Welcome to the start of a new school year fellow students!
As we each work through selecting classes, buying books, negotiating work schedules, I hope that we will keep in mind our goals so that the intensity of our study won’t burn us out within the first few weeks. Heavy reading schedules can take a toll on the mind, I know. So maybe you came to DSPT with a particular purpose… either for a MA to go off and teach or pursue further education, or to enrich your own personal understanding of faith or philosophy, maybe to continue your discernment of Religious life and progress towards ordination into the priesthood; maybe you don’t know why you’re here, just felt it was close and convenient to home… or came with one goal and have been reoriented towards another major altogether. Its all a journey, and the professors are walking through their own wanderings of life with us as we go.
As abstract as this often sounds to those I address, I do believe that our goal is excellence here at DSPT. Not just academics, though those exercises should be stretching and improving our capacities to learn, but relationally too. My goal as ASDSPT president this year is to help dream up, inspire and facilitate a deeper sort of community here. Half of our student body is only here for between 2 and 3 years. So its often a transitional community. I don’t know about you, but when I am aware that a good thing is going to come to an end, I often hold my heart back so as not to lose it when I leave. But yet, Jesus knew His time was short on earth and He came to love, and gave up all to do so. So I have a challenge to propose for all of us this semester: love a little more.
I’m not asking you to give up your life, to sacrifice your commitments, or to make drastic renegotiations in your schedule this semester because you are at DSPT as a student, faculty member, or staff: I would just love to see us try and live a little more like Jesus with all the academic integrity and excellent application of brainpower we can muster. Remember that love is a disposition, not a definitive action (see 1 Corinthians 13): it is the way we approach situations, not just what we do in those situations.
May the light of Christ ignite your hearts as you muster towards the start of a new semester!
In the Hands of Jesus,
Hannah Mecaskey, ASDSPT President
Remember: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” C.S. Lewis
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