BeSMART, an organization that promotes awareness that secure gun storage—storing firearms unloaded, locked, and separate from ammunition—can save children’s lives, is sponsoring SMART Week from August 25th to 29th. This is important because...

Centering Prayer is an apophatic form of prayer – prayer without the use of words and images. There are also cataphatic forms of prayer, which involve the use of words and images as part of the substance of prayer. Prayer forms such as Lectio Divina, the Rosary, and probably most other common prayers in recent history are ...

A Book Review For those wanting to enhance their spiritual awareness and response to the world we live in, I recommend “We Make the Road by Walking” by Brian D. McLaren. Brian is an author, speaker, activist and public theologian as well as...

The Ignatian Solidarity Network (ISN), honoring the feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, quotes him as saying, “Just as the [people] of the world love and seek with such great diligence honors, fame, and esteem on earth—as the world teaches them—so those ...

Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has recently addressed the passage of HR 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”. He lamented the failure of the law to help families in need and to change course on aspects of the bill that fail the poor and vulnerable, making ...

It is a testament to our incarnate nature that our spiritual lives and prayer practices impact our physical bodies. Anxiety and joy, spiritual wounds and healing a carried in the body – as the shallow breath of excitement, the sweaty palms of nervousness, and the ...

The chief dispositions of Centering Prayer and other contemplative practices are welcoming and detaching from all that we receive – without judgement, hesitation, or expectation. These dispositions do allow us to withstand the difficulties and celebrate the blessings of life without becoming bogged down in either, but welcoming and detachment represent so much more than spiritual self-help techniques. These two...

Pope Leo XIV used a newly added formulary of the Mass, “For the Care of Creation,” when celebrating Mass at the papal villa on July 9. This formulary selects prayers and readings that affirm the place of God’s creation in worship....

A newsletter from Feeding America provides a good summary of The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Since 1981, this program has supplemented the diets of our neighbors with low incomes by providing them with ...

Blind Man’s Bluff I spend so much time Feeling around in the dark, Hoping that I will blunder Into the arms of God....

This year’s United Nations World Day Against Trafficking in Humans is July 30. The theme is “Human Trafficking is Organized Crime—End the Exploitation.” More and more victims are being trafficked every year across greater distances, with greater violence, for longer periods of time and for greater profit. Organized criminal networks are...

The use of the sacred word in Centering Prayer practice is designed to facilitate a comfort with detachment – a disposition of not possessing or clinging – by supporting the...

Life experience will tell us that prayer does not erase suffering and hardships. In fact, the great irony is that prayer often calls us more deeply into them! As we grow in our contemplative practices, a common fruit is...

Laudato Si, Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical on the environment, was released ten years ago. His powerful teaching concerning our responsibility to care for all of creation highlights several themes. We are called to renew our relationship with God, one another and the created world. God created the world and ...

Fr. Steve recently offered a homily on the value and significance of silence in the mass. This emphasis on silence as a means and medium of c...

Fr. Richard Rohr elaborates on St. Paul’s instruction for praying contemplatively: Paul says that you should “Pray with gratitude, and the peace of God which is beyond all knowledge, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7). First, you must begin with the positive, with...

A May 16 report by Consumer Reports describing the prevalence of PFAs in our environment reveals their presence in non-stick cookware, water-resistant clothing, food packaging and cosmetics. This category includes over 14000 chemicals that persist...

One of the creative tensions that the contemplative practitioner faces continually is the tension between means and end. On the one hand, contemplative practices, which count among their ranks participation in the Eucharist, are a manifestation and actualization of our relationship with Divine Love, expressions of the communion that simply is. On the other hand, every contemplative practice can just as rightly be ...

No doubt many of us have received communications in the last several days addressing the harmful measures included in the “big, beautiful bill” moving through Congress now. The Ignatian Solidarity Network and USCCB Justice for Immigrants have written...

Contemplative author Carl McColman reflects: How do we pray to the God who is Love/Lover/Beloved? To answer this question, I’d like to propose three ways of thinking about — and encountering — God, right here in our own bodies. These three ways of encountering God correspond to the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. Remember,...