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Stations of the Cross offer prayerful pilgrimage
Day of Alms continues today
All-campus Community Service Project takes place tomorrow
Project 288- extended through next week
Online Mission Week resources available
Explore Marquette’s past with “Do You Remember?”
A daily reflection — Terence Miller
A daily reflection — Elizabeth King

1. Stations of the Cross offer prayerful pilgrimage

Marquette community members are invited to participate in the Stations of the Cross from noon to 1 p.m. today at the Chapel of the Holy Family.

The Stations of the Cross invite participants to make a prayerful pilgrimage along this symbolic path, recalling the suffering of Christ. From early days, the followers of Jesus told the story of his passion, death and resurrection. Pilgrims who visited Jerusalem were eager to follow in his footsteps and walk for themselves the way of the cross. This pilgrimage is offered for all victims of oppression and with a faith seeking to promote justice.

The stations are sponsored by the University Ministry Student Planning Team.

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2. Day of Alms continues today

The Day of Alms continues today Feb. 8, with collection boxes located in many buildings and departments throughout campus. Collections will be taken in the AMU rotunda until 4 p.m. today

Marquette community members can also contact Ellen Blonski at 8-3684 to make a donation.

Donations benefit La Sagrada Familia, the Milwaukee Archdiocese’s sister parish in the Dominican Republic.

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3. All-campus Community Service Project takes place tomorrow

Marquette community members have the opportunity to put Faith Doing Justice in action tomorrow, Feb. 9, by participating in the Homelessness in Our Heartland: All-campus Community Service Project from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Individuals who have not pre-registered should arrive at 9:30 a.m.

The project will begin at the Multicultural Center Lounge, AMU 121, with a service reflection. Participants will be transported to the VETS Place Central to help prepare a benefits information day and a meal.

Sponsored by the Marquette Center for Community Service and Campus Kitchens.

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4. Project 288- extended through next week

Due to the excellent response, Project 288- has been extended through Feb. 15.

What figures of faith and justice have left a lasting impression on Marquette? When you find signs of speakers who have graced the Marquette community over many decades, call the 288- number on it to hear a brief selection from an inspiring speech in Marquette’s proud past. Or, visit the Mission Week Web site for a list of Project 288- extensions or to listen online. The recordings will still be accessible online after Feb. 15.

The “Project 288-: Calling on the Mission” effort is sponsored by University Archives and the Instructional Media Center.

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5. Online Mission Week resources available

Through the courtesy of Milwaukee Public Television, Marquette is streaming an episode of the acclaimed series I Remember online. Hosted by Jim Peck, director of development-Project Understand, the program takes viewers on a trip through the university’s colorful history.

7. A daily reflection — Terence Miller

This year’s Mission Week theme of “Faith Doing Justice” really resonates with me because I had the opportunity last fall to witness Marquette students in South Africa living out the meaning behind those three small words. Students like Rob Wiedie creating a Web-based market for selling hand crafts providing new economic empowerment to 26 HIV–infected and –affected communities in Khayelitsha Township in Capetown; Mary Kate Wagner working with economically poor elementary students in Lavender Hill; and Kathleen Cullen working on a multinational team providing training and leadership development to the next generation of peace builders in Capetown. These three students and numerous other Marquette students working in local and global service-learning placements know all too well the challenges “Faith Doing Justice” presents in our world today. Many of those challenges originated from a further question “Justice for whom?” The new Father General of the Society of Jesus, Adolfo Nicolás, has a response in his inaugural homily after his election “ … all geographically determined nations are here today, but perhaps there are other nations, other non-geographic communities, human communities, that ask for our support — the poor, the marginalized, the excluded. In this globalized world of ours, the number of those excluded from everything increases daily … ” All who practice “Faith Doing Justice” in their lives know it is not easy nor is it ever finished but during the Lenten Season the verb “doing” requires each of us to pause, re-examine our lives and ask “how are you living out your faith by doing justice for — the poor, the marginalized, the excluded — of our world?”

~ Terence W. Miller
Director, Office of International Education

Faith Doing Justice. Though this statement can seem airy and cliché, it seems that at its core it has the power to conjure up incredibly powerful results. Marquette was the place in which I first encountered this statement and also the place that gave me the opportunity to really find out for myself what it meant. By engaging in both the Milwaukee and the global community, by being involved in dialogue with my neighbors, and by taking advantage of countless opportunities, I have begun to see and understand both what Faith Doing Justice means in my own life and how it can work in the lives of others.

Faith Doing Justice means different things to different people. For me this quest for faith that does justice has ranged from being joy filled and eye opening to tear filled and heart wrenching. Faith Doing Justice lends itself to the opportunity to be bold in safe environments and the opportunity to be courageous and competent, though not always fully prepared in new, uncomfortable and unfamiliar situations.

The real beauty of Faith Doing Justice is that it is a journey. There is no checklist of what has been done and what is left to do. It is a journey of questions and discoveries, a journey of changes and fears, a journey of community and a journey of self. It is not a journey that comes to an end, has a perfect or comprehensive answer or where everything suddenly clicks. Faith Doing Justice is the commitment to lifelong learning about the self and the world, a lifelong commitment to understand and work with our neighbors. Faith Doing Justice is about being in love with the world. It is about being vehicle for change and a voice of justice in whatever capacity we are capable of at any given moment.

Faith Doing Justice is about being in a reciprocal relationship with humanity. It is a give and take, a push and pull. It is about this idea of togetherness and cohesion, the belief that we are all interconnected and have a responsibility for the well being of one another.

During my junior year I was able to study abroad in South Africa. In Cape Town I was able to see for the first time this notion of Faith Doing Justice in all of its glory. I had 11 incredible roommates and together with them I was able to engage with the community we lived and worked in. On several occasions I was able to take a moment to stand back and admire the way each of us was participating in the global community and the ways that this notion of Faith Doing Justice was empowering each of us.

It was in South Africa where I was able to see God working in a world of inequality and injustice and, it was in South Africa that I was able to witness hope being personified even through pain and brokenness. In my own experience, I have found that Faith Doing Justice is powerfully rooted in my faith in God, in my love for the Gospel, and in the work of the Church through Christ From this faith and love stems the deep-rooted desire to engage in justice work. My faith allows me to read passages like Luke 4 and see myself. As Jesus quotes Isaiah and reminds the people in the synagogue of these powerful words from the Old Testament, he relates it back to me: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” The Spirit of the Lord is not only on Isaiah and not only on Jesus. This passage can be flipped around and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me … is upon us …” If we are partakers in the body of Christ, if we are participators in this reign of God than this list of tasks set out in Scripture by the power of the Spirit are responsibilities and accountabilities of mine. This is the dream of God; this is the reality of being in relationship with one another … The reality that you are me and I am you. We must acknowledge this if we are to appreciate and rejoice in both the brokenness and the Christ in each of us.

While this is how I have come to understand Faith Doing Justice, South Africa allowed me the opportunity to simultaneously discover that for some of my roommates the desire for justice stemmed from different kinds of faith. There was a sense of Faith Doing Justice in our house that stemmed from our different experiences and understandings of faith. For some it was faith in those they were working with, for others their faith in the world and in the global community, and still others it was faith in the knowledge that we were all working for what we hoped was a better world. This eclectic understanding of Faith Doing Justice that each of us brought to the conversation was beautiful. We didn’t all have to agree on why we desired to work for justice, but it was true that for all of us it stemmed from faith in something that was bigger and more powerful than each of us individually.

The 12 of us were able to take these different faiths we all had and use them to get our hands dirty. We were able to use them to remain empowered and energized and upon our return, it is these faiths and this ideal of Faith Doing Justice that encourages us to continue to ask questions and has enabled us to continue to self assess and self criticize where we are and what role we are playing in the larger community.

Marquette’s Service Learning in South Africa gave me the occasion to experience the beauty of community and humanity, learning as one roommate beautifully put it that “we are simultaneously completely broken and yet practically whole.” She continued, “life is not about being constantly joyful or sorrowful, but about sharing in both with whoever is next to you.”

Faith Doing Justice challenges us all to ask important questions: How do our individual and communal experiences and understandings of faith drive us? What role do we wish to play in the world? How are we contributing to our global community through our different experiences of faith? Faith Doing Justice encourages us all to leave our marks on the world. We all owe it to each other to do what we have with the graces we have been given to work together and for one another so that we may continue to create a world of beauty and justice.

News Briefs is published for Marquette students, faculty and staff every Monday and Thursday, except during summer and academic breaks when only the Monday edition is published. The deadline for the Monday edition is noon Friday. The deadline for the Thursday edition is noon Wednesday. Highest priority notices as determined by university leadership are also sent periodically.