On February 17, 2022, in Dahlgren Chapel, Georgetown President John J. DeGioia contributed to the University’s celebration of the Ignatian Year 500 by offering a Sacred Lecture: “Formation and the Practice of Discernment” (you can watch a recording). President DeGioia delivered the lecture at the invitation of Ignatian Year 500 working group co-chairs, Fr. Ron Anton, S.J., Superior of the Georgetown Jesuit Community, and Kelly Otter, Ph.D., Dean of the School of Continuing Studies, along with Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., Vice President for Mission and Ministry. This event was conducted in coordination with the Office of Mission & Ministry, who produces the Dahlgren Chapel Sacred Lecture Series. These lectures imitate a tradition in the early history of the Jesuits when lecturers, outside of the context of formal preaching and liturgy, sought to instruct, edify, and challenge their listeners to apply the content of religious education within their daily lives. The lectures functioned then as now as a kind of adult education or adult faith formation. This feature of early Jesuit history, like the fact of St. Ignatius being a military veteran who suffered wounds in battle, is another meaningful connection between Jesuit tradition and the characteristics of SCS.
President DeGioia framed his presentation in response to this question: an injury suffered in Pamplona launched Ignatius of Loyola on a journey that we honor five-hundred years later. What is the meaning of this moment for a University community? The lecture covered a wide range of territory, including the biography of St. Ignatius and the cannonball moment that gives life to the Ignatian Year, the Jesuit framework for the “discernment of spirits,” and the relevance today of St. Ignatius and Jesuit spiritual tradition. One of the primary takeaways, based on President DeGioia’s reading of early Jesuit and spiritual master St. Pierre Favre, is that the spiritual life is rooted in affective movements. Not discounting the intellectual, Favre raised important awareness about the need to pay attention to “felt understanding” or “experiential and affective knowledge” in discerning our interior movements. This understanding of human experience, which is informed by the Spiritual Exercises, a guided retreat that St. Ignatius designed out of his own experience that continues to be shared today at Georgetown and throughout the world, gives rise in Jesuit education to a focus on caring for the whole person.
There were many moments of significance in the Sacred Lecture, but some of the most important exchanges of ideas occurred during the question-and-answer session. Four Georgetown students had opportunities to share questions with President DeGioia. The issues and concerns on the minds of these students reflect common questions raised often at Georgetown, grounded as it is in the Catholic and Jesuit tradition, but meaningfully committed to multi-faith chaplaincy, inter-religious dialogue, and a respectful pluralism of ideas and philosophies. One student inquired about how a Jesuit discernment framework is relevant to those who do not profess a belief in God. President DeGioia’s answer is instructive and points all of us at Georgetown, regardless of our religious identities, to the enduring practicality of Ignatian spirituality:
“Whether you believe in God or not, I believe that we all have these interior movements. Interior movements that may lead us to a greater sense of fulfillment, or a sense of flourishing or meaning. And other experiences that may lead us away from that. Now what Ignatius offers, and what the Jesuit tradition offers, is a way of making sense of that in relationship to God. For those for whom that does not resonate, there is still the interiority that is calling for your care, calling for your attention, calling for your engagement. I said in the remarks that we come up with other words to describe this experience in modern language. This moment in the life of Ignatius for the life of a university like Georgetown. But you can no doubt think about what words might work. Contemporary psychology, for example, the work around ‘flow’ or integral psychology, it’s secular, it doesn’t really presume a belief in God. Some of the fusion of Eastern and Western traditions, not clear for me how a spiritual reality might fit in that moment, but those are questions that you can live with. Questions that you can explore. What I would encourage you is to live with the question you just asked me. Because that’s your question. And coming to terms with that, that’s where meaning will be for you, in your life.”
As SCS students prepare for this weekend’s retreat at the Calcagnini Contemplative Center, “Going Inward, Growing Outward, Seeing Things New,” we will take to heart this lesson that all of us can grow as individuals and as a community when we commit to interior practices that help us journey the questions that have meaning in our lives.