CONTENTS
From Fr Provincial Pope Francis, at an ecumenical and interreligious meeting which took place in Ulaanbaatar during his visit to Mongolia in September, expressed the wish that ‘the prayers we raise to heaven and the fraternity we experience here on earth spread seeds of hope’. Praying and working well together are not in competition for our time and energy but are the buildingblocks of the right kind of progress. When we pray, we allow our attention to be directed towards God, listening to him and expressing ourselves to him. However, that focus on the divine does not imply that all the other things we think about are distractions from that central concern. We worry about the world: our prayer makes us hopeful. Our thought and action find an energy and a helpful self-criticism in spirituality. The ‘seeds of hope’ of which the pope speaks are the impact of our attention
to God on us and on everything else that he has created. Hope is more than optimism or whistling in the dark. Living the spiritual life, we find good reasons for our efforts to make things better. Failure, thought about in this way, is not a disaster but a staging-post. Allowing ourselves to be encouraged by God, and encouraging each other, we cope with whatever happens with serenity and confidence.
Praying and working well together are not in competition for our time and energy.
The fraternity which Pope Francis has in mind is an interreligious one. Human beings have in common our attention to the transcendent and
our love of community. In harmony with people of all sorts, we build new structures and repair old ones. Our harmonious efforts spring from a love of peace but they are not unprincipled. Solutions to our problems emerge from the sharing of insights and from the seriousness of our search for truth. Is the contrast between our spiritual aspirations and the needs of the world too great? Are prayers raised to heaven distraction from hard work to cope with crises and worthwhile, long-term projects? For Christians, harmony between these two parts of our life is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Getting to know him better, we discover a way of being fully at the service of the needs of the world and properly attentive to God. He listens and saves. Peter Gallagher SJ
In this issue... 04 Meet our new provincial, Peter Gallagher SJ.
05 Kensy Joseph SJ is grateful for the fruits of July’s province retreat.
06 World Youth Day and the
Magis programme left a lasting impression on pilgrims Matthew O’Dowd and Allena Andress.
08 JRS UK’s refugee friends have
shared joyful experiences with their local community, as Mark Dunn tells us.
10 Paul Chitnis unveils Jesuit Missions’
new look, and David Harold-Barry SJ reflects on what ‘mission’ means.
12 What is discernment of spirits all about? John Paul de Quay gives us a visual guide.
14 Patrick Kenny helps us get to know a World War I chaplain whose
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cause for canonisation opened last year: Fr Willie Doyle SJ.
16 Life at St Aloysius’ College, Glasgow,
is shaped by the retreat programme that Tony McBride describes.
17 Euan McArthur describes how the
UK was encircled in a ring of prayer during a sailing voyage this spring.
18 A pilgrimage in honour of Bl.
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Edward Olcorne SJ brought Frank Tota much encouragement; and Phil McCarthy points any would-be pilgrims in the right direction.
21 Postcard from Guyana: what did Rebecca Somerset uncover in Georgetown?
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22 Praying with the pope: Eddy Bermingham SJ.
23 Obituaries.
22 jesuit.org.uk
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