OTTAWA - Many people find that getting away for a retreat is impossible due to time, money or family reasons. Even finding a free weekend can be difficult in our busy lives.

Aside from a day at my church during Advent and Lent, where parishioners gather for lectures, quiet time and a silent meal, I haven’t attended a formal retreat in more than a decade.

Instead, I have discovered the simplest, most flexible way for me to make a retreat is to find my way to the nearest adoration chapel and stay there for an hour or two. Over the past year, I have done this frequently. I have also been blessed with the grace to pray three novenas that included a minimum of an hour of adoration for every one of the nine days.

VANCOUVER - Every May, the graduating class of St. Thomas Aquinas Regional Secondary School in North Vancouver, B.C., attends a three-day retreat organized and facilitated by school staff and alumni. My Grade 12 retreat four years ago is one of my fondest memories of high school. So it was a blessing this past May to be invited to help lead the 2011 class in this spiritual exercise.

The objective of the retreat, held at Camp Stillwood (about a two-hour drive from Vancouver), is to help students open up to God and to each other. Students begin from varying levels of spirituality; we had to ensure they understood that.

The retreat had all the activities that a large-scale retreat should have: a morning of team building exercises and games, a campfire, free time and an evening devoted to hilarious skits (making fun of teachers is encouraged). As a leader, I was responsible for leading some of these games, leading small group discussions and helping lead worship.

The first thing Fr. Phil Hurley makes clear is that when he is speaking about Hearts on Fire he is not referring to a popular line of engagement rings.

“This is not the world’s most perfectly cut diamond,” he jokes.

The priest is the national youth and young adult director of the Apostleship of Prayer, a Jesuit association leading the Hearts on Fire retreats. The retreats are for young adults ages 18-39, married or single, based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and the spirituality of the Apostleship of Prayer.

“It’s a crucial time for people in their lives,” Hurley told Catholic News Service. “They are at a place in their life that they can make decisions soon and take action on it right away and make a big difference.”

NEW YORK - Is it possible to be a faithful Catholic and a video gamer?

That's a question all Catholic gaming enthusiasts -- including the young adults at whom many of the industry's offerings are primarily targeted -- must ask themselves as this medium continues to develop and expand its influence over contemporary society.

Once upon a time, back in the 1980s and early 1990s, classic games such as "Pac-Man" and "Super Mario Bros." raised few if any moral issues. So youthful Catholics could casually -- and comfortably -- pick up whatever new release was available at the local store. There was no need for them to worry that the sensitivities of their faith would be assaulted or that troublesome opinions would be aggressively foisted on them by game developers.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has made the dangers of secularism a major theme of his pontificate.

And it's a battle both sides take seriously.

On the one hand, the pope warns that societies without the moorings of Christian values will be lost at sea, unaware of or indifferent to the truth that anchors humanity to justice, peace, respect and solidarity.

On the other side are groups and individuals that hold so tightly to the democratic tenet of church-state separation, they don't want any voice tied to religion to be let loose onto the public square.

Four hundred years ago a pair of brave, but no doubt anxious, French Jesuit missionaries landed at Port Royal in Acadia on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. In 1611 the small fort was a gateway to the vast, unexplored territory called New France.

Over the decades that followed, the Jesuits moved steadily inland and, while fulfilling their mission as evangelists, they also became explorers, cartographers, educators, chroniclers and pastors. More so than any other religious order, the Jesuits not only witnessed the birth of Canada, they shaped significant parts of its history.

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of their arrival to the “New World” and to celebrate their many spiritual and temporal contributions to Canada, The Catholic Register has published this 36-page homage to the Jesuit priests and brothers whose courage brought them to our shores in 1611 and whose faith and commitment to service has entwined them in the fabric of Canadian life to this day.

We originally envisioned this tribute as a 12-page section. But it tripled in size over the summer due to an outpouring of support from the many organizations on these pages that wanted to extend their own congratulations in an advertisement. As a result, when the special section is combined with our weekly 20-page paper, the 56-page Catholic Register you are holding is probably the largest we’ve ever published.

The story of the Jesuit martyrs is an important part of the Canadian education curriculum. Therefore, in addition to being delivered to subscriber homes, an additional 14,000 copies of the Jesuit section have been printed for distribution to more than 1,000 Catholic elementary and high schools in Ontario at the expense of The Register.

This 400-year milestone is worthy of celebration. We hope you enjoy it.

Jim O’Leary
Publisher and Editor

Jesuits in Canada 400 Years of Service

Browse print edition Jesuits are a key part of our history 400 years of giving Wherever they went, Jesuits embraced local ways Jean de Brébeuf's rules on interacting with the Hurons Loyola's Spiritual Exercises still at Jesuits' core A developed mind takes us on a path to God Setting the world 'on fire with the love of God' Social justice Jesuit-style is for God's greater glory Martin Royackers was first English Canadian Jesuit killed in service Three martyred at China mission Arts are a tool towards the Jesuit mission goal The Jesuit Relations opened up the New World to Europe Finding Jesus through Loyola's Spiritual Exercises Exhibit unearths gems from Jesuits' history The formation process for a Jesuit is laborious, lengthy Experiencing God in ecology A chronology of the Jesuits in Canada Jesuit heroes through the years

Jesuits in Canada - 400 Years of Service

Friday, 16 September 2011

The Catholic Register is proud to honour the 400th anniversary of the Jesuits arrival in Canada with this 18 part special feature.

There are two ways to read the articles.

You can view the articles in the embedded reader below as they were printed in the newspaper . Click the "Expand" button in the centre of the player to go full-screen for the best reader experience. You can then zoom in on specific pages with the magnifying glass button or by using the scroll wheel on your mouse. Click to the side to navigate through the pages and press the ESC key on your keyboard to exit.

You can also enjoy the articles on catholicregister.org. Just use the 18 links below the reader to browse through the stories.

Jesuits in Canada 400 Years of Service

Jesuits are a key part of our history 400 years of giving Wherever they went, Jesuits embraced local ways Jean de Brébeuf's rules on interacting with the Hurons Loyola's Spiritual Exercises still at Jesuits' core A developed mind takes us on a path to God Setting the world 'on fire with the love of God' Social justice Jesuit-style is for God's greater glory Martin Royackers was first English Canadian Jesuit killed in service Three martyred at China mission Arts are a tool towards the Jesuit mission goal The Jesuit Relations opened up the New World to Europe Finding Jesus through Loyola's Spiritual Exercises Exhibit unearths gems from Jesuits' history The formation process for a Jesuit is laborious, lengthy Experiencing God in ecology A chronology of the Jesuits in Canada Jesuit heroes through the years

I met Jesuit Father Bill Maurice on the roof of the mission house on the Fort William Reserve, on the edge of Thunder Bay, Ont. He was repairing an outdoor loudspeaker which he had mounted to broadcast prayers and other vital messages to the surrounding households.

It was early spring with the wind whipping off Lake Superior and I had been wondering why an 82-year-old man was scrambling about on the roof with a pair of pliers and a screwdriver. Once he had persuaded me up to the roof and started handing me tools I was not so much mystified as aghast. As he handed me tools, he was talking.

Maurice had opinions about theology, liturgy, politics, the weather, hockey and everything else but I wasn’t catching much of it while I hung on to the TV antenna. I eventually learned Maurice wasn’t just a colourful, crazy character. He was a Jesuit, one of more than 2,000 Jesuits who have been entwined in Canada’s history since 1611. Just as students in Jesuit schools inscribe the top of their exam papers with AMDG, the old priest had carved Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam (“to the greater glory of God”) into his soul and into every day of the 92 years he lived.

When Frs. Pierre Biard and Ennemond Massé arrived in Canada in 1611 their religious order was a relative infant. In 1611, the Jesuits had only been in existence 71 years, compared to the Benedictines who were more than 1,000 years old, or the Dominicans and Franciscans who were each about 400 years old.

But the Jesuits wasted no time in taking the Gospel to the frontiers. Just one year after the Society of Jesus was formally approved by Pope Paul III in 1540, St. Francis Xavier left for the far east. And by the time the Jesuits came to Canada, they had already established missions in the far east, Africa and Latin America.

St. Francis Xavier’s incredible success in India and Indonesia, heroic efforts in Japan and doomed attempt to reach China — all in the space of eight years — established a Jesuit pattern of absolute commitment to spreading the Gospel.

Ignatian spirituality, the foundation of the largest religious order of men in the world, had humble and unusual beginnings: three lay students sharing a dorm room at the University of Paris.

But these were no ordinary students. The first was Ignatius of Loyola, a converted soldier who had encountered God in a vision, and the other two were as deeply rooted in their faith as he. In that dorm room, Loyola led Francis Xavier and Peter Faber through the Spiritual Exercises, a 30-day prayer pattern he had developed. That same pattern is still used today, and is at the core of the Society of Jesus.

“The Spiritual Exercises becomes a means of knowing, experiencing, understanding and growing in intimacy with Jesus Christ,” said Fr. Bernie Carroll, S.J., director of the Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ont. “You come to the end of it and realize God is in everything.”