SMU Catholic Weekly Blogs

A Letter to our Parents & Families

We are delighted to have you with us this weekend, celebrating the Eucharist together with the Catholic community at SMU.  Our Catholic community at SMU, which this year celebrates its 75th year, is made up of students, faculty, and staff as well as area residents who worship with them at Perkins Chapel each Sunday. Ours is a mentoring community who takes seriously the responsibility and privilege of accompanying the young Catholic men and women who live, study and play at this fine institution.
    As we carry out this mission of mentorship, we follow one simple principle: We believe in your sons and daughters. That’s why we place them at the center of all we do. They lead. They create. They teach. They serve. They sing. They inspire. In fact, we don’t just believe in them, we are counting on them.  We know that in a few short years, once their time at SMU is over, they will enter the world to assume roles of leadership in their professions, in the arts, in their communities, in their parishes and in their families.
    As their mentors on the journey, we challenge them to lead authentic lives of conviction and integrity.  We strive to inspire them to ask profound questions that will guide them to become who God calls them to be. It is our goal to help them discover their unique gifts and call each one to use their gifts to meet the world’s deep need with compassion and courage. We accomplish all of this through relevant faith-sharing and educational programs, community-building events and an ongoing presence made possible by the dedicated effort of campus ministers, our chaplain, Deacon Bronson Havard, visiting priests, student leaders, and dozens of volunteers. 
    The mission is certainly not an easy one, but it is one that is vital to the life of the world and the church today and into the future.  We are building upon the foundation you laid. We welcome your insight and wisdom into the lives of your children. We also welcome your prayers and support of our ministry. Your support of our ministry will help us reach more students, transform more lives, and send more Catholic leaders into society.
    If you have joined us on Sunday morning, please continue to celebrate with us following Mass at a brunch in your honor at the Neuhoff Catholic Student Center. If you are at the 5:00 pm Mass, you are invited to our regular Sunday Supper, also at the Catholic Center.

Kateri Tekakwitha

European fur traders settled Newfoundland during the early 1600s, and by 1642 French settlers and Jesuits had established a firm foothold along the St. Lawrence River at Quebec and Montreal. In 1676 a French Jesuit baptized the daughter of an Algonquin Indian woman, naming the girl Kateri. Already in poor health after surviving a smallpox epidemic, Kateri discerned her vocation to care for orphans and elderly people, Indian and French, at St. Francis Xavier mission near Montreal. Long hours of prayer and penance contributed to her poor health, and in 1680 Kateri died at age 24. She was beatified in 1980, making Kateri one of two American Indians recognized as candidates for canonization.

Sources: McBrien, Richard P. ed. The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1995. Pp 1243-1244.

Think Global, Act Local

Last week I used the phrase “Think global, act local.” It’s a fairly common catchphrase used by activists in all different areas, and I’m always surprised when someone hasn’t heard it before—- usually the response is something along the lines of, “that makes so much sense!” Like a lot of catchphrases that end up overused and on bumper stickers, it sometimes loses its punch and ends up seeming like a platitude. But just because it’s a common phrase doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hold true. On one level, it means that we have the responsibility to both stay aware of global issues while we try to create positive change in the community we live in. It’s a hard balancing act: in a bubble like SMU, or any college community, it’s easy to forget that there’s a larger world where things are happening. But it takes a certain amount of dedication to keep up with global events, just like it takes time to dedicate ourselves to inciting change in the world around us. There’s an art to dividing our time between doing both, especially when things become overwhelming—- sometimes it seems like there’s so much that’s wrong with the world, it’s impossible to keep track of it all.

On a deeper level, “think global, act local,” is also a call to maintaining a constant ethic, which essentially translates to avoiding hypocrisy. Without thinking about it, we can easily aware of global issues and condemn the wrongdoings of people and countries elsewhere in the world while overlooking the fact that similar injustices are happening just down the road. If we condemn the actions of those globally, we also have to hold ourselves accountable for the wrongdoings that occur locally. Even if we’re not directly to blame, we hold responsibility as people who are capable of doing something to change it.

Saint Michael

In churches and homes across the world, Christians cherish the image of St. Michael the Archangel. Michael appeared to Daniel assuring him of victory against the Persians (Daniel 10), and Revelation gives an account of a war in heaven in which Michael expelled Satan and his angels (Revelation 12:7-9). The scriptures tell us that angels are pure, created spirits who do not depend on matter for their existence or activity. Angels are the messengers of God, and they constitute a vast multitude beyond human reckoning. Each angel is a unique individual differing in perfection of nature and grace. They pray for us and are a powerful ally in the struggle against evil, since angels see God face to face and know rather than believe in the existence of God.

Sources: John A. Hardon, S.J. The Pocket Catholic Dictionary. New York: Image Books, 1980. Pp 18-19, 260.

50 prayers a day will bring Jesus to campus for free

I’ve been pitching in my 50 “e-messages” a day to invite Dave Matthews Band to campus in November. Mine went something like, “You guys will really like SMU, you should come hang out here.” Light. Breezy. Yet, to the point and compelling, at the same time. I hope he takes me up on it and the 1000s of other SMU students who have been issuing similar invitations on a daily basis since last week.

The mobilization for this contest has been impressive.  Thanks to the miracle of Facebook groups and innovative, take-charge students, SMU closed the gap from 100 to 5 in just over a week. It's exciting to feel the school spirit that the effort has sparked, too.  As I fell into a Dave Matthews-inviting zone, clicking away over and over and over again, I began to imagine all of the other people doing the exact same thing around campus. It made me think of the power of simple, repeatable acts. It made me think about mantra-like prayer. It made me think of Father Ted Hesburgh.

Father Ted Hesburgh, a walking legend at Notre Dame and the University’s 25th president, is now 90 years old. He often spoke around campus, recounting tales about marching alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or about founding the Peace Corp.  For more than 50 years, Father Hesburgh has been an influential figure in U.S. and world affairs. He was an adviser to every U.S. president between 1950 and 1990. His 150 honorary degrees put him in the Guinness Book of World Records. Among other things, he served on the Knight Commission that overhauled college sports and that is now chaired by our own University President, Dr. Gerald Turner. Through it all, Father Ted, as he insisted others call him, claimed that he turned to one simple prayer, over and over again, on all occasions, momentous or mundane: “Come, Holy Spirit”

“Come, Holy Spirit” That’s it, over and over again. “Come, Holy Spirit.” That was his invitation, or better yet, his self-reminder that God was always present and that he only needed to call to mind that Divine Mystery as he went about his daily routine – a daily routine that sometimes included happenings of historical proportions, but mostly was filled by the everyday things each of us knows. "Come, Holy Spirit."

I hope we get Dave Matthews to come play here. I also hope that when the 50 message-a-day madness ends, I can find something more like “Come, Holy Spirit” to say over and over again, like Father Ted, to remind me that, wherever my day takes me, I’m not going it alone. Imagine if we all committed to a common action like that – a simple, repeatable prayer, like “Come, Holy Spirit”. What would happen then?  It might just make a Dave Matthews Band concert on the Boulevard look like a Typical Situation instead of the Best of What’s Around.

Becoming “Point B” Catholics

Catholicism has often been referred to as a “big tent” religion because of its ability to accommodate a relatively broad spectrum of spiritual practice and faith expression. A running joke gets at the idea this way: when Protestants disagree, they start a new denomination; when Catholics disagree, we start a new religious order. This “bend-but-don’t-break” quality is a rich part of our 2000 year-old heritage. It means that a diverse collection of people throughout history have practiced the same Catholic faith, yet looked very differently doing it.

Today at SMU, this is no less true. Some Catholics come to college from families where devotional prayers like the rosary or special petitions to saints are a regular part of their spiritual life.  Others arrive having developed a strong commitment to community service and social action.  Still others are attracted to the depth and breadth of the Church’s intellectual tradition. It might be that you are hardcore pro-life and sidewalk prayer outside an abortion clinic is what you do in your spare time. Or maybe you are a die-hard justice and peace advocate and getting arrested at the School of the Americas is an annual rite. Or maybe the “smells and bells” of a high mass are your thing – the more incense and Latin, the better. All of these practices can be authentic fruits of an active spiritual life and helpful for living a mature adult faith.

But maybe you’re like the majority of us, just barely making it to Mass most Sundays amidst hectic lives where we make time for serious prayer about as often as we make it to the gym, which, if you are like me, is embarrassingly not often. 

Our challenge is to recognize that which ever one of the above descriptions happens to be our starting point – call it “My Point A” – our goal must be to build upon it and strive toward a fuller, deeper encounter of Jesus in our life, thereby constantly moving from My Point A to some new Point B.  The sign that we are following Jesus is the continual conversion of our heart as we grow more aware of the grace of God that surrounds our life everyday.  Life as followers of Jesus must be marked by ongoing transformation as we learn to place our lives – the lofty and the ordinary, the sorrow and the joy – before Jesus.

When we begin to see our faith life characterized by what we are becoming, rather than what we are doing, there is a benefit to the whole community.  Tired labels used to describe one another like, “conservative” and “liberal”, “traditional” and “progressive” lose their usefulness in a hurry.  They no longer create factions among those who are seeking the same thing: an authentic and intimate relationship with Jesus that brings meaning and purpose to all that we are. The goal of SMU Catholic is not to build up the “Catholic clique” at SMU. It is not to get as many Catholics as possible doing the same Catholic things at the Catholic Center on any given day. Our goal is to invite everyone under the tent to become transformed by the presence of the Living God.  When ongoing conversion is the common denominator, then no matter what our starting point is today, we are always being called together by Jesus toward a new Point B.

Global Hunger

For all of us, figuring out where our next meal comes from isn’t that big of a deal—a lot of us have the meal plan, and if we get sick of that, we can go just across the street to a restaurant and buy our dinner. Every Sunday after Mass, there’s Sunday Supper. Most of us are already aware, though, that this isn’t the case for people the world over, and even for many people in the United States. I was always kept aware of the issue by food drives held my elementary school, and later, by opportunities to volunteer at the local food bank and food pantries. But even when we’re aware of the issue in general, it’s easy to overlook the details. ‘Hunger’ refers to more than the simple lack of food, but also the lack of the nutrients needed to be healthy, which can result in stunted growth and higher rates of illness. About 850 million people around the world are malnourished. Children are the most vulnerable to this, and almost 16,000 children die every day from hunger-related causes.

How can we help? By continuing to donate our time and food and money to soup kitchens and food pantries, but also by raising our own awareness and understanding of the epidemic of hunger; to read and learn more, and to do our best to put faces with the statistics that we hear.

Getting a Catholic Education at SMU

Strong academic reputation. Gorgeous campus. Lively social scene. These are among the brochure-ready reasons for choosing to enroll at SMU. All are true. Here’s one I bet nobody thought of: Get a top-notch Catholic Education. At a Methodist university? A Catholic education? I must be confusing Dallas Hall for Notre Dame’s Golden Dome (minus a certain statue).

I want to suggest that not only is it NOT a wild idea, but that it is distinctly possible and highly encouraged. It all depends on what we mean by “Catholic education”. To be Catholic requires more than rote knowledge of facts and moral rules. Catholicism is a comprehensive way of life – an organic, living tradition that has always enlisted faith and reason together in the pursuit of wisdom and truth about the natural and the supernatural. Only with this starting point in mind do the spiritual practices, the moral conclusions, the dutiful commitments to God and others that have added up from following Jesus in this way of life and that are integral to our shared Christian life begin to make sense and take on their fullest meaning. Doctrine, therefore, is essential, but it must be understood in the context of the God-seeking, Jesus-following, Spirit-led way of life that discerned it and developed it thoughtfully and prayerfully over 2000 years.

If this is what it means to be Catholic, then it is possible to turn every course at SMU into a Catholic course. Looking at each new class through this Catholic lens, every class – Marketing and Medieval Doorknobs, Physics and Basket Weaving – becomes a “Catholic” class. If to know God is to know the world created by God, then every lecture, every assignment becomes an opportunity to learn more about both.

But that’s not it. What we believe is not meant solely for hearty discussions and high fives at the Catholic “club” after class. Our Catholic Education is meant to have implications for how we live with others and for how it compels us to engage the culture we live in. A Catholic education at SMU ought to mean that we offer our insight and wisdom with conviction on serious matters that concern us all – human values, justice, and social responsibility, among others – and, by doing so, transform the campus culture in light of the Gospel.

Such a shift of perspective does not just happen, though. To make the leap to a mature understanding of our Catholic lives and, thereby, pursue a Catholic education that complements the world-class one you’re already getting at SMU, takes guts and time and study. That’s where SMU Catholic can help. Beginning this week on Thursdays at 5:30 p.m., we begin offering “/101/ Catholic Basics”. /101/ approaches the “basics” from this comprehensive point of view. The topics presented each week build a framework for a mature adult Catholic faith and lay the groundwork for seeking a Catholic education at SMU. Each “mini-course” lasts four weeks and ends with an anything-goes “Stump the Priest” session. The first “mini-course” starts this Thursday, asking “Did God write the Bible?”. Contact Erin Duffy for more details.

If we commit to this way of living and learning our faith, then we can truly get a Catholic Education at SMU. Now if we could only find a building tall enough for Touchdown Jesus.