Responding to the Jesuits’ invitation to journey with young people, accompanying them in creating a hope-filled future, the Lane Center has centered hope in our programming this year. This issue of Pierless Bridges features voices of students, faculty, staff, and a Lane Center advisory board member reflecting on hope. As I have spent this year reflecting on the role of hope in Jesuit higher education, I am struck by the way the Jesuits, including Pope Francis, have connected hope to the action of journeying. Demonstrating his commitment to young people, Pope Francis invited the Catholic Church to journey with them in a particular way during the synod on young people, faith, and vocational discernment in 2018. After a period of listening, Francis spoke directly to young people in an apostolic post-synodal exhortation, “Christus Vivit”:
Our best dreams are only attained through hope, patience and commitment, and not in haste. At the same time, we should not be hesitant, afraid to take chances or make mistakes. Avoid the paralysis of the living dead, who have no life because they are afraid to take risks, to make mistakes or to persevere in their commitments. Even if you make mistakes, you can always get up and start over, for no one has the right to rob you of hope.
I share this quote because it offers insight for those of us in Jesuit higher education on how we might accompany students in creating a hope-filled future.
As educators, we are in a privileged position to listen to the dreams of young people. This happens in the classroom, during office hours or advising, on retreats and immersions. The Ignatian tradition naturally cultivates spaces to dream and imagine by emphasizing reflection and depth of thought. This quality and approach to education is increasingly counter-cultural as education is perceived by some as simply a means to an end.
We resist an instrumentalist view of education when we remind students that it is OK to make mistakes or take a detour from a preestablished path. Pope Francis wants young people to feel free from the fear of failure so they can take risks. We can help foster this freedom among our students when we remind them that they are more important than their achievements and share the ways we have grown through struggle and disappointment.
Finally, we can accompany young people when we defend their right to hope, as Pope Francis does. Our students today face many threats to hope — violence and war, climate crisis, ideology, and hate. But they show us the way to a hope-filled future through their activism, community engagement, and vision for change. As educators, perhaps our greatest role is to journey with them as they claim their right to hope.
ERIN BRIGHAM, director of the Joan and Ralph Lane Center and St. Ignatius Institute.
1. Pope Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Christus Vivit, (2018) 142.
