A Windhover (aka a Common Kestrel)

St. Beuno's

From what I can tell, this appears to be the Hopkins's St. Beuno's. 

Even if it's not, it's a great picture anyway...

The Spiritual Exercises

[Ignatius by Rubens]


For the next few weeks, you'll be sampling from The Spiritual Exercises designed by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order.  In order to do the reflection, you will first need to experience some element of the spiritual exercises.  There is thus a practical element of the assignment, though you will NOT be turning in any of the fruits of those practical labors (thus if you keep a list or write something down that is PERSONAL please don't turn it in).  The written reflection, instead, should be about the experience of sampling from the spiritual exercises.  You might write about the notion of time, conscience, writing, etc. that The Spiritual Exercises commend.  In other words, what is like to wake up in the morning and examine your conscience?  Are you doing that already?  What is like to keep lists of virtuous and vicious thoughts?  You are commended here, in other words, to reflect more abstractly rather than confessionally.

To aid you in this reflection, I offer the following helpful links to digital versions of Ignatius's Exercises:
This site is maintained by Oregonian Jesuits
OR
Here one can find various kinds of files (from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

Stonyhurst College

                                                                Stonyhurst College

Jesuits (The Society of Jesus)

Here is a link to a helpful article from the Catholic Encyclopedia on the Jesuits:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14081a.htm

I found the distinctions between the classes of members and the explanation of novitiate and training particularly illuminating.

Swiss Alps

You are probably already familiar with the image of the Matterhorn, but here is is again. It really does look like a ship upended ("a Greek galley stranded," Mariani 75).

Another Versailles Treaty

While reading Hopkins' journal entries for this week, I came across a list of battles and a peace treaty in 1871. I realized (a bit to my embarrassment) that I didn't even know what war it was. It turns out it was the Versailles Treaty for the Franco-Prussian War. If you want to know more about it here's a link to the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War
Since Hopkins was travelling a lot of the continent (France and Switzerland) during these journal entries, he must have been affected by the war, though I'm not really sure to what extent.