Mission in Motion recently reflected on the Mass of the Holy Spirit that took place on the Hilltop Campus and now, thanks to dedicated efforts to build Georgetown’s Mission and Ministry presence in the downtown, can reflect on last weekend’s Mass of the Holy Spirit on the Capitol Campus.
In recent years, the Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) Mission and Ministry team has worked hard to build a neighborhood partnership with Holy Rosary Church on Third Street NW where the Catholic community celebrates weekly Mass. Today, the opportunity for the Catholic community to worship together has expanded beyond GULC to include students, faculty, and staff from SCS and the other units that make up the Capitol Campus.
A sign of this effective partnership was the robust attendance by over 75 students, faculty, and staff at the Capitol Campus Mass of the Holy Spirit, which was presided over by Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., Ph.D., Vice President for Mission and Ministry, and co-celebrated by several Jesuits from the nearby Gonzaga Jesuit community. On a beautiful Sunday evening, this religious gathering convened a diverse group of participants seeking spiritual consolation and greater community connection. All of it took place on the developing Capitol Campus (for more, read “Reflecting on Georgetown’s Composition of Place in the Downtown”) with the service occurring at Holy Rosary and a post-Mass reception taking place outside the GULC Campus Ministry suite in McDonough Hall. The short walk from the church to the campus contextualized the reality that Georgetown’s downtown presence is accelerating, marked by the opening this fall of the McCourt School of Public Policy at 125 E Street (pictured above as the building on the far right) and continuing construction of the 111 Massachusetts Avenue building (pictured below) that will house SCS and other schools and units starting next fall.
Fr. Bosco’s homily pointed to themes of openness to both continuity and change by deeply exploring the meaning from Mark’s Gospel of being “opened.” The Aramaic line from Chapter 7 in Mark, “Ephphatha,” which means “Be opened!” is in the context of Jesus healing a deaf person. For Fr. Mark, this presented a point of departure for more consideration of what this openness might mean for us at Georgetown in 2024. In particular, Fr. Bosco called for us to pay more attention to the small details of our everyday lives. So many of us, obligated by the press of constant tasks and activities, forget to find beauty and goodness in the details of life.
The need for prolonged attentiveness for the potential of deeper mystery and insight to emerge from reflecting on the objects of our sensory experience can be especially realized, Fr. Bosco noted, in the pondering one does of great art and literature. A patient and unhurried stroll through a museum presents an obvious opportunity for this delighted gazing. But so does the intentional commitment to opening ourselves up to new ideas, new people, and new perspectives as part of our learning at Georgetown. Openness as a spiritual and moral theme can then move from the personal or individual to the communal.
As our learning at Georgetown does not take place in individualized silos, we are invited to consider what it means to learn together. Common experience suggests that life in community, however motivated we are by an aspirational shared mission, can be difficult. And these challenges become harder when division and conflict surround every part of our lives and spill over into the context of our education. We live in such a moment today. The temptation is to close off from ideas and views different from our own. Fr. Bosco’s homily encouraged the opposite: Part of the task before us this year is to expand the horizons of our perspectives by meeting old and new ideas with openness. No matter the discipline of our formal study at Georgetown, everyone engaged in this common project can grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually.