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I have a keen interest in Ignatian spirituality, and one of the key features of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius is beginning each prayer period by asking for a particular grace. He encourages us to reflect on the deep longings and desires within, and then ask for those desires to be granted. There is READ MORE

Maybe you already journal or maybe you haven’t journaled in a long time. Perhaps you think journaling doesn’t “work” for you. This month I invite you to develop or renew a journaling practice with a few different techniques and see how God speaks. Some people like to journal on the computer but I am a READ MORE

A common prayer practice in the East is known as the Jesus Prayer. It acknowledges the power of Jesus’ name as well as the benefits of repetition. Muslims reverence the name of God and list at least 99 versions of it as a way to explore different aspects of who God is. Names of God READ MORE

In 17th century France, a man had a spiritual awakening which led him to enter a Carmelite monastery near Paris. His name became Brother Lawrence and he spent the majority of his life in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning up. He lived, always, aware of the presence of God. For Brother Lawrence, the kitchen was READ MORE

In many faith traditions, there is a huge emphasis placed on memorization of sacred texts. Jewish boys begin memorizing the Torah at an early age. Muslims memorize the Quran. In the faith tradition of my childhood, we were expected to memorize many, many verses of scripture. In early Catholic tradition, memorization was vitally necessary in READ MORE

The Examen is a beautiful prayer from Ignatian spirituality. The traditional steps of the Examen are very basic and easy. If you’d like to read more about it, check out Jesuits.org. One way to engage more deeply with scripture is to read the passages alongside the steps of the Examen, letting scripture suggest questions for reflection. For example, if the READ MORE

This month focuses on mining the readings for promises from God and the prayers we can make from those promises. We’ll incorporate these into a two-minute prayer period that can help us carry the readings throughout our day. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Sunday I am indebted to retreat material from Fr. Steven Bell, C.S.P. READ MORE

Every week I provide commentary on the readings and then end with one or more questions designed to help you think more deeply about those readings. The process of asking questions of the readings is very valuable and this month we’ll focus on this discipline, particularly with the standard who-what-when-where-why-how questions.  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday READ MORE

St. Ignatius proposed a way of reading scripture that puts us in the text by imagining the scene and entering into it. This month is a technique somewhat opposite to that. Rather than imagining a world not our own, we instead re-imagine the text in our own world. For example, if we are reading a READ MORE