Posted: March 25

A sign of springtime

(Rome) Spring is almost arrived in Rome. It is certainly trying. The soft rains that fall part of almost every day are soaking the ground. The early blossoms of fruit trees have come and fallen, leaving the ground white, but not snow-white. The days feel chilly but not really cold. A change is in the air. And I feel like I am ready for a break as well. Time to change seasons and regroup for the next period. The webmasters of the European Jesuit provinces met here last week for three very full days. It was their second meeting and it looks like the group will continue. It was very heartening to see the progress from last year to this on site after site. The most significant change was that almost half the sites have now added some apostolic content that is focused not on the Society of Jesus as an organization, but on the spiritual needs of people who look to the Jesuits for nourishment. The Austrian province has run two successful on-line retreats, and many other provinces have added how-to-pray pages.

Fr. Peter Scally of London has one of the most interesting innovations. He now produces an audio prayer segment called, "Pray-as-you-go" which he offers in various digital formats that people can download from his website and load into their iPods or other digital music players. Then they can listen to the meditations while on their way to and from work each day. (Check it out yourself. There is a prayer for each day which runs about 12 minutes and includes some music, a reading and some reflections about the reading. Peter did some testing and found, for example, that people need to hear each reading twice because it is harder to focus on the reading when you are hearing it in the context of riding on a bus or subway. Sitting before your computer screen is much easier in one sense, and the person praying can just keep the reading before his or her view. In an audio-only format, adjustments need to be made to help the pray-er pray. There are also some auxiliary files with information about breathing exercise and body exercise as well as an examination of the day. All in all, it is very well done, and Peter deserves the attention that he has been getting in the British press. (Even BBC took notice and ran a program on the new service.) The home page of the new site says that it is a trial for Lent. Of course, that is what the Sacred Space web site also said when Peter and Irish Jesuit Alan McGuckian started it some years ago. That first pray-on-line effort is now being translated into 18 languages all over the world. We will have to see how pray-as-you-go develops. But it is off to a wonderful start and certainly makes me enthusiastic about the Jesuit communication apostolate.

Perhaps it is a sign of Spring as well.