During this time of uncertainty, Fairfield University's Vice President for Mission and Ministry, Rev. Gerry Blaszczak, S.J., encourages us to live intentionally and to especially remember those in need. His reflection is as follows.
In his March 17 message to the Fairfield community, President Mark R. Nemec, PhD, reminded us that we are “the inheritors and torch-bearers of the Jesuit tradition.”
That tradition — as exemplified by St. Aloysius Gonzaga, who served the sick in Rome during the epidemic of 1591 — asks us, with special poignancy at this time, those same questions every Fairfield student is invited to wrestle with: Who am I? Whose am I? Who am I called to be?
Confronting the coronavirus, we are all likely to experience anxiety, fears, uncertainties. Yet we are invited — especially now — to live intentionally, to realize that our precious lives do not belong to ourselves, that everything we are is a pure gift from God, that we belong utterly to God, and that we are called to serve God’s cause: the healing, the well-being, the flourishing of our whole human family.
We belong to those whose needs for care, for protection, for compassion, and for love press in on us with special urgency. We belong to — and are for — those who need a medicine picked up, a carton of milk, a call, a text, an e-mail.
As “inheritors and torch-bearers of the Jesuit tradition,” we draw close to the Source and Origin of our lives, the Lover of all Humanity, with hope that God’s care for us will never fail, finding reason to move beyond panic or despair, and taking up — with God and in God — our shared mission to pursue truth and to reach out to those around us, near and far.
St. Aloysius, Brother and Friend, pray for those who are suffering, for those who are dying, and for all who are caring for them. Teach us how to live in this moment of crisis with hope, with wisdom, with purpose.
