What a gift to have two dedicated worship spaces on campus! 

Holy Name of Jesus Church is inspiring in ways one would expect. It has an elaborate exterior with a bell tower visible for miles. With its high ceiling, colorful stained glass, and lovely marble, its interior reflects God’s glory and generosity. It provides practice in “seeing God in all things.” By engaging all five senses, it affirms the worth of bodies and, by extension, all materiality. 

My office is just across the quad from the new Chapel of Saint Ignatius and the Gayle and Tom Benson Jesuit Center, and so I’ve had a front-row seat as it’s emerged from the ground. What a project! I am grateful to all those who have supported and guided it along the way!

My first impression is of its shape. I know what to expect from a rectilinear structure like Holy Name. It’s clear where one wall ends and another begins. Most churches are rectilinear, but not all. One of the most-visited Catholic churches in the world, the Basilica of our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, is circular and so, like our Chapel, is evocative of God who has no beginning or end. 

This shape also reminds me of the icon of the Trinity by 15th-century iconographer Andrei Rublev, a replica of which I have in my office. It recalls the LORD’s appearance, in the form of three men, to Abraham and Sarah. Rublev depicts these three not as men but as angelic and as seated around a table with an opening facing viewers. It invites us viewers into the circle and, by implication, into sharing God’s very life. 

Where Holy Name is marked by fullness and presence, the new Chapel is marked by relative simplicity. This is the case in part because the Chapel is unfinished. It awaits a sculpture, the corpus for the cross, and a lovely new altar. It is also due in part to a spirituality, complementary to Holy Name’s, that cherishes simplicity, even absence. 

It reminds me of the 16th-century St. John of the Cross poem “Dark Night,” in which “night” symbolizes such absence and silence that it becomes the privileged medium by which to experience the fullness of God depicted here as the “Beloved.” “Oh, night that guided me/ Oh, night more lovely than the dawn/ Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover/ Lover transformed in the Beloved!”

I also note the Chapel’s entrance. Wide at first, its sidewalks embrace and welcome all. At its best, Catholicism, which can mean “universal,” is similarly welcoming of and seeks to learn from truth, goodness, and beauty wherever they are found. And so the Chapel has two gathering spaces that are not explicitly Christian and that, in addition to the main sanctuary, are meant to welcome interfaith worship and all those seeking mystery and spirituality-nourishing silence. 

For me, it’s not either/or. We need Holy Name’s abundance that reflects God’s extravagance in creation and in the Incarnation.  Yet, the Chapel’s exterior color that contrasts with other buildings might be seen as a sign of contradiction that recalls Jesus’s own prophetic stances against exclusion and injustice. The Chapel’s simplicity—outside and in—is a reminder that God who is mystery can sometimes best be encountered in absence and silence. Its flat roof and shape that has no end are reminders that we can also worship in spaces other than those that are gilded and elaborate. It reminds us that God exceeds expectations and invites consideration of new possibilities, new and more just ways of interacting with our fellow humans and creatures. Finally, its circularity taps into ancient accounts of the Trinity as relationship who longs to draw us in and so be intimately connected with us. 

I look forward to experiencing our new Chapel!