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Jack and the Jesuits
Given that both Jack and the Jesuits are symbols for Georgetown University (albeit in very different ways, of course), it is appropriate that his caretaker would be a Jesuit and that he would spend much of his time hanging out at the Jesuit community.
However, one might wonder if the spirituality of another religious community might better suit Jack than that of the Jesuits. After all, other religious communities are far better known for their devotion to animals than the Jesuits. The Franciscans, for example, have a tradition of blessing animals on the feast day of their founder, and some communities of monks have made raising dogs part of their monastic labor.
But Jesuit spirituality has its own tradition of valuing God's creatures. At the end of his "Spiritual Exercises," Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, asks the retreatant to look with wonder at all of God’s creatures and to find in them the labor of God's Spirit -- thus the Jesuit motto of "finding God in all things." The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins captured well this idea of finding God in the good things of the world with his poem, "Pied Beauty."
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chedstnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; addazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Jesuit spirituality encourages people to ponder and experience a God who works personally and directly in their lives -- a God who labors in the big and small events, in the people and things of their daily existence.
How God works in our world always has an element of mystery to it, and so one cannot know for sure exactly how or where God is laboring in any creature. The most that can be said about Jack is that he has made a real contribution to the well-being of student life at Georgetown. As one of the many cherished traditions at Georgetown, Jack helps to draw Hoyas together and foster a sense of community among them. Perhaps in that small contribution by Jack to life on Hilltop, one can see a fragment of God's labor of love.
One doesn't have to be a Franciscan to love a dog like Jack.
