Weekly Examen from Campus Ministry

Date: 08-31-2020

NEW! Each week Campus Ministry & the Murphy Center for Ignatian Spirituality will provide all members of the community an examen for the week. Set aside a few moments each day to pray this examen and listen to how you are responding physically, emotionally, spiritually and to sit with what you hear. This practice brings greater awareness to our shared Jesuit values and how they guide our work together here at the University and beyond. Each week, a different member of the Campus Ministry or Murphy Center staff will provide a text for us. Video of the reflection can be found on our Instagram and Facebook pages.

Let's keep one another in prayer!

from Fr. Paul Rourke, Director of Campus Ministry

For our examen this week I invite us to pray over the theme of a welcoming home.

So before I go any further: Welcome to Fairfield! whether it’s for your first time or whether it’s a welcome back. Whether you’re here on campus or planning to be studying or working remotely, we all hope that this semester will be an experience of homecoming for you. We hope that your experience of Fairfield will be one of finding yourself loved, accepted, and included. We hope it’s the place you feel most yourself, most at peace, and most alive, and held most closely by our loving God. Ideally home is all of these things, though we know that for many that is not the case.

As we start our examen what comes to mind for us when we think of the word “home”? Do we have happy feelings or sad, or a mix—perhaps we feel anger, too. What are the first feelings we experience when we think of home?

If we have been at home over the last several months, what was our experience of home life? What were the lights and darknesses? The joys and challenges? How did our relationships grow or get strained?

How did we find our relationship with God during these months? Try not to judge, but bring to light how we have felt. Were there some significant moments that stand out?

How have we experienced Fairfield as a home so far? How has it felt like home or how has it not? If we’re new, we may not feel we can answer, but how have we felt welcomed or not?

What do we hope for Fairfield as our home? What would we like to see? What would make us feel more “at home”, more loved?

Do we have fears that Fairfield won’t succeed as our home, or that we’ll never feel at home here? What makes us have that fear? Share that fear with God, and see if you receive an answer.

What can I and what can we do to make Fairfield a home that is radically hospitable and inclusive of all members of our community?

People of faith believe that God is our ultimate and only true home. As we conclude our prayer, let us ask God to deepen our feeling of belonging to God and to the university community of Fairfield. May we feel truly at home with God here and everywhere.

Amen.

For more information, contact Katie Byrnes / 2032454000 / kbyrnes@fairfield.edu