Above: Fourteen sophomore through senior students attend an Ash Wednesday 2019 Mass overlooking Vatican City. Two alumni studying for the priesthood joined the students.
You won’t be on campus long before you encounter the word magis, one of our core Jesuit values. Magis means “more,” and in practice it leads people to strive for excellence, to be more. How can Georgetown help students embody and live out magis and other Jesuit values, such as a faith that does justice, a commitment to academic excellence and cura personalis—care for the whole person?
To enable students to do more, and be more, for others, the Office of Mission and Ministry offers MAGIS Immersion programs that integrate real-life experiences with Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit mission and values. MAGIS Immersion programs are also open to faculty and staff.
MAGIS Immersion programs have two frameworks: social justice and pilgrimage. In collaboration with the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service, MAGIS participants can witness first-hand the issues at the U.S.-Mexico border, work with social-service agencies in Lima and Cusco, Peru, or immerse themselves in other national and international locations to reflect on and work with the principles of social justice.
The Office of Mission and Ministry has recently begun offering MAGIS Immersion pilgrimages as well. This past year, one such immersion trip was a pilgrimage through the Eternal City—Rome.
Vice President for Mission and Ministry Mark Bosco, S.J., in collaboration with the Office of Global Education, taught a three-credit theology course called Rome: A Theology of Pilgrimage. It combined six weeks of in-depth classroom study on the theories, theologies and spiritualities of pilgrimage with an intense, one-week immersive experience in Rome over students’ spring break. From San Clemente to the Scavi, from St. Peter’s to St. Paul Fuori la Mura, this course connected learning and experience.
“This was not just a trip to Rome,” says Andrew Straky (C’20). “It was a remarkable exploration of faith and history in light of my broader experience at a Jesuit university. It felt like the culmination of my encounter with the Jesuit values at Georgetown, which have ensured a lifelong commitment to using my faith as a tool for helping others.”
In addition to Rome, the MAGIS program has brought students from the School of Nursing & Health Studies to the healing water of Lourdes, France. NHS students not only served as volunteers at the baths, but they reflected on how service and spirituality could impact their own understanding of what it means to be a nurse today.
“Going into the experience…spirituality wasn’t a part of my goal as a nurse really,” Nicole Chen (NHS’20) said in a Catholic Standard article about the trip. “It has really informed the way that I go through clinicals [in] nursing school. It’s the presence of being with a patient, just taking extra time to be with them and ask them how they’re doing. It’s very tangibly a part of how I practice nursing now.”
The Office of Mission and Ministry also coordinates immersion pilgrimages to Taizé, France, and continues to explore opportunities for future MAGIS Immersion pilgrimages.
To learn more about the MAGIS Immersion programs, visit missionandministry.georgetown.edu.
