Ignatian Engagement

In this light, we are working to “create dynamic and integrated recommendations for Ignatian formation and engagement programming that will affect each of the constituencies at the Prep” over four school years to coincide with the Society of Jesus four Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs). These preferences, issued in February 2018, serve as the guiding light for Catholic and Jesuit communities over the next decade. They invite us into the priorities of spiritual discernment (Year of the Examen 2019-2020), walking with the excluded (Year of Solidarity 2020-2021), journeying with youth (2021-2022), and caring for our common home (2022-2023).

The Year of the Examen grounds us in prayer--in this case, a prayer Ignatius deemed an indispensable daily exercise for any Jesuit and pilgrim of the Lord. With its emphasis on God intimately at work in our personal, day-to-day lives, the Examen prayer is mighty in its relation to the mundane. Throughout the year, all members of the Prep Community were invited into experiences of the Examen in all of its fruits and graces, awakening us to the myriad applications and implications of this simple prayer for our professional and personal lives.

The Year of Solidarity builds on the previous year's "Year of the Examen" to invite the Prep to greater solidarity rooted in the Ignatian way of prayer and action as it recognizes "our desire to walk alongside those individuals and communities who are vulnerable, excluded, marginalized, and whose very humanity has been impoverished" (UAP 2018). As we walk together, we remain rooted in the Examen, to prayerfully discern how we as a school community can work in solidarity to lift the voices of the marginalized and oppressed. This call to solidarity is an urgent one. Rooted in our connected humanity, this call exhorts us to recognize and accept requests for justice and hope and, as Pope Francis says, to seek "those roads together, real paths that lead to liberation."