PL 449. Self-Knowledge and Discernment
History and overview of the course
During the summer of 2013, Professor Jeffrey Bloechl, together with his wife and three children, made a pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago de Compostella. The combination of intellectual, spiritual and physical benefits he experienced, as do nearly all pilgrims along that way, led him to outline a course that would offer undergraduate students the possibility of a similar experience. At the same time, the administrators of Boston College initiated wide-ranging discussion of undergraduate education and student life. In that context, Professor Bloechl and Mike Sacco, of the Office for Student Formation (he has since become its Executive Director), shaped a program that would include both academic and formational dimensions, and indeed try to make each enrich the other. With considerable support from Sacco and his team, Professor Bloechl completed a syllabus and received university approval to teach the course in spring 2015. A year later, he led a faculty group of seven on a one-week pilgrimage meant to familiarize them with important features of the experience. Since 2017, the course has been taught annually.
General features
Each course has three main components: substantial classroom work beginning early in the spring semester, a weekend retreat for students and the faculty team who will be making the pilgrimage, and a 13 or 14-day pilgrimage in northern Spain.
Each year, ten students are selected by late fall. Many more than that number apply. Students do not need to be Catholic to qualify—and many have not been—but they do need to have a positive interest / openness to religion and spirituality, as well as a reflective relationship to that feature of their own lives.
In addition to the faculty instructor, the team includes a graduate student assistant, and a chaplain. Ideally, the chaplain is a Jesuit, though this has not always been possible. The chaplain is available to the students, but they are not required to interact with him/her in any formally religious manner (e.g., Roman Catholic Mass is celebrated moist days, but students are not required to attend, though as it happens, most usually do). If the faculty member is male, the graduate student assistant is female; if the faculty member is female, the graduate assistant is male. This insures sensitivity to any gender-specific concerns that may arise during the pilgrimage.
The classroom work is focused on the intersection and interplay between (a) questions of self-knowledge, ultimate value and vocation; (b) academic methods and exercises pertinent to the fields drawn upon for readings and other media; and (c) the active experience of pilgrimage that is meant to bring the themes and insights of (a) alive for the pilgrim, which can appeal to (b) in support of how to understand and respond to them. The course is fully academic, with a great deal of reading, writing and examination. But it is also more than that. Working within these general parameters, each instructor develops a course that is in line with her/his expertise, interest and basic goals.
The retreat is meant to (a) bring the students and team together as a community whose members know and therefore will support one another during the pilgrimage in all of its challenges; and (b) provide an early, in-depth look at themes that lie on the boundary between academic and formational reflection.
On pilgrimage, students walk approximately 15 miles each day for about two weeks. They arrive in Spain at least two days before the walk begins, and generally depart Spain one to two days after it ends. The pilgrimage begins in Leon and ends in Santiago de Compostela. Each day begins with a short meditation and about 45 minutes of silence, and ends with a discussion group and/or some form of prayer or meditation. In between, there is about six hours of walking often in temperatures over 80 degrees F, but also often rain. The physical challenges often bring to the surface honest and open personal reflection to be shared in evening discussion or with one or two fellow pilgrims along the way. The group stays in simple hostels each night, often among many other pilgrims from all over the world, and generally take turns preparing dinner for each other. We are awake by 7 am and after a quick breakfast are walking by 7.45.
Application process
Each fall, approximately in late September, an emailing is sent to undergraduate students, inviting applications. After some basic questions are answered and some brief essays submitted (all online), a limited number of students is invited for interviews with the instructor for the spring course, and one faculty member who has previously taught the course. By late October, prior to registration for spring courses, 10 students are notified of acceptance and 3 to 5 are notified that they are on a reserve list.