Contemplatives In Action: Workshops, Prayer Services, & Celebrations

Overview

The Contemplatives in Action: Workshops, Prayer Services, and Celebrations program and digital badging system are housed in Campus Ministry and facilitated by Tinamarie Stolz-Enríquez alongside her student leader, Tabitha Witts. 

The Ignatian Advocacy Digital Badge and Ignatian Justice Digital Badge recognize students who commit themselves to sustained formation in advocacy, civic engagement, and justice in the Jesuit tradition.

Rooted in the call to become contemplatives in action, the two badges equip students to work alongside impacted communities for systemic change while developing the human capacities needed to engage complex social realities with curiosity, compassion, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, discernment, and courage. These capacities are grounded in Ignatian reflection and faith. Through workshops and experiences, students will explore how Catholic Social Teaching and Ignatian spirituality call us to engage the social realities of our world. 

Together, the two badges provide a meaningful formation experience that prepares students to engage public life with compassion and competence and to discern how they are called to participate in creating a more just world. The journey is rooted in the Jesuit call to be contemplatives in action: people who reflect deeply on the realities around them, listen and accompany others, discern their response, and move toward action for the common good. Or, in the words of Fr. Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., students are invited to become “professionals with a conscience.”

Two Badges. One Formation Journey.

The two badges are intentionally developmental and formative. Students begin with a foundational understanding of advocacy and civic engagement and build toward increasingly complex engagement with power analysis, coalition-building, policy engagement, public witness, and other forms of justice-oriented action.

Both badges seek to form students who can connect reflection and action and engage public life as informed, reflective, and justice-oriented citizens and professionals.

Through both badges, students will develop the capacity to:

• Connect learning across academic, experiential, relational, civic, and spiritual experiences to develop an integrated understanding of justice and their role in public life.
• Discern how Ignatian spirituality and Catholic Social Teaching shape a commitment to advocacy and the pursuit of justice.
• Analyze how systems, institutions, and power structures shape social realities and contribute to injustice.
• Listen & Accompany by practicing advocacy as accompaniment—listening to, learning from, and centering the voices, experiences, and leadership of communities most impacted by injustice.
• Act by developing and demonstrating advocacy skills, including storytelling, legislative meeting preparation, coalition-building, and public witness.
• Engage respectfully, courageously, and effectively with elected officials, community leaders, and others working toward systemic change.

Students may enter the badge program at any point during their undergraduate career and progress through the formation journey. Students are encouraged to begin their advocacy formation early in their undergraduate experience.