The idea of "Making the Parts Whole" is not new. In fact, it is very much at the heart of Jesuit or Ignatian spirituality. For millions of Jesuit educated men and women, the goal of living an integrated life is a priority. At one time or another, many of us have pondered questions like:

• Who am I?
• What are my special gifts and talents?
• What are my deepest desires?
• What keeps me from being able to be the kind of person I want to be and that God calls me to be?
• How can I best discern God's call to me in my life today?

The trick, of course, is to keep asking the questions throughout our lives and to keep discerning the answers. Making the Parts Whole is here to keep the questions in mind and to inspire & guide the process of discernment.

Some three and a half years ago, the College of the Holy Cross was one of a number of religiously affiliated colleges and universities to receive a prestigious 2 million dollar grant from Lilly Endowment. The grant is awarded to support efforts aimed at examining and expanding the college community's broad understanding of vocation and facilitating a deepened sense of one's own vocation (http://college.holycross.edu/grants/lilly/index.html) Since then, the College has created some excellent new programs on and off-campus.

One of these is www.makingthepartswhole.com, a new website conceived by - and maintained through - the College of the Holy Cross. Our primary aim was to develop a site for the extended Holy Cross family that offers some of the same spiritual resources readily available to members of the on-campus HC community. Our secondary aim was to provide spiritual resources for anyone interested in learning about and using some of the Ignatian tools for prayer, reflection, and discernment that are the special legacy of a college like Holy Cross where our Jesuit heritage is central to our identity.