Fr. John Navone, SJ

About Fr. John Navone, SJ

Fr. John Navone is an emeritus professor of theology at the "Gregrorian" in Rome, the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he taught from 1967–2010. He is now at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Pope Francis acknowledged the impact of Fr. Navone's "theology of failure" on his thought in his interview with S. Rubin and E.F. Ambrogetti, Il Nuovo Papa Si Racconta, Milano, Salani Editore, p. 65. Articles published March 29th in both Italy’s Corriere della Sera and Il Foglio also made note of it. Pope Francis had read the book in the Italian translation, La teologia del fallimento, Paoline, 1978). Navone is the author of more than twenty-five books; his most recent is Atheism Today: A Christian Response (2012).

Life with God

God cannot exist in any place or at any time, though God is present to anything in any place, and the proposition that God exists will be true at any time that it is uttered or conceived. Thus eternity, which properly belongs to God alone, … [Read more...]

Christian Life: The Outworking of Christ’s Life Within Us

Christ Ascends the Mountain to Pray by James Tissot The Christian community of faith is born of the grace of God. Grace expresses what God does for us. Just as when we hear of the wisdom of God in the Bible, we think of how God’s action m … [Read more...]

Life in the Spirit

God is Spirit God, in whom we live and move and have our being, is Spirit. We do not, and cannot, exist apart from God; for we are the created effects of the uncreated Cause that is effecting our existence. Our cognitive-affective … [Read more...]

Our Church and Vision

St. John affirms the mystery which is at the heart of our Christian faith: the “love which the Father has lavished on us in letting us be called God’s children” (1 Jn 3:1), the love that takes flesh in Christ, and the outpouring of his Spiri … [Read more...]

God’s Beauty Evokes Our Joy

God’s manifestation of his beauty/glory is both a grace, expressing his self-giving generosity, and a call to his joy. Beauty, a relational aspect of created or uncreated excellence, is always the self-manifestation or communication of e … [Read more...]

New Testament Witness

The faith of the early Christians in Jesus and the Kingdom of his Father constituted them as a community or Church. If it was their shared faith that formed them into a community, who and what they believed in would be the decisive factor … [Read more...]

Parables of the Generous One

Our faith-conviction that God is the primordial Source and Resource for all creation and human life inspires our gratitude for all as gift, and our boundless hope that the best is yet to come. The abundance of God is the ultimate Source and … [Read more...]

Scriptural Iconography Communicating Our Vision of God

Literature, whether in the form of narratives, plays, autobiographies, biographies, or histories, is a question-raising work of art for the inquisitive mind seeking understanding. As such, it presents what scholastic philosophy called “the s … [Read more...]

Memories Make the Future

The community of faith throughout the entire biblical tradition has been called to tell its story to others. Jesus affirmed that those who love him will keep his word and share it with others (Jn 14:24)...  Old Testament prophet's … [Read more...]

Communion, Community, and Communication

The Gospel summons us to authentic human development in communion, community, and communication under the sovereignty of God’s love. Our Christian conversion is both an event and a lifelong process of ongoing response to the grace and call o … [Read more...]

Aquinas’s Vision of Divine and Human Happiness

St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that only the pure of heart see God without distortion ... Sharing the mind and heart of Christ, we share the eternal happiness of his vision.   Holy Trinty by Rubens We all have some vision or other of God … [Read more...]

Existence as Persons In and Through Others

The human family is the relational image of the relational Trinity, in which each divine person is distinct from the other while eternally one with the other in communion, community, and communication.   We are aware of ourselves as … [Read more...]

Christian Life and Education: The Christian Belief in God

The sacramental vision of an authentically Christian education enjoys the sense of the holy in all things, and imparts a kind of sanctity to the study of all disciplines, seeing in each an avenue to the Creator Logos ... (it) is an aspect … [Read more...]