My family and I watched the 1988 film “My Neighbor Totoro” — one of the most beloved stories from renowned Japanese animation studio, Studio Ghibli — for the first time this past weekend. We loved it.

“Totoro” tells the story of two young girls — Satsuki and Mei — who move with their professor father to an old, abandoned house in the Japanese countryside. They do so to be nearer to the hospital in which their mother is receiving treatment for a long-term illness.

Four-year-old Mei, the younger of the two, finds herself left to her own devices while her father works and her older sister attends school. Curious about the mysterious goings-on happening in her new home, she discovers a magical creature and follows it into the nearby forest. There, she finds more magical critters, ultimately stumbling upon the enormous cat-like, raccoon-bear-adjacent, Squishmallow-before-it-was-cool, titular being called Totoro.

Mei is delighted. But when she wakes up in a clearing in that same forest all alone — save for her sister and father who’d been frantically looking for her — she’s confronted with a terrible question: Was it all a dream?

This is where the story comes upon a crucial narrative juncture. Mei, naturally, is convinced of the fantastical encounter she’s just had. But her sister and father, standing there in a seemingly ordinary forest, have no evidence upon which to base these magical claims, save the utterings of a four-year-old. As the viewer, I’m wondering at this moment: Will a substantial amount of the remaining runtime be devoted to convincing the rest of the family that the forest is pulsing with magic?

There’s nothing wrong with a story that follows a true believer set on winning over those who doubt the proverbial magic all around. That’s why I expected at least some of the plot to be dedicated to Mei convincing her sister and father that Totoro was real — and could ultimately be helpful to the family.

But I was wrong. Mei’s father immediately believes his daughter; in fact, he not only affirms her mystical experience but leads the small family on a pilgrimage to offer gratitude to the forest spirits for their presence. Just like that, Mei’s own enchanted encounter is validated, and Satsuki eagerly sets about looking for one of her own — with her father’s implied blessing.

The world of “My Neighbor Totoro” — and that of many of Studio Ghibli’s most beloved films — is pulsing with enchantment. Characters assume the forests to be alive with spirits; they don’t need to be convinced that reality may be more than what is readily seen by the naked eye.

Now, of course, a story about spirits living in the woods is quite different than a faith that insists on a Triune God present in all things. And yet, I can’t help but think that this disposition — this readiness to encounter the spiritual alive and waiting at every turn — is quite helpful in our own journeys of faith. Certainly, entering a forest expecting to encounter God is a wonderful way of proceeding.

But what most struck me after having watched this film was that narrative choice, the one that said, “Yes, of course Mei’s encounter with spirit was true and worthy of belief.” That decision meant the plot could dive deeper into what those helpful spirits could do in the lives of our characters. The writers didn’t need to spend time convincing anyone of the spiritual reality dwelling in the forest; instead, characters could simply bask in it together. There was no second guessing of self or others; there was simply shared enjoyment and a deepening understanding of what these spirits meant for the characters’ lives.

I don’t want to overdo the lessons to be drawn here — or force them where they are not. But I’m left thinking about how that father immediately believed his daughter. How he affirmed her experience and then journeyed with her on pilgrimage to a sacred place where the whole family could pray together. He allowed her space to grow while also walking alongside her, offering advice, protection and companionship.

The question I’m left with is this: How often do we affirm one another’s experience of God? How often do we cast doubt and shadow on what God may be doing in the life of another? Rather than offer suspicion and judgment, what if we instead offered our hand — and the promise of shared pilgrimage? How much deeper might we descend into the life of God all around us if we spent less time doubting one another and more time journeying together?

The post Now Discern This: What My Family Learned from “My Neighbor Totoro” appeared first on Jesuits.org.

If you look at my text threads with a Jesuit friend, you’ll quickly observe that all our messages comprise numerous versions of the same exchange:

Fr. R: Hey, Gab! I want to invite you to a Christus Ministries [insert: mixer/retreat/faith sharing]. I think you’d find the content meaningful, and you’d be in community with other young adults who are also out of college.

Me: Hi there! Sorry it’s taken me so long to respond. Unfortunately, I’ve already got plans on [insert date here]. Hopefully I can join next time. Wishing you a wonderful event!

These messages stretch back about two years.

The repeated invitations baffled me at the time because the Jesuit in question, whom I met at Loyola Marymount University (LMU), knew the breadth and depth of my involvement there. At LMU, the place that embraced me as an 18-year-old first-year student, I am a double alum, staff member, cantor and student organization chaplain. It is the bridge between my adolescence and emerging adulthood, the source of my educational, spiritual, professional and social life. So I’ll sheepishly admit that my knee-jerk reaction to Fr. R’s ongoing outreach was, “Thanks, but I’m all set.”

Then 2025 began, bringing with it a deep mental health rut that caused me to question everything — relationships, career, faith. Each day was weighed down with a sense of restlessness at best and meaninglessness at worst. As my grasp on the present loosened, the future felt increasingly murky, like driving on a mountain road with zero visibility. I embarked on several weeks of therapy, slowly addressing those places in my life that were causing me anxiety. Still, my faith life was merely treading water, neatly compartmentalized within Sunday Mass.

During this time, I chaperoned an undergraduate retreat through LMU’s campus ministry. In the typical rhythm of such retreats, the students were given the option of receiving the sacrament of reconciliation from one of the Jesuits who had joined us for the day. After all the undergraduates had returned to the main cabin, I crept toward one of the makeshift “confessionals,” a picnic table under a drooping tree. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I began. Through tears, I proceeded to tell the Jesuit in front of me how far I felt from God, yet how angry I was despite the distance. How futile the day-to-day often felt. How my clumsy attempts at prayer had nothing to show for them. He listened, then quietly assuaged my fears while challenging me to remember that ours is a God of closeness, who desires a relationship with each of us.

Then, after a pause, he asked, “Have you heard of Christus Ministries?”

No way. Et tu, Father?

“Yes,” I replied slowly. Then, to my own surprise, I added, “I’ve been thinking about going to their events. I think I need to be around peers and be more intentional about my faith life. I’ve let it go on autopilot.”

I felt the truth of the words as they left my mouth. At some point since graduating from college, my spiritual needs had changed. I needed more than what LMU could give me. I was growing up — and that meant outgrowing certain spaces while finding my place in others.

So, with no small amount of trepidation, I ventured out to a nearby parish where Christus Ministries hosts its weekly Word and Wisdom Wednesdays (WWW). Fr. R., who runs the program, was delighted; I was nervous. But I returned the next week. And the week after that. The consistency was a comfort: show up, mingle, listen to the Gospel reading for the coming Sunday, a nugget of wisdom from Fr. R., quiet reflection, then small group sharing. I started recognizing the regular attendees, learning faces and names and stories, and the more familiar I became with the group, the easier it became to show up, authentically myself, each week.

Several weeks into attending WWW on a weekly basis, I visited a coffee shop I’d never been to in a nearby neighborhood. When I turned to leave, drink in hand, a blonde girl standing in line did a double take at me. I smiled uncertainly — did she have me mistaken for someone else? But she beamed back. “Gab! Gab, right? From Wednesday nights?”

Momentarily dumbfounded, standing in this coffee shop I had never been in, I could only blink back at the girl for a beat or two. “Maddie!” I finally exclaimed. Outside the context of our Wednesday night gatherings, I almost failed to recognize her. We had been placed in the same small group a few times, where I learned that Maddie, a recent college graduate from the Midwest, was only in Los Angeles temporarily for an internship. I recalled meeting her at one of my first WWWs, slightly awestruck by the initiative it took to seek out a faith community and make a home there, even if only for a couple of months. She gave me a hug, we chatted for a moment, and I left the cafe, reeling a little bit from our brief interaction but unsure why.

Driving off, the reason dawned on me: I had become part of something very tangible, something that existed outside the walls of a parish hall. I had not only been welcomed into Christus Ministries, but seen, known, called by name. In our Scripture reflections and small group sharing, so many of the worries I had been dragging around for months had been echoed back to me, affirmed and validated by peers experiencing the same growing pains. In doing so, in opening myself to the vulnerabilities of others and sharing my own, I had become part of a community. Maddie had done the same.

The third of the Society of Jesus’s four Universal Apostolic Preferences, Journeying with Youth, seeks to “accompany young people in the creation of a hope-filled future.” It acknowledges that the complexities of modern life and many sociopolitical factors make it difficult for young people to find “a road where they can build supportive personal and family relations based on solid spiritual and financial foundations.” In response, the Society of Jesus proposes walking alongside young people, “discerning these possibilities and finding God in the depths of reality.”

As a young person who has been on the receiving end of that accompaniment, I find that the vocation of walking alongside our young adults is straightforward — not easy, by any means, but simple. The realization of a hope-filled future begins with an invitation of relationship, an offer of companionship: “I am with you. You may not need it now, or perhaps you don’t realize you do, but I am with you.” In living in community with one another, we embody what I was told that day during the sacrament of reconciliation at that picnic table under the tree: “When we feel far from God, we’re the ones who have pulled away. God desires a relationship with us. Our God is a God of closeness.”

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I find myself of two minds concerning the mounds of LEGO pieces strewn about my office floor.

On the one hand, this is all I’ve ever dreamed of, the peak of the parenting mountain. Both of my girls are so delighted by the literal construction of magical worlds that they can hardly bring themselves to end their imaginative play. Castles and creatures and storybook creations stand in various degrees of completion, surrounded by tiny LEGO people dead set on tea parties and weddings and the like. A unicorn has been transformed into a peacock so many times that, at present, it exists as some unholy amalgamation of the two.

Am I happy that my children love the things I love, delve into stories the way I delve into stories, surround themselves with the literal building blocks of imagination, and can barely stand to stomach an end to the flow of creativity? Yes. Yes, I am.

So, that’s the one hand.

On the other hand, my entire office floor has been unnavigable for the better part of the last two months. The cats can’t even pick their way across this carpeted expanse. Am I happy about that? No. Not at all.

And so, I stand before this chaotic clutter of colorful bricks and sigh. Mostly, because if I didn’t sigh, I’d yell, something to the effect of, “Clean this stuff up now!”

It’s an amazing thing that the human mind can behold that which exemplifies all it hoped for, evidence that points to the good, and yet still fixate only on the bad. It’s an amazing thing that I can stand in my office and witness proof that our girls are awesome, that they’re clearly taking after me (in at least some unenviable ways), and still I fixate on how untidy the floor is.

It’s an amazing thing that our God can pour out blessings in abundance, shower us in graces — good health, flourishing relationships, opportunities for growth and delight — and still we are distracted by mundane problems.

It’s an amazing thing, and also a pretty normal and understandable one. Because while a part of me delights in the sight of all those LEGO pieces, another part — namely, my two feet — needs to be able to reach my desk to work. We may all be able to name those blessings that God bestows upon us while also rattling off our unique and overwhelming struggles.

I think that’s important and right. God dwells not only in the beauty and joy of our lives but in the mess of it all, too. God is in all things.

But I do think there is an important spiritual disposition to reflect upon bound up in all this: that of gratitude. Importantly, we begin in gratitude. We stand upon the threshold of our proverbial offices, overwhelmed by the number of LEGO pieces, but all the same start with words of thanksgiving: Even these irritating obstacles point to our God who has given us good things.

And then we go about the work of cleaning up the mess. Of tackling our problems. Of repairing our relationships. Of caring for our health and our world. And we do so in the company of our God of countless blessings.

I wonder: Does beginning in gratitude ground whatever follows in our God who loves us? I know that cajoling our girls to clean up those LEGO pieces takes on a new hue when I begin by remembering what a gift they are, what a gift their creativity and imagination is. I’m reminded of the good — even amidst the mess — and of why it matters, what it points to.

Perhaps, at my best, I see not simply a clutter of colorful toys but a whole story arc, the development of my children, a glimmer of who they might yet be.

I wonder if, at your best, when you bump up against the inevitable messes of life, if a defiant disposition of gratitude doesn’t help you glimpse something more, something beautiful. I wonder how that holy insight might change what happens next.

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I spent the better part of last week in New Orleans. The city’s Jesuit university — Loyola University New Orleans — was playing host to the 2025 JASPA 5-Year Institute. Don’t let the name confuse you: This was the first institute in 10 years; you’ll recall 2020 was a less-than-ideal year for in-person meetings.

What does JASPA stand for? The Jesuit Association for Student Personnel Administrators. These are the folks on Jesuit campuses who, in many ways, are most intimately responsible for accompanying students through the formative years of higher education. Folks in residence life, housing, discipline, wellness, athletics, career planning — anything that falls under the broad umbrella of “student affairs.”

This gathering in New Orleans was a time for these professionals to be together, learn together and be inspired to go back to their campuses and embody our shared Jesuit mission.

One of the highlights, at least for me — decidedly an outsider in this group of student affairs professionals — was the keynote conversation among four of our Jesuit college and university presidents: Tania Tetlow of Fordham University, Vincent Rougeau of the College of the Holy Cross, Salvador Aceves of Regis University, and Xavier Cole of the hometown Loyola University New Orleans.

The panel was given a question from those gathered in the auditorium about the reality of burnout in higher education. Why stay when the work only gets harder? And, more poignantly, how had these four individuals on stage managed to stay in Jesuit higher education for so long?

The panel reflected on the role and value of the Ignatian tradition in sustaining them in their ongoing work and vocation. Dr. Cole offered this brief bit of insight: “I can’t do the work without these tools,” he said, referring to the principles of Ignatian spirituality. “I can’t do the work without this mission.”

What was his advice to folks who may rightly feel overwhelmed by the work? Align why you stay to these tools, to this mission.

Now you may be saying, “This is all well and good for student affairs professionals working in Jesuit higher education. But that’s not me. Why does any of this matter?”

Here’s the thing: I don’t work in Jesuit higher ed either. And yet, this statement — this invitation and challenge — has been rattling around in my head for a week.

I can’t do the work without these tools, without this mission.

These words are for each of us, whether we work in a Jesuit apostolate or not. These words are for those of us who have been formed by the Ignatian tradition, who have gone out into the world to be “contemplatives in action.” These words are an anchor for each and every vocation, for those who are in “ministry” and those who find themselves in so-called “secular” settings. Yes, these words are for those in higher education; but they’re for the rest of us, too.

At least, these words can be for us — if we grapple with what they require. If we rise to the occasion to which they call.

Because Ignatian spirituality is meant to be a lived spirituality, the principles and tools are meant to integrate into each of our unique contexts. They are meant to sustain us in the intimate, nitty-gritty work of accompanying other people: from undergraduate students to colleagues to our own children. We’re all on this journey to God together.

So, what do we do? Spend some time this week reflecting on how the tools of the Ignatian tradition and mission sustain you in your work — whatever it may be. Do you find concepts like cura personalis or magis particularly animating? Or maybe you’re moved by a tradition that doggedly pursues finding God in all things.

Whatever it is, name it; bring it into your prayer. Let God speak to you about how this facet of our global tradition can and will uniquely enliven you in the vocation God continues to unfold through your life.

The post Now Discern This: Mission Sustains the Work appeared first on Jesuits.org.

My 2-year-old daughter is currently obsessed with the nursery rhyme “Five Little Ducks.” The requests to listen to this little ditty come fast and often — when she’s eating her morning yogurt, on the drive to daycare, in the middle of a block-building session when she suddenly realizes she’s gone more than five minutes without her favorite tune — and once the song concludes comes the inevitable appeal, “Again, Mama! Again!”

For those unfamiliar, or unwilling to subject themselves to the latest toddler earworm, “Five Little Ducks” is about some ducklings that go out to play and disappear one by one, over a series of days, until zero ducks remain. On the final day, a sad, desperate mother duck quacks in despondence over the loss of her family, until — surprise! All of the ducklings return. While it’s not as grave as the dark themes of other nursery rhymes, it still fills my mind with annoying questions. Where did the ducklings go? What were they doing for days on their own? How could mother duck just… lose her kids?

I’m quite certain that I’m not the only parent who’s wanted to stuff my ears full of cotton balls at the first sign of the nursery rhyme-spiral (the ducks’ YouTube video alone has a staggering 1.8 billion views!). So many aspects of parenting small children require colossal amounts of patience, but I often find navigating the constant repetition of songs, requests and actions to be particularly challenging. So, whenever the duck symphony begins, I try to remind myself about the value of repetition.

Parenting articles and newsletters emphasize the fascinating ways repetition is quite literally building my toddler’s brain. Researchers credit repetition with building neural circuits, fostering language development, and understanding cause and effect. So while I can easily become annoyed by the lack of variety in everything from food choices to the preferred stuffie, I’m comforted knowing my toddler’s dedication to her “one favorite thing” is mysteriously helping her learn about how the world works.

Gaining a better understanding of how repetition helps my daughter grow has encouraged me to become more patient with her repeated requests. It’s also invited me to reflect on the value of repetition in my own life. Recently, I came to a major realization: Just as repetition acts as a building block for my toddler’s brain, it also serves as the building block to my spiritual life.

Similarly to my daughter’s desire to watch, read and play the same things over and over, our faith insists on repetition — from liturgical celebrations to the passing of Catholic traditions across generations — as a pathway to spiritual growth. What stands out to me the most are the prayers — the Our Father, Hail Mary, the Rosary — that I have recited by memory since I was a young child, as well as all the deeply important rituals that connect me with a community of Catholics across the world.

In the past, I’ve been grateful for memorized prayers that help me move deeper into contemplation when words come up short. It’s comforting to have reliable prayers to turn to, particularly when I’m feeling stressed, overwhelmed or exhausted. Whether I’m reciting them out loud at Mass, or in my head before falling asleep, the Our Father, Hail Mary and others offer a familiar gateway into a prayerful state where I can talk with God.

My desire to regularly turn to the most familiar petitions has only become stronger since I became a mother. In this season of my life, I’m recognizing God’s invitation to help my children get to know our faith. In that spirit, my husband and I have begun to pray these prayers with my daughter at bedtime. God willing, she’ll eventually learn them and be able to turn to them for spiritual comfort and reflection. I know it will take some time (so far, she’s really mastered the enthusiastic “Amen!” when we’re finished), but seeing her sweet and clumsy attempts at copying the sign of the cross ignites my heart with gratitude and gives me hope for what might become the building blocks of her own faith life.

Praying the core prayers of our Catholic faith with my toddler has given me a greater patience for repetition and appreciation of its fruits. Just like my daughter’s favorite melody, repeated prayer is an instrument to see and understand how God is working in the life of my family. If my daughter can find newness and excitement at the 400th listen of her favorite song, then who knows what discoveries await her as she learns, grows and moves forward, hopefully, in prayer.

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Chester A. France Jr. played the trumpet in the band at Frederick Douglass High School. He is a 1957 graduate of this historic Baltimore city academic institution. His alma mater is one of only two city high schools that admitted African American students during the many years of segregation.

All this to say, Chester is a proud alumnus. And he’s very familiar with those old band uniforms. But nowadays when Chester returns to his alma mater, it’s not as a trumpeter but as the founder of Lifting Labels, a Baltimore-based nonprofit that seeks to reduce poverty, create sustainable jobs and improve the quality of life for folks returning to communities after incarceration.

Chester spent more than three decades in the corporate world. He knows how to put a business plan together, how to talk to and motivate employees, and how to close a sale — skills that have proven essential to the founding and growth of Lifting Labels. But it was his 17 years as the Protestant chaplain with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services that demonstrated to him the importance of what Lifting Labels might be.

Those years of accompaniment gave him a surprising insight. There are three sewing plants within the Maryland prison system. That means there are countless folks in that system who are spending hours and hours refining this crucial trade. These same folks leave the prison system and return home with newfound skills only to discover there are no jobs to be found that will put their expertise to use.

In 2018, Chester decided to change that. He spent the next many months developing a business plan in collaboration with Innovation Works — another Baltimore-based and Jesuit-backed organization that seeks to connect neighborhoods, entrepreneurs, social innovation assets and investors in order to build sustainable local economies throughout Baltimore. Through Innovation Works’ programming and partnerships, Chester was able to secure enough funding to begin turning Lifting Labels into a reality. Their doors officially opened in 2021.

“If it wasn’t for Innovation Works,” Chester told me, “none of this would have happened.”

Chester was giving me a tour of the workshop. It’s one of several small businesses housed in a beautifully repurposed red brick warehouse located in Pigtown, one of the neighborhoods in southwest Baltimore.

The workshop was quiet when we were there: a rectangular industrial space awash in colorful fabrics, lined with overflowing cardboard boxes and humming with possibility of new ideas and better futures. Mr. Anthony — the lead sewing machine operator — was silently working at one of the handfuls of stations, focused on the thread dancing through his fingers.

Chester showed us the clergy garments that Lifting Labels is perhaps best known for, as well as the graduation stoles and judicial robes and tote bags and more. He stood leaning on an enormous table, showcasing a swatch of camo material that would soon become an apron.

“I never turn down having a conversation,” he was saying. “You never know where it’s going to go.”

I imagine that mentality was a real strength in both his corporate and chaplaincy days. I know it continues to serve him well today. That’s probably how he found himself holding those old band uniforms at Frederick Douglass High School. Chester had been asked to reimagine what those uniforms could be.

So, he brought them back to his small team at Lifting Labels. And now, they’re hoping to collaborate with Frederick Douglass High School to transform those old band uniforms into something new: reversible aprons.

I like that image, that idea of transforming something that was otherwise forgotten, ignored, left to collect dust. I think that’s what Chester and Lifting Labels is really all about. How often do we as a society cast folks to the curb, declare them too far gone and unwelcome in our communities? Certainly, we do that to too many women and men marked by the prison system.

But I think we do that to others, too — all sorts of individuals and communities that we deem unnecessary to our own lives. What a shame. What a tragedy! Because I think one of the many lessons we may take from Lifting Labels is that each of us — no matter our background, our missteps, our skillsets — have the wherewithal not only to contribute to the greater good but to make something beautiful. That’s what they’re doing at Lifting Labels.

I wonder: Where do we need to look to see anew the possibility in those around us and — perhaps just as importantly — within ourselves? Have we been too quick to write someone off? Have we been too quick to forget our own great worth?

“This is a training ground,” Chester told me. In many ways, it has to be. He serves folks who are right out of prison. Lifting Labels reminds them of their inherent dignity and then encourages them on as their lives continue to unfold. “If you find another job,” Chester said, “we’ll help you get there.”

What a beautiful image: the constant unfolding of vocation, encouraged and nurtured and prized but pushed on all the same to strive for the next good thing. No one is written off; everyone instead is woven together.

And the old isn’t abandoned but transformed, made new — a real Easter story.

You can learn more about Lifting Labels by clicking here. And discover the Jesuit-backed Innovation Works by clicking here.

Photo by Eric Clayton/Jesuit Conference

The post Now Discern This: How Lifting Labels Changes Lives in Baltimore appeared first on Jesuits.org.

This past weekend was a big one at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

After more than seven innings of jumping as if their shoes had caught fire, dancing like their pants were quite literally full of ants and casually throwing limbs in every direction anatomically possible, both my kids and our friends’ kids wound up on the big screen. They were jubilant.

Also, the Orioles won — which isn’t something we can say a lot these days.

But it was those few seconds of stadium-wide glory that really stuck with our girls on the way home: “I can’t believe I was on the screen.” When we went around our dinner table to check in on everyone’s favorite part of the day, showing up on the jumbotron was far and away the highlight.

I’m no expert in appearing on the big screen at sporting events. I suffer from not being an adorable, energetic child and from also not appearing terribly interested in the event at hand. I understand that to be a lethal combination for anyone trying to make it onto the screen.

But we knew how to coach the kids: “Look happy! Look excited! Keep jumping! Dance!” In short, exude joy.

It’s a funny thing to try and catch the attention of a camera operator on the far side of a ballpark by the sheer ferocity of your joyful disposition. It’s no wonder I didn’t make the cut. But the job of the camera operator — of the whole production team, in fact — is to be on the lookout for such displays of unbridled delight. After all, they have to put something on that enormous television. Better to fill the time showcasing happy fans.

But there’s something more going on here, I think. Something worthy of our reflection. What does it mean to send out this kind of joy into the world, knowing that someone is looking for it? What does it mean to be on the lookout for such joy, knowing it’s your job to transmit that happy sight to others? What does it mean, in short, to be part of the joy-filled supply chain?

This supply chain means a lot of things, not the least of which is that we all have a role. Are we the ones dancing and singing, sending joy into the world for others? Are we the ones responsible for spotting that joy, for gathering it up and transmitting it to where it needs to be? Or perhaps we’re the ones sitting in the stands in need of a joy-filled injection. We send joy; we receive joy. We do the work of embodying joy so that others may feel what we ourselves try to manifest.

The world is a hard place, you say in response. And I don’t feel very joyful. That’s fair; I understand. But here’s the thing: Our proverbial supply chain can transmit any number of virtues.

I wonder, then, if joy is too hard to summon forth, we might instead turn to hope. Can we find in our beings that foundational virtue? Can we send it out into the world, knowing that there are so many people near and far who need to see it? And not just see it, not just receive a signal, but feel in their very souls that we’re all in this together, that we still go to God together, that we still look for God’s Spirit at work and still strive to build up God’s vision, that the people of God continue to hope “because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rm 5:5). And so we don’t simply sit and hope but we get up and love and serve — and we do so joyfully.

I wonder, then, if in the home team’s stadium in the Kingdom of God our own faces might show up on the holiest of jumbotrons to show that we continue to muddle onward, that we show joy and hope and all the rest to stir our own souls and those of others along our shared path toward God’s dream.

I’ll wager that if we do this work, if we showcase joy and hope for the good of others and our own consolation, that our holy effort — and its fruits — will be our favorite part of the day.

The post Now Discern This: Joy on the Jumbotron appeared first on Jesuits.org.

The following is an adapted excerpt from Eric Clayton’s new book, “Finding Peace Here and Now: How Ignatian Spirituality Leads Us to Healing and Wholeness” (2025, Brazos Press) in which we’re invited to consider how the Easter story challenges us to find peace in community. 

The resurrection is Jesus’s moment of return. During the fourth week of the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius invites us to pray “for the grace to be glad and rejoice intensely because of the great joy and the glory of Christ our Lord.”^[i] Fr. John English, SJ — in his classic “Spiritual Freedom: From an Experience of the Ignatian Exercises to the Art of Spiritual Guidance” — notes that this kind of joy “means escaping from our narrow selves to an unusual degree.”^[ii] We accompany Christ in joy, contemplating Jesus’s joy, that of those he encounters, and the joy that is consequently awakened in us. It spills over from Christ to us, from us to others, and back again. This moment of return, this turning back toward community, is key — it ignites something within us. It connects us. Saint Paul says of the body of Christ, “If one part is honored, all the parts share its joy” (1 Cor. 12:26).

Does this joy feel sudden or abrupt? We just witnessed Jesus’s brutal execution, where violence was visited on his body and soul. We stood there; we watched. The disciples fled, fearful that the same violence would find and finish them. That same passage from Paul begins by reminding us that “if [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it” (1 Cor. 12:26). But now — joy! From passion to resurrection.

The transition can be jarring, yet Christ encourages us to embrace this joy, not to allow ourselves to become trapped in sorrow and sadness. To remind ourselves of our intrinsic identity as the beloved of God. “There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter,” our beloved Pope Francis wrote in his apostolic exhortation “Evangelii gaudium.” “I realize of course that joy is not expressed the same way at all times in life. . . . Joy adapts and changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved.”^[iii] As we approach the resurrection, as we seek to embody its spiritual insights for peace, we must commit ourselves to that slow, steady work of joy, even in seeming darkness.

We know the story of the resurrection, more or less. Ignatius, as usual, invites us to sink into the story’s scenes. Ignatius asserts that the very first of Jesus’s apparitions after his return was to his mother, Mary.^[iv] The second was to Mary Magdalene, and then he appeared to Mary the mother of James.^[v] And so on: Jesus walks with his disciples on the road to Emmaus, and he shares breakfast with his friends after a night of fishing. He appears in the upper room, even though the doors are locked, and he returns again to put Thomas’s doubting mind at ease.

Ignatius names Jesus in this week the “Consoler” and says, “Consider the office of consoler that Christ our Lord exercises and compare it with the way in which friends are wont to console each other.”^[vi] In each Gospel scene, Jesus enters deeply into the sorrow of his friends, of his community.

He returns to share in that hardship, to carry it, and ultimately, to show his friends that they can let it go, that they themselves can return to their lives in a new way.

Hope has spilled into joy. “The divinity, which seemed to hide itself during the passion, [is] now appearing and manifesting itself so miraculously in the most holy Resurrection.”^[vii]

I wonder, did it have to be this way? Did Jesus really have to make the return journey himself? Did he have to personally visit each group of friends, spending time with each? Could we not imagine a scene parallel to Jesus’s baptism at the Jordan, all of his friends gathered in one place and the voice from heaven declaring, “He is risen! Fear not!” Same effect, right? In this scenario, the news of the resurrection still gets out, and the angels have a busy few days spreading the word — after all, isn’t that what they did at the Incarnation?

But that’s not the story we know; that’s not what happened. Jesus returns. He has to come back to his friends, his beloved community. He has to console. “This is a beautiful way of showing how Jesus goes about bringing joy, hope and confidence to people,” Fr. English writes. “All of the Resurrection appearances in the Bible have the Immanuel theme — the continuation of the Incarnation today. God continues with us and is present to us.”^[viii]

God doesn’t gloss over the struggle, the fear, the hopelessness. God isn’t content to give a sign in the sky as he had done at previous times.

God wants to enter deeply into our own stories, to continue to walk with us from fear to hope, from uncertainty to courage, from violence to peace.

“In the Resurrection appearances we hear Christ’s command: ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my [friends],’” English writes. “The message of the Resurrection is ‘go and spread the good news.’ In other words, move out of yourself; go and tell other people.”^[ix] There is movement in the resurrection; it is not a state of paralysis, and it is certainly not a new status quo. It is a constant calling forth.

The resurrection is an invitation to seek out and eradicate fear — the fear that closes us in on ourselves, closes us off to other people and creation, to new ways of being and thinking. The resurrection changed the story; God lifted our horizons on what was even possible. But God didn’t just tell us the news; Jesus entered deeply into the story to walk with us into this new way of living.

What does it mean that we, who are made in the image and likeness of this same God who returns, are called to enter into the highs and lows of our community? How can this disposition be one of peace?

“Finding Peace Here and Now: How Ignatian Spirituality Leads Us to Healing and Wholeness” is now available from Brazos Press! Click here to learn more.

[i] Saint Ignatius, The Spiritual Exercises, trans. Louis J. Puhl, SJ (Loyola, 1951), 95.

[ii] John J. English, Spiritual Freedom: From an Experience of the Ignatian Exercises to the Art of Spiritual Guidance, 2nd ed. (Loyola House, 1974), 231.

[iii] Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium (Vatican, 2013), par. 6, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html.

[iv] Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, 132.

[v] Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, 133.

[vi] Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, 96.

[vii] Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, 95.

[viii] English, Spiritual Freedom, 230.

[ix] English, Spiritual Freedom, 232.

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From where we stood — a wide, rectangular landing roughly halfway down the stairs between the second and first floors — I had a good view of the inner workings of Homeboy Industries.

I watched folks as they walked in from North Alameda Street, passing from the bright Los Angeles sunshine through glass doors to be greeted by eager and welcoming faces. I noted the homies seated in rows of simple black chairs — men and women of all ages, some in the company of their big-eyed, big-grinned children — waiting their turn to talk with a staff member. Beyond those chairs, I peered into the swag store where shelves were full of T-shirts and hoodies and caps, all branded “Homeboy Industries” — products of the hard work done by homies and homegirls working in Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery. Further still, I could just peek into Homegirl Café, where the lunch rush was dying down but where work continued with gusto as coffees were poured and sandwiches were made and smiles were shared.

I pressed against the railing, gazing out and over, making room on the landing as folks busied themselves walking up and down, talking with colleagues and friends, carrying boxes, offering advice. Many folks were headed for the offices and classrooms on the second floor where legal and social services were offered and job readiness skills were taught.

Even on a Friday afternoon, Homeboy Industries was an active, joyful, hopeful place. And that’s why we’d stopped on that landing at the end of my tour: to take it all in, to really see the people who walked through those doors looking for hope and community and love.

“That’s part of my job,” Raul told me. He’d been saying as much throughout the tour. “I study people, their body language. It’s important.”

He pointed to a young man sitting by himself, arms crossed and slouching. “That’s someone I might go over and check in on,” Raul told me. “It’s important for everyone to know they’re welcome and to leave with hope. Right now, I’m not sure he feels that way.”

As our tour proceeded, a young woman bumped into another. She laughed and apologized and skipped off. “But that could’ve gone badly,” Raul said. “Something as simple as that can take a turn.”

After all, Raul told me again and again, so many of the folks who sat in the waiting room, who walked through the halls, who bumped elbows and swapped smiles had been members of rival gangs. They were, in a very literal sense, enemies. At least, they had been before experiencing the all-embracing love of the Homeboy community. That’s why it was so important to pay attention to body language: Raul wanted to diffuse situations before they got out of hand and remind everyone that they belonged to one another.

Homeboy Industries, in its earliest form, began in 1986, when Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ, became pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles. At that time, the neighborhoods that comprised the parish had the highest gang activity in the city, as well as the largest public housing projects west of the Mississippi. Fr. Greg’s desire to respond to the needs of the folks in his community — a need for peace and hope and space to dream — ultimately led to the vast array of social enterprises, services and opportunities that now make up Homeboy Industries.

There’s so much to see and to love at Homeboy. But I’m still so deeply struck by this attentiveness to body language. The practical reason is clear: Diffuse possible conflicts before they happen and maintain a sense of safety for all.

But even my brief time walking the halls of Homeboy revealed something far greater than a simple concern with public safety: Folks wanted to see each other in their fullness. Body language was simply a physical manifestation of deeper truths. What burdens and struggles do crossed arms and slouching portend? What past trauma and suffering does a bumped elbow point to? And how important is it to meet these physical expressions of spiritual woundedness with a resilient, persistent, joy-filled call to hope?

“No one leaves without a little hope,” Raul told me. “Even if we can’t give them exactly what they’re looking for, we always give them something, some reason to keep going and to come back.”

In the Ignatian tradition, we talk of cura personalis, care for the whole person. And yet, do we study one another’s body language with this same level of intimacy, this same great desire to care for the fullness of the other, to offer that glimmer of hope?

I wonder who we might pay closer attention to this week. I wonder how that deeper attentiveness might lead us to a renewed and shared sense of belonging.

The post Now Discern This: What I Learned at Homeboy Industries appeared first on Jesuits.org.

The art of discernment is a hallmark feature of Ignatian spirituality. From the moment Ignatius began to differentiate between consolations and desolations during his eleven-month convalescence in Loyola to today, Jesuits and lay collaborators have been mining the depths of what it means to listen to and act on God’s invitation in our lives.

Today, we get a crash course in discernment. Fr. Mark Thibodeaux—renown spiritual author, Jesuit priest and the pastor of Holy Name of Jesus Church in New Orleans—is back on the pod to talk about his newest book, “Discern: Listening for God’s Whispers.”

Fr. Mark is a modern-day master of the Ignatian spiritual tradition. As you listen to this conversation, I invite to really bring his ideas into your own prayer. We’re all constantly tasked with making decision—big, small and otherwise. Ignatian discernment can be a big help, no matter where you are in your own vocational journey.

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