Letter from Fr. Linnane invites reflection on gifts Dear Loyola College Community, Greetings and blessings to all of you. When I declared the 2006 - 2007 academic year the Year of the City, I had no idea what to expect for the campus or the community in this endeavor. Certainly, I wanted the effort to become a theme during my second academic year with the College. More, though, I wanted to promote a purposeful renewal of our relationship with Baltimore City--our home for more than a century and a half--and to invite the College community to examine what difference our presence in this great city makes in the way we approach higher education. I am pleased to report that the College community has invested time, energy, and talent in the Year of the City project. The commitment has been broad-based and substantial. At a recent focus group discussion about the initiative’s progress, I was especially encouraged by the many expressions of hope that the Year of the City will extend beyond the current academic year. From the start, that has been my hope, as well. Indeed, I had imagined that whatever else the Year of the City accomplishes, it would help us to reflect upon our social vocation, and discern where and how our gifts, as individuals and as a university community, correspond with the concerns and aspirations of the City. As the Year of the City continues, our ongoing discernment will help to lay the foundation for sustaining our commitments over time. In keeping with this aim, I will be asking the Year of the City Coordinating Committee for a year-end assessment that includes specific recommendations of ways to institutionalize what we discern. As I indicated in my inaugural address, in which I introduced the idea of the Year of the City, the initiative has deep roots in our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit university. Central among its aims is the affirmation and revitalization of our educational mission, especially in light of the social and cultural offerings of the city and its more distressing realities. With regard to the latter concern, the words of Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach’s October 2000 Santa Clara address, which are so often quoted as the inspiration for immersion and service activities on many Jesuit university campuses, bear repeating here: Students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering, and engage it constructively. They should learn to perceive, think, judge, choose, and act for the rights of others, especially the disadvantaged and the oppressed.
Fr. Kolvenbach’s comments are addressed to students in concern for their intellectual and spiritual development. However, it is not possible to imagine that his text has no application to the lives of the administrators, staff, and faculty who interact with our students daily. More, as we work here everyday, we learn, we study; we gain new understanding of our jobs, our relationships with colleagues, and our own skills and gifts. To put it plainly, we, too, are in the midst of our formation. The Year of the City proposes that this formation must include a growing regard for and responsive sensitivity to those people and communities who are suffering in our city. As we move into the Christmas season, I look forward to reflecting on ways that my own commitments-as president, priest, long-time member of the Loyola College community, and new citizen of Baltimore-can be more deeply integrated into the aims and purposes of the Year of the City. On this mark, I am reminded by one of the liturgical readings for this season of Advent that the focus of this reflection must be a critical discernment of gifts and their purposes. The story relates that Jesus had gone up a mountain, and that "[g]reat crowds came to him, having with them the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute and many others" (Matthew 15:29-30). As I reflected on the reading, I was struck by the action of the crowd and what I imagined to be their experience. Their desire, it seemed to me, was to eliminate the apparently intractable maladies that kept their neighbors from full participation in the life of the community. As the passage continues, we see that Jesus exercises the gift of healing. He then turns to his disciples to express his concern about the hunger of the crowd. The tables are turned. At first, the followers of Jesus present human need to him; now, with a turn of his head, it is Jesus who presents human need to his followers. In this moment of instruction, Jesus invites his disciples to do what he has done-to respond to the need, the hunger, by offering what food they have, nothing more, nothing less. While their meager offerings of seven loaves and a few fish seem wholly mismatched to so great a hunger, the gifts blessed and broken increase as they are shared. When I spoke of our gifts earlier in this letter, I was speaking of the "food" that we possess, nothing more and nothing less. All of us, individually and collectively, possess gifts, talents, and skills that flourish only when we share them with communities that need our potential offerings. If we see, hear, and experience the aspirations and needs of the communities within our midst, then we allow ourselves to become better attuned to our own gifts. We allow ourselves to be summoned to lives of ever-greater generosity, justice, and compassion. As a college, we have studied the City, and gingerly ventured into its neighborhoods. What more can we do to become attuned to the City and to receive it in the life of the College? What will you do in that effort? During the approaching holiday break, I ask you to commit an hour of your time to reflecting upon the gifts you have that can be of use and service to Baltimore. I ask also that you reflect upon the ways that you might exercise those gifts through your work at Loyola. As you consider your own talents, think, too, about the College and what it has to offer to the City. What is it that a university can offer a city-this city-particularly a Catholic and Jesuit university like Loyola? Perhaps there is some gift that the College has that it has not yet discovered. As you recognize your gifts, I hope you will understand them to be more than merely personal talents. They are our way into Baltimore. More, your recognized and generously shared gifts move us forward on the path to becoming the kind of university that we aspire to be. It is my prayer during this season of hope and renewal that each of you will recognize what you have to offer Baltimore, and what it has to offer you. And it is my hope that each of us will return to campus in January with new energy to contribute to the College’s maturing understanding of its social vocation, educational mission, and commitment to Baltimore City. Season’s greetings, 
Rev. Brian F. Linnane, S.J.
President
|
