On a windy, rain-soaked September afternoon, Rev. Paul Rourke, S.J., celebrated his first Mass of the Holy Spirit at Fairfield University. A worldwide tradition at Jesuit colleges and universities since the Middle Ages, the Mass of the Holy Spirit heralds the beginning of a new academic year. The fall 2019 service at Egan Chapel welcomed first-year and returning students, faculty, and staff to campus — an especially fitting start for Fr. Rourke, the newly appointed director of Campus Ministry.

Originally from St. Louis, Fr. Rourke is a 1994 graduate of Georgetown University. He received a law degree from Washington University in 1997 before joining the Society of Jesus in 2000.  He was ordained a priest in 2010, and arrived at Fairfield fresh off an eight-month tertianship — the final stage of Jesuit formation — in Australia. While abroad, his pastoral ministries centered around offering the Spiritual Exercises to parish groups and working with university students who traveled to Australia on foreign immersion trips.

Prior to his tertianship, Fr. Rourke served for five years as director of Campus Ministry at Georgetown University Law Center, the largest law school campus ministry program in the country. Of the Georgetown Law students, he said, “I could relate to the career pressures, the anxieties, the uncertainties, and also the public service dimension. A lot of people have a sense of wanting to be of service to society, but they also feel the need to pay off loans and other competing pressures. Having had some experience with that, I was able to share the tools of Ignatian discernment, hopefully to their benefit.”

Now at Fairfield and ministering to  the community here, he said, “I’d like to lead every person I meet into a deeper encounter with the living God and a deeper encounter with their true self.

“How do we accompany students on this discovery without imposing, without proselytizing, or without compromising their freedom in any way? Just by giving them that space to come to the deepest longing of their heart, which I firmly believe is ultimately only satisfied through God.”

Fr. Rourke described his role as director of Campus Ministry as “somebody who is trying to care for the spiritual health of the whole campus community.” By that he means not just Catholics, but students of other faiths (or no faith) as well. “Even though I’m not giving non-Catholic students the kind of spiritual leadership that our individual faith chaplains can offer them, I still think that my job is to be a steward of the home that they already have here in Campus Ministry.”

Fr. Rourke noted that although students come to Campus Ministry with a lot of the same basic life questions as anyone, they’re at an age where they’re deciding whether faith and regular participation in Church are going to remain part of their lives. “It’s kind of a tender moment,” said Fr. Rourke, “where they’ve come from home and maybe they were practicing or maybe they weren’t going to church on a regular basis, and here they have the opportunity to choose.”

Mass at night in the residence hall lounges — an old Fairfield tradition — was reinstated during the fall semester as a way to minister to students where they live. Other initiatives that Fr. Rourke envisions going forward include financial support for students who wish to go on an immersion trip, a broader array of retreat offerings, and perhaps one day, a dedicated off-campus retreat house.

But first, Fr. Rourke’s goal is to work in collaboration with the Murphy Center for Ignatian Spirituality and other Centers on campus “to really have Campus Ministry be not simply pastoral, but to be an agent of the mission of Jesuit education, of passing on our Ignatian tradition, and helping it to enrich the whole fabric of the University.”

As the first semester of his Fairfield University career drew to a close, Fr. Rourke was once again a celebrant on the altar of Egan Chapel, continuing another Campus Ministry tradition: the annual candlelight Advent Mass. Looking very much at home, he began his homily with these words:

“There’s something about candlelight that creates a feeling of intimacy and peace; something that makes you feel, in a sense, a closeness to the sacred and to the spirit of this season of peace that we celebrate. And of course, light is also a symbol for us, of hope and of understanding, of God’s knowledge and wisdom coming to us, and of God’s very life that comes to us through Jesus.”