Rejoice! Joy is the message of Gaudete Sunday. “Shout for joy, O daughter of Zion! Sing Joyfully, O Israel!” Originally forty days of fasting, Advent used to be a more penitential season than it is today.  Things change.  Indeed, throughout the first millennium the length and Masses of Advent fluctuated a great deal but St. Gregory the Great put his seal on the season when he promulgated his sacramentary collection.  At that time there were five Sundays in Advent but by the 10th …

If this feast day isn’t the day for Sister Act, then I don’t know what is.  I can’t say that I’ve seen Sister Act II but the first movie was a big hit and we could use some more Whoopi Goldberg’s in the Church these days.  Click on the image to watch this clip.

~ by Glen Butterworth, SJ
John was born ca. 680, the son of a treasurer in the courts of the great Umayyad Caliphate at Damascus. By the time Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan was ruler of the Islamic unity, John’s father was a high official, this despite his strong Christian faith. Tutored by a captured Sicilian monk, John and his foster brother Cosmas excelled in all their studies and when the father died John was appointed as a chief financial counselor to the Caliph.
From 726 to 729 the Byzantine Emperor …

As you know, the primary visionary of the North American Martyrs was Jean de Brébeuf, SJ. There is a lot of information around about our brother Jesuits and the hardships they suffered. To simply live in “the woods” with all the bugs and normal outdoor life, day in and day out without their culture and “civilization” as they knew it was I believe very heroic.
Brébeuf’s dream was a church that is fully Indian and fully Catholic. That simple formula, which Fr. Dick Mercy , SJ loved and internalized, …

~ at the very heart of the Church and the Society

When the Jesuits came together in Rome in early 2008, we experienced a new awareness of the Spirit active in our world. We wrote the following:
“To find divine life at the depths of reality is a mission of hope given to us Jesuits. We travel again the path taken by Ignatius. As in his experience so too in ours, because a space of interiority is opened where God works in us, we are able to see the …

~ Patron of Day Laborers & Rural Communities
St. Isidore the Farmer (1070 – 1130) was one of the so-called “Spanish Five” canonized in 1622. The others were Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Phillip Neri, and Teresa of Avila. Pretty saintly company.
Legend has it that Isidore was a good and pious man, and yet not everyone thought he was a saint. In fact, he was known to loiter around the local church dedicated to Mary and rumors circulated that his so-called piety was more about shirking his responsibilities in the …