Have you ever wondered how different your life might have been if certain things had been just slightly different? Sometimes it seems as though all the facts of my life happened with a certain inevitability – I was always going to be raised in this town, support this football team, enjoy this type of food, […]
Feeling overwhelmed by your temptations? Michael Martinez SJ shares a personal poem and reflection that can help us process this internal tension between temptation and victory in our daily lives.
Have you ever prayed with rap music? Michael Martinez, SJ released a new album, “Worship Real”. The album’s fourth track, “Radical Prayer,” explores the question of how a deeper prayer life can lead us to live our Christian calling more radically.
“Beowulf,” the Old English epic, received a fresh take in a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley. It’s astounding from the very first word. Reading this updated classic raises many questions. Are we victims of fate or benefactors of Divine Providence? What makes a good person? And how do we translate ancient texts, like Beowulf or even Scripture, into modern language?
What would St. Augustine have to say about freestyle rapping? It’s a remarkable talent that reveals more than just a rapper’s skills, like those showcased by the great Harry Mack. It can reveal how we are created in the image and likeness of God. And Augustine shows us how.
Through all of our joys and sorrows, we use songs as a way to express ourselves and bring us together as community. Some people use the Psalms, some use sea shanties.
Fantasy and the imagination have much to contribute to our religious experience. We’re excited to announce this new series, “Fantasy, Fiction, and Faith,” that will examine imaginative literature from the lens of faith.
“I love you” It just was the most believable utterance of that phrase I’ve ever heard, while sitting in an utterly unremarkable conference room transformed with incense and song into a place open to worship; somehow breaking through the stubborn habits of conventional self-assurance I felt forced to carry. For some, a vocation is automatic, an easy skin to fit into. For others, God’s call is great, the response is real, and yet it is something one must learn to love. Take a moment to read and pray with a reflection about my vocation, and maybe it will illuminate something about yours.
There are times when I don’t want to accept my present circumstances, so I enter another world with more novelty and excitement. Yet when I turn back to reality, that world evaporates and I am left feeling more alone and discouraged than before. A recent chance meeting with someone broke through this fog of drudgery to reignite the roots of life within me, reminding me to keep my faith in what God places before me each day, no matter how small or mundane.
When I take a more honest look at life, with its’ beauty, and also its’ darkness and suffering, I’m drawn to see the meaning of seeking something that transcends worldly pleasures or pursuits, even the willingness to sacrifice those things. And I want to affirm this desire to “transcend” is not an escape from reality, nor is it inhuman. It is rather a call to become even more fully and authentically human concretely in the world. Chris Williams, SJ, invites us to see this transcendence in his newest poem perfect for prayer and reflection.