Spring 2017

FROM THE CHAPLAIN'S DESK 

Dear Friends,
The Spring season has been busy and enriching. Some students traveled to Nicaragua and France over break to help their neighbor and deepen their Catholic faith. Other students traveled to Chicago to join with students from nine campus ministries across the country for the annual ESTEEM (Engaging Students to Enliven the Ecclesial Mission) conference. Students from each group spoke about the experiences of these trips at a Sunday dinner after Easter.
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ALTERNATIVE SPRING BREAK: TAIZE, FRANCE

It is so wondrous to have a song stuck in your head. The melody automatically plays on loop, refusing to cease for even a second to allow the intervention of lunchtime chatter. You know exactly how the chant ends, and exactly how to subtly connect the last syllable with the first as the song repeats itself. You recognize that familiar calmness, that glowing feeling, as the chant slowly takes root and grows inside you. It takes a while for you to notice that you’re now singing “Bénissez le Seigneur” out loud in the Trumbull Dining Hall! You’re back at Yale, and people are staring. 
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FROM THE CENTER OF MUSIC AND LITURGY: CLOUD HYMNAL 

High quality liturgical music offered in a highly affordable medium. That’s the quickest way to summarize Cloud Hymnal, a very young, innovative project for sharing newly harmonized hymns and newly composed music with churches around the world through online media. The idea is fairly old, but the medium through which it takes place is quite new.
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THE HUNGER BANQUET: ENCOUNTERING WORLD HUNGER

As a child, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where I knew there would always be food on the table, but for so many others, access to food each day is not guaranteed. I was quickly reminded of this disparity upon entering STM’s Dining Hall to take part in the Hunger Banquet.
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LUMEN FIAT: THE CHAPEL'S CHANDELIERS

"Let there be light" conveys the significance of light as a metaphor for the divine, and it is readily present within the Chapel at STM.
In an earlier “From the Archives” article, we noted that the Chapel’s founder, Rev. T. Lawrason Riggs, expressed his preference for a “cheerful church-joyous-with plenty of light” — hence, the clear windows, beautifully etched, that grace the STM’s Chapel and flood its interior with sunlight during the day. We also think that Father Riggs’s sentiment holds true for the Chapel’s chandeliers during the evening hours.
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JUDGE GUIDO CALABRESI & PROFESSOR CATHLEEN KAVENY: CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION

On Sunday, March 5, STM did something different for The Judge Guido Calabresi Fellowship in Religion and Law. Instead of a lecture, Cathleen Kaveny ‘90 J.D. ‘91 Ph.D., Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology at Boston College, sat down for a conversation with Hon. Guido Calabresi ‘53 ‘58 L.L.B., former Dean and Sterling Professor at Yale Law School and now Sterling Professor Emeritus and Professorial Lecturer in Law. The conversation was entitled “Life, Love and the Law: Continuing the Conversation” and was a follow-up to the discussion they began during their break-out session at STM’s tenth anniversary celebration in December.
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THREE QUESTIONS: NANCY RUDDLE, PH.D.

CS: A large part of your work as a scientist deals with the unknown. What have you learned about the process of asking questions?

NR: I have found that the most interesting discoveries emerge from exploring the peripheral issues of straightforward questions. This requires an open mind and attention to what looks odd.
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FAITH IN THE REAL WORLD: EVEN JESUS WEPT

Sitting in my cozy attic room in Seattle, Washington, curled up on a salvaged couch with a giant evergreen tapping at the window, I am a world away from the lower level seminar rooms of the Golden Center where I had found my core community at Yale.
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STM SCHOLAR IN RESIDENCE:
COMBINING THE SCHOLARLY AND THE SPIRITUAL

One of the most memorable moments for me this past year was watching a group of about thirty-five students, staff and community members from STM handle and pray with St. Thomas More’s sixteenth-century psalter, during a special visit to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library arranged by Michael Morand ‘87 ‘93 M.Div., the library’s public relations and communications officer.
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ON SILENCE: BREAKFAST WITH FR. JAMES MARTIN, S.J.

His speech was fluid and open and drew the small group of students seated around him into his world with the ease of a man who tells stories for a living. The Jesuit, known for his many forays into the media and his work as editor at America magazine, gave his second talk of the weekend. While his lecture the night prior had focused on the unity of the human and the divine natures of Jesus, the second presentation addressed his recent work on the Martin Scorsese film Silence.
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CONTEMPLATION ON SCREEN: A REVIEW OF SILENCE

Viewing Silence, the long-gestated passion project and film from Martin Scorsese, defies the typical movie-going
experience. Movie reviewer Matt Zoller Seitz described it as “not the sort of film you ‘like’ or ‘don’t like.’ It’s a film that you experience and then live with.” Father James Martin, S.J., an advisor on the film, likened the act of watching Silence to “living inside of a prayer.”
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