Monday, 8:30am, a beautiful spring day. Where would you typically find most graduate students? Sure, diehards and early-birds might be clicking their keyboards, or hitting the gym. But many would still be asleep. As I walk into one of the bigger classrooms at the Sophia University Institute in Loppiano (near Florence, Italy) at 8:30am on the dot, I almost have to catch my breath as I encounter the most awake and ready group of students I have ever seen in an early morning class.
They have come from 31 different countries, and 25 areas of study, not only to pursue an interdisciplinary master’s degree but to find the elusive connection between studies and life.
Class begins with a brief running commentary on a scriptural text; this morning it is “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all” (Mt 6:31–32). Professor Gerard Rossé, a well-known scripture scholar in Europe, provides an explanation geared toward helping students, faculty and staff consider the passage’s implications in their daily lives. Ample time is then given for students to exchange reflections or their efforts to apply a previous day’s passage to daily life.
In a following session, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day” (Mt 6:34) prompts the President of Sophia, Msgr. Piero Coda, to share his own efforts at fighting off anxiety when an unexpected dinner guest had claimed his preparation time for a presentation, or when he encountered ongoing fundraising concerns. In each case he experienced God’s loving intervention — finding the capacity to focus in the time that he did have, and receiving news that a grant application had been successful.
A series of commentaries on not judging — “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Mt 7:1-2) — draws out students’ efforts to build authentic relationships, overcoming profound cultural differences and personality clashes. Others offer insights gained in reconciling their interior struggles within difficult personal, family and social situations. These range from concerns for a friend who recently served a prison term for drug possession to the wounds of family life in the wake of a painful divorce.
For a diocesan priest spending his sabbatical as a student in the program, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Mt 6:33), is an opportunity to reflect on how the Sophia experience has shifted his perception of ministry, helping him to tap into a sense of service that values and potentiates the talents and capacities of parishioners, and resists the temptation to be domineering.
Some of these reflections may seem ordinary. But if you consider how so much of modern life is plagued by restless anxiety and how our lives become battlegrounds for competing commitments, definitions of success, and sources of identity, then the impact that living scripture produces is extraordinary.
Delicate questions
Most classes do not include explicit running commentary on scripture. But insights from this class in particular do pour into the other classes in theology, philosophy, logic, economics, political theory and so on.
I experienced this as well. Living in my home Focolare, I was familiar with the “pact of mercy” — the practice of waking up each morning with the intention of setting aside the differences and tensions that might have been previous obstacles to building relationships, giving each other the possibility to start afresh. I had found this extremely helpful in community life, but it had never occurred to me that it could be applied in the legal profession.
As part of our Sophia law course, I worked through a delicate question in legal ethics: the extent to which a lawyer can bring her own moral values to bear on client counseling. One hurdle is avoiding paternalistic attitudes that could interfere with the client’s own moral autonomy and freedom. Suddenly we realized that the pact of mercy — understood in a broad sense: giving others a chance to grow, being careful not to let preconceptions block the possibility for a client to gain new insights — might shed some light on lawyer-client relationships. In fact, refined respect includes seeing the client not as rigidly fixed in a course of action but as a person who can engage more profoundly with their actions’ moral implications.
I had not thought of that before.
A relevant model?
How much does Sophia have to say to other educational environments? Some might consider it a sheltered oasis in which all of the participants have decided to live the same spirituality of unity. In reality, however, a significant percentage of the students, and some of the professors and staff, are not members of the Focolare, and Sophia is their first contact with the movement and its spirituality.
After my brief participation in the project, what comes to mind is less an oasis but more a fairly busy multi-lane bridge that has become a fascinating point of contact between the Focolare and multiple facets of culture or, more broadly speaking, modern life.
Professors, students and staff who are part of the Focolare have to work hard to express the contribution of the charism of unity in a language accessible for everyone. Those who are not part of the movement not only welcome its insights but in turn bring their own valuable contributions.
This daily exercise gives the program extraordinary traction and great promise as a relevant model for other educational institutions.
Amy Uelmen is a visiting lecturer at Georgetown University Law Center. In May 2011 she taught a course at Sophia on “The Person and Relationships in the Legal Order.”
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