Recently, our candidate, Armando, visited Harvard University in Cambridge.

They say that if you rub the foot of John Harvard's statue, you will study at the university some day!

The Harvard College Project on Purpose And Values in Education (PAVE) has partnered with Assumption College to promote opportunities like the SOPHIA Initiative, a co-curricular program at Assumption that asks its students to consider “big questions” of meaning, value, and purpose.

Harvard’s Project on Purpose and Values in Education (PAVE) chose to link with Assumption’s SOPHIA (SOPHomore Initiative at Assumption) program because of SOPHIA’s focus on liberal education for traditional-age college students; commitment to the education of the whole person; and its nurturing of a thoughtful and reflective stance toward the problems and challenges faced by individuals and society.

Through its website, the PAVE Project highlights 24 colleges and universities committed to providing students with opportunities for vocational reflection and the pursuit of purpose in one’s life. Its focus is on identifying and promoting promising programs that encourage reflection of meaning, purpose, and values and that have demonstrated influence on students’ moral growth.

Assumption is the only central Massachusetts-based institution featured by PAVE.

“Never having to deal with bureaucracy alone”

(The following article by Paul de Theux first appeared in the April 2015 issue of L’Appel, pp. 12-13).  In 2001 a team of volunteers from the Brussels neighborhood of Koekelberg, under the leadership of the Assumptionists, launched an innovative initiative: accompanying individuals in need as they went through required administrative hoops to receive social services. The idea, simple though it may have been, answered a real need. In 15 years this non-profit organization, called “Accompagner” (“Accompany”), has lent a hand to more than 5,000 people. At the 2011 general chapter of the Assumptionists it was named one of 7 'mobilizing works' of the institute, works that, by virtue of the nature and quality of their work, serve as flagship ministries deserving of widespread support and imitation throughout the Congregation.)

For 5 days during the Octave of Easter, a group of professed Assumptionists in the Philippines (priests and brothers), with 2 Oblates Sisters of the Assumption, had a retreat on "Brotherhood (Sisterhood)" with our Assistant General John Franck in Baguio City. Father John preached on the salient features and implications of "Brotherhood" as contained in the Letter of our Father General, Benoit Griere.

The retreat, thanks to Father John, gave new light to our understanding of "Brotherhood (Sisterhood)" in the Assumption putting emphasis on "community" as our "1st apostolate."

I'd like to express my deep gratitude to my brothers and sisters in the Assumption and to God for all these grace-filled days in Baguio City. And I'd like to express this especially through these impressions I got during this Easter Week!