Begin as you mean to go

August 22, 2019 | David Mengel

I was invited this year to participate in“Ignite” – the Sunday conclusion toManresa for new students.

The event’s name, I gather, evokes a famous (and spurious?) saying of Ignatius Loyola about starting fires.

So naturally I had hoped—in vain—that flames would be involved. (I knew, of course, that there would be no smoke.)

As the newly arrived students together recited the Student Commitment that morning, the obvious struck me: what I, after all these years, experience as seasonal—the start of yet another academic year—for the students represented a once-in-a-lifetime rite of passage, a tone-setting initiation into their college experience.

We do rituals well here at Xavier, and that’s important.

Manresa began last Thursday, with Fr. Graham's ceremonial welcome. If you’ve never witnessed his blessing to the new students and their parents, you should read it. Trust me: even the best prepared parents always succumb to its power.

And for those who didn’t know before that day what it means to be joining a Jesuit Catholic university, Fr. Graham’s frank words about racism and the legacy of slavery left no doubt.

Begin as you mean to go, a wise woman periodically reminds me. Indeed.

David Mengel

Students form two large circles by wrapping their arms around each other's shoulders. They are doing this as part of a new student orientation. They are outdoors in front of Gallagher Student Center.