“Some people think [hip-hop and God] are completely disconnected. But when we actually come to look at both, we try to see God in all things, and this is one way of doing that,” Martínez, FCRH ’13, said in an interview before the main event.

On Oct. 25, Martínez returned to his alma mater to share how he blends hip-hop with Ignatian spirituality. 

Under Flom Auditorium’s stage lights, he performed several original songs and spoke to alumni, faculty, staff, and students at Fordham’s Ignatian Week event “Prophetic Fire: The Power of Hip-Hop, Media, and Faith,” sponsored by Campus Ministry and the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies.  

“One of the main missions that you have as a Jesuit scholastic and as a Jesuit, period, is to set hearts on fire. Set hearts on fire with love …  for something greater than yourself,” Martínez said. “For me, music is one powerful way [of doing that]. It’s a universal language that speaks and crosses borders, cultures, and even language. It connects with people.” 

Martínez, a Cuban American from Miami, graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill with degrees in philosophy and psychology in 2013. Later that year, he joined the Society of Jesus in the Antilles Province (Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Miami). He currently serves as a theology teacher and campus minister at his high school alma mater, Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, in Miami. 

For more information about Martínez, visit his website: http://www.mikemartinezsj.com. 

“What Matters to Me (and Why),” a series of lunch-time discussions held at the Lincoln Center, Rose Hill, and Westchester campuses, was part of the programming tied to Ignatian Heritage Week.

For Anne Fernald, Ph.D., special advisor to the provost for faculty development, and Debra McPhee, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Social Service, their talk at the Lincoln Center Campus centered on three Cs: contribution, community, and change.

The Three Cs

They kicked off the afternoon by asking the audience how they contribute to their community. McPhee noted that recent studies show that the feeling of making a tangible contribution to society has a greater effect on people’s happiness than any other variable.

“It’s kind of a shocking thing, right? You’d think it’d be health or money, or something like family. But it’s really contribution that was the most significant element, whether the person is in the workplace or out of the workplace,” she said.

“It resonates with both me and Anne in terms of what drives us to be in the profession we’re in, and the work we do at Fordham.”

Of course, the concept of the community that one might contribute to has changed radically in recent years. Fernald recounted how she’d reunited this summer with a friend she hadn’t seen in 20 years. The meeting only happened because they realized, via Facebook, that they were going to be visiting the same upstate New York region at the same time.

Her friend was dropping her son off at a camp for trampoline enthusiasts. He had developed a passion for the activity, and bonded over it with other campers, via videos of their exploits shared on Instagram. Up until that point, though, he’d never met them person.

“When he got out of the car, she said it was amazing. There were a dozen other 14-year-old boys who saw him, and said ‘Emmitt’s here!’ And they all enveloped him in this giant hug, and then went over the trampoline to show each other their flips in person.” Fernald said.

“So, when we think about community for our students, it’s not the same kind of community that’s anything like what any of us grew up in.”

Beware the Temptation to Restrict Your Circle

McPhee said a major challenge for older generations is appreciating the positive aspects of online life while acknowledging the pitfalls. Older generations’ conceptions of community were constrained by geography, and were therefore more limited, whereas young people can be pickier and limit their circle to say, only fellow teenage male trampoline enthusiasts. There is a potential downside to this, she said.

“When you can pick from the whole world, most are going to pick those that are like you, as opposed to those that are different. So do we navigate that difference better because we have a more global perspective, or do we actually restrict ourselves because we just sing to the choir and go to the people who are interested in what we’re interested in? I don’t know that we have an answer to that,” she said.

Embrace Change

All of this leads to the third C, which is change. Long gone are the days when educators are the keepers of information, said McPhee.

“My students can Google anything I’m going to tell them before they walk into a classroom, so what does that do to the nature of what we’re doing? That “sage on the stage” bit gets challenged quite a bit in terms of what it means for the entire institution, how we react to teach other, how we see our own jobs, and how we see change.”

That, said Fernald, is why the class environment is more important than ever: She challenged everyone to imagine ways to make the classroom an occasion for students to imagine themselves as each other’s colleagues in learning. Both acknowledged how easy it is to accept the narrative that says that anyone under 30 is not engaged in the world, is not a critical thinker, and is not engaged in community. It’s a narrative that should be rejected.

“Those in charge of the education need to bring their whole self to it, and say ‘This is hard for me, it doesn’t resonate with me, but I need to look at the gap. I need to look at the difference,” McPhee said.

“The current challenge in front of us is, how we engage that narrative, and how we engage the change that’s right in front of us.”

It was a day of reflection for staff, faculty and students throughout the Fordham community. Dorothy Marinucci, associate vice president for presidential operations, and John Kezel, Ph.D., director of the Office of Prestigious Fellowships, hosted a What Matters to Me luncheon at the Rose Hill campus. Stephen McGowan, recruiter and admissions associate at the Graduate School of Social Service, and Joan Cavanagh, Ph.D., director of spiritual and pastoral ministries in the Office of Campus Ministry, hosted one at the Westchester campus.

From Feb. 3 to Feb. 11, members of the Fordham community are invited to participate in a series of educational, recreational, and arts activities at the Rose Hill, Lincoln Center, and Westchester campuses. The festivities aim to bring students and staff together with Fordham Jesuits while honoring the legacy of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Ignatian Week also aims to highlight the Jesuit values that have guided the University since its founding.

“Ignatian Week helps our community look at how we can apply the fruits of our Ignatian traditions in our life—both at Fordham and beyond,” said Erin Hoffman, associate director of campus ministry and director of Ignatian Initiatives. “It’s a chance to look at how we can connect what we do at Fordham, either as students or staff, to the greater world in which we live.”

The celebration is sponsored by the Division of Mission Integration and Planning and Campus Ministry in collaboration with several University partners. Ignatian Week is primarily driven by students this year, said Hoffman.

“Our committee wanted to create something that would be constructive and move toward healing and inclusivity instead of topics that can cause division,” she said.

Ignatian Week kicks off on Feb. 3 at Rose Hill’s Squash Courts with a dodgeball battle between Jesuits and students. This year, students will screen short films about what living for others means to them in the inaugural event, “#GetReel: Living for Others Student Film Festival,” which will be held on Feb. 9.

Participants will also come together for an escape the room challenge focused on Ignatian principles on Feb. 6 and Feb. 11.  In addition to a Jesuit storytelling event including three generations of Jesuits, the week will feature a Q&A session with James Martin, S.J., contributing editor of America magazine. The talk, which centers on how to listen like a Jesuit to engage in constructive conversations, will be moderated by a Fordham student.

Hoffman hopes the festivities will help students and staff become more acclimated with the University’s values and mission.

“A Fordham education is not just in service of yourself but in service of the greater community and the greater world,” she said. “How we’re using the work that we do at the University and elsewhere is important.”

 Click here to view a full list of Ignatian Week events.  

Outside, more than three dozen Salvadoran soldiers had surrounded the University of Central America’s (UCA) Pastoral Center, where the six priests lived. Forcing their way into the quiet residence, the soldiers dragged the Jesuits outside and ordered them to lie facedown on the ground.

That morning, the world awakened to news of the most gruesome attack in El Salvador since the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. The six Jesuits had been executed in their front garden, while their cook Julia Elba Ramos and her 15-year-old daughter Celina—who had taken refuge at the residence after fleeing violence near their own home—had been shot to death in the bed they shared.

A Commitment to Justice

November marks 25 years since the killings, which have become emblematic of the civil war that ravaged El Salvador in the 1980s. An estimated 75,000 Salvadorans were killed in the decade-long war between a people’s movement and a U.S.-backed military government.

Father Ellacuría and his fellow Jesuits had responded to the violence by transforming UCA into a source of information about the political, economic, and social problems plaguing El Salvador. They documented the kidnappings, torture, and mass killings committed by military “death squads” and offered UCA as a venue for open debate.

“Father Ellacuría envisioned a new kind of university, one that focused all of its resources on what he called the ‘national reality,’” said Charles Currie, S.J., former president of Wheeling College and Xavier University. “He said the university had to be committed to teaching, doing research, and engaging in social outreach.”

Justice has always been at the heart of the Jesuit ethos, Father Currie said, but the dire situation in Latin America called for something radical. In 1975, Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Superior General of the Society of Jesus, called for the Jesuits to be “men for others” and implored them to embrace a “faith that does justice.”

“Our mission to proclaim the Gospel [demands]of us a commitment to promote justice and enter into solidarity with the voiceless and the powerless,” he wrote in the fourth decree of the 32nd General Congregation.

He also issued a caution: “If we work for justice, we will end up paying a price.”

Coming to UCA’s Aid

Following the murders, Father Currie traveled to El Salvador as a representative of Georgetown University. Many American Jesuits were coming to UCA’s aid, including the late Dean Brackley, S.J., who at the time was on the Fordham faculty. They found the capital, San Salvador, still embroiled in violence.

“We would go to meetings and would have to walk through gauntlets of soldiers, who would hit us with the butts of their rifles,” Father Currie said. “There was a lot of fear. You never knew what was going to happen when you opened the door—who would be out there and what they were going to do.”

At UCA, signs of the massacre were still evident.

“We went down there in early January, just over a month after the killings,” Father Currie said. “Blood was still on the ground. Everything had been left just as it was that night.”

And yet, there were also signs of what UCA had been a part of before it bore witness to the events of Nov. 16. The campus was alive with students walking to class or stretched out on the grass talking with classmates. Despite the trauma it suffered, UCA had refused to allow its spirit to be violated.

Justice and the Jesuit Campus

In the 25 years since the murders, Jesuit institutions have kept social justice at the core of their mission. A number of national initiatives evolved in direct response to El Salvador. Two of these are the Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice, a yearly gathering to advocate for social justice issues, and the Ignatian Solidarity Network, which promotes leadership and advocacy among students and alumni.

Individual Jesuit institutions have responded on the local level withthe same ardor. Many Jesuit schools have centers dedicated to social justice, such as Fordham’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice. Grounded in the philosophy of “men and women for others,” the center connects Fordham with the local community to promote service and solidarity.

“Our aim is to invite faculty and students into local partnerships that can place our hearts, research, and resources within the wider community,” said Jeannine Hill-Fletcher, Ph.D., faculty director of Fordham’s service-learning program. “We are inspired by Ignacio Ellacuría’s vision that the university is a social force and its heart must reside outside its gates.”

“I think it’s fair to say that no Jesuit campus today was the same after the killings in El Salvador,” Father Currie said. “Fordham has responded very generously to this vision, along with all of the Jesuit schools, by consciously committing to serving their local communities. I think that can trace back to what happened in El Salvador.”

To mark the 25th anniversary of the murders, presidents of Jesuit colleges and universities, advocates, U.S. politicians, and many others will travel to El Salvador. The delegation will meet with the nation’s leaders about urgent issues in the aftermath of the war, as well as visit sites related to the Jesuit martyrs.

The hope, Father Currie said, is to ensure for the Salvadoran people the justice that the Jesuits and their companions were denied.

“Peace without justice is not enough,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we should seek vengeance. But it is very important that we name the injustice so that we get to the root of the problem. Otherwise, peace becomes very fragile.

“The killing of the Jesuits represents a challenge to do just that,” he continued. “This 25th anniversary commemoration is the opportunity to recommit ourselves to a faith that does justice.”

The Westchester campus will celebrate a special liturgyThursday, Nov. 13.

Also on Thursday, Nov. 13 there will be a lecture at the Lincoln Center campus on the Jesuit martyrs and how they have influenced Jesuit institutions in the United States.

Twenty students will be attending the Ignatian Family Teach-In from Nov. 15 to Nov. 17, where Fordham theology professor Michael Lee will also speak.

At Rose Hill, there will be a prayer vigil on Sunday, Nov. 16 at 7:30 p.m., followed by an 8 p.m. Mass in the University Church, celebrated by Claudio Burgaleta, S.J. A meal of pupusas, a traditional Salvadoran dish, will be served after Mass.

Born in in the Basque region of Spain, Father Arrupe is known for his work as a missionary in Japan during the mid-20th century. He was sent to the country in 1938, and in 1945 moved to Nagatsuka, just outside of Hiroshima, to become master of novices at a Japanese mission.

He was in Nagatsuka on Aug. 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, annihilating the city. Having received medical training in Spain before becoming a Jesuit, Father Arrupe attended to as many of the wounded as he could. He and his colleagues gave shelter to 150 victims in their mission, offering food and medical treatment.

In 1965, while serving as Superior of the Japanese Province, Father Arrupe was elected Super General of the Society, a position he held until 1983. During this time, he helped guide the Jesuit community through Vatican II, a turbulent time for the Society. He emphasized a spirituality of engagement and the Jesuits’ obligation to address the needs of the poor, which resulted in the Society working in more hands-on ways with poor communities, especially in Latin America.

This same mission drives Jesuit education, he said, insofar as the “prime educational objective must be to form men and women for others.”

To read more about Father Arrupe, including his arrest and imprisonment shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, read the article by Loyola Press’s Ignatian Spirtuality page.

Nothing is more practical than finding God,
than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination,
will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read,
whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

— Pedro Arrupe, S.J.

The events, which include several lectures by Fordham’s Jesuit faculty members, and which continue through Feb. 2, are designed to help the community gain an appreciation of the Ignatian heritage through discussion, performance and religious observance. Event highlights include a discussion by George Drance, S.J., artist-in-residence in the Department of Theatre and Visual Arts, on his production of The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis. Also scheduled is an encore performance of Ordina questo amore, O tu che m’ami: Recitative with Four Voices, which Daniel Berrigan, S.J., Fordham’s poet-in-residence, penned in honor of the founding Jesuits, and which had its premiere in December at Fordham’s University Church.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, closes the celebrations on Feb. 2, when he dedicates a chapel on the Lincoln Center campus in honor of the German Jesuit, Blessed Rupert Mayer, S.J. Father Mayer was a former military chaplain who denounced Nazi ideology and was imprisoned in a concentration camp. He died in 1945.

Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J., adjunct associate professor of theology at Fordham, has written a series of essays on the Jesuit Jubilee Year 2006, available at FORDHAM magazine online. A full schedule of Ignatian Awareness Week events can be viewed at the home page of the Office of Campus Ministry.

– Janet Sassi