A series of events to celebrate Fordham’s Jesuit heritage gets underway on the Lincoln Center campus at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 28, the start of Ignatian Awareness Week, with a Mass celebrated by Gerald J. Chojnacki, S.J., provincial of the New York Society of Jesus, at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, 60th Street and Columbus Avenue.
The events, which include several lectures by Fordham’s Jesuit faculty members, and which continue through Feb. 2, are designed to help the community gain an appreciation of the Ignatian heritage through discussion, performance and religious observance. Event highlights include a discussion by George Drance, S.J., artist-in-residence in the Department of Theatre and Visual Arts, on his production of The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis. Also scheduled is an encore performance of Ordina questo amore, O tu che m’ami: Recitative with Four Voices, which Daniel Berrigan, S.J., Fordham’s poet-in-residence, penned in honor of the founding Jesuits, and which had its premiere in December at Fordham’s University Church.
Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, closes the celebrations on Feb. 2, when he dedicates a chapel on the Lincoln Center campus in honor of the German Jesuit, Blessed Rupert Mayer, S.J. Father Mayer was a former military chaplain who denounced Nazi ideology and was imprisoned in a concentration camp. He died in 1945.
Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J., adjunct associate professor of theology at Fordham, has written a series of essays on the Jesuit Jubilee Year 2006, available at FORDHAM magazine online. A full schedule of Ignatian Awareness Week events can be viewed at the home page of the Office of Campus Ministry.
– Janet Sassi
