Fr. Eric Sternberg of
St. Paul's University Catholic Center posted a
recording of his homily from yesterday's 9 PM Mass for the Third Sunday of Lent:
"On Detachment and the Holy Eucharist." (duration: 11'58")
An excerpt, which touches on the first reading (Moses and the burning bush):
How odd Moses must have looked, on his face, in front of shrubbery.
How odd you and I must look, on our knees, for a "little piece of bread." It's silly! You can't get your head around it. Either we have faith in it—or you have to mock it! There's no other choice.
To have faith in it is to admit: I comprehend only a little; I sing, but not all the notes; I speak, but I don't know all the words; I feel, but not all the beatings of the heart. There is some that is left only for you, Lord, only for you.
My wife remarked, "I'm so glad that Bishop Morlino understood how important it is to post solid, intellectually meaty young priests on campus." I agree.
1 comment:
'My wife remarked, "I'm so glad that Bishop Morlino understood how important it is to post solid, intellectually meaty young priests on campus." I agree.'
You and your wife are right on. Speaking nationally really from the 1950s (and getting really noticeable in the 1960s) the idea was to send rather liberal priests to fill campus ministry spots. The thing is the "hip young priest" who showed up with his paisley shirt, bell bottoms, and "the church has changed," mantra in 1974 and then mentally never left 1974 was seeming a bit like a bad joke by the 1990s.
Now our Bishops really get it, the college years are vital in the life of young Catholics. For a lot of them who have been raised in Catholic families that are something more than nominal but not super-pious you only have a week or two to catch them based off the inertia of the previous life. If all the campus ministry is offering them is the same left-wing messages they are getting everywhere else on campus and inferior contemporary music to what they can find elsewhere they will quickly drift away into either de-facto secularism (if they go with the flow of the dominant culture on campus) or one of the many ulta-active Evangelical groups (if they are searching for something counter-cultural). I think until recently a lot of campus ministries and student parishes were particularly alienating to young men, thank God those days have ended in most places.
Thanks to the way things are set up at St. Paul's now, I actually know people who did show up, as nominal Catholics, and were for the first time in their life given real solid catechial formation and were drawn to the liturgy and the sacraments. I myself had a similar sort of "a-ha!" moment while in university when I was first exposed to Gregorian chant and I remember thinking "where has this been during all my life?"
Likewise it should go without saying that the ages of 18-22 (or up to the mid to late 20s if we are counting the grad students, etc.) is a time when young people are making decisions that will influence the rest of their life, vocations to the priesthood and religious life are discerned, people are meeting those who will become their future spouses etc.
I wonder if Bishops must have at some point looked at the stats and asked, "how many vocations to the priesthood have come out of the campus ministry at such and such university?" and had a rude wake up call.
Now, thank God, the campus ministry at St. Paul's in Madison is gaining even a national reputation for excellence. Also recently a very solid priest was assigned to the Newman center at UW-Lacrosse (so I expect good things to come.) Also I believe Fr. Luke Strand is running the Newman at UW-Milwaukee?
What I do not know about is the state of things at our state's many Catholic colleges. I would say that at Marquette you can find good things, it is harder than it should be but you can do it. As to places like Edgewood College, Alverno, Marian University, Mount Mary College, Viterbo, St. Norberts,and Cardinal Strich. I would be very curious how things are at these places. Wisconsin has a surprisingly large ammount of Catholic colleges but very little is ever heard about them.
I can say though that the campus ministry info from Alverno is not very promising...
http://www.alverno.edu/campuslife/campusministry/
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