I first encountered the Jesuits during my undergraduate years at the University of Scranton. While few places might have less in common with Los Angeles than Scranton, Pennsylvania, both are, believe it or not, known for their spectacular sunsets. A popular vista point for watching the colorful, vibrant evening dusk splash across Northeast Pennsylvania sky was a statue at the top of “the Commons” depicting Jacob wrestling with God from the Book of Genesis.
The sculpture is visceral – remarkably detailed in its grit and physicality – and, I reckon, not all that removed in its expressed intensity from the rugged interior terrain of the lives of our students. These undergraduate years are spent pioneering new landscapes within oneself, mapping anew what one once thought to be true, adapting to unexpected and sometimes dramatic erosion, and contemplating the expansive vastness of ourselves, one another, and our world.
As students change majors, navigate relationships, deepen their wisdom, and for so many, bear the nearly unbearable weight of what it means to be human in our polarized, challenging world, these years are rich with struggle, growth, grappling, and grace. Within this, formative opportunities offered by Campus Ministry to retreat from the world and reflect, to serve and accompany the marginalized, locally or across the world, to gather, to worship, to pray, are inherent to the Jesuit ideal of cura personalis and elemental in inviting our students to belong, believe, and become more thoughtful, sensitive, engaged stewards of Jesuit education. This time bears incredible potential. Our ministry programming must rise to the occasion of these watershed years, tend to its margins, and boldly, tenderly offer a place for all students to encounter God, self, and one another.
Though I had never met a Jesuit before my years in Scranton, my upbringing was Catholic through and through. Milestones within my family, both immediate and extended, were marked by grace before meals around sprawling holiday tables, packing the pews for liturgy, and seeking consolation and hope in the language of our shared tradition when our experiences eclipsed words. My personal spiritual practice has evolved over the years to include service, retreats, devotional poetry, and spiritual direction, all introduced to me during my years at Scranton and Boston College, but there is a comfort I find in returning to the space of a church in my most salient moments. When my soul aches, it longs for familiarity, for ritual, for spaces where my native spiritual tongue is spoken. In crisis and in doubt, in joy, and in the mundane, I’ve wandered into open churches seeking a solace I struggle to articulate more fully.
I had noticed during previous visits to LMU that the doors of Sacred Heart Chapel were always open. As you head down Loyola Boulevard toward the original entrance of campus, the wide- open doors beckon. That “all are welcome here” is an ideal embodied. I felt it for myself: upon landing here in L.A., weary, jet-lagged, and bewildered by the threshold before me, I ambled about campus and made my way into the chapel during off-hours. To meet not only unlocked doors but a wide-open entrance allowed me to accept the invitation I felt God stirring in my heart: to pause, to rest, to reflect, to simply be.
This invitation exemplified by Sacred Heart Chapel’s doors is the invitation I offer all LMU students: that you are welcome here. This invitation is not confined to a particular faith tradition, a certain way of talking about God, reserved for only a few, or set aside for certain seasons. Your questions, your doubts, your loneliness, your enthusiasm, your giftedness: we are palms up, hearts open, ready to receive.
The Jesuit notion of “finding God in all things” (so sacred to me that I had it inked on my skin) is the pedagogical imperative of our service. Campus Ministry is here to reveal the boundless love of God laboring in the world, through unearthing anew the inherent belovedness of our students, and expanding their capacity to love through their service, studies, and formation of character. Campus ministers, and those who join us in our work, lift the lamps that illuminate paths toward a deeper understanding of the holy mystery of love that animates our beautiful, brutal world. Our doors are open, and always will be. Your soul has a soft place to land here. Let us step into the light.
