Tag: Ignatian Spirituality

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Mass of the Holy Spirit on the Hilltop Invites Community to Rediscover Our Shared Purpose as Academic Year Begins

May be an image of 3 people, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and text
This year’s Mass of the Holy Spirit, an annual tradition at Jesuit institutions that dates back five centuries, emphasized the spiritual gifts needed to flourish as an academic community. 

The annual tradition of the Mass of the Holy Spirit, a practice celebrated across the global network of Jesuit institutions since the religious order first founded schools five centuries ago, presents a welcome opportunity to consider the meaning of a Georgetown education. Each year, the Mass presents both the same and new reflections at the dawning of a new academic year. The readings from Scripture all point to the need for greater reliance on the Holy Spirit as a giver of spiritual gifts that we most need to realize our mission. Of special importance at an institution of higher learning are the gifts related to knowledge, inquiry, communication, and discernment. While a traditional Catholic religious ritual, I think emphasizing the universe of spiritual gifts needed to sustain the academic enterprise of Georgetown can resonate with people of all faith traditions and those with no tradition at all. 

The homilist for this year, Fr. Bill Campbell, S.J., the new Superior of Georgetown’s Jesuit Community, focused his reflections on the historical analogy between the founding of the Society of Jesus (or the Jesuits) by college students attending the University of Paris in the 16th Century and our contemporary experience at Georgetown. The similarities in these situations are striking: Both Paris and Washington, D.C., have prominent rivers that their prominent universities abut; both the founding Jesuits and today’s Georgetown students come from homes around the world; and both of these student populations knew how to have a good time after working hard in their courses. 

The urban experience of these educations presented many opportunities for both reverie and reverence, a reminder to us today that our experience at Georgetown is enlivened by our embeddedness in a global capital city. 

But Fr. Campbell’s main point was not just about the urban similarities in this comparison. He ended his reflection about the early Jesuits by noting that we still remember the names of the seven early companions (Faber, Xavier, Laynez, Ignatius, Rodriguez, Salmeron, and Bobadilla) because they wrote history with their lives. By professing in faith their vows to a new religious order, at a time of great challenge and resistance to such a formation, these Jesuits chose to use their higher education in the service of a noble purpose that still benefits the world today. 

The question to us in 2024 at Georgetown: How will we use our Georgetown experience in service of a larger, more noble purpose than our own personal aims or professional goals? To what do we owe our faith in the transformative possibilities of a university education rooted in the Jesuit tradition of academic excellence?  

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Toward a Meaningful Diversity: Ignatian Resources for Realizing an Inclusive Community

Diverse student group
This week’s post considers the resources of Ignatian spirituality for the work of justice, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Check out how SCS is committed to this work through its Diversity, Equity, Belonging, and Inclusion Council (DEBIC). 

A new semester is underway and with it comes a new group of students beginning their educational journeys at Georgetown. This week, SCS welcomed these new students and intended to do so in an evening reception featuring remarks by Dean Otter and other school leaders. While inclement weather postponed the formal welcome event, program staff and faculty oriented the new arrivals with information, resources, and advice about how to succeed at the University. A central piece of this orientation to SCS is the Catholic and Jesuit heritage of Georgetown and how it influences student experience in tangible ways. 

An introductory reflection for new students about what they can expect from studying at the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university might begin with this e-story: “What’s So Different About a Jesuit Education? Seeking Something Greater.” This post makes clear that students are encouraged to cultivate spiritual practices that develop a healthy interior life as they pursue their SCS programs. The attention that Georgetown places on interiority, through guided reflections, retreats, religious services, and daily meditation, is a distinctive feature of the SCS experience. This attention to interiority is emphasized because such an inner life of contemplation ultimately leads to healthy and generous actions in the world that advance social justice and the common good. New students will quickly come to learn that Georgetown distills the five-century-old tradition of Jesuit education into 10 values, The Spirit of Georgetown, that reflect our “way of proceeding” as a learning community. In this week’s post, I would like to call attention to the value “Community in Diversity.” 

Most institutions of higher education emphasize the importance of a diverse community as part of their mission statements, programing, and marketing. The value of a diverse workforce, manifested in many markers and indicators of human diversity, is undisputed. In today’s globalized world, it is imperative that well-prepared professionals have the competency and skillfulness to meaningfully engage with diversity in all of its forms. But at Georgetown, a religious heritage university anchored in the Catholic tradition, diversity is more than a secular value. The Catholic and Jesuit moral and spiritual tradition prizes human diversity as a gift of a creative and loving God who desires that communities flourish by sharing together the richness of their various gifts. Celebrating diversity then becomes both a moral and a spiritual imperative. What, you might ask, does the advancement of a diverse community have to do with spirituality? 

This week, a group from Georgetown and other Catholic colleges and universities is gathering at the University of San Diego for a conference, “Lighting the Way Forward: The Purpose of Catholic Higher Education in a Changing World.” The gathering, organized around four themes, seeks to reflect on how Catholic higher education in the United States is being called upon to help address the most pressing social challenges of our age, including “climate change, structural racism, lack of trust in institutions and breakdown of communities, polarizing political discourse, religious disaffiliation, and more.” One of the core themes is Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, reflecting the moral imperative at the heart of Catholic Social Teaching to create truly inclusive communities by combatting the forces in social, economic, and political life that exclude, marginalize, and “otherize” individuals and groups in the social minority. The Jesuit tradition, embodied in the practices of Ignatian spirituality, has a particular contribution to this work of advancing meaningfully diverse communities. 

The root of all Ignatian spirituality is the Spiritual Exercises. This retreat framework, developed by St. Ignatius, is offered in various formats and is structured as a relationship between a retreatant and a spiritual guide or director based on the retreatant’s experience of daily prayer. The entire journey of the Exercises, divided into four major themes of self-discovery and development, is guided by the principle that all human beings need to free themselves from “disordered attachments” in order to fully realize their deeper meaning and purpose in life. These attachments, which impede the realization of personal and social flourishing, are the kinds of impediments that get in the way of realizing our full capacity to love. Some of these impediments are “blind spots” that we possess, preventing us from seeing reality clearly and truly. Blockages to true freedom might be in the individual, like a tendency to continually self-doubt or self-criticize in ways that chip away at our healthy self-esteem and self-understanding. Other blockages might be social, like an intentional lack of awareness or curiosity about social and economic injustices in the world around us. Whatever these blockages might be, the Spiritual Exercises journey aims to help the individual realize, with the assistance of a loving God, how to attain true inner freedom for the sake of participating in God’s project of justice, hospitality, and kinship. 

At the “Lighting the Way Forward” conference, I will be presenting with Tony Mazurkiewicz, Chaplain for the Athletics Department, on an Ignatian retreat being co-sponsored by Georgetown and Holy Trinity Parish. The presentation, “The Long Journey to Spiritual Freedom: Making the Mission Case for a Racial Justice Integration Role at Catholic Colleges and Universities,” is centered around Setting Captives Free, a 6-week retreat in daily life modeled on an adapted format of the Spiritual Exercises. Georgetown faculty and staff are invited to register for this retreat. 

Retreatants participate weekly in a small reflection group where they share about the spiritual fruits of their daily prayer. Each of the six weeks is organized around a different theme in which participants ask God for a particular gift related to the journey of growing in freedom about one’s own participation in the structures of society that maintain racism. This journey to freedom begins by growing in greater awareness about the reality of racism and the retreatant is challenged to experience this not as an abstract, distant reality but one that is personalized and evident in one’s participation in the structures of daily life. 

Ignatian spirituality is well-suited to this critical work of striving for racial justice because the developmental framework of the Spiritual Exercises is ultimately about personal and social transformation of unjust and sinful personal and social structures. How is God moving and calling me to advance a more inclusive community not only at Georgetown but in the world beyond? What work is there for me to do in combating the forces that marginalize and exclude on the basis of race and other categories of human diversity? This journey to spiritual freedom might be long and arduous, but it is a path to realizing an inclusive community that flourishes amidst its differences. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the Setting Captives Free retreat, taking place from the weeks of February 11 through March 17, please check out the retreat website or reach out to me (pjk34@georgetown.edu) for more information. 

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An Examen To Review 2023

This week’s post invites quiet reflection on our year together by using the Jesuit spiritual practice of the Examen. The May 2023 student retreat stands out as a moment of great gratitude. 

Readers of Mission in Motion recognize the Examen as a common feature of the blog. Many articles describe this core Jesuit spiritual practice or use it to inspire reflection about an event or program at SCS. Sometimes, the blog even constructs a post as a form of Examen. This practice is one that invites interior reflection on the events of a period of time with the purpose of prayerfully and sensorially re-engaging with those experiences and making spiritual meaning of them. 

The reflective steps of the Examen process involve settling in and becoming centered in the presence of the Divine and then growing in awareness of particular encounters with gratitude, consolation, desolation, and a hoped-for resolve for the future. The point is to sift through the data of experience to discern how one is called to move from reflection on experiences, both the joyful and the challenging, toward choices and actions of greater love and generosity. Individuals can do the Examen and so can entire groups or organizations, like Georgetown, which is currently undertaking its own Mission Priority Examen, a reflective self-assessment of the University’s commitments to Jesuit mission and identity.

As we sit on the precipice of a new year, I offer a brief Examen on SCS in 2023. In next week’s post, Rabbi Rachel will offer some reflections about the year we had and the year to come. In this spirit of deeper meditation on the meaning of our shared Georgetown experiences in 2023, I invite you to join me in this Examen. Take a few minutes to settle into some quiet. This is especially important as we transition from a long semester of work and study and prepare for some time of quiet and rejuvenation. As you settle in, I invite you to ask for insight and new self-knowledge during this time of quiet. When you feel grounded in the silence, I then invite you to ponder these questions slowly: 

  • Take a few minutes and notice all of the significant events of the last year. These might be personal events or events you experienced with a group (for example, a class, a work team, family, community organization, etc.). Allow these significant moments to flow by in your consciousness one-by-one as in a parade. Do not yet judge or assess the moments, just allow them to pass back into your present awareness. 
  • As you sift through all of these significant moments, what experiences rise to the surface? In particular, what encounters with Georgetown feel most important to you at the end of the year? I invite you to focus on the most important moments and let the less significant experiences move to the side. 
  • What is one significant moment from this last year that brings you deep gladness and joy? A moment that, in Jesuit spirituality, brings consolation? These kinds of moments stir within us an impulse and an inclination to savor more greatly, express more gratitude, and share ourselves with others with more magnanimity. 
  • Take a moment to explore a moment that brings the opposite feelings of desolation. Was there a significant experience in 2023 that challenged you to the core of your being, perhaps causing you to doubt your self-purpose or become skeptical about the good intentions of others? Did times arise in this year that drained you of energy and led to nagging self-doubt or disbelief? 
  • As you consider the year ahead, what from 2023 would you like to do differently, or better, or more lovingly in 2024? Grounded as we are in the Spirit of Georgetown, how are you called in the next year to be an agent of more justice in the world and more generosity and understanding in your communities? 

As I look back on our SCS 2023, I notice lots of gratitude that arises from my prayerful Examen. I recall the generous availability that students demonstrated during our annual retreat (“SCS Student Retreat Steps Outside of the Ordinary into Rest and Reflection”). I also remember students, staff, and faculty coming together to support one another after the tragic loss of a member of our community (“Coming Together in Times of Challenge and Loss”). I remember the inspiration I felt during Jason Kander’s 2023 Commencement address when he challenged us to reconsider what it means to be brave by acknowledging our needs for mental health support (“SCS 2023 Commencement Emphasizes Celebration, Care for Self, Commitment to Others”).  

There are so many other important moments from the year that rise to the surface of a longer reflection on our SCS commitment to Jesuit mission and values. For now, I am going to look ahead with gratitude and hope for another year of journeying together with you in this sacred work. 

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An Invitation into Your Imagination: Spiritual Exercises for a New Semester

This week’s post relies on the spiritual wisdom of Jesuit founder St. Ignatius of Loyola and invites us to use our imaginations as we begin this semester.  Photo credit: Jesuit and Ignatian Spirituality Australia

One of the core purposes of the SCS Mission in Motion blog is to help make connections between the teaching, learning, and service happening across the School and the living spiritual tradition of the Jesuits and their founder St. Ignatius of Loyola. The source for this spiritual wisdom is the Spiritual Exercises, a structured retreat designed by St. Ignatius that invites retreatants into greater and greater interior depth and growing union with God through contemplation and meditation. What remains such an enduring insight of the Exercises is that one of the surest paths to spiritual transformation comes through the imagination. St. Ignatius encourages retreatants to imagine themselves as active characters in the Gospel scenes that they are contemplating in prayer. But instead of potentially getting lost in the imaginative depths, Ignatius puts up some conditions about how to enter the imagination and ensures that the inner work of imaginative prayer should be discussed with a spiritual director or guide. 

This Labor Day weekend, as the new semester is now underway, I invite us to turn our attention to our imaginations. Do you desire deeper reflection about how to imagine yourself journeying the next few months at Georgetown in ways that bring you closer to your personal and professional purpose? This feels like an opportune time for such reflection before the work of the semester begins to accumulate. St. Ignatius offered some still very relevant suggestions for how to enter into the imagination that I would like to share with you. 

  • Take a moment to pause and grow quiet. Settle into your breathing and notice your body relaxing. When you feel grounded in quiet, I invite you to picture yourself from someone else’s perspective (perhaps a dear friend, family member, or even God). What does this other see about you when they look at you? How does it feel to be seen from another’s perspective? What do you notice about their gazing at you? How does this feel? 
  • In your imagination, relive in the present moment all the significant events of your life to this point. In these moments of quiet, I invite you to linger on the most important events that come up. Is there a single moment from your story of life that rises to the surface? What is the importance to you of this moment? Does it bring you peace? Or does it challenge you in some ways? Try this exercise over multiple days. Is there a pattern to the life events that show up in your imagination? 
  • St. Ignatius suggests that one technique of making discerned choices in the present is to imagine how you might interpret a present choice from a place in the future. Is there a choice that you are considering in your life right now? It might be a choice that concerns how you spend your time on a daily basis. Or it might be a bigger choice about your vocation (job, family, community involvement, etc.). As you contemplate this choice, how might your much older self in the future look back and assess your approach to this decision? 

One of my motivations for sharing these reflective suggestions is to encourage all of us to imagine more deeply the possibilities of making the most of our experience at Georgetown. As a student, faculty, or staff member, are there invitations and opportunities at the University that you want to pursue? Are there programs, events, communities, and spaces at Georgetown that you want to engage and learn about? You might take a few moments and scan the list of incredible events happening at the University. You might review the spiritual accompaniment resources offered at SCS and across Georgetown. Wherever your journey into the imagination leads you, I wish you peace and rest as you make your way.

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“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.

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President DeGioia Delivers Sacred Lecture in Georgetown’s Ignatian Year, Invites University Community To Live Questions of Meaning

President DeGioia delivered a Sacred Lecture as part of Georgetown’s Ignatian Year 500. You can watch a recording.

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.

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Jesuit Heritage Month at Georgetown Invites Remembrance, Reflection, and Connection

Jesuit Heritage Month at Georgetown takes place throughout November. Check out our events!

Jesuit Heritage Month at Georgetown, taking place throughout November, is an annual tradition that encourages members of the University community to more deeply engage with Jesuit heritage and its lasting resources. This year’s celebration is especially significant given that we continue to proceed through the Ignatian Year. The events of Jesuit Heritage Month can enrich exploration of the Ignatian Year by inspiring more reflection on the significance of our “cannonball moments” and the stories we share about them within our unique contexts at Georgetown.  

The signature events of Jesuit Heritage Month focus our attention not only on the past but also on the present and the future of Jesuit education. The central question giving life to these programs seems to be: How is the Jesuit heritage helping all of us at Georgetown live out our mission and values in a way that meets the world’s contemporary needs? 

Patrick Saint-Jean, S.J., will present a talk on “A New Way To Imagine Racial Justice with Ignatius of Loyola” (RSVP here) on Monday, November 8 at 4 p.m. ET in the ICC Auditorium. Mission in Motion has previously reflected on Saint-Jean’s book, which offers up Ignatian spirituality as a resource for the individual and collective work of racial justice demanded in our society. 

The next event in the series discusses the incredible life of Fr. John O’Malley, S.J., a renowned historian and long-time member of Georgetown’s faculty. The program, “The Education of a Historian: Discussing the Life, Work, & Education of John W. O’Malley, S.J.,” takes place on Friday, November 12 at 4 p.m. ET and features a panel that will converse with Fr. O’Malley and his life and lessons for life learned from a deep study of history. 

Participate in these events and celebrate the history, mission, and identity of the Jesuits at Georgetown, and beyond!

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Ignatian Year 500 at Georgetown Kicks Off With Stories and Some Poems

A profoundly inspiring event, “What’s Your Cannonball Story? Story-Telling in Georgetown’s Ignatian Year,” brought together students, staff, and faculty from across Georgetown on October 28. It marked the start of a year-long journey at the University to deeply explore the enduring legacy of St. Ignatius and the spirituality and style of education that he inspired. Introduced by Ignatian Year Working Group co-chairs Dr. Kelly Otter, Dean of SCS, and Fr. Ron Anton, Superior of Georgetown’s Jesuit Community, the event featured two levels of stories. 

Fr. Greg Schenden, S.J., Director of Campus Ministry, describes the importance of discernment in his own life by making a meaningful distinction between wants and needs. Where are the world’s greatest needs and how are we called to use our gifts and talents in response to them? Photo credit: Kuna Hamad. Watch the recording here. 

The first level of stories were the narratives provided from the stage by three talented story-tellers: Fr. Greg Schenden, S.J., Director of Campus Ministry; Michelle Ohnona, Assistant Director for Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives at the Center for New Designs in Learning at Scholarship (CNDLS); and Dawn Carpenter, DLS, Practitioner Fellow at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. In their unique ways, each storyteller touched upon some common themes as they reflected upon personal transformations that arose from their own Cannonball-like experiences. Each referenced the importance of personal discernment and the need for community support in making significant life decisions. And each described instances where their journeys of life often ended up in unexpected places, but eventually aligned them more closely to their deeper purpose and calling in the world.  

Michelle Ohnona, Assistant Director for Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives at CNDLS, shares how she arrived at a lifelong commitment to teaching and learning. Sometimes our intellectual resources help us discern our vocation choices, other times our bodies communicate important data for discernment that we should pay attention to.  Photo credit: Kuna Hamad

The second level of stories were those occurring in small-group discussions at tables arranged around Copley Formal Lounge. The Ignatian Year Working Group intentionally designed the event to encourage participants to actively engage with the Cannonball theme by listening and then offering their own stories to share. The Ignatian Year 500 bookmark was the foundation for these table conversations and provided a model for how each of us at Georgetown, regardless of our role and responsibility, can learn from our own stories and those of our colleagues. It was encouraging to see students, staff, and faculty from across the campuses listening and learning from each other in this context. With this first event completed, a precedent has been set for how to move through the Ignatian Year and make time for ourselves to meaningfully reflect on our own stories and those of our colleagues. 

Dawn Carpenter, DLS, Practitioner Fellow at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, tells a story about following unknown paths and the importance of faith and perseverance in response to adversity. Photo credit: Kuna Hamad

“Pause” comes first in the progression of practices suggested on the Ignatian Year bookmark. The hope of a “pause” is that it allows us to take some time to slow down our busy minds. But this can be difficult because many of us are accustomed to continuous mental and physical motion. We are processing so much data so often that we become inundated with experiences without making meaning of them. So we have to intentionally pause so that we can look about and re-evaluate our practices and direction. The pause moment in our day, our week, our month, or even our year is really a time to grow in our habits of attention and awareness. 

In his introduction, Fr. Ron Anton, S.J., encouraged this habit of attention and awareness by quoting from the poet Mary Oliver and her poem “The Summer Day.” As you read the poem, consider the ways that you take some pause in the next few days and simply pay attention to the awe and grandeur of the world around you.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

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From Collision to Conversion: What’s the Significance Today of the Cannonball Story?

The Ignatian Year at Georgetown kicks off on October 28 with a special event exploring the meaning of the “cannonball moments” in our lives. RSVP here!

Ahead of the event, “What’s Your Cannonball Story? Story-Telling in Georgetown’s Ignatian Year,” I want to consider the significance of the Ignatian “cannonball moment” as it relates both to the life of St. Ignatius and to our lives today. For some, relating this historical image to our contemporary human experience is a fitting way to enter more deeply into the principles and practices of the Ignatian Year. For others, the cannonball theme may feel distant, remote, or even dissonant with a desire for healthy spiritual development. In whatever way you relate to this image, I offer some insights that can hopefully help make this Ignatian story come more alive for you. 

The cannonball was literal for Ignatius, but it does not have to be so for us. One of the potential stumbling blocks of relating this 500-year-old story to our present lives is its dramatic nature. Not all of us can relate to the monumental wounding of St. Ignatius in battle, a war-time injury that earned the respect of rival forces because of Ignatius’s bravery. Some of us have had similarly significant life experiences – especially for many at SCS connected to the military. But it might feel like an unachievable high bar to have a similar cannonball experience in order to enter into the personal reflection invited by this Ignatian Year. That is not the point of relating this story to our lives today. 

The point is that we all have had some foundational event or experience that has caused us to question our existing beliefs or behaviors. This is especially the case in the context of the ongoing pandemic and how it has forced greater awareness of our feelings and the changes in our interior dispositions, attitudes, and beliefs as we have adjusted to unpredictable exterior conditions. The enduring meaning of the “cannonball moment” is that reflecting on our own examples can help set in motion a process of profound personal transformation. Here is an example of a relatable transformation offered by a prior student in the SCS “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice” course: 

“During a difficult consolidation of an organization where I used to work that divided employees and company leadership, I decided to pause and think very carefully about whether I wanted to survive through political maneuvering or doing the right thing for the company and myself. I discerned that the right thing was to continue to perform, collaborate, share information, and support the needs of the business. I chose this path and the decision was a relief. Ultimately, this path led to me to consider a more honorable path forward in my career.”

For Ignatius, the cannonball was a singular event, but for us personal transformation can take a long time and we might not consciously realize that it is even happening. While the fact of the cannonball collision is a salient detail in the Ignatian story, what matters most is how Ignatius responded over time. The injuries he sustained led to a deep shift in perspective that was possible because he committed to regular habits of prayer and self-examination. Battlefield wounds facilitated this process of conversion and enabled Ignatius to take time to imagine a different future for himself more aligned with God’s calling. 

For many, there is not a single moment that explains a deep change of heart that leads to reforming our habits, behaviors, and courses of action. Sometimes the interior transformation is a slow and patient process. It is only much later, with the help of dedicated reflection, that we understand what transformations actually occurred within us. One SCS alumna of the Jesuit Values course reflected on a slow change in her life in this way: 

“After a disappointing experience as a college athlete, I had to give up the sport that I loved. I became angry, disappointed, confused, and doubtful as a result of that decision. It took a long time for me to accept what felt like I had lost the most important thing in my life. Through much reflection over time I eventually embraced the decision, but it took a lot of patience with myself and others. I also later converted my passion for athletics into other ways of using my gifts and I became a mentor and have found other ways of helping people.” 


Over the course of the coming year, Mission in Motion will continue to bring to life the cannonball story by offering opportunities to make relevant connections to its enduring meaning. Please join us on October 28 as we mark Georgetown’s Ignatian Year by making some time and space to pause and reflect on your own cannonball journeys.

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Welcome to Georgetown’s Ignatian Year! (Wait, What’s an Ignatian Year?)

In her fall welcome message, “Looking Ahead with Hope,” SCS Dean Kelly Otter acknowledged the challenges and stresses many are experiencing in this semester of transition and pointed toward reasons for hope. Building upon the inspiration of Fr. Otto Hentz, S.J. that we can be hope for one another, Dean Otter articulated a special cause for hope at the University in 2021–2022: celebration of the Ignatian Year. 

This week’s Mission in Motion introduces the Ignatian Year, a celebration occurring in 2021–2022 at Jesuit institutions around the world. What is this Ignatian Year? And why should it matter to you? To answer these questions, we need to start at the beginning: the story of St. Ignatius. Check out this short film about his life. 

The purpose of this week’s reflection is to narrate the significance of the Ignatian Year, the 500th anniversary of the conversion of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, a religious order known for building schools all over the world. My own hope is that this brief summary of highlights will help make Georgetown’s Ignatian Year relevant to every member of this community. Regardless of your religious or spiritual tradition, your familiarity with the Spirit of Georgetown, or how long you have been at the University, the themes, principles, and practices at the heart of Ignatian spirituality and the style of education St. Ignatius inspired five centuries ago are relevant to you today. I invite you to consider how your ongoing journey at Georgetown, grounded in your unique lived experience, will be enriched by more deeply engaging with the events and opportunities planned for this special year.

This story begins with the story of St. Ignatius of Loyola (for an entertaining biographical summary, check out this short 10-minute film produced by Jesuits in Britain). The founder of the Jesuits was an unlikely saint, devoting the early part of his life to the pursuit of riches, honors, and conquest in battle. Upholding his knightly honor as a Spanish soldier, Ignatius defended against an invading French force and was struck by a cannonball that severely injured his leg. He had no choice but to recover slowly from his injuries, forced to stay put and entertain himself not with TikTok but with the castle’s only available reading material: religious books. This period of convalescence set into motion the deeper personal transformation that Ignatius would undergo for the rest of his life. 

What matters most for us about this transformation story is that Ignatius eventually decided on his life’s path because he paid attention to his daydreams! During his recovery, Ignatius began to notice how he felt after imagining his life’s alternate possibilities. The authentic option, the one that would lead him to pursue a profession of generosity and the common good, left him feeling joyful in a sustained way. When he imagined returning to his past life, Ignatius experienced fleeting feelings of excitement that ultimately left him feeling dry. The path toward realizing God’s invitation, his deeper purpose, would lead to deep delight and joy. Moving from a life of vainglory to a life of noble purpose required thoughtful discernment of Ignatius’s interior movements. And so it is the same for us today five centuries later. 

We are each called to make meaning of our experience by paying attention to our interior movements. You might consider these basic questions: 

  • What stirs you? 
  • What do you desire? 
  • What repels you? 
  • What distracts you?  
  • Where do you find purpose in your work? In your home? In your community? 
  • How and when do you feel most free to pursue the deeper meaning of your life? 
  • How do you want to share your gifts and talents with others? 
  • How do you want to realize justice, practice charity, and build bonds in your communities? 
  • Is there a shift in perspective that you are being invited to undertake? 

Ignatius would tell you to pay special attention to the movement of these feelings within yourself and where they lead you. Ultimately, it’s the direction of the movements that matters. And while we may not have literal cannonball experiences like Ignatius, we are each invited – especially in light of the ongoing pandemic – to convert our individual and collective suffering and adversity into profound moral and spiritual transformation. 

Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Georgetown, discusses the significance of the Ignatian Year by describing an Ignatian movement from profession to purpose. Watch the video. 

For Ignatius and the Jesuit spirituality that carries on this legacy, implanted in our interior life, rooted in our deepest desires, is our vocation to be realized in the world. All of our lived experience – from the most tedious daily details to the biggest cannonball moments – present opportunities to encounter a loving God. There are many names and paths for this encounter and some may use less theologically oriented language like the true self, transcendent mystery, goodness, truth, etc. According to Fr. Arturo Sosa, S.J., Superior General of the Jesuits, all of us, regardless of our beliefs, share in the “same struggle” of realizing real change in our day-to-day mission of life. 

This Ignatian Year is also an opportunity to shine a light on how all Jesuit institutions are called to realize the Universal Apostolic Preferences. These orientations – Showing the Way to God, Walking with the Excluded, Journeying with Youth, and Caring for Our Common Home – are intended to focus the energy of all Jesuit works for the next 10 years. Georgetown SCS uniquely animates Jesuit mission in a way that honors the context of our learning community. One of the great opportunities of Georgetown’s celebration of the Ignatian Year is a deeper appreciation for the diverse ways that schools and units across the University bring to life an Ignatian spirit in their teaching, learning, and working. 

In the coming weeks and months, Mission in Motion will dedicate attention to the meaning of the Ignatian Year. Stay tuned for opportunities, like events, communications, programs, and practices, that are designed to accompany you on your journey.