News & Updates | October 2024

Dear Friends,

When I was a kid, I remember my mother passed on some advice to me: “Sit for one hour a day in (get this!) the best room of the house.” I suppose she was thinking of the room that wasn’t filled with unfolded laundry or the one where the kids’ toys weren’t spread out all over. Mom didn’t put an explicitly spiritual spin on this. She would just mention it from time to time, planting another seed for living life.

It probably goes without saying that I never followed that advice. It was decades before that seed found its way to the surface when I discovered centering prayer. Once I did, it was still years before I connected it with Mom’s voice again, encouraging some silence, some disengagement from the busyness of living, some time alone.

We don’t always have the time or inclination to spend an hour, quietly, in the best room of the house. For those days, I’d like to propose something completely different (with apologies to Mom). What can we do to find a spiritual practice that connects us with our God in our everyday life? I am one who believes that a spiritual practice during the week makes us more attuned to God and more prepared to worship God on a Sunday. And I also firmly believe that most of us already have spiritual practices we don’t even recognize as such.

I ask: What is your favorite time of day? Maybe it’s a first cup of coffee in the morning before everyone else is up. Maybe it’s a long shower when you get a little peace and quiet. Maybe it’s the moment when the kids get home from school. Maybe it’s the drive to or from work. Maybe it’s the daily friendly give-and- take with co-workers. Maybe it’s the family dinner table with all its joys and conflicts.

Find the part of the day that is your favorite. Then why not very consciously think of this as a spiritually “charged” part of your day? Perhaps think of it as the time when you are especially close to God and those around you. It probably won’t be very silent. It probably won’t be in the best room of the house. But you don’t have to “practice” it.

You’ve been doing it for years.

Merle Marie Troeger, Ignatian Maine Leadership Team & RIEL Team Member

The 2024-25 Retreat in Everyday Life has begun!

October marks the beginning of the Retreat in Everyday Life (RIEL). Please pray for this year’s group of pilgrims as they journey through Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises: 

Mark K

David

Duane

Diane

Mark M

Judith

Kim

Rachel

Jane

Susan

Charlotte

Anna

We invite you to choose one person and pray for them over the next 9 months.  

Enter your name in this chart so we can let them know you are praying for them.  

Your care and support make a difference.

Principle and Foundation

Sr. Karen Doyle, SSJ, D. Min reimagines Ignatius’ Principle and Foundation as a letter from the one who created you and loves you…

Dear One,

The goal of your life is to live with me forever. I gave you life because I love you. Your response of love allows my life to flow into you without limit.

All the things in this world are my gifts, presented to you so that you can know me more easily and return your love to me more readily.

I want you to appreciate and use all my gifts insofar as they help you develop as a loving person. But if any of my gifts become the center of your life, they displace me and so hinder our growth towards your goal.

In everyday life, then, you must hold yourself in balance before all of my created gifts insofar as you have a choice and are not bound by some obligation. You should not fix your desire on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in you a deeper response to your life in me.

Your only desire and one choice should be this: to want and to choose what better leads to my deepening my life in you.

Resources

Pray as You Go (Available online and as an app, this site offers daily meditations in the Ignatian tradition.)

Sacred Space (Available online and as an app, this ministry of the Irish Jesuits offers daily prayer, retreats, and more.)

Ignatian.info

If you know someone who might be interested in any of our offerings, please share!

This message was sent by the Jesuits East Office of Ignatian Spirituality (OIS) on behalf of the Ignatian Spirituality Partnership of Maine. OIS is pleased to provide communications support to Ignatian Maine.