Finding God In All Things—Including Your Heart

Jesus does not look at us from a distance with a detached pity; rather, He invites us into a profound, personal friendship rooted in His desire to labor alongside us. In the tradition of Ignatian spirituality, we are called to recognize that God is constantly active in our lives, "dwelling in creatures" and working for our good. This is the heart of the Contemplation to Attain Love: realizing that everything we have is a gift from a God who yearns to be close to us. As Jesus reassures us in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest." He doesn't just offer a temporary escape; He offers His very self as a companion who understands our humanity intimately.

To accept this love, we must practice the discernment of spirits, learning to distinguish the voice of the "Creator and Lord" from the movements of desolation that tell us we are unworthy or alone. Jesus wants to help us navigate the interior movements of our souls, whispering the same truth found in Jeremiah 31:3: "With age-old love I have loved you; so I have kept my mercy toward you." By praying for an "intimate knowledge" of the Lord—as St. Ignatius suggests in the Spiritual Exercises—we begin to see that His love is not a passive feeling but an active, helping hand reaching out to us in every moment of our day.

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Woman, Behold Your Son

The spiritual climax of the Gospel of John, as Father John Waiss points out, occurs at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus utters his parting words: “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26-27). While these words were addressed to the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Church has long understood this moment as a universal adoption. To truly image Christ, we must share in His parentage; if we embrace God as our spiritual Father but reject Mary as our mother, we treat Christ as a half-brother rather than our "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). As Origen noted as early as the third century, the profound depths of the Gospel are only accessible to those who, like John, rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and receive Mary into their own homes. This maternal role is deeply rooted in biblical typology, positioning Mary as the fulfillment of the great mothers of the Old Covenant. She is the New Eve , the mother of all the living according ...

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Learning to be Quick to Listen

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