Sabbatical 2026: A Gift I Couldn’t Possibly Earn

Editor’s note: Navarro is currently on sabbatical for the spring semester, although he wrote the following reflection in December 2025. He is the first faculty member to take a sabbatical funded by the newly established Sciuto Institute for Teaching Excellence.

By Diego Navarro
Theology Faculty

Excited. Nervous. Grateful. These only begin to describe how I’m feeling as my sabbatical approaches. Mostly I still can’t believe it’s happening: that SLUH – thanks to the incredible generosity of John Schaefer ’70 and his wife, Pamela Zilly – is sending me halfway around the globe to work, learn and, when I return, go on retreat.

I hadn’t seriously considered a sabbatical until I received an email from the UCS Office of Ignatian Spirituality about a November pilgrimage to Japan. Knowing it would be tough to leave during the school year, I spoke to the administration anyway. Subsequent conversations with Fr. Matt Stewart, SJ turned that impulse into a proposal for a sabbatical – one designed to enhance the curriculum of our World Religions course and deepen my own spiritual life. I felt like the project was unlikely to take flight given that school funding is pretty tight, but I felt it was better to dream big and leave it all on the table.

The request was expansive:

• Immerse myself in communities and sites studied in the World Religions class, such as those of the Dalai Lama in India and the Gaagudju in Australia.
• Refocus the World Religions curriculum into a “Catholic retreat” model. This way, students would still appreciate what is beautiful and true in other traditions while using that work as a vehicle to connect more deeply with themselves and their own Catholic faith.
• Develop connections with Jesuit high schools in Nepal, Japan and the Philippines in order to facilitate future exchanges.
• Continue to deepen my own relationship with God by making Ignatius’ 30-day Spiritual Exercises.

I wasn’t wrong about the financial realities, though, and so when I was officially told that my proposal didn’t fit in the budget, I understood completely. I made my peace with it quickly: sabbatical or not, I felt deeply grateful to have students that I love, work I find meaningful, and peerless colleagues that are so dedicated and supportive.

Some time passed, and then one day Fr. Stewart called me to his office and said that, after a meeting with a donor,everything had changed, that I could go, and that I needed to submit a formal budget. I was truly shocked. And nearly 11 months later I still feel shocked. It seems surreal that I’ll be traveling for nearly four months, surreal that I’ll get to go on retreat after that, surreal that SLUH and its benefactors so deeply believe and care for its faculty and future students that they’re willing to invest in us – in me – in this kind of way.

I hope to make the whole experience a retreat of sorts, and I anticipate being challenged in many ways. We never really know where God is leading us, what love might ask of us, what encounters and people might change us or help us realize what we need to let go of for God’s sake. It’s Advent as I write this, and it’s a helpful reminder to me that all I can really do is remind myself that I’m always in God‘s hands, that wherever I go I need to continue learning to cooperate with God in my daily life, and that ultimately I can’t really predict the cumulative effect of anything, much less this sabbatical.

But I do know one thing for sure: this is truly a gift I couldn’t possibly earn.

You can follow Diego on his sabbatical journey HERE.