by Damian Torres-Botello, SJ | Oct 28, 2015 | Blogs, Spirituality ~ Approx. 3 mins
Last week a good friend called me in tears. “Damian, there is something I need to share with you, but I don’t know how.” I imagined her on the kitchen floor leaning against the fridge, a roll of toilet paper as tissues unraveling beside her, and a jug of pulp-free...
by Eric Immel, SJ | Oct 27, 2015 | Faith & Family, Sexuality ~ Approx. 2 mins
“Will you go out with me?” It’s a terrifying question once awkwardly muttered by romantically untried youths everywhere. No longer. I may have first uttered the words during a teen night at my local YMCA, or perhaps over my family’s landline on a Thursday – the...
by Andy Nguyen, SJ | Oct 26, 2015 | Justice, Pope Francis ~ Approx. 4 mins
In following Pope Francis’ visit to the United States, I was moved by a report of New Yorkers moved to tears after just a brief moment of seeing Francis on the popemobile passing by. The last time I saw such a cheering, adoring, tearing, screaming and selfie-ing crowd...
by Michael Rossmann, SJ | Oct 22, 2015 | Pop Culture ~ Approx. 2min
Many road trips have been filled with discussions of my favorite icebreakers: If you could invite any three people to dinner, whom would you invite?1 If you could keep only five U.S. states, which would you keep?2 Or, an even more entertaining one: If you could get...
by Brendan Busse, SJ | Oct 20, 2015 | Blogs, Spirituality ~ Approx. 5 mins
Our father left us. Not in the permanent, out-for-a-smoke-never-to-return, kind of way. He left us habitually; that is to say, with regularity. He left us outside of supermarkets and soccer games, hardware stores and nurseries. “Here’s a shopping...
by Lucas Sharma, SJ | Oct 19, 2015 | Humor, In the News, Pop Culture ~ Approx. 3 mins
View image | gettyimages.com People in my life know that I love the same few things, which makes gift-giving really easy. Puppies. Martha Stewart. JCrew. And soap operas. When I began watching soap operas more than ten years ago, they were an active part of the...
by Joe Simmons, SJ | Oct 15, 2015 | Catholic Writing, Spirituality ~ Approx. 2min
“A poem,” Robert Frost wrote, “begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” In our preaching course, professor Bob VerEecke, SJ encourages us future-priests to break from the boring ease of staid prose....
by Garrett Gundlach, SJ | Oct 13, 2015 | Blogs, Spirituality ~ Approx. 3 mins
Fifteen minutes into my first retreat as high school campus minister, I found myself sitting in a big circle with all the student leaders of the school. We were playing the classic ice-breaker, “Two Truths and a Lie.” As the game snaked its way around the circle...
by Matt Stewart, SJ | Oct 12, 2015 | Sports ~ Approx. 5 mins
View image | gettyimages.com My dad was very amused at the inappropriate level of anger I was showing at the TV screen. He was curious why something like this could stir up such deep emotions in his non-sports-fanatic son.1 But the truth is, one of the more...
by Jason Downer, SJ | Oct 9, 2015 | Humor, Pop Culture ~ Approx. 2min
So there I was minding my own business and October sneaks up on me with its gray skies and temperatures in the 50s. Am I mad? I’ll let you in on a little secret, I can’t stand being hot. I’ll take a day walking around with a jacket on over a day at the beach every...
