Title:The Last Word

Christopher Steck, S.J., Thomas J. Healey Family Distinguished Professor in Ethical Studies, on “unfolding stories”

One of the hats I wear at Georgetown is that of residential minister. I love being a dorm chaplain, particularly since my dorm (New South) houses not just any ol’ students but first-years. I joke that my favorite classes at Georgetown are first semester freshmen and second semester seniors.

It’s been a gift to share a living space with the former. Only three months or so out of high school, the firstyears arrive on the Hilltop and are quickly immersed in a demanding social and intellectual environment. They endeavor—sometimes deftly, sometimes awkwardly—to find their group and way of belonging, gain their footing in the classroom, and attend to all those projects and activities that beckon beyond it. Being with these students allows me to experience, if indirectly, the excitement of encountering a new intellectual landscape, the challenge of negotiating new and fragile relationships, and the struggle to overcome academic disappointment and social heartbreak.

I often refer to my ministry in New South as a “shift of gears.” Much of my professional life can lean toward the cerebral—class preparation, research in animal ethics, editing an academic journal. But dorm ministry is different: It requires less head and more heart as I try to meet students where they are.

Pope Francis once encouraged priests to “be shepherds with the smell of sheep.” If there is any part of my life where I get close to that exhortation, I suspect it’s my work in the dorm. The “sheep” of New South bring their own particular smells that regularly waft up and down the hallways—sometimes invitingly and sometimes… less so. They serve as token signs of the remarkable stories unfolding around me as a special group of students begin a new stage in life’s pilgrimage.

I hope that all of my work at Georgetown, somehow and in some way, serves the greater glory of God. But I think residential ministry is privileged in at least one sense: It reflects the movement of the God whom I strive to follow—a God who wants to keep getting close, not just to the elevated and distinctively spiritual parts of our stories but to the quotidian and seemingly commonplace events that fill them.