Latest Space #25
The Newsletter of SacredSpace.ie

The feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a moveable feast, usually falling in the month of June. Given the date of Easter this year, we celebrate the feast on Friday 30 May. It is simply an opportunity for us to consider again the love that Jesus freely gives us and a time to pray that we might receive even more the grace that Jesus promises.

Sacred Heart Novena

The Sacred Heart Novena is available on Sacred Space this year in an audio and text format. This novena was recorded for for distribution on CD by Messenger Publications and has kindly been made available to Sacred Space community. The final three days of the nine days of prayer are on Wednesday to Friday of this week - a triduum in which you might like to take part.

The familiar Novena format uses texts written by Brendan Comerford, SJ and is accompanied by music by Irish artists.

Living Space

Living Space is an established part of Sacred Space. The daily commentary on the readings have become an important part of the day for for some seven thousand people every month. The texts are written by Frank Doyle, and Irish Jesuit priest, and regularly updated and revised.

The new format makes for easier management of Living Space and allows many possiblilites to enhance the presentation of the daily reflections. The user of the site will find a dynamic calendar to allow quick access to the readings. The resource can be shared readily with others through the facilities for printing and emailing that are on each page.

In time, we hope to be able to add a calendar to make days easier to find. It helps too that, as days are added into the new system, they are available to the search facility.

Mobile users can access the pages too. They are designed to offer a simpler page to the smaller browser.

Book review: Jesus: social revolutionary

well-known Irish campaigner for the homeless, Jesuit Peter McVerry, recently launched a book entitled Jesus: social revolutionary?At the launch he commented: “For me, the life and work of Jesus should mean that a huge commitment to social justice should be at the heart of all that the Christian churches preach and do”. This perspective pervades the book in which Peter makes clear where his own inspirations lie. As he regrets the “the Churches’ emphasis on personal conversion fails to go beyond the personal, to emphasise the radical economic, social and political consequences of such conversion” he expresses his belief in God who is to be found in all things.

Perhaps we cannot say that Jesus came to tell us where to find God. We cannot find God, God finds us. It may be more accurate to say that Jesus told us where to search for God. If we search for God where God is to be found, God will reveal himself to us.

A website with extracts from the book and interviews with Peter McVerry is published by Dublin's Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice.

Peter McVerry. Jesus: social revolutionary
Dublin Veritas. ISBN: 978 1847301109

Book Review: Surprises Around the Bend

This is an easy read, with bite-sized accounts of the walking habits of many well-known people. Included are Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, C S Lewis etc..Walking, it appears, can improve your life and expand your creativity! It helps the mind, as Aristotle found, and the spirit too, as those on the Camino Real will know. Walking, an imperilled spiritual practice, can be prayer in motion. But we are not talking about a walk around the block! Nothing can be more satisfying, according to the enthusiastic author, than to learn the art of LSD: long, slow, distance walking. But even if you can manage only ‘mindful walking’ in the Eastern style, there is plenty to enjoy in this book.

The word ‘Surprises’ in the title brought Gerry Hughes’ God of Surprises to mind, but though a mighty walker and one who has written up his walks, he does not feature. More surprising is the omission of Ignatius of Loyola, who clocked up some 15,000 miles ‘alone and on foot’ as he says in his Autobiography. Had Hasler included him, he might have mentioned the following distinctive points about Ignatius as walker.

Ignatius describes himself as ‘the pilgrim’ – the term meant a lot to him, and gave him his identity. This pilgrim was in search of God, and God’s will for himself: ‘What ought I do?’ was the driving motivation for his walking. He wasn’t a fitness freak, nor an explorer nor did he travel for enjoyment, but with the hope of ‘helping others’. He always carried his limp, so his jourrneys must have been more painful for him than for many of those included in Hasler’s book. He travelled in utter poverty: no money, no resources. He begged his way from place to place, on land and sea. He carried one treasure – a high level of trust in the providence of God. So he faced hunger, cold and death with equanimity. He prayed constantly on the way, with the Lord as his companion, sometimes in visible form. He slowly learnt that God can be found everywhere, not simply in holy places like Jerusalem. And he walked no more once he discovered where God wanted him to settle, becoming a sedentary administrator in Rome, and walking out of the city only five times in his 16 years there. A final distinctive mark of Ignatius as walker: he alone founded a walking group whose members were willing to travel to any place in the world, where there is hope of God’s greater service.

Review by Brian Grogan SJ

Richard A Hasler: Surprises around the bend: 50 adventurous walkers.
Minneapolis, Augsburg Books, 2008. ISBN: 978-0806680415

Mirada Global - a different viewpoint

Mirada Global is a website that draws together a number of Jesuit publications from the Americas and Spain. Published principally in Spanish and Portuguese, it has a substantial English section. The areas of the site cover many aspects of life, dealing with religion, politics, society and culture. Articles include a reflecion of the use of art in prayer, a description of the situation of the indegenous people in the Roraima region and a consideration of graffiti in Latin America.