John Peck, SJ

This winter and spring I have had the privilege to work at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, DC.  My work at the school has included the following:  teacher in the Religious Studies Department, assistant freshman baseball coach, KAIROS adult retreat leader, and occasional liturgical minister at school-wide Masses.

As I write this reflection, the students of Gonzaga are busily preparing for finals week, which means that my time here is quickly coming to a conclusion.  This is a bittersweet experience for me. On the one hand, I look forward to what I know will be an exciting and grace-filled summer, hopefully culminating in the joy of pronouncing perpetual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the Society of Jesus on August 15.  At the same time, however, a significant part of me desires to remain here with the “men of Eye Street,” teaching, mentoring, and getting to know these students whom I have grown to love so much.

I depart Gonzaga in much the same way as I began: with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I was full of excitement at the prospect of working full-time in a Jesuit apostolate and living in an apostolic community of Jesuits.  Having grown much as a disciple of Jesus Christ during the first year-and-a-half of my novitiate, I was eager to bring all that growth to bear on my apostolic work with high school students.  Even so, I also experienced a considerable amount of trepidation and hesitation, given that I had never taught high school students before and would begin my stay at the mid-point of the academic year, when things at Gonzaga would already be in full swing.  I wondered whether it would be difficult to find my niche under such circumstances.

Contrary to these concerns, finding my niche at Gonzaga has not proven to be difficult.  I have found my place in simply loving the students and conveying that love and concern in simple ways.  Although each day consists in definite tasks to be accomplished and challenges to be confronted, I have seen my overarching task and vocation at Gonzaga as loving each students.  Whether I am answering a sophomore’s question about Mark’s Christology (yes, sophomores do ask questions about Mark’s Christology!), encouraging an ethics student to participate more eagerly in class, or congratulating a freshman baseball player on his double in the clutch, I have tried to do all with love for each student, aware of the gratuitous love that God lavishes on that young man at every moment.  Through it all, I perceive that God has given me a share in his own gracious vision, a glimpse of how he sees each student with whom I cross paths.   Participation, if only a bit, in God’s loving vision has empowered me to carry out my daily tasks joyfully.

This divine perspective is a major component of Ignatian spirituality.  In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius instructs the retreatant to begin each prayer period by raising his mind to God to consider how God beholds him at that moment (75).  Admittedly, I have often had more than a bit of difficulty with this preparatory exercise, wondering how I could possibly fathom how God beholds me.  Are not his thoughts higher than my thoughts, as the heavens are high above the earth (Isaiah 55:8-9)?  These five months at Gonzaga have resolved these doubts, however, since I perceive that my own mind has been elevated to share in God’s loving vision.  Through the experience of loving my students, the love with which God beholds each person, including me, has become so much more real.  What does the Father see in these young men that prompts him to love them so ardently?  In the Church’s liturgy, we pray that “you may see and love in us what you see and love in Christ.”  As God looks upon the “men of Eye Street,” whether they are in class, on the baseball field, or on a KAIROS retreat, he beholds and loves his Son Jesus Christ.  I know this since he has given me a share in his own fatherly gaze, a gaze that also enfolds me.

Over the past five months, I have also learned a good bit about the vocation and work of a teacher.  Teaching New Testament and Christian Ethics, I have come to appreciate as never before just how much work goes into preparing lessons, correcting tests, and motivating students.  I have also learned to esteem my colleagues, Jesuit and lay, who pour so much energy, dedication, and love into this work, year-in and year-out.  Aware of the importance of preparation, I have also learned that preparation isn’t everything:  it is also important to be spontaneous, allowing the promptings of the Spirit to move the class in new directions, even if it means setting aside my own plans.  Spending a bit more time than usual asking and answering questions, giving in to an idea for an activity on the spur of the moment, stopping the lecture for ten minutes of in-class writing, and other ways of following the inspiration of the moment were often more fruitful for the students than what I had originally planned.  In addition, although I worked hard to give my students substantive lessons, I was also made aware, both in prayer by the Lord and by other faculty members, that the “who” and “how” of teaching is ultimately more important than the “what”; that is, although the students may retain only a small portion of the objective content of my classes, they are more likely to be affected by who I allowed myself to be with them, how I was present to them, and the attention and care I showed them.

Through it all, my hope has been the same, that the students, now or perhaps later, might look beyond me to the One who inspired me and informed my work over these past months:  Jesus Christ. 

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