Month: March 2021

With nine candles alight, an urn full of petitions from your love expressed in hopes, longings and wishes, and Taize music in the foreground, our ninth day of arrival began with incensing the sacred space of our journey together. Fr. Billy was our presider and presenter today with Katie Hennessy assisting.  

The first reading from Hosea placed us in a blessed verdure of lily, olive and cedar anointed with dew. Fr. Billy, at the beginning of his homily, captured the eight daily stepping stones of beauty that came out of discerning our brokenness in the light of God’s love. Please listen to his own words on why we pray the Novena, how we intercede together, sharing hearts — that shapes our own Gospel here. 

The interlocking of human and divine, God and neighbor, our being and becoming, nature and grace… this dynamic of our Novena is shaped and woven together by God’s Spirit. Thank you all for being part of our communion — for taking the time to be companions, surrendering the personal defenses and excuses, allowing yourselves to connect more authentically both to the Kingdom that is not and the Kingdom that is.

In every age, God is our refuge.

Brokenness and Beauty:  Blessed by a Novena of Grace

Thank you for your attentiveness and care.  Peace!  

As a chaplain at OHSU, Fernando Serna daily helps patients and families deal with distress and the concomitant decisions that crisis, especially ones with vital health concerns, brings. The brokenness and beauty in these hospital rooms reverberates behind his articulation on what grounds his attentive healing and caring ministry. Some of us may think of scripture as antiquated or irrelevant, but the inspired words of the gospel came not just in remembering what Jesus did but what the community who remembered was experiencing in their everyday lives — how Jesus’ Spirit and his dream of Kingdom abided with them even under excruciating circumstances. 

Please listen as Fernando helps form us as ones ready to go into the “field hospital” as Pope Francis beckons us. Receive how the “finger of God” directs his life choices thereby helping him guide others through crucial life changes. Like Fernando, we are baptized for “ambassadorship,” a servanthood of  love and forgiveness.

Do you ever consider how Jesus thought of God’s covenant with him that was weighted so heavily on law and commandments? How does one grasp the identity of our God when the Old Testament seems so proscriptive with statutes and laws?

Jeanette Grimaldi, with the lens of a spiritual director and the pathos emergent in the prophetic scriptures, uniquely speaks about how the law is God’s way for us to find refuge, to invite us to be in solidarity, to find community under God’s desire for healing, reconciliation and care.

Listening to Jeanette, one can feel that “word” has not only a conceptual content but a texture. Her words are like soft gels mirroring the tender attentiveness of God for those who long, beseech, request, cry out to this one who knows our names. As with all our presenters, these reflections are chock-full responses for these perilous times we inhabit. May you be nourished with this engagement and encouraged!

When you think of your best teachers, no doubt you will remember not just the animated instructors but the ones who made you feel alive, who gave you a sense of purpose, of belonging in the classroom. Our presenter today is Dan Beseau of St. Ignatius Parish School and he represents that element, not of cognition, but recognition that makes the difference in academic formation. But Dan’s presentation is not on teaching but on his own transformation in order to teach well. 

As a jeweler precisely cuts and fashions the facets on a gemstone, Dan illumines our theme of “beauty and brokenness” through the scriptures, our Ignatian charism, his visit to Homeboy Industries (a gang rehabilitation enterprise founded by Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ) and his own story. Dan awaits the return of his students to the classroom next week. He speaks with the readiness and anticipation that awaits this reconnection, this love and support that is authentically transformational and comes as gift. Just imagine!

Welcome to our halfway point — and beyond — in these nine days of grace! For some intuited reason, both Fr. Billy and our presenter, Beth Schaller, wore boots today. Before the liturgy even began, I wondered what realities were being confronted in our journey.

As our Parish’s Family Life Coordinator and as a mother, Beth related the ongoing identity questions some children like hers have: “What color am I?” Listen to how this parent and minister responds by first attending to the story of God, from the perspective of faith and baptismal identity. Our Eucharistic gathering has been blessed with preaching richness over the last four days, and Beth continues this banquet of word among us. Her gift lies in seeing and relating how Christians compassionately view human realities and respond as a God — Jesus — would. Beth’s attunement to “God’s story” is beautifully coherent. Enjoy the feast of this heart-walk! 

Today’s gospel passage describes the shocking behavior of Jesus who becomes visibly enraged over how the temple in Jerusalem has been compromised. He overturns tables, chases out the animals and upends the transactional nature of the merchants there. 

Fr. Billy, our presider and presenter on this fourth day, relates how in his own life, God comes as more than healer and restorer. God is often involved and engaged on both sides of life’s pivot toward new directions and wholeness. During these last, long months of sickness, failure, fault, loneliness — the multiplicity of brokenness — listen to how Fr. Billy makes sense of Jesus’ actions and his role in our own upheavals. We are led to confront broken realities and find directional truth in defeats, failures, rejections. With God, we can come to know “we are all loved in broken beauty.”

Today’s gospel is the familiar parable of the Prodigal Son. When one reflects on how Jesus had to have such empathy and compassion for those suffering from the brokenness of regret, one can only imagine how carefully and passionately he weaved this story of such joyful, unconditional, forgiving love — memorialized beauty!

Sue Brent and Kevin Jeans Gail were our presenters this liturgy, and to listen to them share their own harrowing and hallowed stories of life’s tragic losses, struggles to rebound, searches for belonging, discoveries of love… you can sense (and try to hold through tears) the humility, honesty and holiness that inspirited their words to us.

In the scriptures, “the third day” has special meaning for how the future comes alive.  This day of the Novena is commensurate with feeling deeply what’s truly at stake and how God’s providence abides from brokenness to beauty. We are blessed to be their companions in the pilgrimage of this retreat. (Kevin gives his words while on oxygen support. When he and Sue finished, we could have borrowed some!)

On our second day in your company of the Novena, both scriptural passages from Genesis and Matthew’s gospel speak of brokenness caused by human iniquity. In between these passages, the Byrd family sings our responsorial psalm: For every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

Today’s presenter, Dr. James Peck, MD, reflects on both sides of these realities. As a medical professional who has served for almost two decades with Doctors without Borders, Jim addresses how the Ignatian spirit of magis (Latin for “more”), when embodied in Christian witness, brings the generosity of spirit, the beauty that is light shining in the darkness. Though he could have spoken about his own witness, Jim reflects on St. Francis Xavier, SJ, and Dr. Tom Catena, MD, operating in a remote region of the Sudan. May listening to his words on their emulation help further activate your own solidarity and service to those in need. Dr. Tom’s picture with joyful smile shines beneath the ambo!

HAPPY 100TH ANNIVERSARY TO THE NOVENA OF GRACE AT ST. IGNATIUS PARISH!

Our pastor, Fr. Craig Boly, S.J. welcomed all, far and wide, who gather together virtually and in our church to begin these nine days of Beauty and Brokenness in the company of one another and also Francis Xavier, S.J., whose life remains with us.

Fr. Billy Bigler, S.J. our Presider for this retreat, embraced us as one who knows and loves this Jesuit tradition but is also cognizant of the overwhelming sense of need at this time. When Jesus chose his disciples, it seems he selected people who had heart and spirit, possibly even some command with a little thunder like James and John. Joseph and Grace, our parish’s pastoral administrator and faith formation associate, share a “tandem reflection” on the gospel of Dives and Lazarus with the lens of Ignatian charism: seeing with open eyes. 

They are steeped in Christian and Eastern spiritualities and have this dual harmony of engagement that puts word into dance, that tends any brokenness into repair mode, that fosters healing by seeing deeply and holding the ambiguities and sometimes the questions. Please view the livestream while letting your own reality come into God’s light. Their gift is there for your benefit. May our nine days together be graced and blessing. May we be sacrament to one another and to our world.