Contents: Spring Issue Company Magazine, 2005

by Julie Bourbon

They call them pilgrims and sent them out on experiments -- social, creative, or pilgrimage-themed. This summer, several thousand young men and women spent up to five days fanned out through twelve European cities, in 100 international groups, engaging in street theater, encountering immigrants, visiting sacred shrines, or begging for their day's bread on the streets.

The idea behind these spiritual experiments came from the Jesuit formation experience of entering into an unfamiliar situation in order to learn more about self, others, and God.

This year, as in years past, the Jesuits gathered young people from around the world on their way to World Youth Day. They embarked on their experiments and then met in Loreley, Germany, finishiing one pilgrimage before setting sail on the next, up the Rhine River by boat to Cologne, where Pope Benedict XVI would arrive just days later.

The two days in Loreley ranged from the rustic -- trudging through mud to unheated showers half a mile away -- to the surreal -- listening to a concert in the next valley blasting the song "Highway to Hell" one night, and the next night attending adoration of the Eucharist in a circus tent as thunderous fireworks shot off overhead. The Spaniards sang into the wee hours, the Australians carried a big fake kangaroo, and the Califorians taught everyone the Hokey Pokey.

Everyone called it the Jesuit Magis experience.

"They come asking, not demanding." So says Roger Dawson, SJ, a British Jesuit who is one of the Magis organizers. That doesn't sound like much, unless you're huddled in an open-front, damp, muggy information tent, forced in by a deep chill, constant rain, and a forgotten poncho. There is no hot tea here, so it's not as crowded as the hospitality center or even the much larger tent up the hill, where perpetual adoration draws the devoted and the curious by the hundreds. In this tent it's mostly Jesuits in formation, the event's coordinators, directing the young people who stop by to check the schedules posted in German, French, English, and Spanish.

Nobody really likes the weather, but they don't seem to mind it that much, either. A young woman washes her hair outside in the second day's downpour, skipping the showers entirely. Anyway, the weather is not the reason they've come. They are pilgrims on a journey. They arrived the previous afternoon in glorious sun, waving their country flags.

The throngs drawn to World Youth Day in Germany this August-more than a million, according to estimates-were augmented by Jesuit groups the world over, including one of about 90 who traveled under the aegis of Marquette University.

On display here in Loreley, continues Dawson, are the "values of the kingdom, not of the market or the world." As he speaks, he looks out at a sea of little blue tents and falling rain, of young people hurrying by with hoods up and heads down. This is August in Germany, and everyone is good and wet, with only their spirits still mostly unruffled. All else is mud. Dawson has been busy chatting with the visitors to this tent and finds them all to be of great goodwill. "Everybody's just remained incredibly good-natured and cheerful," he says in a clipped British accent, good-natured and cheerful himself.

Welcome to Germany's picturesque Rhine River Valley, home to castles and vertiginous grape vines high on the hills above. It was also home for a few days this summer to the Magis gathering of pilgrims on a spiritual journey. They came from Cameroon and Lebanon, Italy and India, Madrid and Milwaukee, converging on a tent city that sprang up literally overnight, only to be dashed by wind and rains before rising again to house about 2,300 young people from Jesuit schools, parishes, and other ministries with one purpose in mind: to meet their new pope in Cologne at World Youth Day.

The Marquette group, organized by campus minister Fr. Will Prospero, SJ (above left), first journeyed to Paris to visit Notre Dame and also Sacré Coeur (top). After joining other Jesuit groups in Loreley, Germany, for the Ignatian Magis event, the pilgrims traveled on the Rhine (above) to World Youth Day.

But first they would meet each other, gathering for two days of Jesuit hospitality, of tofu and cultural pageants, of prayer and song and liturgy in many languages, of helping each other put up tents on Saturday and take them down on Monday. The maroon Magis T-shirts and bracelets identify participants as one, even though they are many. Those familiar with Ignatian spirituality know the Latin word magis, "something more," the desire to get more from faith, from one's relationship with God, from one's self. For these two days in Loreley on the Rhine, it was written in brackets with an accent mark-['magis]-as it might appear in the dictionary, explains Jeffrey Burwell, SJ, another coordinator from the Upper Canada Province, "suggesting everyone has to put a different meaning to it." And so they do.

Joe Brennan, a Georgetown University junior, is one of five students here from the school; they participated in an experiment group that spent several days in Frankfurt interacting with migrants, visiting diocesan parishes with communities from Nigeria, Eritrea, and Ukraine. The experience was an opportunity for him to learn about different cultures in the context of the same faith, Brennan says, waving a large American flag overhead while waiting for the start of the outdoor liturgy celebrated by the German Jesuit provincial. His group is planning to teach the crowd to sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" as an introduction to U.S. culture that night during the international pageant. Each country group will present something. Brennan, 20, is a long way from Voorhees, New Jersey. Sitting there in the rain, he marvels at the Magis gathering as he looks around. "Just the feeling of passion, knowing that all these people are so focused on their faith," he muses.

At Mass the next afternoon, the rain comes in fits and starts, but it is warm and clear at the end, and the congregants bunny-hop to the jazzy strains of the Magis house band. These musicians, from all over the world, have formed their own experiment group by playing in inclement weather with little rehearsal time. "This sun is so beautiful," says Luke Strand, a thoughtful and articulate 24-year-old in his second year at Saint Francis Seminary outside Milwaukee, stretching his lanky frame skyward. One of his brothers has just entered the Jesuit novitiate. "I feel like I'm being renewed."

Strand is one of the Marquette pilgrims, a group of about 90 young people, four ever-joyful Dominican sisters and eight energetic young Jesuits. Many of them hail from Marquette University or have an affiliation with the school, some are from University of Detroit Mercy, and still others come from Holy Trinity Parish in Washington, D.C.

Jesuits of the German Province hosted the Magis experience in Loreley for close to 2,400 members of Ignatian groups from around the globe. Participants gathered after engaging in "experiments," such as making pilgrimages or working with the disabled, as a prequel to World Youth Day.

Fr. Will Prospero, SJ, a university minister at Marquette and Wisconsin Province director of the Apostleship of Prayer, is leading this group as he did another three years ago at World Youth Day in Toronto. "This group is much better prepared than they were for Toronto," he says, reflecting on the time spent on pilgrimage to Cologne and in preparation for this journey. He is tireless, always pressing the pilgrims to strive for greater awareness and understanding of why they're here and what God is asking of them. "The history and tradition of the Catholic faith are much more present on this trip."

Their passion for the faith is in evidence from the moment they land in Paris to the last day in Cologne. They dedicate themselves and their journey to the Sacred Heart of Jesus-the devotion of the Eucharistic Youth Movement, the Jesuit youth branch of the Apostleship of Prayer, to which many of the Marquette pilgrims belong. They pray the Rosary at the start of each leg of the bus ride and recite the Our Father upon crossing safely from France into Germany. The musicians among them practice liturgical songs in the back, although strains of "American Pie" can be heard after a while. They will be up at all hours in the perpetual adoration tent at Loreley.

That tent, which will draw many of the Magis participants over the weekend to kneel in prayer and song, was a highlight for Dan Janasik, another Saint Francis seminarian and an '02 Marquette graduate. Calling the time at Loreley "a great tune-up for World Youth Day," a time of "living simply and trusting in God, not planning," Janasik, 26, recalls particularly the last night of Magis, when about 400 pilgrims processed, by candlelight, from the Eucharistic adoration tent, "taking God out into our little tent village." He beams at the thought of it.

For some, like Sr. Joseph Andrew Bogdanowicz of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the meaning of Magis was most clear in the pilgrimage that preceded it. They began their journey in Paris, visiting the shrines of Notre Dame and Sacré Coeur, traveling through the French countryside to the shrine at Paray-le-Monial, where St. Margaret Mary Alacoque had visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and on to the ecumenical community of Taizé before arriving four days later at Loreley.

Candles welcomed Pope Benedict XVI to a vigil service on Saturday, August 20. He spoke to the World Youth Day audience that night and celebrated the Eucharist the next day, the culmination of the event.

Bogdanowicz found the experience "extremely Ignatian," she says with a strong Southern twang. "Seeing the unknown and allowing themselves to be stretched . . . One hundred people traveling on buses, sleeping on floors, reaching out to others, helping with tents, the schedule, food lines-it's a gift of self to the other. A very beautiful Ignatian concept.

"Whereas the experiments were all in Europe," she continues, referring to the other groups that participated in Magis, "ours was in the day-to-day pilgrimage." She is speaking on the boat that will take the group upriver to Bonn, to their accommodations at a high school. It is here, surrounded by half of the Magis participants-the rest are on a second boat-that these pilgrims have a few hours to relax, eat, and think in relative comfort. Some sprawl out in the aisles, sleeping against their backpacks. Others play cards or smoke cigarettes, waiting for a bag lunch of rolls and butter and, possibly, chocolate.

A weary-looking Latvian Jesuit scholastic sits on the lower level of the boat with a group of students. Their experiment group was in Essen, Germany, a former coal mining town, where they learned about the extremes between rich and poor. Juris Vizums, SJ, says that the most interesting part of the experiment was spending the last day begging, which he did for five hours after spending 40 minutes searching for the right spot, afraid to begin. "It was hard to start," he says. "I thought normal work is easier than to sit and beg."

One of the young women in Vizums's group, Ellen Van Roost, an eighteen-year-old from Antwerp, attends the Jesuit high school there, the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwecollege. She has an inexplicable amount of energy after two days of camping in the rain. Her mother is also on the trip. Ellen found the experiment exhilarating.

"You hear of it in theory, but now you have the ... the ..." she says, snapping her fingers, searching for the word in English, "what do you call -- the practice!"

On an upper deck is Fr. Christopher Lockard, SJ, who works for the Jesuit Refugee Service in Washington, D.C., and is accompanying the Marquette group. Despite some fatigue, he is enjoying the experience, taking vacation time to participate. Students drift in and out of his orbit, sitting down for a chat and invariably leaving smiling. "It's awesome," he says, stretched out on the floor in a corner of the boat, sipping a beer, watching the German countryside roll by. "I'm all about encouraging people to improve their prayer and spiritual life," he says, and that can take many forms, including pilgrimage, perpetual adoration, and social justice work, all of the things Magis participants engaged in during their time in Europe. The key, Lockard reminds, is always to challenge the self. "There are other ways to encounter Christ," he says thoughtfully, "not the least of which is each other."

Julie Bourbon is editor of the National Jesuit News, published by the Jesuit Conference in Washington, D.C.