29 minute read
community
SuSTEMability
Fairfield engineers bring sustainability science to local elementary and middle school students.
by Sara Colabella ’08, MA’11
It’s a cool and rainy April afternoon, but Bridgeport’s Wakeman Boys & Girls Club gymnasium is a buzzing hive of activity.
Assistant professor of electrical and biomedical engineering John Drazan, PhD, and a group of Fairfield engineering students known as “SuSTEMability fellows” arrive to a swarm of excited children running toward them screaming, “The engineers are here!”
Made possible by the E2 Energy to Educate Grant offered through Constellation Energy (a leading competitive energy company that provides power, natural gas, renewable energy, and energy management products and services), SuSTEMability is a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) outreach program that engages Fairfield’s School of Engineering students and faculty with students and educators from Bridgeport’s Cesar Batalla School and Wakeman Boys & Girls Club — with a particular focus on sustainable energy and environmental efforts within engineering.
Mentored by Fairfield engineering undergraduates in this community-engaged learning experience, elementary and middle school students acquire technical skills, hone their critical thinking skills, learn basic statistical techniques, and develop a fundamental understanding of science, sustainability, and engineering concepts.
“We’re putting our first-years and sophomores in a position of trust to serve as mentors, which is phenomenally important,” said Dr. Drazan.
Led by the engineering professor and fellows Lorenzo Arabia ’25, Abigail Diltz ’25, Kobi Oktobi ’23, Margaret Millar ’25, and Megan Rourke ’24, each Wakeman session kicks off with an athletic activity such as basketball, to illustrate how STEM principles relate to sports. The sessions then transition into engineering and sustainability lessons.
Using activities like basketball helps young participants see and understand engineering concepts. “We spend the first couple of sessions getting to know the students and incorporating STEM by asking them how buildings and various objects are created, how basketball shots are made, or how the gym is lit up,” explained Rourke.
Following the engineering discussions, the fellows engage their students in activities that apply the concepts they learned – things like basketball layup drills, or building solar cars and fans which are then tested out in the gymnasium.
“What is really cool is that we are doing a lot of hands-on building, where the students have the opportunity to not only measure their basketball performance but also build sustainable systems like a solar car or a solar windmill station,” said Dr. Drazen. “The students are able to collect their own data and see tangibly how they can design these types of systems in a micro scale version, and hopefully apply these lessons in their future careers.”
“We encourage the students to be bold in their curiosity. We’ve been able to focus on breaking into our groups and talking about how each student can make their own difference in the world by being a hero for those that will live in it after us,” said Rourke.
At Cesar Batalla School, Associate Professor Uma Balaji, PhD, and associate dean Elif Kongar, PhD, program director of Management of Technology, joined SuSTEMability fellows Isabella Carrano ’24, Brianna Duswalt ’23, and Dermot Warner ’24 to engage middle school students in classroom lessons, including one taught solely in Spanish. Topics included: the use of Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps for energy conservation, how motors and gears work in relation to solar energy, sources of renewable energy, and the responsible use of energy. “Seeing how excited the kids were about engineering and seeing their efforts come to fruition has been an amazing experience,” said Duswalt of the hands-on classroom activities that included creating LED circuit boards, hand crank generators, solar cars, and solar fans. “This experience has allowed me and the other fellows to inform future generations on how they can reduce their ecological footprint by small daily changes,” said Carrano. “The SuSTEMability program allows us to expose youth to STEM education and excite them to create change in the world.”
At the School of Engineering, students are taught to be engineers with a higher purpose: they are not only trained in technical skills and knowledge, they are challenged to think about the impact they can make in the community.
Said Dr. Kongar, “Engagement in highquality science education is critical to attracting students to the sciences, yet these enrichment opportunities are seldom accessible to populations presently underrepresented in STEM. SuSTEMability addresses both these issues by providing students from diverse backgrounds an understanding of sustainable engineering through age-appropriate enrichment opportunities that illustrate our role — as individuals and as a community — in building a climate-safe renewable future.” l FLeft: Through this outreach program, Fairfield engineering students teach STEM using activities to help kids see and understand the concepts.
Brianna Duswalt ’23
Above: Students built miniature solar cars, fans, LED circuit boards, and crank generators.
Joe Frager cuts down the net following the Stags’ MAAC Championship win.
A NEW FRONTIER
HEAD COACH JOE FRAGER’S FINAL SEASON WITH THE STAGS GOES INTO THE BOOKS AS ARGUABLY THE BEST IN THE HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD WOMEN’S BASKETBALL.
by Drew M. Kingsley ’07
March 12, 2020. Fresh off of a 72-56 win over Siena in the quarterfinals of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Championship, Fairfield Women’s Basketball came off the court at Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J., expecting to begin preparations for the next day’s semifinal contest. Instead, the Stags were met with the sobering reality that they had played the final game of their season — and, in fact, the last game played to completion in all of college basketball — as the MAAC, the NCAA, and much of the country began their response to the emerging Covid-19 pandemic.
Exactly two years later, on March 12, 2022, the Stags were back at Boardwalk Hall watching the final seconds tick down on a 73-68 victory over Manhattan. Only this time around, it was not the last game of the campaign, the tears shed were only in triumph and celebration, and the new frontier that lay ahead for the Stags was the team’s first trip to the NCAA Tournament in more than two decades.
“We’ve been together for a long time and we’ve been through a lot,” said MAAC Player of the Year and Championship MVP Lou Lopez Senechal ’22 in the postgame press conference. “Obviously, it wasn’t easy to have the tournament shut down like that, but we knew that we had to stick together and that one day we would get it, and that’s what we did today. We made history.”
Fairfield’s 2021-22 season was set to be historic before it began, as Head Coach Joe Frager announced three weeks prior to tip-off that his 15th season at the helm of the Stags would be his last. “After much consideration, I have decided to retire at the conclusion of the 2021-22 season,” he said in a statement. “As always, I am totally committed to maximizing the potential of this year’s team and helping us attain our goals together. I believe in this group of young women, and I look forward to tackling the challenges that we will face this season.”
In the non-conference portion of the season, those challenges included a grueling schedule featuring visits to Big Ten foes Indiana and Rutgers, a trip to Orlando to meet a Florida Gulf Coast team that went on to win an NCAA Tournament game, and a clash with eventual Atlantic 10 Champion UMass. The result was an average 3-5 record heading into MAAC play, but also a team brimming with confidence that it had sparred with the best and come out better for it.
And as the calendar turned to the league slate, the wins came with it. A victory over perennial power Marist, the first win over Quinnipiac in Hamden in eight years, and a convincing 17-point triumph over Iona capped the month of December. January’s tests included a two-game sweep of the MAAC’s infamous Buffalo trip — back-to-back wins at Niagara and Canisius.
The Stags reached 7-0 in the MAAC before a rare misstep at Siena in mid-January, but the detour proved slight as Fairfield stormed through the back half of the conference schedule. This run featured a 75-72 nail-biter against Niagara and overtime contests with Canisius and Quinnipiac, all ending with the same result: Stags win.
The victories — 12 in a row to cap an unprecedented 19-1 MAAC record — bore plenty of spoils. Frager was named the MAAC Coach of the Year, Lopez Senechal scored 20 or more points in 12 league games on her way to MAAC Player of the Year honors, and the duo of Rachel Hakes ’21, M’22 and Callie Cavanaugh ’21 joined her as All-MAAC honorees. But the most important accolade of all was the top seed in the upcoming MAAC Tournament, an event that the Stags had not won since the 1997-98 campaign.
Down in Atlantic City, three more wins separated the Stags from their first taste of March Madness in 21 years, and first MAAC Championship in 24 seasons. First up was a motivated Iona team that took advantage of foul trouble for Lopez Senechal to stay in striking distance in the first half. But in the absence of their leading scorer, the Stags looked to another veteran to shoulder the load as Hakes — one of the nation’s top distributors with 5.5 assists per game — took on the scoring mantle to the tune of 26 points to power Fairfield into the semifinals.
Just as MAAC opponents struggled to slow down the Stags, neither a day off nor an early 11 a.m. tip-off could derail Fairfield in its next outing. A 21-2 run in the first half set the Stags in motion, and they led by as many as 42 points in a 75-38 thrashing of Niagara to set up Saturday’s championship game against Manhattan.
Now just 40 minutes from their goal, the Stags and Jaspers had the back-andforth clash that fans expect from a MAAC Championship contest. Manhattan opened up a 17-8 lead in the first quarter and maintained a lead into the final minute of the third before a Cavanaugh jumper knotted the score at 47-47 heading into the fourth frame. The Stags pounced in the final stanza, building a double-digit lead as Cavanaugh, Sydney Lowery M’22, and Andrea Hernangomez ’22 poured in key baskets, and Sam Lewis ’20, M’22 drained the final free throws to cap off a 73-68 championship triumph.
“I’m so proud of these kids,” Frager said, donning a MAAC Championship cap and
above from left to right: The Stags celebrate after the final horn in Atlantic City; the 2022 MAAC Champions; Rachel Hakes ’21, M’22 and Coach Frager embrace at center court.
fresh off of cutting down the nets at Boardwalk Hall. “I’ve said from the beginning that I just wanted this for them. Whether we won today or didn’t, I couldn’t be disappointed in this group with what they did throughout the entire season. But the fact that they were able to come through this way is just a great capper. It’s a lot of work to do what we do. It’s a lot of fun, it’s a lot of stress at times. But we’ve got a great staff, a great group of young women, and we got it done.”
The Stags went on to the NCAA Tournament, drawing the daunting and unenviable task of challenging Big XII Champion Texas in Austin. But despite the first round loss to the host Longhorns, the 2021-22 campaign makes its way into the record books as arguably the best in the history of Fairfield Women’s Basketball.
And for Frager, who hangs up his whistle with 454 wins over 24 seasons — not to mention a Division II National Championship from his days at Southern Connecticut — the tears shed are again only in triumph and celebration. And the new frontier?
A NEW COACH
Carly Thibault-DuDonis has been named the head coach of the Fairfield University Women’s Basketball program. Thibault-DuDonis most recently served as the associate head coach and recruiting coordinator at the University of Minnesota. She becomes the third Division I head coach in Fairfield program history.
In four seasons at Minnesota, ThibaultDuDonis brought three nationally ranked recruiting classes to Minnesota — including a current incoming class that ranks 10th in the nation — and the first two five-star recruits in program history. Thibault-DuDonis was the team’s defensive coordinator.
Prior to her time at Minnesota, she was a part of back-to-back NCAA appearances by Mississippi State University, as a member of Head Coach Vic Schaefer’s staff; she also worked under Head Coach Tory Verdi at Eastern Michigan University, during which time the Eagles made a pair of WNIT appearances as well as a trip to the 2015 Mid-American Conference Championship Game.
Thibault-DuDonis began her collegiate career at Florida State University as director of Recruiting Operations in the 2013-14 season.
A standout at East Lyme High School in Connecticut, Thibault-DuDonis played collegiately at Monmouth University. She earned All-Northeast Conference Third Team honors and was named the NEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year as a senior. Her father Mike Thibault is currently the head coach of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics. The three-time WNBA Coach of the Year previously coached the Connecticut Sun and has been an assistant coach in the NBA for the Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls, and Milwaukee Bucks.
HUMANITIES AT WORK
ALUMNI WITH HUMANITIES DEGREES FOLLOW THEIR PATHS TO BUILD CAREERS THEY LOVE
by Tess (Brown) Long ’07, MFA’11
In today’s rapidly evolving world and job market, a degree in the humanities still offers graduates the keys to wherever they’d like to go.
In fact, according to annual data on median salaries compiled by The Wall Street Journal, humanities majors surge ahead midcareer in comparison to many professional school graduates. According to testing agencies, humanities graduates outpace other academic subgroups in GMAT, LSAT, and GRE exam results.
At Fairfield, the humanities are not a department, but rather, a combination of studies around human cultures, expression, and thought — specifically, the study of history, philosophy, religious studies, languages, and visual and performing arts.
“The intellectual rigor and creativity of the humanities have long prepared students to be leaders in a variety of careers,” said Nels Pearson, PhD, professor of English and director of the Humanities Institute at Fairfield. The institute was created by a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant in 1983, to support teacher-scholars in humanistic inquiry.
Here is a look at some recent Fairfield humanities alumni and the routes they have taken towards achieving success in their careers and lives.
MATTHEW WALDEMAR ’20
Major: Art History Occupation: Gallery Assistant at Marianne Boesky Gallery
Matthew Waldemar ’20 grew up in a home filled with vibrant Haitian arts and crafts, and tagged along with his mother as she taught art workshops and shared her passion with others. So, he felt he wanted to develop his interest in art with a course of study at college.
“I want to give people the same reaction that I had when I first saw this,” Waldemar said, lifting a Haitian Steel Drum sculpture — called Fe Dékoupé — of birds in flight on an ornate tree into the frame, during a Zoom interview with Fairfield University Magazine.
Raised in Fairfield County, Waldemar found his way to the University by chance and became a member of the Academic Immersion Program for first-generation students.
Once he matriculated full-time, Waldemar overcame some initial challenges with the support of the Office of Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, and decided to stick it out. He then studied abroad in Italy where he took a roster of art history courses and something just clicked.
“That’s how I became an art history major,” Waldemar said, smiling. Once back on campus, he volunteered at the Fairfield University Art Museum, held internships at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Conn., and at local galleries, and connected with instructors in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts.
Waldemar joined the Humanities Seminar, which is a research and mentorship program for students under the aegis of the Humanities Institute. His seminar project was to curate an art exhibition in the spring of 2020. Over the course of a year, Waldemar built a lineup of artists’ work from across the U.S. to appear in his show on campus, but due to the pandemic, he had to shift modalities from an in-person gallery to an online experience. Waldemar’s exhibit, Bawdy Project: A Study of Masculinity through the Canon of Art, was the University’s first student-curated contemporary art exhibition.
“I wanted to highlight this reimagination of the ‘male gaze,’” said Waldemar, who identifies as queer. “I wanted to show that contemporary artists, of varied disciplines, had already been questioning notions of masculinity.”
“I’m really happy that I did it,” he went on, “because it gave me a sense of confidence.”
Currently, Waldemar has earned a spot as a gallery assistant at the Marianne Boesky Gallery (MBG) in New York City, which represents more than 30 esteemed artists of different generations and backgrounds from around the globe. The MBG, founded in 1996, has a commitment to — and focus on — equality, diversity, and inclusion goals, as well as environmental objectives.
“What attracted me most to my current position was the gallery’s programming,” Waldemar said. “The owner wanted to build in some initiatives, from bias training to better hiring practices, to diversify the staff but also the talents brought to the gallery.”
A founding member of the Alumni of Color Network at Fairfield University, Waldemar has his sights set on becoming a public curator with an aim to “activate public spaces and bring art outside from institutions.”
“Museum-quality, great art can be accessible anywhere, to anyone,” Waldemar said. “People can enjoy these great things in their own backyard.”
left: Matthew Waldemar ’20 near the Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea, New York City. below: Waldemar standing near the entrance of The High Line, an elevated park and greenway featuring public art in Manhattan.
— Matthew Waldemar ’20
ASHLEY TOOMBS ’07
Major: Spanish and International Studies Occupation: Director of External Affairs, BRAC USA
Atypical day for Ashley Toombs ’07, BRAC USA’s director of external affairs, starts with early morning calls to connect with colleagues in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
BRAC — originally the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee — is an international nonprofit that provides people living in poverty with tools and support to create better lives for themselves.
For the past 50 years, BRAC has served 100 million people in 11 countries, with a particular focus on women and girls. They’ve achieved this by disbursing microloans to more than 7 million people, empowering youth through skill-building programs, providing healthcare, educating children, and training farmers.
Toombs travels often, both domestically and internationally, to represent BRAC at events
and conferences, and to manage relationships with other global and strategic foundations and philanthropists.
“I feel so fortunate to get to travel for my work,” she said over Zoom. “I get to spend time with fascinating people from different places who may look different than me, but at the end of the day, we’re all human. To feel that connection with people from all over the world — to have that chance — is such a gift.”
When she spoke with Fairfield University Magazine, Toombs had recently returned from a trip to Bangladesh where she was visiting the sites of climate change programs in the Southern coast of the country, one of the most climate change-affected places on the planet.
While there, Toombs visited BRAC projects she works with that provide access to clean water, through reverse osmosis water treatment plants or rainwater harvesting at the household level, for crop irrigation and human and livestock consumption.
“What I love about what I do is that I find it deeply intellectually challenging,” Toombs said about her broad role at BRAC, where she’s worked since 2015. “My brain is constantly being taxed, whether I’m manipulating a spread sheet, or I’m working with a team in another country who is thinking hard about a systemic challenge that historically the world has said, ‘we can’t fix this.’”
Toombs, who now lives just outside New York City with her husband and their two small children, majored in Spanish and international studies at Fairfield, and minored in Latin American and Caribbean studies. She was a recipient of the Loyola Medal and the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Diversity Award.
“Studying the humanities makes you question everything,” said Toombs, who spent four and a half years with the Peace Corps in South America and then earned her master’s degree in environmental science and policy from Columbia University. “You can feel very small in the world, but in a way that’s really beautiful.”
— Ashley Toombs ’07
far left: Waldemar in front of The Baayfalls Mural 2017/2019, by Jordan Casteel, W 22nd St - High Line. left: Ashley Toombs ’07 at the BRAC USA headquarters in lower Manhattan. below: Toombs, a Spanish and international studies major at Fairfield, talks with a BRAC colleague.
— Jason Mancini ’94, PhD
JASON MANCINI ’94, PHD
Major: History Occupation: Executive Director, Connecticut Humanities; Co-Founder, Akomawt Educational Initiative
Wind gusts rattled the rigging aboard the Charles W. Morgan, an American whaling ship built in 1841, moored in Mystic, Conn.
Jason Mancini ’94 was one of the voyagers who spent some time on the Morgan during its 38th voyage in 2014 from Provincetown to Boston; the ship is now largely a historic exhibition vessel. A longtime partner of the Seaport Museum, Dr. Mancini’s research into the lives and history of Native American mariners brought him to the Morgan restoration project, where he worked with other scholars and museum professionals.
Since 2018, he’s also been the executive
director of Connecticut Humanities, an independent, non-profit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which aims to connect people and ideas through grants, partnerships, and sponsorship of collaborative programs throughout the state.
Dr. Mancini manages a $23M annual budget. This past year, his office awarded operating support grants to 632 arts and humanities organizations across Connecticut, in partnership with the CT Office of the Arts.
“It’s really about teaching people how to tell better stories,” Dr. Mancini said about what his role at the helm ultimately boils down to, as he walked with Fairfield University Magazine through the Seaport campus.
“Teaching people how to tell a better story about Native People, with Native People,” he continued, “and helping different organizations to manage their collections, to make them more accessible.”
To that end, Dr. Mancini co-founded Akomawt Educational Initiative, a non-profit group dedicated to furthering knowledge of Native America.
Dr. Mancini grew up in Ledyard, Conn., and spent his boyhood summers cleaning and categorizing artifacts in the lab of his uncle — tribal archaeologist, Kevin McBride, PhD — at the University of Connecticut (UConn). When he was 14, he did his first field season excavating the site where Foxwoods Casino now stands on the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation, part of the Mashantucket Pequot Ethnohistory Project to document 13,000 years of cultural continuity on the reservation.
The 1994 Fairfield alumnus holds a doctorate as well as a master’s degree in anthropology from UConn and is currently the Mellon Visiting Fellow in Slavery and Justice at Brown University.
Father of two college-aged daughters, Dr. Mancini said he’s had long talks with them about what and where to study. But it all comes down to following one’s passions and interests, and going after inspiration.
“The humanities can create paths to almost anything,” he noted. “The critical thinking skills, the adaptability, the curiosity, the ability to see and gauge nuance in life is rooted in humanities. You can take that anywhere.” l F Learn more at Fairfield.edu/humanities.
above: Jason Mancini ’94 in front of the Charles W. Morgan — America’s oldest commercial ship still afloat — at the Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Conn. left: Dr. Mancini researches Native American mariners and is a longtime partner of the Seaport Museum.
Aging with Grace
by Jeannine (Carolan) Graf ’87
Morning sunlight streamed through the office window of Rev. John Murray, S.J.,’76, assistant director of the Murphy Center for Ignatian Spirituality, as he welcomed his “Aging With Grace” class participants onto their Zoom call the week after Easter.
The two dozen or so retirees in attendance ranged in age from 65 to 87 years old. Most, but not all, were Catholic. A few, like Bob Laska ’69, were alumni. Many, like Joan Bolger, have been a part of the “Aging With Grace” community since the program began in 2018.
“Aging with Grace” is a semester-long course that meets twice a month for an hour and a half. Offered through the Murphy Center and rooted firmly in Ignatian tradition, the online class is open to retirees of all faiths who seek to deepen their relationship with God and enrich their daily lives. Using prayer, assigned readings, and personal reflection, Fr. Murray guides participants through an exploration of the spiritual dynamics of growing older.
A Murphy Center program helps retirees to deepen their spiritual lives.
“When Fr. Murray first offered this class, I was immediately intrigued by the name,” said Bolger. “Certainly we can’t deny that we are aging, and to think we could do it gracefully was consoling.”
During this particular session, Bolger shared a story about a stranger in the supermarket parking lot who had witnessed her shopping list whisked out of her hand by a gust of wind; the gentleman ran to chase the little piece of paper, stopped it with his foot, and returned it to her. “For some reason, that touched me tremendously,” she said, vowing to pay the gesture forward. “We can’t fix [large issues like] Ukraine, but we can live in the world that I’m so grateful to be in, and pass on some form of kindness whenever possible.”
Finding God in all things — especially the little things — is the order of the day in “Aging With Grace.” With assigned readings by authors who have an Ignatian bent or background, Fr. Murray described the course as “kind of a book club, and also an invitation for individuals to look at the readings in a reflective prayer context – not just an intellectual context.”
Now in its seventh semester, the class originally met on campus, in person. At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Fr. Murray switched to Zoom and the group is still online today. With a mix of local and out-of-state attendees, conducting the program virtually allows Fr. Murray to meet all the participants wherever they are.
“The class has evolved into a community of like-minded people sharing very deeply their own spiritual journeys and feelings,” said Fr. Murray. “They’re not all Catholic, but all men and women searching for a relationship with God as they conceive God to be, which is a wonderful thing.” L ook around a church on any given Sunday, and you’re bound to notice that the “regulars” in the pews are mostly older adults. Yet, pick up a parish bulletin and you’ll see it’s filled with religious education classes for children. Rarely are there programs designed to help senior citizens deepen their spiritual lives. This is where “Aging With Grace” comes in.
“Each person’s spiritual journey is unique and in the uniqueness, of course, is a developing relationship with Jesus that grows, depending on a person’s willingness to explore it deeper,” Fr. Murray said. “That can be as true for 20-year-olds as for an 80-year-old.”
Participants in the program are at a point in their lives when the path forward is shorter than the roads they’ve traveled. As retirees, they are free from the demands of a job and the pressure to succeed, but grapple with the health issues and limitations of growing old. As family elders, they rejoice at weddings and the births of grandchildren, but also mourn the loss of spouses, loved ones, and peers. As senior citizens, they’re grateful for the wisdom afforded them by age, but fearful of the specter of isolation in this chapter of their lives.
As noted by one class member on the springtime Zoom session, the assigned readings and class discussions in “Aging With Grace” encourage participants to balance fear with hope, offset guilt with gratitude, and soothe feelings of uncertainty and helplessness. As a result, members of the program have bonded into a tightknit community.
“The people in this group have become family for me,” said participant Jill Gecker. “They are good faith-filled people and with that comes a sense of comfort and trust. In this group we can be vulnerable; there is no judgment at all. I don’t usually share much, but we can simply ‘be,’ and that’s okay, too.”
“We’ve all become such good listeners,” agreed classmate Barbara Kiernan. “Fr. John doesn’t comment after every person takes a turn to speak; he usually just says, ‘thank you.’ It’s so respectful – and such a good example to us of how the very act of listening opens up space for God.”
A 1976 alumnus of Fairfield University, Fr. John Murray has led “Aging With Grace” for the past three and a half years.
Members of the “Aging With Grace” community are heeding the call of 85-year-old Pope Francis, who recently implored his peers: “Dear grandparents, dear elderly persons, we are called to be artisans of the revolution of tenderness in our world! Let us do so by learning to make ever more frequent and better use of the most valuable instrument at our disposal and, indeed, the one best suited to our age: prayer.”
Echoing his assertion of the importance of community in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, the pope continued, “Many of us have come to a sage and humble realization of what our world very much needs: the recognition that we are not saved alone, and that happiness is a bread we break together.”
The pope’s words are part of his message for the Church’s second annual World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, which will take place on Sunday, July 24, close to the feast day of Saints Anne and Joachim, grandparents of Jesus. The theme for the day is taken from Psalm 92:15, “In old age they will still bear fruit.”
Back on Fairfield’s campus on that sunny springtime morning, Fr. Murray reflected on the gifts he’s received through the “Aging With Grace” program. “It has enriched me in my own spiritual journey,” he said, “and it has allowed me to get to know a variety of people that I never would have gotten to know. In some ways, it’s like an online parish.” l F The Murphy Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Fairfield University offers spiritual direction and promotes vibrant expressions of Ignatian spirituality at individual and group levels, both on campus and in Diocese of Bridgeport parishes. For more information about the “Aging With Grace” program, please visit the Murphy Center’s webpage at fairfield.edu/mcis or email mcis@fairfield.edu.
Rev. John Murray, S.J.,’76, Assistant Director of the Murphy Center for Ignatian Spirituality
