President Tania Tetlow asked those in attendance at the University Church to think about the meaning of the ceremony, both current and historic.

“This is bigger than this particular moment, than this particular community,” she said. “When we do the Mass of the Holy Spirit, we perform the rituals that people just like us— students, faculty, staff—have performed for almost 500 years, of opening the semester of a Jesuit university.”

Tetlow told the students that the community gathered there on Sunday would be there for them along their journeys—both for their successes and when they hit bumps in the road.

“What tonight is about is telling you, above all, that in that work, in those choices, in those decisions you make—that you are loved by God, no matter what, for who you are, and that you are loved by Fordham, no matter what, for who you are,” she said. “We will wait with bated breath and hope you make the right choices. But we will be there for you when you stumble, when you learn, when you find a new path and a new way. And we want you to keep coming back to this community as a source of strength and above all, as a source of love.”

“As we all come together as a family, no matter our faith backgrounds, this spring season can be a time of a much-needed renewal for all of us,” he said.

Last year’s Easter celebrations at University Church were attended by a handful of Jesuits and scholastics. As the year progressed, attendance at Sunday Mass steadily increased with safety precautions, including Vital Check, strictly adhered to. By Holy Thursday of this year, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, was able to begin the series of Easter services starting with the Triduum, which marks the Last Supper and eventual removal of the Eucharist from the altar. The bells and music are silenced until the Sacrament returns, signifying the risen Christ at the Easter Vigil Mass celebrated on Holy Saturday, April 3.

This year, the Easter Vigil Mass represented not just a return of the Eucharist, but of long-postponed sacraments, such as Confirmation. At this year’s vigil, five members of the Fordham community were confirmed as Catholics by Lito Salazar, S.J., executive director of campus ministry. Director of University Church Ministries Mark Zittle, O.Carm., oversaw the rites and initiation. Nearly 70 members of the Fordham community—including students and families—were present to witness their full entry into the Church.

Gownley said that while the healing process and the work toward racial justice has only just begun, so too has the Easter season.

“We still have 50 days till Pentecost,” he said. “So, there’s still time to process, to pray, and to do the much-needed interior work that needs to be done to heal.”

Known for integrating prayer with art, Father Gilroy believed that spirituality could be manifested through creative practices like painting. He launched the website, Prayer Windows, more than a decade ago to offer guidance on how to encounter God through the arts.

“Through art, we co-create with God,” he wrote in an article published in the National Christian Life Community of United States’ Harvest magazine in 2000.

Most recently, Father Gilroy, who lived at an infirmary at Murray-Weigel Hall, worked with Campus Ministry to offer spiritual direction. He led retreats and talks focused on art and spirituality at the Westchester campus, where he also had a part-time art studio.

“These [retreats]  were well-received by participants,” said José Luis Salazar, S.J., executive director of Campus Ministry.

Before his death, Father Gilroy was slated to do a number of lunchtime talks on Ignatian spirituality and art at the University, as well as an art and yoga retreat in December at the Goshen Center.

Carol Gibney, associate director of Campus Ministry and for spiritual and pastoral ministry at Rose Hill, worked with Father Gilroy on a Lenten art and yoga retreat this past March.

“He was really gifted at sharing his love and passion for art, and using art as a portal into the sacred to allow us to pause and reflect,” she said.

Though Father Gilroy, who struggled with diabetes, was new to Fordham, Gibney said his energy was magnetic—as was his cheerful laugh.

“He laughed with his whole body,” she said. “It was really joyful. He had what I desired for others and myself—an interior freedom. He allowed God’s light to shine through him.”

In a Facebook post, James Martin, S.J., acclaimed author and editor at large at America magazine, described Father Gilroy as “an amazing friend and Jesuit brother” who was “supportive, interested, generous, thoughtful, caring, funny, wise, and challenging when he needed to be.”

“I’ll miss that irrepressible laugh; I’ll miss his wisdom; I’ll miss his art; I’ll miss his counsel; I’ll miss his gentle presence in the world,” he wrote.

For Timothy Shriver, an educator, author, entrepreneur, and chairman of the Special Olympics, the mental health crisis affecting so many young people cannot be ignored by the institutions of higher education where they study.The solution lies not in teaching students to do more, but in teaching them to do less, said Shriver. In fact, it is in teaching them to do nothing—that is, to engage in contemplative practices such as mindfulness meditation and sitting in silence as a means of gaining greater self-awareness.

On April 27 at Fordham Law School, Shriver shared his views on implementing contemplative practices into higher education in conversation with faculty members, administrators, students, members of the Jesuit community, and other invited guests. The event was sponsored by Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture.

Joined by his wife, Linda, and their daughter, Caroline, a freshman at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, Shriver extolled the experience of silence as a means through which one can combat depression and anxiety by encountering the true self and coming to self-acceptance.

“The silence that has come to us from contemplative practice can be . . . a source of direct experience of one’s goodness,” he said.

“The primary vector of discovery is of your own self judgment. And when you finally start to unmask your own judgment, you get to the point where you can see a little more clearly.”

Shriver addressed the fact that though so many religious traditions have contemplative practices at their root, these techniques are rarely offered as a means of coping with day-to-day problems.

“If we are looking at people who are so hungry for a sense of their own beauty and goodness, why is it that we haven’t created a developmental path using the resources of our religious traditions, translating them into contemporary practice to allow young people to access them?” he asked.

Fordham community members agreed with Shriver that there is a great hunger among students for classes and experiences that help them connect with their inner selves.

Father Jose-Luis Salazar, SJ, executive director of Campus Ministry, said that all of the retreat programs offered each year are overbooked.

Stephen Grimm, PhD, associate professor of philosophy who teaches a course called Philosophy as a Way of Life, said that it filled up “in seconds.”

For Shriver, who has a master’s degree in religion and religious education, a doctoral degree in education, and who worked for 15 years in the New Haven, Connecticut, public school system, the benefits of contemplative practice are clear.

“All the data suggests that integrating ‘the pause’—whatever we want to call it—increases academic achievement, decreases psychopathology, and increases positives states and satisfaction across the board,” he said.

Shriver’s book, Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most (Crichton 2014), recounts his own spiritual journey and his work with the Special Olympics.

–Nina Heidig

Father Lito, as he is known, was part of campus ministry from 2000 to 2005. He was ordained a deacon in 2000, a priest in 2001, and took his final vows in 2006, all in the University Church.

He left in 2005 to do tertianship, the last stage of Jesuit formation, in Boston, followed by a four-month missionary experience in Myanmar. He went on from there to do his doctoral studies on the philosopher-theologian Bernard Lonergan, SJ, at Radboud University-Nijmegen in the Netherlands. After completing his dissertation in 2009, he was assigned to teach theology at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City.

Father Salazar said Lonergan was a natural pick to focus on for his dissertation because he had been drawn to Lonergan’s insights into both the dynamic structure and nature of knowledge itself, beginning with science and mathematics.  Before embarking upon a vowed religious life, Father Salazar parlayed a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering into a ten-year successful career as a chemical process design engineer and executive with Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum in both his native Manila and in The Hague. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1993, after five years as a member of the Mill Hill Missionaries, British Catholic missionary order based in London, England.

With his background, he brings unique perspectives into the classroom. He taught both theology and business ethics at St. Peter’s. For the latter, he brings little more to the table than philosophical tenets, he said. “I’m approaching [business ethics]not just by introducing students to [the philosophical-ethical]aspects of the right and good thing to do, but also from scriptural-theological angles, and Catholic social teachings. It makes for a richer, more integral existential approach than simply a theoretical-ethical one,” he said.

“The bottom line is, I would ask students, ‘How would I respond to the God of my life as a businessman? What kind of decisions would I pursue beyond what is simply right and good?’”

Father Salazar said that, in a way, he never really left Fordham—as he continued in recent years to celebrate weddings for alumni and to baptize their children. But because he experiences the Ignatian charism much more powerfully in urban settings, he said, it made sense to return full time to New York.

“There’s an old saying that St. Francis loved towns, St. Dominic loved mountains, and St. Ignatius loved cities. Fordham is in the capital of the world, where people meet from all kinds cultural, economic, ethnic and social backgrounds. There are opportunities to create bridges and cross boundaries of culture, language, and ideas. So Fordham is a natural habitat for a “son of Ignatius,” he said.