Earlier this year, I accepted the position of Coordinator of Campus Ministry at a small liberal arts college in my area. It has roughly 2000 students. Interestingly, fallen away Catholics are the largest group on campus with a self-identified religious affiliation: roughly 200-300 students. It’s not a Catholic college. It’s a progressive Lutheran one, which many of the students don’t know because that identity is largely hidden.
When I was interviewed last December, I was warned that it was a very difficult position and a total uphill climb. COVID-19 had decimated the ministry. One student held on and kept the CCM going single-handedly during that time. The ministry went from 60-70 active students down to one. When I started, there were four, with a smattering of 8-15 students who’d come to Mass on campus weekly or on occasion.
To make matters more difficult, our chaplain was diagnosed with cancer the same time I was hired. He did my interview and then had to go on medical leave to receive treatment. Praise God he is improving, and we are hopeful he will return in time. Frank Parater, pray for us!
The third challenge is that, unlike many other colleges, there is no Newman center, and I have no office. I joke with people, saying that I’m a nomad, going from place to place on campus and around the downtown area in which its located. This makes gathering students a challenge as I have to arrange the schedule around all the other religious and foreign studies ministries and clubs to get a reserved space. Plus, students are less likely to come to a nomadic ministry because understandably they desire a sense of place and home, which other ministries and clubs, especially fraternities and sororities, provide for them.
This has come to me repeatedly in prayer as I discern the next steps for the ministry. We have seemingly insurmountable obstacles to overcome: a limping along ministry, no space to call our own, and a sick chaplain. But these are the times when the Lord works in amazing ways. It is precisely in our poverty where the Lord can pour out an abundance of graces. He comes as the poor babe of Bethlehem who has nothing. He tells His Apostles that He “has nowhere to lay His head.” His ultimate bed was the Cross. The saints understood that it is these impossible circumstances that resemble the Lord most.
I find myself in similar circumstances to many of them. As I have prayed about this ministry, the image that keeps coming to mind is Our Lady, Star of the Sea (Stella Maris). She has been with me under this title for quite some time now. It is a beloved title of the Order of Discalced Carmelites of which I am a discerning lay member in formation. She is our mother and safe harbor in the stormy seas of this life. For young people, the storm is hurricane force.
As I look out at what my students face daily in both the virtual and real world, it is clear they need Our Lady’s protection and care. What is it that a mother desires to give to her children most? A home. These students need a home. Where does that home come from? It begins in prayer. This is where all major undertakings must begin. The saints did not simply go out begging for alms. They started with prayer. They took their needs to the Lord. Christ Himself taught us in Luke 11:9-13:
And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the holy Spirit to those who ask him?
The starting place of our prayer is the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and love. We must turn to the Lord in love with a firm faith and sure hope that He will hear our prayers. We must trust that He is a loving Father who will provide for our needs in accordance with His plan and timing.
There is a story about St. Teresa of Calcutta. I can’t remember if it is a hagiographical flourish or not. She was unpacking a box of donated food in which there was a birthday cake for one of the sisters. Some of those present were surprised. St. Teresa’s response was that we should expect the Lord to take care of our small needs and our great needs. It’s our own lack of faith that believes that Our Heavenly Father doesn’t want to provide for us. The Lord tells us how much the Father wants to pour out in abundance for our needs.
When it comes to larger projects, the task can feel daunting. These are the times we become most aware of our poverty. This is when we are called to surrender in total trust that the Lord is working and that Our Lady is interceding along with the Heavenly Court in our needs. There is a powerful story about the trust of Mother Angelica when she was starting EWTN, which I have pulled from their website:
The satellite dish
Having secured a lawyer, Mother Angelica then turned to the next big hurdle in breaking into the world of cable television: obtaining satellite dishes.
Satellite dishes are, as one can imagine, expensive. And an order of cloistered nuns is, as one can imagine, not exactly swimming in cash.
So Mother Angelica did the totally rational thing of ordering the satellite dishes and saying that she would pay for them when they were delivered. And then began to pray. Big time.
“And finally the [delivery] day came and the truck driver called and said, ‘I’ve got your satellite dish. You need to have a check for me before I can offload it for you.’ And she said, ‘well, come to the property,’ knowing that she didn’t have the money,” Warsaw told CNA.
“And so she, as she did in all things, when things got difficult, she went to the chapel and she went before our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. And she said, ‘you know, Lord, I guess I’ve messed this up.’”
Mother Angelica thought that perhaps she had not fully understood God’s will, and out of desperation, prayed “is there anything you could do to help me with this?”
There was.
One of Mother Angelica’s nuns came to the chapel, saying that there was a man on the phone who wanted to speak to her. Initially, Mother Angelica brushed her off, and then changed her mind and answered the call.
The man on the other end of the call was on a yacht in the Caribbean. His son, who was struggling with drug addiction, had come across one of Mother Angelica’s mini-books, and that book prompted him to enter rehab and change his life around. The man wanted to make a donation to Mother Angelica out of gratitude for what she did for his son.
“And so he said, ‘I want to send you $600,000,’” said Warsaw, which happened to be the exact amount needed for the satellite dish.
“Mother Angelica, being mother, you know, didn’t miss a beat and just said ‘do you think you could wire transfer that to me?’,” said Warsaw. She then told one of her nuns to write the check for the delivery man, and the dish was delivered to the studio.
That satellite dish still stands at EWTN’s campus in Irondale, Alabama, four decades later, and has been the principal uplink antenna to broadcast EWTN’s programming around the world.
Serving in this ministry requires a deep reliance on God and trust that He is working. It requires the supernatural gaze that looks upon the poverty-stricken King of the Universe in the manger and the tortured, crucified Christ on the Cross and knows that it is precisely in hopeless situations that the Lord works most powerfully. It is to know that the saints who started in front of the Tabernacle and in prayer with one or two other people is how the Lord brings renewal. It is through this prayer that the Lord awakens generous hearts to provide for a ministry’s needs. He doesn’t use a top-down approach. Our Lord is a grassroots, middle of nowhere, impossible situations kind of Savior.
That is why I have slowly begun the task of seeking a home for my storm-weary students through prayer and sharing our mission’s needs with others. Please pray for us. Ask Our Lady Star of the Sea to be a beacon and safe harbor leading us into the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Ask St. Joseph to be a spiritual father who guards, protects, and defends us as he leads us to Our Heavenly Father. Ask Servant of God Frank Parater, a seminarian of my diocese, to intercede for our needs, the healing of our chaplain, and to raise up many holy vocations. You can read more about the ministry here and here.
The Lord calls us to trust Him in seemingly hopeless situations. It is in these moments that we are strengthened in faith, hope, and charity. These are the times when He is able to sanctify us even more. Only through embracing total poverty and powerlessness can He fill us up and transform the situations we find ourselves in as we serve Him. He will provide for our small and great needs. As Frank Parater said: “The Sacred Heart never fails those who love Him.”
Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash
