Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Breakfast with the Jesuits

Waking up early for a breakfast with the Jesuits at first, was not what i had in  mind for my thursday morning, september 25. I had to wake up early, walk over to the opposite side of campus and all just for my FE 100 class. Going there i wasn't thinking about how lucky i was to be, to get a chance to have for Jesuit priests come out of their own way to have breakfast with a small group of us and get to know more of what they have experience through there past/background. 
My roommate being very paranoid about getting there on time, we left pretty early that we were the first of our class to arrive at out teachers room in champion. we even arrived before all the jesuit priests did, but the first one to show up was Fr. Nash. At first he went right over to our FE teachers and they were chatting but than came over to my roommate and I and introduced himself to us. He was very friendly and i knew i remembered him from someplace. He's the one who takes care of our school mascot and i always see walking him around. He was just so welcoming, asking how our classes were and wondering if we have gotten involved with anything around campus especially community service yet. He than went asking if we wanna go study abroad, telling us how we should definitely do it for it's the most magnificent experience and how it's somewhat part of what the jesuit education is bringing us to do. He went into more detail about that later telling us that going abroad is informing ourselves more about others and is making us more aware about the whole person. When going abroad we realize how lucky we are to be in a great country like america, and a spectacular Jesuit school, by showing us the good and the few bad parts about our society here. His main focus on this was about how we need to be for the better good, including all cultures and backgrounds in mind, and should learn about all these other people to become a more all around person.
After everyone finally arrived and were settled down after having eaten, out teacher had asked the four jesuit priest to tell us about how they came to Loyola and their experience with the college so far. We got to learn how Fr. Jack was a principal at Loyola Blakefield and was brought up here to work for our campus ministry. He told us that was fine with him because he loves working with adolescents and this gave him more of a change to make more of a difference . For Fr. Chuck this was his first placement as a jesuit and is so grateful to be at such a great institute. Unfortunately i can't recall what Fr. Nash and Fr. Amiot said about what compelled them. 
From this experience I learned a lot of what Fr. Peter-hans Kolvenbach, talks about in "The Service of Faith and Promotion Of Justice in Jesuit Higher Education". After learning of all these Jesuits' experiences we became more connected with the Jesuit model or the whole person. We learned of many ways in which we could further that education in our own lives whether it be from community service here on campus, studying abroad and learning about other cultures, or just getting to know the amazing people that help to keep this community functioning. I myself came out of it definitely wanting to go abroad, experience other cultures and the desire to try to somehow make it into campus ministry. 

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