Living gratefully
Fr Chris Gleeson
A cornerstone of Ignatian spirituality is gratitude and the more time we spend in being thankful, the more we realise what we have to be thankful for.
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Holding
Chris Gleeson SJ. 01 March 2018
For much of 2017 we Australian Jesuits and many of our lay companions have been engaged in a marathon listening exercise in preparation for some hefty apostolic planning for the Province. It is called strategy planning in corporate speak. This revelation that Jesuits could exercise enough discipline to participate in spiritual conversation requiring active listening and intentional speaking might surprise some of our readers. Well, let me assure you that the old Native American adage 'listen or your tongue will make you deaf' has been heard and taken seriously.
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Our homing instinct
Chris Gleeson, SJ. 01 December 2017
While travelling with my young brother and sister-in-law in North Cornwall in early 2003 on a bitterly cold January day, I went into a shop in the beautiful little fishing village of Padstow to look at some antiques.
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Grace trumps control
Chris Gleeson
During one day in the July school holidays of 1998, I was standing on the 1st tee at the beautiful Bonville International Golf Club just south of Coffs Harbour. I was nervously waiting to hit off with a group of players which included a retired psychiatrist, a pediatrician, and the Manager of the local private hospital.
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Making music with what remains
Chris Gleeson SJ
Readers of the Melbourne Herald Sun might remember the very moving interview journalist Hamish McLachlan conducted with Angie Cunningham over a five-month period. Angie was a young woman who was afflicted in 2012 with a terrible motor neurone disease. She was also a friend of mine, and recently I wrote something on the theme of ‘connection’ which centred around her story.
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Soul Matters
Chris Gleeson SJ. 10 March 2017
As I pen this from Hong Kong on the last day of October, the feast day of famous Jesuit brother, St Alphonsus Rodriguez, I realise that I am not only a long way from home but also a substantial time from the publication of this Autumn edition
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Tender moments
Chris Gleeson SJ. 10 March 2017
Our lives are full of tender moments. Recently, I was listening to our Province Treasurer and long-time school friend, Father Des Dwyer—better known as ‘Dialogue Des’—and I asked him about the health of one of our mutual school companions.
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A balancing act
Chris Gleeson SJ. 10 March 2017
I pen this editorial on a superb day at Sevenhill where, as one retreatant has quipped, the Australian Jesuits’ DNA resides. As so often happens, I am writing with the light of some inspiration I have just received on the Combined Jesuit School Councils’ Retreat
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Education: Giving Wings To the Soul
Chris Gleeson SJ. 10 March 2017
In early July this year, I listened to some moving stories about education.
We were hosting some guests from Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins – a consortium of Jesuit universities and colleges established in 2006 – which now offers higher education to camp-based refugees in ten different sites around the worl
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Everything is connected
Chris Gleeson SJ. 09 March 2017
One of the qualities I most appreciate about Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’ , is his commitment to the very Ignatian belief that everything is connected. Everything belongs. Unsurprisingly, the Pope reveals his Jesuit connection by linking all of us to creation: ‘We are part of nature, included in it, and thus in constant interaction with it (LS 139).
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God is my GPS
Chris Gleeson SJ. 09 March 2017
In early September I was reading the Weekend Australian magazine over breakfast when I came across an article on Israel Folau, the much acclaimed fullback for the Australian Wallabies Rugby Union team. A very religious man, he declared unambiguously to the columnist: ‘God is my GPS’
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