Advent Consolation 
by Andy Otto in Reflections

There’s something about Advent and Christmas that stirs my heart. As my semester as a grad student winds down, I anticipate the time to relax into the season. Typically, my interior is not filled with holiday anxiety, but with consolation.

Each year Advent stirs up the memory of past Advents—those graces of hopeful anticipation, family time, and even the comfort of purple and pink candles lit on a dark winter evening. St. Ignatius says we ought to remember times of consolation, especially in times of desolation. After a delightfully fruitful eight-day retreat last year, my director reminded me that the consoling graces I received on that retreat are mine. I can always go back to them. I must always be reminded of them.

This year, after the tragic death of a family friend, I find it hard to fully settle into my normal Advent consolation. Thankfully, those warm memories of Advents past are still there. Those graces are mine to return to. There is never a good time for sorrow to enter our lives, but I feel Ignatius tapping me on my shoulder, reminding me of the memories of consolation, where I felt the grace of God resting upon me.
Advent is a time of hopefulness—not just for the birth of Christ, but for the time we will see Christ again, face-to-face. When I practice re-journeying into those memories of consolation, I find that the ice of desolation slowly melts away, and I rediscover the warmth of a reassuring God who promises to meet us face-to-face on Christmas and at the end of our days. It’s a promise that encapsulates and gives life to the Christian message, one we can rely on during Advent and at every other time of the year.

Three Ingredients in a Recipe for Gratitude by Lisa Kelly in Reflections

So many times a day we say “thank you” out of nothing more than common courtesy at best or, at worst, out of habit, with no realization that we even said it. Thus, saying “thank you” is actually the least impactful part of being grateful. My spiritual director will often instruct me to “sit with a feeling”— not judge it or rationalize it, but instead just “sit with it” so I really feel it. What does real gratitude feel like? Here are the ingredients I can almost taste when I take the time to feel truly grateful.

First we taste two cups of humility. True gratitude instantly puts me in a place of realizing I am dependent on another. Whatever I have just received—whether it was a cup of coffee, a borrowed pen, or the deepest desire of my heart—someone beyond myself has just positively impacted me and made my life better.
A western cultural mentality promotes the thinking that we somehow deserve whatever we have received, especially if money was involved. There is even a prosperity theology out there that asserts wealth is a blessing God bestows on some and not others. Don’t fall for it. God’s blessing comes in the way of life and love and is freely given to all. If you think money can take the place of your dependence on others, you are cheating yourself out of recognizing our interdependence and experiencing the humility true gratitude brings.

The second cup of humility in my recipe for gratitude comes from the Ignatian mantra that God is in all things. The enormity of God’s presence is easy to feel standing next to the vast ocean or staring up at a sky with a million stars, but even when I am heartbroken or scared, on the craziest of days or just standing in line at the department store, the moment that I reach for sincere gratitude I am bowled over by the enormity of God’s love and graciousness in my life.
How is it that with all my faults and failings, one mere creature of the billions on this earth, the God of all, the Creator of all, longs for me? How is it I have come to have this moment? True gratitude affirms the paradox of our smallness and God’s grandeur. Sitting in gratitude I can also taste a cup of relief. If you say “thank you,” but you don’t feel just a bit of weight lift off your shoulders or anxiety dissipate from your mind, chances are you aren’t really experiencing gratitude. 

Naming the concern or need that has just been alleviated

 instantly stirs the gratitude pot.

Finally, experiencing true gratitude always brings a taste of hope. Receiving is empowering. It allows you to take that next step down the road, to look to the future, and to keep going even when the road is hard. A barrier has been removed or a reinforcement has arrived, even if only in the form of smile from another.
Sitting in gratitude to experience this humility, relief, and hope need not take an extended hour of meditation. 

In mere seconds of awareness I can feel these ingredients all wash over me. 

St. Ignatius encourages us to begin and end all things with gratitude.

Treasured Sorrow 

by Becky Eldredge in Spirituality

A week ago, a friend and I were at lunch, discussing the recent death of his family member, who was also a very dear friend of mine. The conversation turned to how, despite his grief, he could name many gifts of the experience of walking with his loved one during her battle with cancer. He named how the experience changed him, how many people he met during the process, and how it made him more compassionate towards others’ suffering.
As I listened, I began recalling experiences in my life that echoed with both struggle and graces. One of my teachers in my spiritual direction program, Bob Fitzgerald, called these moments of our lives “treasured sorrows.”

What Is a Treasured Sorrow? It is a life experience where there was both grief and joy. We faced pain, challenges, hurt, loss, or grief. Yet, as we look back, we treasure the experience we went through because of what we learned and who we became in the process. While the experience itself was a beast to live through, we know that the growth we experienced, the reliance on God we now have, and the new awareness we have about ourselves would not be there without this period of life.

Reflecting on Our Treasured Sorrows There are a handful of events in my life I can now name as treasured sorrows. While I would rather not re-live these moments of loss and pain, I know that these experiences changed me in a profound way, and so I treasure the lessons I learned. I am more aware of what others experience. The utter dependency on God during these times grew strong roots of faith that still strengthen me today.
I cherish the people I met and the relationships that deepened as we walked the experience together. I know the tools of my faith offer support and guidance after leaning on them as I walked the challenging journey.
Our treasured sorrows are our wise teachers. With the Holy Spirit’s help, we can sift through our experiences and name the sorrows and the treasures. Then, like any good Ignatian friend would do, we can offer this experience to God to be transformed and used by God for the good of the Kingdom.

What about you? What in your life do you consider to be a treasured sorrow?

The Gift of the Ordinary

by Lisa Kelly in Reflections

Last week my 84-year-old mother was in the hospital. For days on end doctors tried this and that to stabilize her heart. What struck me was not the desire for some great miracle in which, beyond the capacities of medicine and the doctors, her heart would suddenly be strong again, but instead a desire shared by so many people I talked to in the hospital—to be able to do the most ordinary of things.

The patients wanted to cuddle up and get a good night’s sleep in their own beds, take a shower, cook themselves breakfast, go to the grocery store, and walk the dog. “Oh, that would be heaven,” one patient dreamed. Heaven? When faced with not being able to do these supposedly mundane tasks, they suddenly become the greatest desires of our hearts.
So often people look for miracles as proof of their belief (or hope) that there is a God. It seems the more outrageous or beyond the bounds of science, the more we are apt to believe there is something greater than ourselves at work.
Unfortunately, a faith that is based on the scientifically unexplainable is all too often lost in challenging times when the miracle is debunked or when the prayed-for miracle doesn’t happen.
One of the greatest gifts of practicing Ignatian spirituality is coming to recognize the utterly miraculous gifts in the most ordinary aspects of life. When we get in the habit of regularly asking, “Where is God in all this?” or looking back over the day and identifying,

“Where was I fully present? Where did my heart soar?” we get in the habit of recognizing with gratitude and awe the most seemingly benign things—the smell of the flowers, the laughter shared with a teenager, holding hands with another, and, when we really take the time the taste it, the most delicious pizza ever!
Can you look out your window right now, at this very moment, and identify a miracle? A wonder? A marvel? Can you recognize with every breath the thousands of processes taking place perfectly in sync within your own body? The everyday, completely ordinary act of living is truly a gift. In these often dreary, cold days of winter, when it seems there is nothing special to motivate our faith, in this Ordinary Time of the Church year and life, could it be that we actually are given the greatest gifts of all?

God Is Right in the Middle of Love 
by Vinita Hampton Wright in Reflections 


A friend of mine recently described specific people who had changed her life. 
They had changed her just by being themselves, by loving her in their particular ways of loving. 
They did not change her life by imposing any kind of plan on her or by trying hard to 
influence what she did—no, the change happened in the midst of daily tasks and conversations. 

In a sense, that friend was meeting God in those conversations and 

in the hours spent laboring over projects. 

When we allow others’ love to affect us, we’re surrendering to a much bigger 
love. 

When people love one another, however imperfectly, 

God is right in the middle of that. 

I remember the grandmother who laughed a lot and who was so patient 
with me as I made mistakes and learned new skills. 
I remember the pastor who would make himself available whenever I, a teenager, 
imagined myself to be in spiritual crisis. His calm manner and optimism about 
God working in my life steadied me and my faith. 

I remember the piano teachers who kept showing up, the elderly next-door neighbours 
who consistently acted delighted to see any of us children in their yards or at their doors. 
I remember people in church, at school, and on the job who have made my life a friendly sojourn. 

I think of people now—whether my husband of nearly two decades or friends of just a few years—whose kindness has made lovely prints upon my life. 

If you feel that God isn’t showing up much these days, remember the people who have showed up often and sometimes quietly, to enter your conversations, lend their help, and connect with you in real and helpful ways. 

The Paradox of Christian Freedom                            

by Andy Otto in Discernment

Jesus came to set us free.   

From what? 

The kind of freedom Ignatian spirituality preaches is freedom from the attachments, fears, and blockades that inhibit our human flourishing. One of those blockades, sin, is more than choosing to do wrong. Sin includes operating our lives from a place of fear—preventing us from being our truest selves.

Blockades to the freedom of our flourishing are those places in our lives that seem comfortable and safe but in truth keep us stagnant in faith and keep us from our dreams. 

For instance, in marriage I might like to keep an escape hatch open so I can get out “just in case.” What seems to be the freedom of keeping options open prevents me from genuine commitment.

When the thought of financial freedom keeps me in a job that drains the life from me and does not utilize my gifts, I’m impeded from the freedom of developing my gifts. The fear of change and endless “what-if” scenarios may cause me to freeze in the safety of my current life situation.

The paradox of Christian freedom is that when we take risks and make choices, we don’t restrict our freedom; we increase it. God calls us to have freedom from our fears and attachments so that we may have the freedom for a full life. When we cling to our comfort zone in fear we sin, a sign that the evil spirit is trying to prevent us from fully living out God’s call.

We must allow Jesus to lift our burdens from us! The genuine freedom that comes from following the call of God to let go of the illusory “safe path” leads to greater trust in God and one another.
When we let go of unhealthy attachments, fears, and other blockades, we gain the freedom to be our best selves, our most whole selves. And then our dreams can unfold, our relationships can be more trusting, and we can cultivate our gifts and talents in new ways.

Loving People Who Annoy Us                       by Andy Otto in Reflection

I commute about two hours most weekdays, so I’ve had a lot of experiences on the road. I’m generally a calm driver, but I’m not immune to frustration.                       

The other day I was in the left lane, moving at about 75 mph with the rest of the traffic, when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw a car racing up to me. The car was nearly riding my bumper. Frustration started to well up, partly because if I had to stop quickly the car would crash right into me.                                                                     

Why was this man so impatient? Was 75 mph not fast enough for him? I was tempted to brake suddenly so he would back off, but at that moment I felt God calling me to love this impatient driver.                                                                                

God’s call for us to love others has a lot to do with the gifts of chastity and sexuality. These terms need to be re-framed a bit: sexuality has to do with the way we relate to and connect with others; the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines chastity as the “integration of sexuality within the person.” (#2337).  Living chastity means being able to freely offer our love to others according to what is proper.                    

In the case of my brother on the road, the proper way to love him was to calm my frustration, acknowledge that God loves him deeply, and then move over to let him pass. Loving people who annoy us is not easy.                               The gift of sexuality means we are not robots. We have emotional connections and reactions to others that we can’t always shake. Chastity is the way we channel those connections. “The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him,” the Catechism says (#2238).                                                               

When I have an emotional response to someone (positive or negative), I need to ask myself, How does my response uphold the integrity of God’s gift of love? How is God calling me to love the other?                                                           The next day on the highway another speeder came racing by and, with a sense of humor, I said to myself, 
“Oh look, another person you want me to love, God.”

Gratitude on the Difficult Days 

by Cara Callbeck in Reflections

My husband has a habit that I find both irritating and wise all at once. When I come home after a really bad day at work, the first thing he asks me is "What are you thankful for today?"  While he knows that he’ll be greeted with my pithy retort of "I’m thankful it’s over," he also knows that in that one quick exchange he has refocused me. That question forces me away from my bleak and self-pitying outlook on the day and reminds me that I ought to be thankful that I had the day to begin with.

Gratitude is quite possibly the greatest weapon God gives us against despair. When we take the time to be grateful, it diverts our gaze toward the light rather than the darkness. This theme of gratitude in the bleakest moments is all over the Bible. As they began their ministry, the apostles were persecuted, flogged, and threatened. Their response to this, though, was to rejoice that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of God. They saw the light in the midst of darkness, and it gave them what they needed to keep on with their ministry. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is described as 'anxious' to eat the Passover meal with the apostles, and he gives thanks during that meal. He knew it was his last, he knew one of his apostles would betray him, and yet he found a little bit of light in that dark day.

St. Ignatius clearly recognized the power of gratitude. He suggested gratitude as a central part of the Examen, ensuring that retreatants, the Jesuits, and all whom they guide and teach, come into the practice of seeing the good that God grants them each day of their lives. It’s perfect training for those periods of desolation—a light toward consolation.
I challenge you, the next time life seems to push you down at every turn or you’re just having a lousy day, take some time to consider the question that irritates me: 
What are you thankful for today? 
It might seem like an insurmountable challenge in some circumstances. If that’s the case, Padre Pio offers you this ounce of hope:

"The most beautiful act of faith is the one made in darkness, in sacrifice, 

and with extreme effort."

Compost, Dorothy Day, and Transformation
by Marina McCoy in Reflections

Last year, we acquired a large compost bin to dispose of many of our leaves, weeds, and food waste. Our backyard compost bin is smelly. It’s stinky. In the spring, I placed the bin a few steps from the back door, with the thought that I’d be more motivated to throw away every eggshell and potato peel if it were nearby.
Fast-forward to late summer, and the location made sitting outdoors unpleasant. The pungent odors of decaying vegetable matter did not go well with strawberries and tea on the back porch. We moved the bin further away, close enough to access, but not so close to prevent enjoying the rest of the yard. Still, the compost is rich and full of nutrients.
It’s amazing that what starts as weeds and garbage can be transformed into life-giving food for plants in the next round of growth. Sin and suffering are like the weeds and the waste that go into compost. Both are capable of being transformed by God into something new and fertile. I’ve been reading Dorothy Day’s House of Hospitality.

In one passage, she tells of a woman screaming in a nearby tenement building. The neighbors wonder at the cause: is the woman giving birth? Drunk? Insane? But they do nothing, just wanting to go back to sleep. Day then recalls being out with a friend as a young girl, when an angry dog attacked them and tore their clothes into ribbons.
She writes, “I remember how people witnessing this miserable sight, in their own fear, had not come out to help. We welcomed the policeman who rescued us and I could have kissed his hands with gratitude…Why didn’t someone call the police now?”

Dorothy Day did not ignore human need. She devoted her life to standing in solidarity with the poor and developing houses of hospitality. It’s clear that much of her great reservoir of energy for this work drew upon her own past experiences of suffering—not only dog attacks but also losses such as being abandoned by her longtime lover, who left her when she became pregnant and converted to Catholicism. Such experiences seem to have deepened Day’s capacity to engage with poverty and loneliness in others. In St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, the movement from Week Three to Week Four is a movement from the cross to the Resurrection, from suffering and death to new life.

In my experience, it’s not so much that God removes suffering, as though it had never occurred. Our pasts remain a part of our identities. Jesus himself still bears the bodily marks of his Crucifixion. Day’s personal history informed her post-conversion work. God takes the difficult material of our lives and makes it capable of bearing fruit. We may want to keep the sinful, broken, “smelly” places of our lives far away—and surely God wants us to enjoy the blossoming gardens and not to remain in darkness. But the compost in the corner has its place, too. 

God takes all and transforms all—even the “garbage”—

into new life.

Martha at Rest

 by Maureen McCann Waldron in Reflections

When we hear the story of Martha and Mary, the sisters who were such close friends of Jesus’, we most likely know which one we are.

I have always been a Martha, and like most Marthas, perhaps a little smug about it.  We Marthas might roll our eyes when this gospel comes up, picturing Mary sitting on the floor listening to Jesus and feeling Martha’s slow burn at her unhelpful sister.  Martha was the one who got things done.  

Those of us who are Marthas suspect deep down that they somehow translated the ancient words incorrectly and that instead of stopping Martha from her frantic pace in the kitchen, Jesus was really saying to her, “Way to go, Martha.  If you weren’t running around getting things done, we wouldn’t have dinner tonight or a place to gather.”

Martha was the one who would argue with her dear friend, Jesus, and complain to him about things that seemed unfair.  She had a spark to her that I admire.

My Martha life has always been guided by To-Do lists and priorities.  I am all about productivity, tidying things up and closing the cupboard doors that stand open.  I am efficient and self-reliant.

And then I got sick.

This summer, after a small but nagging headache that lasted a few weeks, I found myself in the emergency room of the hospital.  I had a bleeding on my brain.  I was in intensive care for six days.  My head was shaved and I had surgery and was sent home - to do nothing.

I have spent the last four months at home, recovering, waiting for my energy to return.  For the first time in 36 years, I don’t go into an office every day. I don’t “do” much of anything.

Day by day, week by week, I can feel my energy slowly returning, but in the meantime I have been cared for tirelessly by my dear husband.  I had meals delivered by a dozen people in our parish – some I hardly knew.  People sent flowers and cards, letters and plants.  For the first time, I wasn’t the Do-er but the Receiver.

And for these past months, I have been Mary.  Sitting quietly.  Reading.  Watching my husband put together every meal. Seeing my colleague at the office carry on with our work.  Receiving.

It has been a wonderful experience not to be rushing all the time; to take naps a few times a day and to be what I might have called “unproductive.” Now I have a new respect for the art of “restoring” the depleted resource of my energy.  I pay more attention now. I watched my summer garden in fascination and have really noticed the spectacular fall leaves.

Mary listened to Jesus as she sat on the floor, while Martha just picked up the general ideas — she was so very busy with her preparations.  Now, after all of these months at home and contemplating that story, I understand that I didn’t get it right.

I don’t think Jesus was telling Martha to stop everything she did.  I think he just missed her.  He loved her fiery intelligence but wanted her not to be so distracted.  He invited her to sit next to him and simply be with him.  He wasn’t looking for her productivity or her finished To-Do list.

And he isn’t checking my list either.  I won’t find a higher place in heaven because I have finished more or been more productive.  Jesus is simply calling me to sit next to him and listen and not be distracted by Doing.  He wants me to notice how much he loves me and to relax deeply into that love.

I know that as my energy returns, so will my To-Do lists.  But I want to keep my life a little slower.  I want to pay more attention to the world around me.  And I want to sit on the floor next to Jesus and to lean back comfortably on his shoulder, basking in his love, his stories and his laugh, and remember what a graced life this is.

TAKE COURAGE. 

By Maureen McCann Waldron in Reflections

One thing about Ignatius —he had courage. Common sense isn’t always apparent in his early life; humility came later, too, and Ignatius grew into his relationship with God, as we all do. But whether it was misdirected or not in his youth, his fearlessness has always been apparent.

Maybe because I never feel like I have enough courage, Mark’s Gospel about Bartimaeus caught my attention recently. The blind man sits at the side of the road begging until he hears that Jesus is passing by on his way out of town. He puts up a fuss—another thing I am not likely to do. He starts yelling for pity and even when people try to silence him, he continues to yell for Jesus.
But then Jesus realizes someone needs him and tells the crowd to send Bartimaeus over. 
They say to him, “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.”
What an amazing thing: Bartimaeus’ call to healing starts with the words, “Take courage.” He is told to get up and get going—“Jesus is calling.”
Some days the idea of Christ calling me makes me want to stay in bed and hide under the covers. What does he want now? What kind of hard thing will he ask me to do? Will it be too big or too difficult for me? Take too much courage? Apparently, whining goes hand-in-hand with fear in my prayer life.

But it’s not just the crowd inviting me to courage—it is Jesus, who says it over and over again to his disciples and to me. I can tremble with what Jesus might ask of me. Will it be to step before hungry lions in the Coliseum, stand in front of the oncoming army of an unjust government, or join with Mother Teresa’s sisters in India? OK, probably not.
Maybe courage is really the invitation from Jesus to have a big heart. Could it be that Jesus just wants me to live the way he lives—with love and compassion for others—and be unafraid when it comes to speaking up for the poor?
Pope Francis, recently suggested to a group of students and teachers that they be magnanimous. 
He said: What does it mean to be magnanimous? It means to have a big heart, to have a great spirit; it means to have great ideals, the desire to do great things to respond to that which God asks of us, and exactly this doing of daily things well, all of the daily acts, obligations, encounters with people; doing everyday small things with a big heart open to God and to others.

So maybe the real call from Christ is simply to live my own life doing the daily things well and doing them with a big heart. Not very dramatic, but challenging. I just need to remember that it is Jesus who is calling me and who is with me.

And on the days we want to pull the covers over our heads and stay in bed, we get up and take courage. Jesus is calling us to be healed.