An Invitation to Mutual Discovery: Rabbi Rachel Gartner Introduces New Role as SCS Senior Advisor for Spiritual Care

This week’s Mission in Motion highlights Rabbi Rachel Gartner’s arrival as the Senior Advisor for Spiritual Care, captured in a new video on the SCS YouTube.

In recent years, SCS has deepened and expanded the presence and integration of Mission and Ministry in the life of the community. Mission in Motion has highlighted these efforts, including dedicated retreats, pedagogical and faculty support, communications, and course offerings. Bringing the Spirit of Georgetown to life has included opportunities for service-learning, community and global engagement in Washington, D.C., and beyond, and advocacy for justice and the common good. All of this work is presented in an inclusive and invitational way, presenting Jesuit values in a holistic and context-tailored manner that sparks inspiration and reflection for our diverse community. 

SCS is growing this commitment to the Spirit of Georgetown with the appointment of Rabbi Rachel Gartner as Senior Advisor of Spiritual Care. Rabbi Rachel arrives at SCS having served for more than a decade as Rabbi and Director of Jewish Life at Georgetown. Rabbi Rachel brings many professional gifts with her to the work of animating the SCS community with mission and values. I am so excited to work alongside Rabbi Rachel because I have witnessed firsthand her skillfulness in interfaith engagement, her resourcefulness for spiritual accompaniment, and her creativity in meeting the pastoral care needs of a diverse constituency. I could go on! 

I encourage you to watch this introductory video by Rabbi Rachel that now lives on the SCS YouTube page. As you watch, I encourage you to pay attention to three important points articulated by Rabbi Rachel: 

  1. The work of spiritual care is to deepen, develop, and diversity SCS Mission and Ministry offerings so as to enhance the lives, learning, and leadership of ever-growing circles of the SCS community; 
  1. Interfaith engagement is so powerful because different traditions can provide new angles, food for further thought, and sometimes deeper illumination about the places where traditions connect without having to connect in every place; and 
  1. The Ignatian, Jesuit tradition of education, spirituality, and mission presents resonances and entry points for other religious, non-religious, and spiritual traditions. 

This is such an important message for a diverse community like SCS. Mission lacks meaning unless it comes alive, and it only does so when deeper connections are made within the context of one’s lived experience. Rabbi Rachel offers a fresh perspective on how to do this work by bringing her considerable experience in pastoral care and interfaith engagement to bear on the opportunities and challenges facing our community.  In a turn toward the practical, Rabbi Rachel’s introductory video ends with a “how” of this work: an invitation to Journey together on the path of mutual discovery through inclusive retreats and informative and inspiring communications.

SCS Hosts Reflective Discussion for Young Professionals: What is the Good Life Now?

Young woman standing next to her bike at sunset overlooking the Washington Monument in Washington, DC
This week’s post highlights an event hosted at SCS and convened by Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life: “What Is the Good Life Now? Work, Relationships, Faith, and Wholeness Today.” You can watch a recording of the event and reflect on the deep questions that were considered. Photo courtesy of the Initiative’s website

Readers of this SCS Mission in Motion blog should be well aware that Georgetown does not shy away from asking big questions about the meaning of life. What distinguishes Georgetown’s approach is how these big questions are asked in a way that is not only about the conceptual and theoretical dimensions. Georgetown strives to encourage “the meaning of life” discussion and deliberation in a manner that stimulates practical responses and positive changes in the way that we individually and collectively live together in society. At SCS, our mission commitment is directly related to the transformation of professional and continuing education students who arrive at various points in the life cycle of their careers. 

In light of the significant flux and social, economic, political, cultural, and religious disruptions of the last few years, there seem to be fewer bigger questions than this: “What is the good life now?” And this question was asked this week when SCS hosted Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life for its first in-person event at 640 Massachusetts Avenue in over three years. SCS has gratefully partnered with the Initiative in the past on these special events, which are offered as part of Salt and Light Gatherings for young faith-motivated leaders in the Washington, D.C., area who desire to explore the links between faith, moral traditions (especially the resources from Catholic social thought), and their own lives and work. The event took place in three phases: a welcoming happy hour, a panel discussion, and a reception that followed building on the conversation. 

The event brought together young professionals in the D.C. area at the SCS Campus. Conversation and community-building preceded and followed the panel conversation. 

I found the framing questions for the event to be thought-provoking and useful for generating deeper personal and communal reflection, so I want to share them here: 

  • What does “the good life” look like for young leaders in Washington and the United States today? What contributes to the good life? What threatens it? 
  • How can young people find meaning, participation, balance, and wholeness while dealing with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health challenges, political polarization, debates over human life and dignity, and economic, environmental, and racial justice issues?
  • How can faith and Catholic social thought inform and guide our choices, actions, and how we live our lives? 
In the SCS auditorium as well as a live-streamed broadcast, panelists pondered philosophy, religion, politics, economics, technology, and social media.

The talented panel brought together faith-motivated leaders with different perspectives and life experience, including a Notre Dame philosophy professor, a Boston College psychology professor, an author and policy advocacy director, and a young professional who has worked on immigration issues. You can watch a recording and relive the lively discussion. You can also consult a helpful list of additional resources prepared for the event. 

I listened in on the conversation and noted a creative tension as a theme: the need for balance between working out one’s own philosophy of life and needing to rely on the wisdom, support, care, and teachings of others in developing this personal vision. To respect a philosophical heritage that is over 2,000 years old does not mean that one’s definition of living a good life has to conform precisely to someone else’s. Instead, determining the meaning of a good life has to take into account all of the unique factors of one’s lived experience and social influences. It is not wise nor possible to enforce a single definition of what living the good life means. But we can benefit from sustained reflection on the meaning of the exemplar actions, teachings, writings, and thinking of the wisdom that we have inherited through the ages. 


So much of the conversation came back to the fundamental need to develop healthy habits of interiority and discernment. Readers of the blog will recognize these as consistent themes expressed about the way to live out the Spirit of Georgetown. No one else can claim your own interior experience. Cultivating a deep inner life, regardless of the “what” that you profess to believe about the biggest, most ultimate questions, is a solid starting point for journeying in the direction of your good life.

“Seeing and Tasting” Life’s Goodness: A Reflection on Shabbat and Entering Life More Deeply, by Rabbi Rachel Gartner

I am delighted to be writing for this wonderful blog, and even more so that Jamie’s last post, along with the occasion of this last weekend’s graduate student “Rest, Recharge, Renew” retreat give me such a powerful entry point.

During my last 11 years on the hilltop, it has been a consistent joy to discover aspects of Ignatian spirituality that resonate with aspects of Jewish tradition and the other traditions represented on campus. My hope in interfaith engagement is always that different traditions can provide new angles, food for further thought, and sometimes even deeper illumination into the places where they connect. All this, without needing to connect in every place!

This week’s post is offered by Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Spiritual Care, who reflects on the contemplative themes and interfaith possibilities of last weekend’s “Rest, Recharge, Renew” retreat for graduate and professional students. Rabbi Gartner also shares about the way that sacred events, like Shabbat, help us step outside of ordinary life in order to move toward it more contemplatively. 

Jamie’s last blog post explored one such area of connection and resonance. One of my favorites, quite frankly.

In the last blog post Jamie sagely reminded us of the potential spiritual and emotional pitfalls of an overcommitted lifestyle, warning: “[E]ven busy adults who have important tasks to accomplish everyday can develop an unhealthy relationship to time.” One of the dangers of a utilitarian relationship with time so prevalent for so many of us these days is that it can make time into a possession that we need to use productively, and using time to contemplate doesn’t fit into our notion of productivity and therefore is a waste of our possession.

Indeed. In a context in which we don’t see contemplation as productive, it can be really hard to make the case for it. My experience in multifaith settings over the last two decades tells me that making the case for contemplation has become one of the central roles for contemporary clergy of any background, precisely because it has become so profoundly challenging and precisely because we believe so profoundly in it.

Thankfully, for me, it’s easy to make the case. Enter the Torah.

Jews like to joke that, through Torah, we brought the world the concept of the weekend; in the form of Shabbat. During Shabbat, Jews construct what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called a cathedral in time:

“Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals.”

As the sun sets on the eve of Shabbat, we light our plain white candles – one for everyone in the household – raise a glass of wine or juice, break simple bread, and step into that sanctuary in time. There, we leave behind the regular flow of time and the productivity we imbed in it. We do this not in order to escape life, but in order to enter into it more deeply. We step outside of ordinary life so we can then turn toward it contemplatively and “see and taste” (Psalm 34) the goodness of all of life.

If Shabbat were a person, she would high-five, fist-bump, or elbow-bump the Jesuit Walter Burghardt for naming and affirming contemplation as a “long loving look at the real” which inspires as “experiential awareness of reality” and a “way of entering into communion with reality.”

Judaism, in particular the mystical strain of Judaism, teaches that all of reality is a manifestation of the Divine. That God not merely permeates reality, but reality is an expression or embodiment of the essence of God. Seeking metaphors to describe this hard-to-grasp concept, Jewish mystics often refer to reality as a garment of God. This garment is woven of aspects of God’s very being – so it is itself ultimately Divine in both origin and nature. Jewish mystics teach that our spiritual goal is to attain the awareness that this is the true nature of all of life. We do this through what they call devekut  (lit. cleaving). Devekut is essentially a communion with the Divine (through, in part, our experiential awareness of reality) that allows us to see and sense the godliness hidden within every single aspect of the material world. Through devekut we come to know intellectually,  as well as to sense in our very being, the ultimate truth that all of reality is sacred, all of reality is One.

Through rest, reflection, song, prayer, communal conversation, and Torah study, Shabbat becomes a weekly, extended, and communal contemplative pursuit of – and ideally the attainment of – devekut.

We conclude Shabbat the way we begin it. In a ritual called havdallah (lit. distinction) we light candles, we drink wine or juice, and in place of eating sweet challah, we smell aromatic spices – a symbolic last whiff of the extra-soulfulness we are granted on Shabbat. Unlike the singular and white Shabbat candle, the havdallah candle contains many wicks and strands of wax composed of a rainbow of colors. The multifaceted candle invites us to weave our singular Shabbat consciousness into the glorious multifaceted activities of the week ahead. This idea is affirmed in some communities by actually placing a drop of havdallah wine or juice on our eyelids, as an invitation to see the rest of the week through Shabbat eyes. Or, as Burghardt, S.J., might express it, to turn to all of reality with a long and loving look that invites communion with it.

In Judaism, devekut is a highly valued end in and of itself. Its reward is deep joy. Through it, we find greater meaning and satisfaction in all that we do in life. And at the same time, there is a desired (even commanded) outcome of equal importance – namely, to live with greater intention, righteousness, kindness, and integrity as a result of our loving encounter with the real.

Contemplation, Shabbat, devekut are meant to lead to living in a way that honors what we come to know through them – that everything and everyone is ultimately divine in origin and nature. It’s our joyful and sacred obligation to live according to that awareness and to become maximally productive in the things that matter most: what we bring to this world and how we treat one another in it. 

May it be so.

Please consider joining me and Jamie for upcoming retreats as they are announced. We’d love to see you at them.

Becoming a Contemplative in Action? Take a Long Loving Look at the Real (and Relax!)

This week, Mission in Motion considers contemplation as a response to an overly utilitarian approach to time. The upcoming graduate and professional retreat offers an opportunity for living out the Spirit of Georgetown value of “contemplation in action.”

The upcoming graduate and professional student retreat, “Rest, Recharge, Renew,” is being offered as an opportunity for busy students to take some time away from the pressures of work and school and enjoy each other’s company in a beautiful, natural setting. The motivation for organizing the retreat is as simple as the tagline: rest, recharge, and renew. Graduate and professional students are accustomed to daily and weekly routines that require rigorous time management in order to fulfill their obligations as students balancing lives outside of the classroom. Making the time and space for this kind of structured experience of relaxation in the company of other students is well worth the effort. Making space for retreat, a temporary interruption and dislocation from daily routines, is a healthy and fulfilling use of time. 

The retreat has me reflecting on the nature of time and how graduate and professional students relate to time. If we take seriously the Spirit of Georgetown value of “contemplation in action,” which is the value that motivates retreat programs across the University, how do we make sense of the tension between these ideas? How does the seeming paradox of “contemplation” and “action” relate to the life of a graduate student at Georgetown? What from the many spiritual traditions represented at Georgetown can help us answer these fundamental questions? 

Despite the disciplinary diversity of graduate and professional programs, I think a common trait of these students is the limited amount of time for activities that might be considered non-essential. The weekly calendar quickly fills up when school, work, home, and social activities are added. Economists tend to make a distinction between “leisure” and “work,” but this simple distinction does not seem to capture well the in-between range of activities. Perhaps unlike traditional residential undergraduate students taking four years to earn a degree, graduate students have a more utilitarian relationship to time. The stakes seem to be higher for older adult students with more responsibilities and the discernments about how to use their non-essential time for activity require lots of negotiation and planning. As someone with a full family and work schedule, I can appreciate these tensions. 

But even busy adults who have important tasks to accomplish everyday can develop an unhealthy relationship to time. The theater critic Walter Kerr in the book The Decline of Pleasure captures the tendency to equate virtue with constant activity: “Only useful time is valuable, meaningful, moral. Activity that is not clearly, concretely useful to oneself or others is worthless, meaningless, immoral.” This utilitarian interpretation of the meaning of how we use our time has some negative consequences. For the purpose of this reflection, I think a concerning outcome of this mentality is that if time becomes a possession that we acquire, then it becomes more difficult to pause and make meaning of our lives in the midst of our activity. The questions that should be orienting our work and activity can be pushed aside if we don’t intentionally make time to ask our core questions: Who am I as a person? What matters to me? What is the “why” of my life? And what path do I need to travel in order to realize my deeper purpose? 

This is where the value of contemplation comes in and can relate harmoniously with the life of action. It is important to note that there is not a single, universal way of naming and understanding a vast concept like “contemplation.” Various philosophical, religious, spiritual, and humanistic traditions have different understandings of this term and its implication for practices. I’ll be relying on an invitational and inclusive understanding of contemplation taken from the Jesuit tradition of education and spirituality. The Jesuit Walter Burghardt describes contemplation as a “long loving look at the real.” This is a way of considering contemplation and the practices it inspires as “experiential awareness of reality” and a “way of entering into communion with reality.”  But what do the pieces of this definition mean for graduate and professional students? Let’s take each of these components.

Real: This is the stuff of your life that cannot be reduced to abstract concepts. The real is people, things, nature, objects, etc. Reality is living and pulsing, concrete and singular. Look: This is not analysis or interpretation, but communion with the stuff of our reality by noticing and engaging reality with all of our senses. For Burghardt, to look is to feel and to experience in our senses the fact of our whole person gazing at reality. To contemplate is to be aware that we are physical bodies in a world of other bodies. Long: This is not a recipe for length of time in contemplation, but an invitation to be unhurried about it. Burghardt describes the long nature of contemplation as rest: “[T]o rest in the real, not lifelessly or languidly, not sluggishly or inertly.” These long looks can happen on a walk, on a train ride to work, in the office or classroom, picking up our kids from school, etc. The point is that our contemplative gazing is “whole person enraptured” with full senses. And finally, loving: Contemplation is not always delightful or comforting and sometimes it surfaces the wounds and hurts of our lives. By lovingly entering into contemplation, we make it more likely that our response will be more generous and more compassionate toward others. Contemplation is not actually individualistic or indulgent navel gazing. 

There is no monolithic way to translate this understanding of contemplation into meaningful practices. The “how” of contemplation depends on the individual person and their full context of life. Burghardt’s suggestions for how to do this are reflected in the upcoming graduate and professional retreat. He recommends that we can develop the capacity for long, loving looks at the real by 1) interrupting our ordinary patterns of life (by going on retreat!); 2) developing a feeling for festivity; 3) building habits of play and wonder; 4) learning not to expect profit from our contemplation or possession of our objects of delight; and 5) finding guides and mentors to accompany us along the way. 

My hope is that the invitation to bring together “contemplation” and “action” sparks something for you. Find a retreat, spiritual companion, leadership coach, affirming community of peers, etc. And next time you feel yourself judging yourself for any empty pockets on your schedule, I invite you to reconsider your relationship with time. We can slow life down even in a few free moments with a long, loving look at the real. 

This post relies on Walter Burghardt’s article, “Contemplation: A Long Loving Look at the Real,” as reproduced in An Ignatian Spirituality Reader, edited by George Traub (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008).

Welcome Video Invites SCS Students to Seek Something Greater at Start of New Semester

This week’s post is about a new welcome video shared with SCS students that invites reflection and meaning-making during the early stages of a new semester. You can watch the video and then explore the Spirit of Georgetown

What does it feel like to begin something new? When you start a new experience for the first time, what are you paying attention to? What grabs your awareness? How do you transition from the beginning to the next stages of a new thing? 

These are the kinds of questions that all students at SCS ask when a new semester starts. Whether you’re a continuing student steadily or quickly making progress in your degree or non-degree program, or just starting out at the School, every student grapples with big questions in the first few days and weeks of a new semester. So often, in my experience, new students are navigating a mix of emotions related to a range of the student experience. There might be nerves about logistics and work-life balance, such as: How can I make this academic program fit into my daily life? Others might be uncertain about their course selections and eager to better understand what their faculty members are like. And other concerns might be about the social aspect of the learning experience: Will I fit in here? Do I belong? 

One of my favorite lines from the author T.S. Eliot is that “We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.” The lesson that we can take from Eliot, I believe, is that a new semester is as good a time as any to consider the deeper meaning of our time at Georgetown. The crunch of early semester business might not seem like an opportune time for deeper reflection, but I believe that the first weeks of a new experience provide the best opportunity to get in touch with the bigger picture of our lives as we navigate the details of the day-to-day. 

Luckily at Georgetown, we have a set of resources and tools for students to do the work of meaning-making about their learning experiences. The Spirit of Georgetown, 10 values distilled from five centuries of Jesuit history and educational innovation, facilitate this kind of deeper exploration.

So as the dust settles on the first few weeks of the semester, the SCS Mission and Ministry team offers a new welcome message to help students consider the deeper meaning of their student experience.

We hope students will receive the message at a fruitful time in the life of the semester, perhaps at a time that students are more eager to pursue some of their bigger questions than they were in week one. Some of these questions might be: How is my coursework informing my reflection about what kind of professional I want to become? What are my unique gifts and talents and how can I apply them in class assignments and extra-curricular opportunities? What is there about being a Georgetown student that goes beyond what happens in my classes? 


SCS students are supported through various programs and events to seek greater meaning, purpose, and belonging. Retreats are great (like this upcoming Graduate and Professional Student retreat) for this kind of structured reflection. And there are other ways that SCS accompanies the spiritual life of its students. New experiences, like starting a graduate program after years in the workforce or transitioning into an entirely new career path, can be filled with uncertainty and worry. But these experiences can also serve as invaluable opportunities to discern how we are called to seek something greater in our daily lives.

Graduate and Professional Students Coming Together for Fall Retreat, October 15-16

 This week’s post is about the upcoming Graduate and Professional Student Retreat, “Rest, Recharge, Renew,” taking place October 15-16. SCS students should sign up here

Some might assume that graduate and professional students, unlike traditional full-time undergraduates, do not desire dedicated time and space for spiritual growth and community-building outside of their class time. This thinking assumes that adult learners in graduate and professional programs are already “formed” in their spiritual lives and are too busy for anything outside of classroom tasks. The theory might be that these adults carry so many other obligations of family, work, and social life that crowd out any interest in activities considered non-essential. To some degree, these assumptions have validity. It is true that most adult students have to be particularly discerning about how they choose to spend their school time in the midst of so much else. And it is also true in terms of human development that many graduate and professional students have already cultivated a well-developed sense of their personal, spiritual, and career identities by the time they arrive at Georgetown. 

While it is true adult learners have different needs than other students in the life cycle, it is not the case that graduate and professional students do not need dedicated mission and ministry programs. In fact, the style of reflection, prayer, meditation, and community-building inspired by Jesuit spirituality (in particular, the Examen approach to consciousness awareness) offers particular benefits to adult learners. Adults learn best from their experience and desire to be in spaces with other adults who want to learn from their experiences, which we might call the “texts” of their own lives. Jesuit spirituality begins in this place by starting with a person’s lived experience and then entering into reflection and ultimately action on how to become an even more generous and giving person in the world. Respecting the context of these adult learners is the best way to design programs intended to build spiritual community. 

SCS has made such reflective activities a key part of student experience. An annual student retreat in the spring semester has provided students with an opportunity to build relationships with other SCS students and grow in awareness of the need for quiet, reflective time and space in the middle of a demanding academic program. SCS will offer this dedicated retreat just for its students again in Spring 2023. 

This fall presents a new cross-campus opportunity for cultivating reflective habits among SCS and all of the other graduate and professional students at Georgetown. From October 15 to 16, an overnight retreat “Rest, Recharge, Renew,” is being made available for all graduate and professional students at the University. Georgetown Law Center’s Campus Ministry is taking the lead on the retreat but other partners at the University, including SCS, are supporting delivery of the retreat. The intention of the retreat is simple – to give graduate and professional students an opportunity to take a break from school and reflect, relax, and build relationships with other students across Georgetown. Taking place at Georgetown’s Calcagnini Contemplative Center, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the retreat setting offers some welcomed time away from the business of daily life. 

Inter-campus encounters can be rare at a big university but these opportunities are precious for developing a shared sense of community at Georgetown. I encourage SCS students to consider signing up for the retreat as spaces are limited! 

Labor Day Presents Opportunity to Reflect on the Deeper Meaning of Work

As a professional school, SCS is committed to transforming the lives and careers of lifelong learners and does this, according to the School’s mission, in order to “improve employability and develop workforces; and to contribute to building a civic-minded, well-informed, and globally aware society.” On the eve of the Labor Day holiday, it is fitting that we reflect on the nature of work and how such reflection can inspire our actions as members of the SCS community. How can we infuse the preparation of lifelong learners for professional practices that reflect the mission and values of the Spirit of Georgetown? How can we as diverse professional members of this community strive to live out an understanding of the “work” of society in a way that justly honors workers and fosters greater equity and the common good?

Labor Day, intended as a holiday that honors the American labor movement, has the potential to give rise to deeper reflection about the contributions of laborers of all kinds in the work of the nation. The themes of work and the proper place of work in our lives are taken up by the teachings of diverse religious and spiritual traditions. Pope Francis, for example, has written extensively in recent documents about the need for political, economic, and social structures that support the dignity of all workers, most especially those marginalized or oppressed by these systems. In his teaching document Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis calls for the realization of “integral human development” through the creation of economic systems and practices that value community production above exploitative models of economic growth that simultaneously harm the environment and workers. 

These ideas from Pope Francis echo a long tradition of Catholic Social Teaching and its seven principles, which includes “The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers.” This principle maintains that: 

“The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God’s creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected – the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions, to private property, and to economic initiative.” 

At Georgetown, advancing the dignity of work is evident in a number of University initiatives, including the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor whose purpose is to develop creative strategies and innovative public policy to improve workers’ lives. And at SCS, programs across the School consider pressing ethical questions about labor within the curriculum. For example, the Master’s in Supply Chain Management has been exploring how supply chain issues and inflation have adversely impacted the charity sector (“Helping Charities Defend Against Inflation’s Double Punch”). 

As a values-based professional education institution, it is important that we regularly consider the dignity of labor and the rights of workers. My hope is that this Labor Day provides time and space to pause and reflect on just principles of work and how we as Hoyas can join in contributing to a society and a world that brings these principles to life. 

“Something More Is Always Going On Here” – Reflections on the Start of a New Year at Georgetown

At this year’s Mass of the Holy Spirit, Georgetown President John J. DeGioia offered reflections about the Spirit at work in obvious and less obvious ways. You can watch a recording of the Mass.

The fall semester is officially here! New Hoyas have been oriented to their programs and faculty and staff are busily working to help new students successfully begin their academic journeys. At Georgetown, the annual celebration of the Mass of the Holy Spirit (which Mission in Motion has written about before) is one of the signature University-wide events that marks the start of a new academic year. This tradition has been a hallmark of Jesuit schools for nearly five centuries and provides a welcome opportunity to pause and reflect on the significance of our shared project in education. 

Whether this is your first year at Georgetown or you are a long-time member of the community, the Mass of the Holy Spirit reminds us of the deeper mission and purpose of our educational endeavors. At this year’s Mass, President DeGioia offered an inspiring reflection about how the Spirit is always at work in this University community, in both obvious ways and ways that are subtler and require our closer attention in order to detect. Making direct connections to elements of the Jesuit tradition, including the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola and relevant Jesuits like Pope Francis, President DeGioia invited us to consider how we might each find resources in the Spirit as we go about our work at Georgetown. 

As I listened in from Gaston Hall, I felt called to consider the Spirit’s presence not just in big initiatives and major undertakings, but in the small, often quiet work of the everyday. Before too long, the fall semester can become overwhelmed with tasks, deadlines, and seemingly relentless pressures. I welcomed the time and space at the Mass of the Holy Spirit to take a deep breath before proceeding apace into the fall. You can watch a recording of the Mass and hear President DeGioia’s reflections at the 1 hour 25 minute mark. 

This week at SCS, my excellent colleagues on the marketing team and I put together a short Instagram Takeover @GeorgetownSCS to help new community members understand better the available resources that arise out of Georgetown’s mission. This was a fun and creative project to introduce the various ways that Georgetown SCS strives to support students both within and outside of the classroom. I encourage you to check out the short clips and learn more about the work of mission integration at SCS and the larger Office of Mission and Ministry at Georgetown. 

Take a look at this week’s Instagram Takeover @GeorgetownSCS with a short orientation to mission-based resources at the School.

My invitation to you is to spend a little time in your day noticing both the obvious and the subtle evidence of the Spirit at work in your life. Growing in awareness of these movements in our personal and collective lives can bring us closer together as we journey further into this academic year.