~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ
Much of my personal daily prayer is just sitting on a prayer bench with an empty mind. Sounds easy enough. I can sit. I can have a fairly empty mind. No, really, it’s pretty empty.
I set the alarm on my phone for 30 minutes, get comfortable and get through it. I try to connect with my breath and open myself to God. And then I try that again. And again. And then, seemingly two hours later, the alarm finally goes off. And I do it …

~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ

It’s January and new leaves are being turned all around us. New leaves in whole new chapters of our lives.   In the world of vocation directors, this is the time when men with whom we have been in conversation come to us and say, “I think I want to apply to enter the novitiate.” Now that is the first leaf in a new chapter, not a new book but a new chapter has begun.  The book is called Discernment and this chapter is called, The Spiritual Autobiography.

Late …

~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ

“God could have created you anyway God wanted. And God created you as you are.” Time and time again I find myself saying this to folks in the confessional and to myself. Can we accept this? If God is God he is all powerful, all knowing and all the rest. So do you really think God was checking his email when you were created?

The bare facts– Our God is a God who creates us out of love and God does not create anything that does …

~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ
I’m tired of being sold stuff. Everywhere I look and everywhere I go, I am being sold something by someone. Online spam, ads on buses, brands on shirts, and all those dang ‘Like’ symbols. By way of contrast, God has never tried to sell me anything. I am all thumbs up about God for this. God just creates us and the entire world and then — just lets us be. We can pay attention to this creative act of radical love or not. We are …

Perhaps because God got to him before he read any theology or philosophy, St. Ignatius of Loyola was able to trust God was trying to speak to him. No one had told him to be suspicious of his own interior life, that his human desires might be dangerous. Nope. He just figured that since God was good and God had created him, then the things he most wanted must be good. His spiritual task then became one of learning to listen to God speaking to him through his desires. This …