Strange, isn’t it, how hyphenated dates pop up in our reading? References to past historic figures, terms of office, academic terms and careers, all have dates separated by a hyphen. I remember hearing it said that the hyphen represents more than the dates because it’s what happens between the dates that’s really important.
Here we stand at the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year. The hyphen here doesn’t stand for midnight between the 31st of December 2010 and the 1st of January 2011 but to the period between Convocation 2010 and Commencement 2011. This modest little hyphen represents all the potential in that space and time for growth of learning, deepening of friendships, new insights, hard-won wisdom, laughter, tears, sweat and goose bumps. A whole magnificent academic year of choices and challenges!
Wherever you’re coming from in your own journey of discovery, it is my hope as we begin this new academic year that you will continue some of the spiritual practices that were yours before you came here, or that you will seek to imbue abandoned practice with some new meaning. You will likely question the value of your familiar habits, beliefs and practices as you explore your convictions. That is, after all, the purpose of your education. But it is difficult to study or critique the absent subject. Ask all the questions, but hold yourself to the same high standard you have for the Church. Forge bravely the foundation of your own heroic sacrifices and please remember that many great women and men have found inspiration and encouragement in their faith and many in the very faith you may be inclined to let slip for a while. As John Henry Newman (1801-1890) (another hyphenated date!) said, “Follow the truth, wherever it leads.”
Newman, priest, scholar and theologian, will be proclaimed “Blessed” by Pope Benedict this Sunday, September19th. This is the penultimate stage in the lengthy process of being proclaimed a saint. And October 17th will see the canonization of Andre Bessette (1845-1937), the Holy Cross brother who, as a young man, worked among the mill workers of eastern Connecticut and was the uncle of a Conn alum.
As the Catholic Community at Connecticut College we have an interest in both of these gentlemen but particularly Cardinal Newman. He is the inspiration for catholic campus ministries at secular colleges and universities all over the world and beginning in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania in 1893.Newman had a lot to say about higher education. His struggle with truth led him by various paths to Jesus as if guided by what he called a “kindly light”. He professed his love of truth in word and deed. It brought him both condemnation and a cardinal’s red hat, each in their turn. Neither distracted him from his quest. He was neither destroyed by the criticism nor too impressed by the hat. It is difficult while we are young (or, honestly, at any age) to have that kind of focus and perseverance. But in Newman, as in all the saints, we have a virtual image of what the finished product might look like.
Good fortune has brought you to a great place to learn and to seek. Please make the Catholic Community here at Conn a resource in that enterprise. Come and invite your friends to join you for Vigil Masses on Saturdays at 5 pm in the Harkness Chapel and for community suppers. (The first is this Saturday the 18th in the Hood Dining Room in Blaustein after Mass.) Join the choir. Become a Eucharistic Minister or Lector. Catch up on the sacraments by preparing for First Communion or Confirmation. Stop by to visit me for a chat at the chapel or invite me to dinner chez Harris. It won’t cost you anything but the time. Visit our website, http://www.conncatholics.com/, for the latest on the Catholic Community’s activities and events.
I look forward to the opportunity to get to know you better. I hope to offer you an opportunity to get to know more about the Church and your faith as a resource to the many important choices you make every week. And I hope this will be a spectacular “hyphen” for us all.
Devotedly yours,
Fr. Larry
