Immersion: A Pilgrimage into Service

Immersion: A Pilgrimage into Service is a resource for those discerning or undergoing an immersive service experience or post-graduate volunteer service program. It utilizes recent Catholic social thought, Scripture, an Ignatian paradigm of service-reflection and Christian spirituality. This book helps readers to identify and navigate their innermost call to service by providing tools for reflection and discernment. It also challenges harmful attitudes that can reinforce unhealthy uses of privilege and power and perpetuate historically deleterious impacts on host communities through cultural and racial hegemony. A book which invites reflection on the motives, potential pitfalls, and outcomes of immersion and service programs is timely as the United States grapples with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and a greater sense of the need for racial justice. Despite the vast resources used to sustain immersion and post-graduate volunteer programs, there are few resources to guide students, their parents, team leaders, discerning post-graduate volunteer participants, and program directors through the personal, social, and spiritual transformation that is sparked by these experiences. Immersion: A Pilgrimage into Service fills that void.