A couple returns to their Jesuit alma maters to teach, advise and ultimately share the gift of Ignatian educational travel
By Ann Power Greene
ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TRIP WAS VISITING THE CITY OF LOYOLA AND BEING ABLE TO CELEBRATE MASS WITH MY FRIENDS IN THE ROOM WHERE ST. IGNATIUS STAYED DURING HIS RECOVERY AFTER GETTING HIT BY A CANNONBALL
Trena Marks and Augie Pacetti didn’t know each other when they were attending Jesuit high schools about 35 miles apart in Ohio in the mid-1990s—she at Walsh Jesuit in Cuyahoga Falls, he at Saint Ignatius in Cleveland. But when they met as students at John Carroll University, their love story began. They got married and returned to work at their high school alma maters, where they remain today.
In true Ignatian spirit, to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary, last summer they led a group of rising high school seniors on an Ignatian Scholars Program and Pilgrimage in Spain, France and Italy.
“It was a great gift to share the experience of being in so many sacred places significant in the life of Ignatius, whose faith, love and understanding of God shaped us individually as Jesuit high school and college students, led us to our vocation in Jesuit education at our alma maters, and ultimately brought us together,” says Trena Marks Pacetti, a Walsh
Jesuit theology teacher and a 1997 graduate of the school. The program began in 2008 and has been offered in its current form since 2013. “We thought it would be a way to make the life of Ignatius come alive for our students, and it is deeply impacting on our students’ faith,” says Dan Bizga, the chair of Walsh Jesuit’s theology department, and a 1993 alumnus of Saint Ignatius. Under Bizga’s direction, the travel group has grown to include more than 60 students and adults in 2022, mostly from Walsh Jesuit and Saint Ignatius. But students from University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Fairfield College Preparatory School in Connecticut have also attended, along with faculty from other Jesuit high schools.
In conjunction with the trip itself—following in the steps of St. Ignatius of Loyola for two weeks—students also take a related online course from June to mid-August (aided by The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life by Fr. James Martin, SJ), and complete a final project. All of it leads to class credit. “The Six Paths to Finding God” in Fr. Martin’s book is the part that prepares students for the trip itself, reinforcing the idea that a pilgrimage is a journey undertaken for the sake of faith, not just travel.
“One of the highlights of the trip was visiting the city of Loyola and being able to celebrate Mass with my friends in the room where St. Ignatius stayed during his recovery after getting hit by a cannonball,” says Lauren Bangs, a senior at Walsh Jesuit.
Students pooled their money to buy a 5-foot tall, 10-inch diameter candle to carry in the street procession for healing in Lourdes, France. They later carved their own intentions into it.
For Trena and her husband, Augie, a 1996 graduate of Saint Ignatius and the school’s director of mission, a highlight was visiting Lourdes, France. “Because Ignatius had a devotion to Mary, the pilgrimage visits the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, where St. Bernadette saw apparitions of Mary in the mid-1880s,” Trena says.
In Lourdes, the group participated in the nightly street procession for healing, which included everyone from infants in their parents’ arms to the elderly being pushed in wheelchairs while the rosary was prayed in multiple languages over loudspeakers. Students chipped in their own money to buy the largest candle they could find (about 5 feet tall with a 10-inch diameter) and took turns carrying it in the procession. Afterward, in their own prayer service, students were invited to carve an intention on the side of the candle. They left it burning among thousands of others representing the intentions of pilgrims from all over the world. Bizga told the students that their candle, because of its size, would probably still be burning after the new school year started.
Something amazing happened on the trip. Before it even began, as the Ignatian Year neared its end in the summer of 2022, Trena and Augie invited friends and family to share their intentions. The Pacettis wrote the intentions in a journal and promised to pray
Dan Bizga, chair of Walsh Jesuit High School’s theology department, and Walsh Jesuit theology teacher Trena Marks Pacetti at the Vatican.
for them at the holy sites they were about to visit. Trena kept the invitation open during the trip, too, by posting it on her Facebook page. While the group sat in Mass in the Chapel of Conversion, where St. Ignatius, recuperating from injury, had turned to God 500 years earlier, Trena’s phone rang.
It was Fr. Jim King, SJ, whom Trena has known since her freshman year at Walsh Jesuit in 1993 when the school went co-ed. They’ve been friends ever since. Fr. King presided at the Pacettis’ wedding and baptized their children. He was at Walsh Jesuit when the doors opened in 1965 and spent close
to 50 years there teaching theology and counseling students, among other things. Now he was calling to ask for prayers at the exact moment they were sitting in one of the most significant Ignatian sites on earth. The coincidence was moving, to say the least.
“Father King has been a faith companion to us in some of the most significant moments of our lives, and here again God reminded us through him that we are never alone in this mission,” Augie says. “God is really present all around us in our ordinary life each day, always waiting for us to answer.”
The Pacettis brought back prayer cards and holy water from the spring in Lourdes for everyone they prayed for. “It was a powerful experience to be entrusted with those prayers and to bring them before God,” says Trena, who went on after JCU to receive her master’s in pastoral studies from Loyola University New Orleans Institute for Ministry.
Ann Power Greene serves as senior director of grants and special projects for the Midwest Jesuits in Chicago. A native of Cleveland, and a Gesu School alum, she has more than 14 years of service to the Jesuits.
The 2023 trip runs from June 29 to July 15. The cost of the full program is about
$4,000, which includes accommodations, meals, excursions and transportation costs on the tour. Airfare, estimated at $1,200, is separate. Scholarships and reduced rates are available. All parents are welcome, and parent chaperones receive discounts based on the number of students attending.
“It was so beautiful to witness little miracles, little moments of conversion, in the lives of our students,” Augie says of the 2022 trip. “As we entered more deeply into the story of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and walked in his footsteps, we saw a model of what it looks like to listen to God in our lives, to discern our own vocation, our mission, our path forward.”
