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From the Provincial's Desk
 This
is our second issue of Ignatian Imprints, an issue in which many of
the articles focus on hope. Since we are still in the early stages
of magazine production, I want to remind you that the contents of
the magazine are available on the website at www.ignatianimprints.org.
There you will find additional information and links relating to our
articles.Our cover story this time is about the hope that the Appalachian Institute at Wheeling Jesuit University is bringing to the long-overlooked population of the Appalachian region. Inaugurated in 2002, the institute has developed a number of programs to engender hope among those who seem to have lost hope that their children's lives will be any better than their own. The institute has found that there are strong communities filled with people who do care and who devote their lives to caring for the world's materially poor and to the diversity of life on this earth. Change comes through incremental steps, and the institute is focused on bringing hope and wholeness to these communities. You will also find hope in the article about a province-sponsored trip to New Orleans. More than a dozen people from six different apostolates across the province worked for a week in New Orleans gutting houses and getting them ready for rehabilitation. It was a sign of hope in their future. Again, from the bishops' message: "Our human dignity can never be separated from community with our sisters and brothers, nor from our community with the rest of creation. We are never solely individuals…we are always members of community, truly responsible for our sisters and brothers, and also for God's sacred Earth." ("At Home in the Web of Life") Other features include a Lenten reflection by Fr. Stephen Fields, SJ. The Focus On…section highlights Sue Cesare, a parishioner at St. Ignatius Church in Baltimore who started a program that brings food to the city's homeless population. You will also read about Fr. G. Ron Murphy, SJ, who just may have discovered a treasure that has been hoped for and desired for centuries. Hope is rooted in our humanity. Hope is not the same as that feeling that things are going well or that eagerness to invest in activities that are obviously going to succeed early on. Rather hope is the ability to work for something because it is good, it is right, not just because it is apt to be a success. It is a way to orient our lives, a way to be part of building the kingdom of God that is anchored just over the horizon and within our hearts. I am certain you will enjoy the stories of hope that appear in this issue of Ignatian Imprints. Please let us know your thoughts about this and future issues. Yours in Christ,
Timothy B. Brown, SJ
In our present times, we believe, the mighty wind of God's Spirit is stirring up people's imaginations to find new ways of living together, based especially on the full community of all life, including love of all nature, and love of the poor. We call these new ways the rooted path of sustainable communities. ("At Home in the Web of Life," a pastoral message on sustainable communities in Appalachia, from the Catholic bishops of Appalachia, 1995.) |
