Finding God in All Things
T
he Jesuit commitment to “finding God in all things” has a significant impact on the ways in which Jesuit universities approach the task of educating students. Jesuit education challenges us to recognize that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.” And, as we seek to build our knowledge in a given area of study, we are encouraged to ask, “How does this recognition determine my approach to my subject, as well as my research and work in that field?”
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the former Superior General of the Society of Jesus, reminds us that there is more to university education than providing an arena for people to “learn more and more about less and less until they know everything there is about nothing at all.” Education is not about the accumulation of facts; rather, Kolvenbach suggests, education is a process of listening and discernment. The Jesuit perspective calls us to move beyond a functional approach to education. The tools we receive become resources for deepening our relationship with God. Work and school assignments are not tasks to complete; rather, they are creative opportunities to enter into and share the mystery of God. Ultimately, we are taught to see our profession as a vocation. The writings of Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest executed by the Nazis in 1945, have profoundly affected my sense of vocation. Delp reflected in his prison journals, “There are genuine creative dreams that entice us on and drive us out of the rut of routine. Woe to youth if it should ever lose its capacity to conjure up glorious visions and to feel the breath of the Holy Spirit.”
The fullness of Joy is to behold God in everything.
Julian of Norwich
An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer. Sarah Ban Breathnach
God communicates with us by way of all things. They are messages of love. Ernesto Cardenal
In the shadow of death may we not look back to the past, but seek in utter darkness the dawn of God. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.
We experience the darkness of life’s challenges in light of the fact that the tomb was found to be empty and that the risen Christ promised, “Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
finding god in all things
Jesuit education forms us with the imaginative capacity to find “resurrection moments” amidst the routines of our day, and it calls us to transform them into possible moments of revelation. The Jesuit vision of education calls us to seek and discover the God of peace and justice, and be a prophetic witnesses to that God in our academic and professional careers. And the grace and the challenge of the Jesuit academic experience is the way in which it forms students with a willingness to allow ourselves, our thought and work, to be interrupted and surprised by the voice of God. Edward Sloane | Theology
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