James Martin, S.J.

Our commitment to God is expressed through living out the gospel, but also in your fidelity to prayer. Day in and day out. “Showing up and shutting up,” as my friend likes to say about daily prayer.

There’s nothing wrong with setting a particular practice aside for a time and trying something else. Maybe you could pray with the psalms. Or maybe take a book of spiritual reflections and let that invite you into prayer. Or maybe you could just sit quietly in God’s presence.

Many devout Christians end up, with the best intentions, overwhelmed by the great many things that they feel that they have to do in their daily prayer, as if prayer is just a “to do” list.

Imagine Jesus were to come into a room and tell you something. You would obviously treasure his words and want to remember exactly what he said. So you’d certainly write them down, maybe even paint them on the wall of every room in your house.

The most significant gift to the world from St. Ignatius, as every Jesuit will tell you, is the distinctive spirituality known as “Ignatian spirituality.”

Faith sharing means gathering your friends so that you can pray alongside one another. It may just open up new avenues of connecting with your faith.

To find out about retreats you might start by looking up a nearby Jesuit retreat house on Jesuits.org.

If you’ve been praying for any length of time, you might have heard about the practice of spiritual direction. So you might wonder: What is it? And is it for me?

God meets people where they are. For some people, God meets them through relationships, with others through books; with others through nature. Maybe this week you can look around to see the very personal and unique ways that God encounters you and invites you to believe.