.

And this shouldn't surprise us. Jesus Himself predicted that His followers would be persecuted. He even said that this persecution would come from members of one's own family. It shouldn't surprise us if opposition and persecution arise from within our family, whether it's our blood family or religious family, or from within the Church itself. This is the story that we see so often played out in the Acts of the Apostles, including today's reading.

Fr. Hardon once said: "You do not remain faithful to the Savior without paying for it." That was true for the Apostles of Jesus' time. It's true for modern apostles, like Fr. John Hardon. And it's true for us.

Why? Because Jesus is the Truth. He said that He was the Truth and that He came to witness to the truth. The world has always questioned truth. Our ancestral parents questioned the truth of what God had told them. Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" The world rejects truth, so much so that Pope Benedict has said we are living in a "dictatorship of relativism."

I'm sure at one time or another you've heard someone say something like this: "Well, that may be true for you but it isn't for me. You have your truth and I have mine." I'm always tempted to ask, in response to that, "But how do you know that's true?"

You see, deep down in every human person there is a sense of truth. There is a standard by which we judge something to be objectively true or false, right or wrong, good or bad.

But people deny this. Why? It's part of the "hardness of heart" for which Jesus rebukes the Apostles in today's Gospel. Before Pentecost, the hearts of the Apostles continued to be hard, closed to the truth. Our world continues to have unconverted, hard hearts that reject the truth.

Where do we find the ability and courage to witness to the truth, and to do this as Christ did, as Fr. John Hardon did? Where do we find the ability to speak and witness to the truth without rancor, without resentment, without hating those who oppose or persecute us?

We can see the example of Jesus and of Fr. Hardon and try to imitate them in speaking the truth boldly with love. But that isn't enough. It isn't enough for us, just as it wasn't enough for Fr. Hardon. We need something greater that will give us the power to speak the truth with love.

Fr. Hardon found the ability, the strength, and the courage to love in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He practiced devotion to the Sacred Heart in very practical ways. He used invocations like "Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place my trust in Thee!" He did this throughout the day. He once said: "Over the years, every time I pick up the telephone, before I talk to whoever called, I make an aspiration to the Sacred Heart. It helps; you never know who is on the other side."

Fr. Hardon was deeply devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus whom he found in the Blessed Sacrament, in the Holy Eucharist. He often wrote about the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. He articulated our belief that since Jesus is truly present, Body and Blood, soul and divinity, in the Most Holy Eucharist, His Heart is present there as well.

There are two places in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, chapters 11 and 36, where a great promise is made. Through the prophet, God said that He would take from our bodies our stony, hard hearts and give us natural, human hearts. Where was this prophecy ever fulfilled? I know of nowhere except in Jesus who gave Himself for us on the cross and gave Himself to us in the Eucharist. There He give us His Heart to replace our hard hearts.

The imagery of the Sacred Heart shows a Heart on fire, on fire with love. This Heart is on fire with love for the Father. It's on fire with love for the truth. It's on fire with love for souls. The fire of love burned within the Heart of Jesus and He could not keep it to Himself. Nor could the Apostles, once they were enflamed with the fire of the Holy Spirit. It was impossible for them to contain the truth and the love they knew. As they declared in the first reading today: "It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard." They could not keep it to themselves. They could not hold it inside. It had to come out, just like the Heart of Jesus.

I once asked a group of children to whom I was showing an image of the Sacred Heart, "Why do you think Jesus' Heart is on the outside of His body?" One little girl responded, "Maybe He loves us so much, He can't keep it inside." So it is for the one who, like Fr. Hardon, knows the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He must speak the truth and do so with a love that bears witness to the truth.

Jesus shares with His Apostles and with us the work of communicating the love of God. He told them: "Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature." Fr. Hardon answered this call. But notice, Jesus said to proclaim the Gospel to all creatures, not just human creatures. What does that mean? Even though Fr. Hardon's middle name was Anthony, I don't think he ever followed his namesake and preached to the fish. Nor did he follow St. Francis' example and preach to birds and other animals. Fr. Hardon wasn't a Franciscan but a Jesuit.

I think he answered this call to preach to every creature by faithfully living out the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. At the beginning of them there is a reflection entitled "The First Principle and Foundation." St. Ignatius has us reflect on our purpose in life. We are here on earth to prepare for heaven. We are here to give glory and praise to God. Thus we are to use the creatures of the world in a way that helps us fulfill that purpose. If some creatures get in the way of our attaining our purpose, we are to reject them. If they help us in attaining our purpose, we are to use them. In using them in this way, we ennoble them. Like the beautiful music of this Liturgy, the sounds alone mean nothing, but when brought together for God's glory and praise, they become beautiful and noble. This is what it means to preach the Gospel to all creatures. We lift up the creation around us and bring it under the reign of Christ the King. We proclaim to all creation its purpose--the praise and glory of God--and in doing so we claim all for the reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

This brings us to another of aspect of the Spiritual Exercises that can be found in Fr. Hardon--his zealous response to the call of Christ the King. In the Exercises there is a meditation on the call of a king. St. Ignatius has us first imagine the call of an earthly ruler who wants to set the world right. If such a leader captures our imagine and desire to overcome the evil in our world, how much more ought Christ the King? Fr. Hardon answered that call with his all. Fr. Hardon was a true soldier of Christ. He battled for the truth. He battled for the authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council. He battled for the reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

But his battle was also a hidden one. Yesterday morning, Fr. Benedict Groeschel said that Fr. Hardon was "utterly dedicated" but "not a fanatic." He was not an extremist. That's because he won the interior battle. He resisted the temptation to resent or hate those who opposed him. He won the battle for love, for pure love with no ego concerns. He did not battle to win the esteem of others or support for himself, but to win souls for Christ.

And the weapon in this battle was the Cross, the love of Christ. His weapon, which he so often talked about, was sacrificial love, suffering.

We are all called to do battle. No one is neutral or on the sidelines. In this regard I'm reminded of a statue in Omaha. It's in Heartland of America Park near the downtown and the riverfront and it's dedicated to the veterans of World War II. It consists of a group of figures. First, there is a soldier dressed in his khaki dress uniform, holding his cap in his hand and bending down to a girl who is running into his arms. He's the veteran of the front lines who's returning to his family. The girl, holding a stick with a small American flag on it, represents all the people who prayed and who through their patriotism supported those who were fighting far from home. And then there's a boy, saluting the returning soldier and pulling a wagon that's filled with all sorts of odd things and junk: paper, wire, cans. In the effort to fight the forces of evil, nothing was wasted. The boy represents all the saving and sacificing that people back home did in order to support the war effort. And then there's a woman dressed in overalls with a wrench in her back pocket. Her name is ... yes, "Rosie, the Riveter." She represents all the women and wives who remained behind and worked in the factories to provide the materials for the war. Lastly, there are two other figures, a man and woman standing side by side, an older couple whom, when I first saw the group of statues, I assumed were the parents of the young man returning. But as I went around the statues and looked at them from the other side, head-on, I could see they weren't his parents. Together they were holding in their hands the tri-folded flag representing the sacrifice they had made--the son who didn't return.

We are all called to do battle in a war that is bigger than World War II. The battle line for this war crosses each of our hearts. We are called to do battle with ourselves, with temptation and sin, with the devil, with the world that is under the influence of the devil. And our weapon in this war is love.

We are called to love, and to lose. That's right, to lose. To lose ourselves in Christ. To die to ourselves. To offer all to Christ and with Christ, in every Mass, to the Father. This is the meaning of the Morning Offering which Fr. Hardon prayed and encouraged others to pray as part of their involvement in the Apostleship of Prayer. In offering ourselves and losing ourselves we find ourselves. We find Christ and eternal life.

This is the meaning of the "martyrdom" that Fr. Hardon predicted. It's only in that Daily Offering, in living in union with Christ's perfect offering at Mass, in living a Eucharistic life by offering ourselves with Christ, in letting the Heart of Jesus reign over us and transform us--only in this, will we be able to survive as Catholics.

Seven days after Fr. Hardon's death on December 30, 2000, Pope John Paul II issued an Apostolic Letter to the Church for the new millennium. It's called "Novo Millennio Ineunte" and in it the Holy Father challenged the Church to go deeper, "Duc in altum!" I want to conclude with words which echo Fr. Hardon's:

"Christians who have received the gift of a vocation to the specially consecrated life are of course called to prayer in a particular way: of its nature, their consecration makes them more open to the experience of contemplation, and it is important that they should cultivate it with special care. But it would be wrong to think that ordinary Christians can be content with a shallow prayer that is unable to fill their whole life. Especially in the face of the many trials to which today's world subjects faith, they would be not only mediocre Christians but 'Christians at risk'".

We must go deeper. We must enter more deeply into the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus as Fr. John Hardon did. Then we will be able to speak the truth courageously with love. Then we will be able to pray in a way that fills our whole life. Following Fr. Hardon there, entering into the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we will offer all and receive all.

"For the Greater Glory of God"

AMDG. For the Greater Glory of God. That is the motto of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, and it was the title for the 2010 National Meeting of the Institute on Religious Life that was held this weekend in Mundelein, IL. This annual meeting is always a blessing and this year was a special one because it was held to honor a brother Jesuit--Fr. John Hardon--who died on December 30, 2000 and whose cause for canonization has been opened. The subtitle of the meeting was "The Theological, Spiritual, and Apostolic Legacy of Rev. John A. Hardon, S.J., Servant of God."

The meeting began on Friday morning with a special session for consecrated persons at Marytown, a place that has had 24 hour Eucharistic Adoration since 1928. Mother Assumpta Long, foundress and superior of the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist, gave a talk entitled "In Pursuit of Perfect Charity: Father Hardon's Quest for Authentic Renewal of Religous Life." She said that Fr. Hardon "loved God with his whole being, and loved those whom God loves in the same way." She was followed by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, whose talk was "Loyal Son of Ignatius: The Religious and Priestly Witness of Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., Servant of God."

Archbishop Raymond Burke presided at Mass Friday afternoon and gave the keynote address which was entited "For the Greater Glory of God: The Lasting Legacy of Fr. John A. Hardon."

On Saturday there were two main addresses in the morning. Journalist Jay McNally shared stories from the biography of Fr. Hardon which he is writing and Fr. Louis Guardiola, of the Fathers of Mercy, spoke on "The Eucharistic Spirituality of Fr. John Hardon, S.J."

In the afternoon there were various workshops available that covered a variety of topics: the canonization process; the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius; Mary as Model, Missionary, and Mother; evangelization; and the one I attended, "Preaching the Gospel to the Digital Generation."

Archbishop Thomas Doran of Rockford, IL celebrated Mass and I had the honor of preaching. I plan on posting the homily I gave in the next few days. A specially commissioned muscial composition and score in honor of Fr. Hardon was premiered at this Mass.

The day ended with a wonderful banquet at which Archbishop Burke received the annual "Pro Fidelitate et Virtute" award which is given to individuals who manifest a strong love for the Church and a zealous commitment to the consecrated life. Archbishop Burke knew Fr. Hardon and helped him in founding a group called the Marian Catechist Apostolate.

Today there was another major address by Douglas Bushman of the Institute for Pastoral Theology--"Responding to the Call to Martyrdom." All the talks are available from the Institute on Religious Life.

Fr. Hardon founded the Institute on Religious Life in 1974 and it was a deep consolation for me to be a part of this meeting in his honor. Fr. Hardon was very devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and was a great promoter of the Apostleship of Prayer. I had been thinking how it was too bad that he didn't live to see the current revival of the Apostleship and how that behind the revival is the devotion of many younger Jesuits to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But then it occured to me: Fr. Hardon's intercession after he died is what's behind the current revival.

The Rooms of St. Ignatius

On Monday evening I celebrated Mass with the other small group of Jesuits who are here in Rome for a meeting to discuss the Apostleship of Prayer. We celebrated in a little chapel which used to be one of the rooms where St. Ignatius dwelt and where he died. Monday was the feast of St. Claude la Colombiere, who lived a little over a century after St. Ignatius, and it was appropriate that we began our meetings with Mass on his feast and in the rooms of St. Ignatius. St. Claude was the spiritual director of the great Sacred Heart visionary, St. Margaret Mary.

In my homily I spoke about the connections between St. Ignatius, St. Claude, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Apostleship of Prayer. St. Claude, formed by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, had a deep, personal love for Jesus and in particular for his humanity. Jesus loves us with a Heart that is human and divine. Knowing the love of Jesus which is symbolised by his Sacred Heart, St. Claude, following the direction of St. Ignatius, would have listened to what this Heart had to say to him in his prayer and would have responded as one friend speaks to another. He would have had a heart to Heart conversation with Jesus.

But love, as St. Ignatius taught, is expressed in more than words. In fact, it is expressed best in deeds. At the end of the Spiritual Exercises St. Ignatius invites the retreatant to ponder all the good things God has done and to ask, what would a reasonable person do? The answer is to give as one has received. Since we have received everything from God, and since God has held back nothing of himself, then we too ought to make a total offering of ourselves to God. Such an offering is best renewed each day, one day at a time.

And such an offering will ultimately involve sacrifice. It will mean surrendering our own plans, desires, and will to God. This is what happened in the life of St. Ignatius who wanted to be a priest directly serving people in pastoral ways and ended up the last decade of his life as a priest-administrator. Out of love for Jesus, he gave himself to the task of organizing the Jesuit order he founded and writing its Constitutions. He sacrificed his will for the will of God. Love inspired him to do so.

Similarly, St. Claude sacrificed his plans and desires. After serving as St. Margaret Mary's spiritual director he went to England where he was ultimately imprisoned, became ill, and was released lest his death create a political crisis with France. He died a short time later at the early age of 42.

The Daily Offering of the Apostleship of Prayer can only be made as an act of love. If it doesn't arise out of the knowledge of God's deep personal love, it is in danger of becoming a routine or a part of a business negotiation with God. That idea is one of the things we discussed yesterday and today. But more on those discussions another time....

Cleveland

I am in Cleveland, Ohio for a couple events. Yesterday I met with local members of the Ignatian Volunteer Corps. According to their mission statement, IVC "is a national community service organization of volunteers and for volunteers, and is affiliated with the Society of Jesus. IVC works to meet the most urgent needs of people who are poor through the experienced service of mature men and women--Ignatian Volunteers." While the Jesuit Volunteer Corps consists of young people who have recently graduated from college, IVC consists of people over 50 who, as they say in their brochure, share "their skills, talents, and life experiences with organizations that directly assist people who are poor, or address issues related to poverty." Their slogan is: "Your most important work may begin after you retire." There are 16 such groups scattered around the country.

Realizing that being active isn't enough, the IVC encourages its members to "grow deeper in Christian faith by reflecting and praying in the Ignatian tradition." This is what brought me to meet with the group in Cleveland. I led their "Winter's Day of Reflection," and the theme was "Thirsting for a More Compassionate Heart."

In my first talk I went through the three key words of the theme. "Compassion" is more than giving help; it involves a sharing and actual identification with the suffering of another. The "Heart" is more than a sentimental symbol that inundates card shops and candy stores every winter in preparation for Valentine's Day. In the Scriptures the heart symbolized the deepest center of a person; it is the place of wisdom. "Thirsting" describes our relationship with God. The Psalms often speak of the human person longing and thirsting for God. This is because we are made in God's image and likeness; we are made by Love Himself, and for love. We are made for union with God and nothing earthly can satisfy this thirst. As St. Augustine put it: "You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You."

Ultimately the "More Compassionate Heart" for which we are "Thirsting" is the Heart of Jesus. Only His love, symbolized in the Sacred Heart all on fire with love for humanity and for each individual, can fill the thirst with which we are created. As the love of this Heart fills us and our emptiness, it flows through us to others. Like the Jordan River which begins in the mountains of Syria and flows into the Sea of Galilee and then into the Dead Sea where it ends and stagnates, so the love of God must flow through us. When it does, we are fresh and beautiful like the Sea of Galilee. When love does not flow through us but when we grasp at it and try to possess it for ourselves, then we become like the Dead Sea.

How do we grow in union with this "Compassionate Heart" of Jesus? The Mass, with its two parts, gives us the answer.

The Liturgy of the Word puts us in touch with Jesus, the Living Word who speaks to us in the proclamation of the Gospel. The Church has traditionally taught a way of praying with the Gospel called "Lectio Divina." Employing this method, we prayerfully read the Gospel passage, noting which words or phrases strike us or move us. We ask ourselves, "what is God telling me through this passage?"

St. Ignatius Loyola took "Lection Divina" a step further by inviting the person praying to enter into the scene by means of the imagination. By becoming one of the characters in the scene, and imagining what the people are saying and doing, and even fantasizing our own involvement in the scene, we enter more deeply into the Gospel. Jesus, the Living Word, speaks to us on a deeper level.

But we can go even deeper. We can try to imagine what was going on in the mind and heart of Jesus. What was He thinking and feeling? What was He experiencing in His interior? How was He being moved? In this way we can begin to enter more deeply into Jesus' Heart and take on His attitudes and values, His thoughts and feelings. We can feel, with Him, the compassion He felt for all the crowds and individuals who came to Him. Our own hearts can become more compassionate, like the Heart of Jesus. In the words of the U-2 song, our "Two Hearts Beat as One."

That's the Liturgy of the Word, entering more deeply into the Heart of Jesus by praying with His thoughts and feelings as they come to us through the Gospel. But what about the second part of Mass, the Liturgy of the Eucharist?

This is where our "Thirsting for a More Compassionate Heart" is really satisfied. We believe that Jesus is truly present, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the Eucharist. When we receive Holy Communion we receive Him. He unites Himself to us, even giving us His Heart to transform our hearts. In the Eucharist the great prophecy of Ezekiel is fulfilled: "I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts" (36: 26). The Heart of Jesus, present in the Holy Eucharist, transforms our hearts, making them more and more like His own.

In this way our hearts become more compassionate. We don't just feel sorry for others, but we are willing, as Jesus did, to share their burdens and sufferings with them.

That's a summary of the two talks I gave and our Day of Reflection ended with the celebration of the Mass on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. This was a good reminder for us that "conversion" is not a once-and-for-all event. Conversion is ongoing. Though Paul had a life-changing encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, this conversion didn't make him perfect. He still struggled, as evidenced in his Letter to the Romans, Chapter 7: "What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate. ... The willing is ready at hand, but the doing the good is not. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. ... Miserable one that I am! Who will deliever me...? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." The transformation of our hearts isn't complete. We are still on the way and, one day at a time, Jesus who is present in Word and Sacrament is changing us.

Tonight I will be speaking at Gesu, the Jesuit parish next to John Carroll University. As part of their Adult Enrichment program, I'll be saying more about the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Fr. Richard A. McGarrity, S.J.

Yesterday I participated in the funeral of a member of my community, Fr. Richard A. McGarrity. He was 78 years old and had been battling cancer for a couple years. Over the last few months it was clear to all of us--the 50 or so members of the Marquette University Jesuit Community--that his battle would soon be over.

Fr. McGarrity was a fighter. Whether it was competing in a tennis match or battling the weeds at our community's villa in the Kettle Moraine area of Wisconsin, Dick fought hard. He fought not only against the physical foe of cancer but the spiritual foe of despondency. While he lost the physical battle, he won the spiritual one. Clearly in pain as he moved from side to side, unable to stand still as he concelebrated Mass, he never gave in to negativity and despair.

I don't know if he prayed the Morning Offering or "offered up" his suffering. I regret now not asking him about that. I suspect he did, though. He was always supportive of me and the Apostleship of Prayer. As a member of the Wisconsin Province's "Jesuit Partnership," the development staff of my province, he periodically included our monthly leaflets in his "thank you" cards to benefactors. I can't help thinking that he must have had a daily habit of offering himself, of surrendering himself to God and His will, and that this prepared him well for his final surrender on October 26.

At his funeral, during the Preparation of the Gifts, we sang a song by Daniel L. Schutte based on the "Suscipe" or offering prayer of St. Ignatius. Its haunting melody and words were the perfect tribute to a man who embodied the Christian call to "offer it up." Here are those words:

"These Alone Are Enough"

Take my heart, O Lord, take my hopes and dreams.
Take my mind with all its plans and schemes.

Refrain: Give me nothing more than your love and grace.

These alone, O God, are enough for me.

Take my thoughts, O Lord, and my memory.

Take my tears, my joys, my liberty.

I surrender, Lord, all I have and hold.
I return to you your gifts untold.

When the darkness falls on my final days,

take the very breath that sang your praise.

Week of Travels

Saginaw. Four years ago I was recruited to go to the Diocese of Saginaw about once a month to be the spiritual director for 9 to 12 priests and parish administrators who wanted regular spiritual direction. After consulting my staff, it seemed like one more way to get the message of the Apostleship of Prayer out and it did indeed lead to retreat and parish mission opportunities. But the work of the Apostleship has greatly increased since then and a change in bishops in Saginaw provided a natural opportunity to end that commitment. So on Monday and Tuesday I went to Saginaw for the last time as a regular spiritual director.

Omaha. Last night I was in Omaha as the speaker at an annual banquet honoring people in the area who are working with the Jesuits there and who embody the ideals of St. Ignatius Loyola. I spoke about the Ignatian and Eucharistic spirituality of the Apostleship. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius culminate in a prayer of surrender (the "Suscipe" or "Take, Lord, Receive") which can be renewed every day by means of the Daily or Morning Offering. It's an act of love--returning love for God's love. As God has given us His very self in Jesus who became flesh in order to offer His flesh on the cross and in the Eucharist, so we return His love by offering our entire selves to Him, one day at a time. This offering is what it means to live a Eucharistic life, joining the offering of ourselves to the perfect offering Jesus made and renews in every Mass.

Northern, IL. Tomorrow I'll be at Marytown in Libertyville, IL for the annual board meeting of the Institute on Religious Life (www.religiouslife.com). In the afternoon I'll drive to the Bellarmine (today's his feast!) Jesuit Retreat House in Barrington, IL. From Friday evening until Sunday noon I'll lead the retreatants in the Spiritual Exercises by means of eight half-hour talks.

Though I've written about my travels, the work of the Apostleship involves so many more people--from my small staff of three full-time and two part-time employees, to all our financial supporters and promoters, to all those people praying with and for us. And our faithful local volunteers who gathered today to send out the annual Fall mailing of our flyer and the leaflet that has Pope Benedict's monthly prayer intentions for 2010.

AMDG. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. All for the greater glory of God!