Jonathan Mulrooney | English | College of the Holy Cross

A Traveling Company

     As John O'Malley's The First Jesuits points out, one of the great challenges for the founders of the order was to transform their itinerancy-the physical and spiritual capacity to go anywhere and do anything in the service of God-into another kind of life centered around permanent schools and institutes. Visiting the places so important to early Jesuit history, I realized that the challenge remains a vital one for Holy Cross, because the College must find ways to instill in its faculty, staff, and students a continual sense of movement: towards knowledge, towards justice, towards a deeper life of the spirit.

      The pilgrimage's overriding sense was just that: a physical, emotional, and intellectual movement that freed the pilgrims from the encumbrances of daily life and enabled us to form a new and enduring community. The friendships I developed with colleagues, both senior and junior, Catholic and non-Catholic, emerged not simply from close proximity and ongoing conversation, but from a shared encounter with a history that mattered to all of us. The setting of our interactions-places that spoke of the spiritual and historical legacies of the Jesuits-gave even our lightest moments a kind of palpable ethical and moral dimension. If before the trip we had not recognized that dimension in the midst of our teaching, advising, and committee assignments, the lessons of the pilgrimage have not been forgotten as we have returned to those duties. We are a College, but we are also something more: a traveling company.