Students and Jesuits come together for Ignatian Heritage Month

November marks Loyola’s celebration of Ignatian Heritage Month, a time when students, faculty and staff explore the University’s Jesuit roots through service, discussion and community events. This year, the month added a new event, “Lunch With the Jesuits,” alongside their long-standing tradition of hosting a canned food drive and a book club. 

Lauren Schwer, director of Ignatian Spirituality, said the new addition of the “Lunch With the Jesuits” initiative allows students to share a noon meal with a Jesuit every day in Ignatian House. The lunches offer a casual, welcoming environment, designed to make the Jesuit graduation approachable. Schwer said the idea is personal to her and wanted it to inspire others. 

“Twenty-three years ago, I went to a free lunch with a Jesuit at my alma mater, Boston College, and met the Jesuit who is now officiating my wedding in January,” Schwer said. “We’re hoping that Ignatian Heritage Month just touches as many corners of the university as possible because our mission and our identity are for everyone.”

Schwer said there’s no single way to engage with the Jesuit tradition. For her, these lunches can be a space for students to create connections and meet Jesuits they wouldn’t otherwise encounter. The campus chaplain, Brother Bobby Nicholas, S.J., said many students graduate without having had a conversation with a Jesuit. 

“I was eager to be one of the Jesuits that signed up for the lunches, so that students and faculty staff could meet other Jesuits,” Nichols said. “This is a great way for people to safely and comfortably enter a space that they wouldn’t maybe have met before or wouldn’t necessarily go if they don’t go to Thursday night mass or if they don’t have a relationship already with a Jesuit.”

Noah Banasiewicz, S.J., instructor of human communication and digital media in the School of Communication, said Jesuits can occupy multiple roles without being separate people, and he said he wants to show that in conversation with students. 

“It’s interesting as a Jesuit, there’s this perception of a religious person in general, but you have to occupy different identities at different times,” Banasiewicz said. “I wouldn’t say that I’m a different person in the classroom or hiding parts of myself.” 

Banasiewicz said students need to get a chance to see Jesuits beyond the clerical collar. 

“When it’s in conversations like this where people can hear about that I haven’t always worn this, and I wasn’t always a Jesuit — I had a story,” Banasiewicz said. “This provides an opportunity for people to genuinely get to know who we are, and then through that, see Jesuits through a different lens.”

An approach Jesuits have taken is to get closer to students outside the classroom or Campus Ministry. Nichols said he has an online presence where he makes videos relatable to students. Additionally, during his Thursday lunches, Nichols said he often starts with light conversation — about sports, jokes about the dining hall food — but gradually students sometimes open up about more personal struggles.

“A lot of people, and I can speak even for my own self, have some element of religious trauma,” Nichols said. “Our image and understanding of God is often the same image of God that we had when we were children. If we can recognize it, the innate love and compassion that is in God, that is across all faith traditions, then we can create a space for healing and growth.” 

For Nichols, the lunches are an embodiment of cura personalis, or care for the whole person. As someone who talks to students daily, Nichols said he sees what they need even if they don’t verbalize it. 

“Cura personalis gets thrown around like a marketing phrase — sometimes it doesn’t often mean anything, and at the core, it means everything,” Nichols said. “An undocumented student who’s being intimidated by ICE needs a particular kind of care. It requires responding to them in love and hope and compassion. We all need love. We all need hope, and we all need compassion.” 

Beyond the lunches, Loyola students participated in service through the annual canned food drive, held Nov. 8. Fourth-year environmental science major Isabella Songer led the effort which marked the drive’s 20th anniversary.

“In this time, this specific month, it’s just been such a nice exemplification of what Ignatian spirituality is supposed to be and what Christian values are supposed to be, which is service to others and unwavering kindness and love and respect for other people,” Songer said. “The want to help others is really something that I love about this food drive.”

The drive collected non-perishable foods, hygiene products and clothing for Saint Thomas of Canterbury Food Pantry and the Chicago Refugee Coalition. Student athletes, volunteers and Christian Life Community members worked tirelessly, even on days when weather conditions were challenging, according to Songer.

The Food Recovery Network helped CLC with disposing of expired food, according to Songer. Schwer said part of the Jesuit mission is eco-friendly work, which is why she said she’s delighted by the support the students have been giving to the community.

“Sometimes it is hard to get out of bed when it’s cold and gray outside,” Songer said. “But for me, what gets me out there and makes me want to do these things is remembering that you made a commitment and that commitment deserves to be honored.” 

For Songer, the sense of community was palpable. Songer said she joined CLC when she was a first-year, and now as a fourth-year, she picked the outreach pillar to lead her journey. For her, community and serving others is at the core of what she does. 

“There was this wonderful purpose and this camaraderie that we had because we were sharing in this experience and this want to help others and to make our community a better place,” Songer said. “That was really impactful for me and also really inspiring to remember because I’m a senior. Knowing that I’m leaving this place, and there are other people who are younger than me who can carry on this service-minded and this love-minded mission.” 

For Songer, she said she views the Jesuit values as basic human decency. Songer said there’s an inherent importance in the inclusivity and unconditional giving only found in the Jesuit doctrine.

As a member of CLC, Songer said she hears a lot of misconception about the Catholic ideals and how they’re presented to people. For her, she tries to dismantle those misconceptions by providing service with and for others. 

“The misconception of religion specifically stems from this ideal that there’s an in-group and an out-group — that’s false rhetoric,” Songer said. “As Christians, it’s very important to show that everyone is loved by God. It doesn’t matter whether or not you are religious, you are still worthy of everything in life. You should be able to have access to things that are important to you.”

Ignatian Heritage Month also features a longstanding book club, according to Schwer. This year, she said participants are reading Spiritual Criminals by Loyola history faculty member Michelle Nickerson. Schwer said the book club is one of the few elements of the month that has remained consistent over time.

“Each year we pick a different book for people to read and come and share a meal and talk about the book that is somehow connected to our Ignatian tradition,” Schwer said.

The month’s programming has expanded in recent years to be more student-focused while maintaining faculty and staff engagement, according to Schwer.  

“The last two years we’ve really focused on having people responsible for initiatives in their particular spheres of influence,” Schwer said. “We think one is being very specific about who is running the initiative, someone who’s in that community, who knows what the needs are. The other piece is to not think about this as only programmatic, but seeing the asynchronous world as an opportunity as well.”

Examen practices, a reflective Jesuit spiritual exercise, were an addition to last year’s Ignatian Heritage Month initiatives as a way to get students connected to Campus Ministry. She saw the impact those examens had and wanted to expand it further.

This year, 27 different examens were recorded, featuring faculty, staff, students and Jesuits, providing multiple ways to engage with Ignatian spirituality, according to Schwer. She said the tradition is flexible and accessible to all.

Tyler Cotton, a cognitive and behavioral neuroscience student and member of Hillel, reflected on how the lunches reshaped his perception of Jesuits.

“I’ve always respected the Jesuit order and thought they’re all a bunch of very cool people, but before I came here, I feel that my view of what they did and why they did it was more shallow,” Cotton said. “Coming here and being able to meet even more of the Jesuits on campus, I appreciate how, within the order, there’s sort of a diversity of personality and a diversity of approaches”  

Schwer said fostering understanding, engagement, and care is at the heart of Loyola’s Ignatian identity.

“I wish that people recognized that when we talk about social justice, we do social justice because our mission requires it of us, and it’s one expression of what the fullness of our mission is,” Schwer said. “We have all kinds of Latin phrases we can look to, but at the end of the day, are we caring for people?”