Words of Life: Celebrating 50 Years of the Hesburgh Library’s Message, Mural, and Meaning

This book celebrates the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library and its fifty years as a place of evolving service, powerful symbolism, and collaboration. It tells the history of the Library in terms of its meaning to all those who designed it, helped it to become a reality, imbued it with a distinctive identity, and pointed it toward the future. The text by Bill Schmitt and photographs from the University Archives and university photographers give the reader a new appreciation for a building that is central to the university’s history and therefore important to supporters of Notre Dame as a place of special value.

Schmitt begins with the Library’s dedication day in 1964 and explores what the new building meant to Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., who as president of Notre Dame played a key role in its construction and in defining its characteristics and place at Notre Dame. The book focuses especially on the building’s best-known feature, the iconic mural named The Word of Life but better known to many as Touchdown Jesus. Included in the book are numerous photos that transport the reader to the past and enhance an appreciation of the mural and the building for us today.