Dear Friends,

  It is Sunday evening, 8 PM here, 1 PM in Michigan.  I am back into giving retreats.  My vacation has come to an end.  Lots of the time was spent at my computer, yes, at my computer doing some creative work for projects I am responsible for during the coming months.  We had two days of sun and mild temps and then today a noticeably chilly day with a wind that made you want to duck out of the way or wear a thick jacket.  The days are getting longer--wonderful, and spring cannot be too far ahead.  I have been working outside on two rose beds.  I am determined to make the rose bushes in those two areas a grand success.  They are like my little kids.  Spading, lots of bone meal, pruning, more attentive watering.  Soon I wish to bring in some hay for mulch, for making the soil more loose, and then the magic: some cow manure that has aged some.  Not too much lest everything turns too green and leafy but with few blossoms.  Anyway, I am learning and enjoying this for my present hobby.  Working in the dirt and creating something beautiful from the earth always refreshes me.

  The retreatants I now am guiding are from the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, and two from Tanzania.  Two men, three women.  The stories I am hearing are something else.  We have 48 here during this week while each of them makes an 8-day individually guided retreat.

  This coming Thursday is a day of huge, huge importance for all Jesuits in the world, plus those impacted significantly by Ignatian spirituality in their lives and Christian service.  Thursday will mark 200 years to the day when the Jesuits were restored as a religious order in the Catholic church.  We had been legislated out of existence in 1773, three years before the Declaration of Independence of the American colonies and remained out of existence for 41 years, except in Russia.  Thanks to Catherine of Russia, we were not totally wiped out.  This is because the decree of abolition by the Vatican was not valid until the political authority of the nation  (e.g. Catherine in Russia) co-signed and made the decree effective in their territory.  Catherine had schools in Moscow and St. Petersburg which these Polish Jesuits staffed.  She liked very much what they were doing, so she refused to implement this decree and wanted the Jesuits to stay and the schools be kept running.

   The Polish Jesuits then served as a "beachhead" for the new Society of Jesus and our resurrection in 1814.  Please join me and many others in saying 'thank you' to the Lord for His mercy and sustaining power.  Otherwise, there would have been no Manresa, no internship, no revival of the Spiritual Exercises as we knew it in the 1960s and more recently.  I shudder to think what my life would have become if there had no Society of Jesus.  So, again, PLEASE PRAY, PLEASE SAY 'THANK YOU'  TO GOD WITH ALL 18,000 JESUITS IN THE WORLD FOR THIS VERY GREAT FAVOR IN JESUIT LIFE.  Thank you.

   What I am working on right now is a lecture for the opening class of a weekly course I am offering starting on August 27 at the local Jesuit seminary, called Hekima College.  The course is on the last and greatest book St. Teresa of Avila wrote, called "The Interior Castle."  It is one of the finest presentation on stages of spiritual growth and stages of prayer in the Christian repertoire of spiritual writings. So I want in the lecture to introduce the student to something of what was going on in Spain in the 16th century when Teresa lived, something about the Inquisition that the Dominicans conducted at the request of the Spanish monarchy ( to get rid of all heresy and religious crackpots in Spain!) and the efforts of the king and queen of Spain to mine the Americas for the riches of Spain, to "purify" Spain of all foreigners, Muslims and Jews, and prevent in Spain the religious disintegration that was going on at the time with the Protestant revolt in Germany, France, Bohemia, England and Switzerland.  In short, I want the student to have a beginner's feel for the times and political, ecclesial, social and religious climate of her times.   Besides Teresa's book, I will have the students read a small paperback that comments on the kind of prayer and distractions a person experiences in each of the seven stages Teresa talks about.  These two books, this topic should lend themselves to great discussions and should be a big eye-opener regarding the interior life for those who are committed to daily meditation/contemplation and a strong, conscious relationship with God.  I have waited a year to be in a position to teach again.  Now that I have myself rather well established here at the retreat center, I can venture out further with a one-course, once a week teaching commitment.

  We bought a cow last week.  It bleated/groaned loudly so much for its first two days here, lonely I suppose for its former environs.  It is producing 15 liters of milk a day (almost 4 gallons).  We are pleased.

   That is all for now that I can think of.  God bless.  Enjoy your summer while it lasts.

Bernie Owens