Category: The Tough Questions
Finding God in the Gulag: Discovering Freedom in Captivity
by andyotto | Apr 29, 2024 | Essays, The Lighter Side, The Tough Questions | 0
Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit priest, endured solitary confinement and harsh conditions in Soviet prisons for 23 years. His trust in God’s will and his commitment to living a life of love helped him find hope and inner peace.
Read MoreReimagining Original Sin: A Journey Towards Wholeness
by andyotto | Feb 5, 2024 | The Tough Questions | 0
Original Sin isn’t just about guilt, but a path to rediscovering our true selves and our relationship with God and all creation.
Read MoreIgnatian Resilience: Navigating the Tumult
by andyotto | Jan 15, 2024 | Spiritual Practices, The Tough Questions | 1
Ignatius offers tools for us to stay resilient in the storms and uncertainties of life.
Read MoreSuffering and God’s Loving Accompaniment
by andyotto | Jun 19, 2023 | The Tough Questions | 0
What’s is God’s role in suffering? It might be helpful to see God as a parent who accompanies their child in pain.
Read MoreSeeking What I Already Have
by andyotto | Feb 20, 2023 | Awareness, The Tough Questions | 0
We are all seekers, longing for inner peace and purpose. What if we already had what we were seeking all along?
Read MoreConforming God to My Unfreedoms
by andyotto | Sep 26, 2022 | Discernment, The Tough Questions | 2
We sometimes try to conform God to our decisions, rather than the other way around. In his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius explains how we often make a means an end in itself. We need both internal and external freedom.
Read MoreWar and Ego
by andyotto | Mar 19, 2022 | The Tough Questions | 1
We’re all prone to the tactics of the evil spirit. For some it leads to catastrophic evil like war.
Read MoreThe Neighbourhood
by andyotto | Jan 11, 2021 | The Tough Questions | 1
Through his neighbourhood, Mister Rogers teaches us how to be people of love and how to truly know one another. His neighbourhood was kind of a metaphor for the kingdom of God.
Read MoreThe Tension of Poverty and Abundance
by andyotto | Dec 14, 2020 | Awareness, The Tough Questions | 4
The pandemic has revealed the tension between our experiences of poverty and abundance. It’s fitting to reflect on that this Advent season.
Read MoreThreat or Freedom? – Two Ways of Reading the Gospel
by andyotto | Sep 21, 2020 | Scripture Reflections, The Tough Questions | 3
Do you read the Gospel and Jesus’ statements through a lens of threat or a lens of freedom? How you do will make a big difference of how you see God, church, and religion.
Read MoreHow can I trust that I’m not ‘making up’ my prayer experience?
by andyotto | Aug 24, 2020 | Prayer, The Tough Questions | 0
When we pray using our imagination we might worry that the content of our prayer is not of God, but of our own makings. Here are a few ways you can discern the “voice” in your prayer.
Read MoreFilling an Empty Well
by andyotto | Jun 8, 2020 | Awareness, Scripture Reflections, The Tough Questions | 1
For many of us these days our energies are focused in fewer places than normal, which means those...
Read More
This guide will offer you a process and framework for discerning a particular decision using the approaches and prayer methods in the Ignatian tradition.