~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ
For Jesuits, the Eucharist is at the center of their prayer and their life together. Most Jesuit communities have a space dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament for private prayer and all Jesuit communities gather together for regular Eucharistic celebrations. While the quality of this celebration can vary as widely as the character of the Jesuits participating, the Eucharist is where we have the opportunity to find God every time we allow ourselves to be found at Eucharist. For when we gather with each other in …

To love someone is to be in active relationship with them. St. Ignatius believed that this action consists in a mutual sharing of goods between the ones who love. Technical as it sounds, we all experience this, however imperfectly, in our many human relationships. And all this is true when it comes to our relationship with God, except that the love of God is perfect. But it is not enough to say that God is love and leave it at that. God is love, therefore God shares what God is …

St. Ignatius did not join the Jesuits right out of high school. And he did not put it off until he finished college.  Nor did he wait to enter religious life until he had traveled the world, fallen in love, and been involved in armed combat; though he did all those things before being struck down by a cannonball, being found by God, and giving it all up for Jesus. Ignatius had never planned on going into religious life at all, but rather, he was converted from one life into …

~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ
For some of us the call to religious life is like an insane crank caller who keeps calling and then says nothing. You pick up the phone and there is silence on the other end or perhaps at best, garbled words that you can’t understand. So you hang up and try to ignore the next time it rings with that Unknown Caller on the blinking screen.
“Yeah,” you tell your friends, “I think I have a call to religious life.” What does that …

~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ
In order to become a certified martyr in the Roman Calendar of Saints you have to die for the faith and other people must recognize this to be the case. And the rest is luck and paperwork. So we think of the great martyrs of our tradition starting with St. Stephen being stoned while St. Paul stands about holding the coats. This was only the beginning.
Martyrdom caught on quickly in the Christian tradition and continues on to this very day. We …

~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ
It is just as well that the Acts of the Apostles does not go into detail. If it did, we would be depressed to the point of never trying to live the ideal of community life described in its pages. For I am sure it was a variegated experience of light and darkness. As it is, we can hold onto the report that all members of the community “who believed were together and had all things in common.” These are words …