SMU Catholic Weekly Blogs

Pray without Ceasing

Over and over in his letters to the first Christians, St. Paul calls them to pray at every opportunity. For us today, the challenge is still the same: to make a habit of our praying. The forms and styles of prayers can be as numerous as words prayed.  To help encourage a habit of prayer, SMU Catholic has begun organizing four student-led opportunities each week, all at 8:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday at the Neuhoff Catholic Center. Here’s a rundown of what to expect:

Mondays : Rosary    I didn't grow up much of a rosary guy. That is, if you don’t count the gigantic one made of peach pits that hung over my grandmother’s bed. But since then, I have learned a great deal about this prayer method rooted in similar ancient, bead-based practices of contemplative prayer. The focus of the Rosary is the life of Jesus, despite the popular perception that those who employ it are praying “to” Mary. The repetition its known for is intended to focus the mind and heart to more fully ponder the mysteries of the life of Jesus.

Tuesday: Eucharistic Prayer    Find silence and solace while contemplating a verse from Scripture in the presence of the Eucharist. The heart of this prayer is silence for private conversations with God framed by the reading of scripture to begin and end.

Wednesday : The Holy Half Hour    Loosely based on the Liturgy of the Hours, the Holy Half Hour features a talk about living the Christian life in college and a time to pray together for personal and community needs.

Thursday : Praise & Worship    If you like to sing, then Praise & Worship is for you.  It’s a contemporary style characterized by the upbeat guitar music and spontaneous, unscripted prayers.    The group meets in the Upper Room.

God, online

For the technologically-inclined, here’s a new guide to some worthwhile podcasts, websites and video blogs designed to help us live out our faith.

The Busted Halo Show – (bustedhalo.com & iTunes)
Late last year the weekly Busted Halo podcast premiered as a daily Sirius satellite radio show hosted by Paulist Father Dave Dwyer, who before becoming a priest was a producer at MTV. iTunes carries select interviews from the show featuring Dwyer’s laid back, light-hearted style. Recent notable guests include the rock band the Barenaked Ladies, presidential candidate Senator Sam Brownback, and self-help guru Deepak Chopra.

Catholic Classes – (catholicclasses.org & iTunes)
Produced by a Utah parish for use in its religious education classes, these podcasts manage to be informative while not putting you to sleep.  A team of lay people use scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, liturgical prayer, music, references for in-depth reading, and discussion questions to teach adult-level classes on basic topics of Catholic doctrine.

The Catholic Media Report – (catholicmediareport.org)
This online digest tracks media coverage in mainstream newspapers of Catholicism and U.S. political issues.  It targets Catholics interested in the intersection of faith and politics and serves as a resource for members of the media who are concerned with reporting accurately on Catholic Social Teaching.

Religion and Ethics Newsweekly: “One Nation 2008” – pbs.org/religion
This Webby Award-winning site is a companion to the TV show that airs weekly on PBS. If you are interested in the religious views held by the current crop of presidential candidates, then click the One Nation banner on the homepage.  The One Nation blog is the only place on the web that posts full-length video of candidates addressing religious audience and topics.   

A Priest and a Nun walk in to a Barbecue Joint, sort of.

Tonight is a special night at Sunday Supper. The atmosphere will be typically laid back, but you may find yourself sitting next to someone with an extraordinary story. In addition to the delicious catered barbecue banquet – which is reason enough to come – we will welcome men and women who have answered God’s call to serve in a special way as priests and religious sisters. Thanks to the sponsorship of the Serra Club, we are hosting our second annual Vocations Dinner tonight following the 5:00 p.m. Mass. All are welcome.

Whether it has ever crossed your mind or not to dedicate your life in service as a priest or nun, rubbing elbows with those who have and hearing their stories can serve to inspire all of us to ask the question: “What am I living for?” It’s that fundamental question that can open each of us to hear God’s calling in our life. God calls each one of us, not just those who become priests and nuns. We each have a calling, or a vocation.  But how can we know what that calling is?

We hit two basic stumbling blocks when we are trying to listen for God’s calling in our life. First, we think that when God calls us to serve, it will be to do something outside our daily life and interests, like, becoming a missionary in Africa or serving the poor like Mother Teresa. Sometimes that is the case, but most often God calls us right where we are to serve the Gospel mission of healing and reconciliation among our own friends, family and colleagues.  And what’s more, our already-present passions and talents can give us clues into how to do it. In other words, God doesn’t call us to become someone we are not, to do something we aren’t capable of. God calls us to be who we are, right where we are, committed to doing “our thing” in loving service of others. If we do this, it will be impossible to avoid being changed by the transformative presence of God in those we serve.

The second obstacle to hearing God’s call is that we think God speaks only to us, about us. The understanding of vocation in our church is limited to something personal and internal, making the discernment of a vocation to the priesthood, for example, something that is often done in private or in isolation. We each have a role to play in helping one another hear God’s call.  Individually and collectively, we need to develop a habit of affirming one another’s gifts and “calling” each other to apply those gifts in service for the common good.  To become a community that affirms and calls would not only force us out of our self-revolving orbits, but also demand an awareness of the needs of those around us, in and out of the community circle. This way of approaching vocations could help us gain new insight and appreciation of what we celebrate in part in the sacrament of Holy Orders, that is, the sacred stewardship of the community’s human resources.

So join us tonight for a tasty Sunday Supper. You might just leave with more than barbecue on your chin.

My Brain, on Retreat

I’ve got retreat on the brain. Here’s why:

• Around 10 of our students attended the TCU Awakening this weekend. Some of them are likely sitting next to you at the FIVE right now. Ask them how it went. They may not be able to say much more than “It was amazing!” before they start urging you to go next semester. Take their word for it.

• I spent most of my weekend at a camp outside of St. Louis observing how Washington University puts on their version of the Awakening. Why Wash U.? Their campus culture is much like our own: urban, affluent, ambitious. I’m looking to steal their ideas. Our goal is to offer the first-ever Mustang Awakening next Fall. And after all, it was a transformative experience for our own Erin Duffy, a Wash U. alumna. Get to know her and you’ll know what I mean.

• Then there’s our new library in the Upper Room at the Catholic Center which is stocked with books with titles like, “A Retreat with Catherine of Siena, Living the Truth in Love” or “A Retreat with Patrick, Discovering God in All” just to name two of the dozen or so books like these that combine writings from the lives of spiritual guides and saints, biographical information, prayers and questions to ponder.  Each book is broken up in to chapters designed to be easy to read each day in less than 20 minutes. Check one out.

    When I hear “retreat” it often conjures up negative images of icebreakers at 8th grade lock-ins or smoky campfires and musty bunk beds. Or even worse: someone asking me to talk about my feelings.  More than anything, restless soul that I am, I resist the idea of “retreating” altogether. Why should I retreat, back down, surrender when I want to move forward, advance, get ahead? In our go-go-go culture, the idea of getting away on a retreat seems downright ancient.
    And that might be the point. It is ancient because God has wired each of us up with the inherent desire for the Good Life. The problem is that our idea of the Good Life is up for grabs. There are plenty of conflicting opinions on what makes the Good Life so good and even more theories on how to get it.  What can make a retreat so powerful is its ability to help us hit the reset button in our lives, clear out the competing images and inclinations. When we take the time to hear each others’ personal stories, open up to someone new, experience the true freedom that comes from letting go we catch a glimpse of the Good Life the way God intends it. A retreat helps by giving us a tiny sample, a hint of what could be. It gets us into a new rhythm, even if just for a brief time. But that rhythm is meant to be played with others back in the Real World, not left and longed for in the retreat world. Getting away helps us find it, getting together helps us keep it.

10/11/07

I am thrilled to finally announce the completion of a project that has been long in the planning and even longer in the dreaming. This Wednesday, SMU Catholic will officially dedicate the new Theological Education Resource Center at the Neuhoff Catholic Student Community Center. Thanks to the generous support of three charitable foundations and many individuals, the "Upper Room" as its already being called, is now home to an inviting and versatile atmosphere designed to accommodate many of the faith-learning and faith-sharing programs sponsored by our community on campus.

Don't take my word for it. Please come see for yourself. All are invited to join in the dedication of the Upper Room on Wednesday, October 17 at 4:00 p.m. A short program will include a prayer of blessing and expressions of gratitude for all involved in making this happen.

The space is decked out in warm tones and bright light perfect for quiet study, group meetings, and our weekly /101/ mini-courses. New computer

Upper Room now open

I am thrilled to finally announce the completion of a project that has been long in the planning and even longer in the dreaming. This Wednesday, SMU Catholic will officially dedicate the new Theological Education Resource Center at the Neuhoff Catholic Student Community Center. Thanks to the generous support of three charitable foundations and many individuals, the “Upper Room” as its already being called, is now home to an inviting and versatile atmosphere designed to accommodate many of the faith-learning and faith-sharing programs sponsored by our community on campus.

Don’t take my word for it. Please come see for yourself. All are invited to join in the dedication of the Upper Room on Wednesday, October 17 at 4:00 p.m. A short program will include a prayer of blessing and expressions of gratitude for all involved in making this happen.

The space is decked out in warm tones and bright light perfect for quiet study, group meetings, and our weekly /101/ mini-courses.  New computers, an LCD projector, sound system and a screen will accommodate most technological needs for presentations or movie nights. Just about everything in the room is on wheels making it ready for everything else we haven’t thought of yet, too.

A central feature of the room is its small lending library of titles chosen to help everyone from the moderately curious to the majorly confused (I’m usually both) continue asking big questions about life, God and how we fit together. Here are some examples of what you’ll find, just to name a few of the 200 new titles:
•    A Retreat With C. S. Lewis: Yielding to a Pursuing God
•    Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
•    Consuming Faith: Integrating Who We Are with What We Buy
•    The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
•    Does the Bible Really Say That? Discovering Catholic Teaching in Scripture
•    What Jesus Said and Why It Matters Now
•    When a Catholic Marries a Non-Catholic
•    Facing Forgiveness: A Catholic's Guide to Letting Go of Anger and Welcoming Reconcilation

The Resource Center and its library represent a vital supplement to our life together.  After all, the study of our Catholic faith is really the study of our life together – a life focused on following Jesus in the midst of our everyday blessings and challenges. None of these books have all the answers but many are filled with the kinds of questions pondered since Jesus called the first disciples, ones sure to lead us to a life richly and authentically lived.

Will this be on the test?

If I had to take one, my guess for the most frequently-asked question in any classroom on campus would be: “How long does the paper have to be?” Have you ever asked that one? I have. It’s the first day of class, new semester, the professor has just passed out the syllabus. I rifle through the pages, past the “learning objectives”, gloss over the book list (there goes another one hundred and fifty bucks), and search for the paper assignments, looking for most important detail: length. If it’s not in black and white on the syllabus, my hand is in the air before you can say “is that single or double-spaced?”  My heart goes out to the optimistic professor who holds out hope for that one student who shows up in class for the sheer joy of learning. Yeah, right!  Tell me what I have to do to get my “A” and will this stuff be on the test?

We make the same mistake with God, asking How much is enough? What is the minimum I have to do in order to enjoy favor with God? What do I have to do to get on God’s good side?  We reduce life together with God to a list of minimum requirements. In our admirable but misguided attempts to do the right thing we limit God to the role of a moral judge giving out grades based on our behavior and activity. When we do that, we can’t help but begin to see ourselves in those terms: I am what I do. From there it’s a short jump to: God only likes me when I am doing “good” things. When we put God in this box, we end up with questions about how “far” we can go before something becomes wrong or sinful.  Where do I draw the line when it comes to sex? Is cheating wrong if it doesn’t hurt anyone else?

Jesus’ message to us today in Luke’s Gospel tells us we’re missing the point when we base our relationship with God simply on carrying out our responsibilities. The basis of our relationship to God must be in our grateful response to God’s unconditional, unearned love for us.  Like the servant, what ought to motivate us to carry out our duties – do the right thing – is the awareness of our own belovedness in the eyes of an ever-present God, who gives to us, without regard to our accomplishments, all that we have: our faith, our life, our purpose and our responsibilities, not because we have earned them, but because it is the very nature of God as the Master Creator and the Giver of Life. The stunning, liberating, sobering truth is this: Nothing you and I do today, tomorrow or the next day, can increase God’s love for us yet nothing we do can ever diminish it, either.  And, yes this will be on the test.

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.

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.