Skip to main content

Hearts on Fire - San Antonio

The Hearts on Fire Team in San Antonio, Texas

First of all, San Antonio is a great, if underrated city. Seventh largest in the United States, and second biggest in Texas, yet often overshadowed by its younger brothers Dallas and Houston with all their corporate behemoths and professional sports teams (S.A. only has one: the NBA's Spurs). But S.A. has more history, and Texans will forgive me, more charm. Home to a huge Latino population, the oldest cathedral in the U.S., and a series of historic missions, the city was very receptive to us both as visitors and retreat-givers.


About eighty young adults attended the retreat, which was held at the Jesuit-run parish/shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It went very well, thanks to our greater familiarity with our material and the tremendous openness of the retreatants. 


Teaching the morning offering, Ignatian discernment, living eucharistic lives, and how to do the examen or evening review...



Santiago leading a small group in prayer...


"Here's the plan: we put the band back together, do some gigs, earn some bread, bang! We'll have 5,000 bucks in no time." - Jake, The Blues Brothers. Different objective, but we too have gotten the band together... to teach about the (Sacred) heart.



We played our usual "coffeehouse" social Friday night, which was all mellow, spiritual and fun. One retreatant caught some of it on camera. Wait for Fr. Jim Marshall, S.J., associate pastor of O.L. of Guadalupe church, coming in at 3:30...



Shorter version here (thanks to Julia Fracker of "The Embassy" for these).

*   *   *

Perhaps not surprisingly, people actually do speak Southern here:

Overheard in Dallas retreat-house cafeteria: 
(lady to man, about somebody): "Who is he?" 
(man, matter-of-factly) "O, he's a good ol' boy from Alabama."

Before departing for San Antonio: 
(nice lady to me) "Git ready. It's hotter than a hootenanny down there!"

Southern hospitality and generosity has been truly living up to its reputation. I'll be making a separate post about our visit to the San Antonio missions, plus the eucharistic processions into the barrios of South-west part of the city. Tomorrow we hit the road once more. Next stop: Corpus Christi, Texas!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Focal Things

Albert Borgmann The German-American philosopher Albert Borgmann is professor at the University of Montana and author of several books on the effects of electronic media on the human person. He rejects both technological determinism -- the view that technology is a irresistible force that forces our hand as we shape our culture, and technological instrumentalism, which sees technology as a mere collective of neutral processes and structures that can be used either well or badly. Like Marshall McLuhan, Borgmann is aware that the medium “is” the message, highly transformative in and of itself, and requires critical analysis and understanding. For example, he writes: Using or not using the interstate highway system is not a matter of choice anymore for most of us, and neither are the moral consequences of long commutes and the neglect of family, neighborhood, and inner city. When we finally come home, late and exhausted, greeted by a well-stocked refrigerator, a preternaturally effi
1 comment
Read more

Ten Secular Songs with Religious Themes

While preparing songs for our retreats and coffee house ministries this summer, I have come across many by secular artists -- that is, musicians who don't self-categorize as belonging to genres of religious music -- which were nonetheless powerfully spiritual. This is my top ten list from past and present.
14 comments
Read more

Ten Popular Songs that Point to the Transcendent

One of the most-viewed posts here was called "Ten Secular Songs with Religious Themes" . Now, I'm not that person who scours the pop cultural landscape with a magnifying glass looking for oblique references to a latent Christianity. But I do believe that Christ is very much alive, and can be found in the remotest corners of humanity. Sometimes the profoundest truths are not in theology books but in the lyrics of the poets and the insights of artists. Four years later, I'd say it's time for a sequel. The following songs have in common a certain degree of popular acclaim, although not be familiar to all readers. They are, I submit, beautiful songs that point beyond the mundane, offering glimpses of the transcendent -- that is to say, of God who is beyond this material world, while nonetheless present in this life as well. They remind us that we will one day see God "face to face", and generally reflect the key dispositions of faith, hope and love t
Post a Comment
Read more