An Invitation to the Search

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pains.
C.S. Lewis

Dear Friends:

I’m not sure that many students, teachers and participants in college life think that they are on a search for God, but Doctor Lewis, that old Oxford don, certainly thought so. As the very new Catholic chaplain at Connecticut College, I’d like to invite you to that search. First, the good news: God lurks around every corner. The discovery can leap out at you in a piece of literature or in history read rightly; in the workings of a single cell or in the story of the unimaginably vast universe; in loneliness, friendship, and reaching beyond ourselves.

 

So our search involves quite a bit of stretching, welcoming, and quite a lot of watching and listening. More good news: No one takes the journey alone. We are so accustomed to thinking small, but God knows better. God does whisper in our pleasures. God does speak as we apply our consciences to great issues on the personal scale and the global scale. So perhaps our first step in the search to find God is to learn to be still.

For us Catholics, Sunday Mass is a big part, an essential part of the search for God. Think of it as the still point in a world that is turning very fast. This year Mass will be in Harkness Chapel on Sunday evenings at 7. By coming—and coming back—on Sundays, we make contact with the mystery of God in Christ and renew the search. We also gradually form ourselves into a community of welcome.

 

During the year there will be plenty of opportunities both to build that community and to deepen the search. It may help you; I hope it does: I plan to be available for conversations about life and faith and our search. For now, you can reach me by calling the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life number. In short order, I should establish some regular office hours.

It is a delight for me to join the Connecticut College Catholic Community. It definitely expands my search to connect it to yours. I look forward to seeing you on Sunday evenings. So let us begin!

Yours Truly,

Father Bob Washabaugh

(860) 439-2452 – Office of Religious and Spiritual Life/Harkness Chapel

(860) 447-1431 – St. Mary Star of the Sea Church

Farewell Message from Fr. Larry

I learned just recently that, according to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, time passes more slowly at sea level than it does at higher elevations.(That would explain why I can still walk but I can’t remember where my shoes are.) I am not equipped to verify that theory scientifically. But existentially speaking, I have found that the 33 years over which I have served the academic community at “Connecticut College by the sea” passed exceedingly quickly. Although I have been at Conn for very nearly half my life, it seems as though I arrived only yesterday … well, OK maybe not yesterday but … not so long ago.

During that time the college has seen four presidents and graduated more than 14,000 students. The total enrolment has increased by about 350 and no, I did not know Katharine Blunt or Mary Harkness personally!

As many of you already know, I have been assigned to serve the people of Saint Joseph Church in Willimantic since November of 2010 while continuing with the ministry to the academic communities of Connecticut College and Eastern Connecticut State University. During this time Bishop Michael Cote has considered different models of campus ministry for us in the Diocese of Norwich, given the decreasing number of priests in active ministry. The new model is one in which the pastoral care for the Catholic community at a residential college or university is entrusted to the priest(s) of the local parish. For Connecticut College, even though Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Waterford is closer as the crow flies … or the camel walks … the college is located within the territory of Saint Mary, Star of the Sea on Huntington Street in New London.

The pastor of Saint Mary, Father Robert Washabaugh, who will be following me as your chaplain, is a great pastor of souls. He has met more than one challenge in his 34 years of priesthood (I know, I know. He wasn’t even two years ordained when I showed up here on the doorstep!). He is the founding pastor of the diocese’s only Latino parish (Sagrado Corazon in Windham), which helped him prepare for his current work as pastor of Saint Mary, a large, urban, working class, multi-cultural parish.

I am convinced that there is a synergy possible in this assignment which will enhance the life both of the college and of his parish. He is the fulfillment of the ideal campus minister defined by the Bishops Conference in 1985, a man with “… a solid faith, a love for the academic world, and the ability to relate well to both inquiring students and an educated faculty.” I know that when you meet him you will find Father Washabaugh prayerful, thoughtful, scholarly, witty and wise---not to mention self-deprecating and given to hyperbole (Oh, I guess I did mention it there!)---a man equal to the challenges of ministry on most college campuses these days, including Connecticut College.

Over the summer the pastoral care of Sagrado Corazon in Windham has been added to my portfolio. Turn around is fair play---he succeeds me and I succeed him. This is when I regret not having studied Spanish in high school or college. The people there are warm and welcoming and endlessly patient with my furtive efforts to communicate with them in something that vaguely resembles their native tongue.

If I wasn’t there when you needed me or if I disappointed you in some other way, please accept my sincere apology. Pray for me when you have a moment. Connecticut College past and present--and you in it--will always be in my heart, in my thoughts and in my prayers.

Father W. has decided Mass will be at 7 p.m. on Sundays, a time that we hope will be convenient for you. Please join him and other members of the community for worship. And please give him the same great measure of support you have always given me. Invite him to events on campus and to dinner in Harris. Come to Mass early and help him set up the altar. Volunteer to read and help with communion and community dinners.

I remember my godfather saying (with increasing frequency as he aged) “If I had my way, I’d never grow old.” Those were the days before Google and I didn’t realize then that his saying was a paraphrase of the opening line of a song from 1913, or that at least for 33 years I would very nearly live out the fulfillment of that wish … but then, for a few hours each week, I did live at sea level.

Always devotedly yours,

Fr. Larry

P.S.--Over the summer the Catholic Community gained a Facebook page in addition to its website. If you are on Facebook, please visit www.facebook.com/ConnCatholicsand “like” the page. You can find more about Father Washabaugh and the transition there and at www.conncatholics.com.

A Message from Father Washabaugh

It would be a whole lot easier to begin as the new Catholic chaplain at Connecticut College if my predecessor had been inarticulate, anti-social, uninterested in the condition of peoples’ souls, and got drunk every other night. Alas! The opposite is the case. Fr. Larry LaPointe has served here for 33 years with wit, intelligence, deep faith and wonderful effectiveness. Now, me!  As Hamlet said, “Hyperion to a satyr”.

Of course, it is grace that saves us. Fortunately, there is a power at work that can use the efforts of the most unlikely individuals, and as a college chaplain, I’m pretty unlikely.

I’ve been a parish priest in eastern Connecticut for 32 years. For the past 25 years, I’ve been involved in ministry to the growing Spanish-speaking population of our region. St. Mary Star of the Sea Church, just down the street in New London, has about 1,000 households, half of which are Spanish-speaking.

I’ve been pastor there for the past 11 years, and I must say, I enjoy it. I particularly love the way a culture not my own pulls me out of my artificially small world. Maybe serving today’s Connecticut College community will do the same thing for me.

Robert Kennedy, S.J., quoted a Japanese educator who said that the purpose of education is to take a young person and pour steel into his/her spine. (Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit, p. 55-56). Although I’m no Buddhist, I like that notion.

Catholic learning doesn’t take place primarily in the head, but lower down. It is learning to live in a certain way and to walk a certain path toward fullness in a world both beautiful and filled with illusion.  I’m very happy to be on that journey with all of you in the Catholic Community at Connecticut College this year.

Fr. Bob Washabaugh 

Holy Week and Beyond

Spring is here and winter is over and gone. It hardly seems there was a winter at all this year by New London standards. Still we are mostly happy to welcome the warmer weather and the beginning of the season of blossoms and green shoots.

There remain a number of events in the Catholic Community's calendar for the semester. I hope you will read through them and work some or all of them into your busy schedule.

On Saturday, March 31 at 5 p.m. in the Harkness Chapel we will observe Palm Sunday and begin Holy Week with Bishop Michael Cote, the local Bishop, as principal celebrant. A reception will follow Mass so you can meet him.

On Wednesday April 4 there will be a Penance Service in the Chapel at 5 p.m.

A Good Friday Service will be held on April 6 at 5 p.m. in the Harkness Chapel.

There will be no Mass on Saturday, April 7 but on Sunday, April 8, at 5 p.m. we will celebrate the Mass of Easter in Harkness Chapel.

Our usual schedule of Vigil Masses on Saturday evenings at 5 p.m. will continue until the weekend of Floralia (May 5-6).

There will be no Vigil Mass on Saturday, May 5. On May 6 at 5 p.m., weather permitting, we will gather for Mass in Buck Lodge in the Arboretum to celebrate our graduating seniors and to round out Floralia weekend. A light supper will follow Mass. Bring your friends.

On Commencement weekend the Saturday night Mass will take place at 5:30 p.m.

Keep up on happenings and schedules for events of the Catholic Community here at the college by visiting our website at www.conncatholics.com.

Whatever you do know that you are always welcome, that you can contact me through the website, by email or at the Chapel x 2452. I’m usually on campus on Wednesdays and Saturdays and would welcome the opportunity to chat with you. I’ll look forward to seeing you perhaps this Saturday or next Sunday or sometime before the semester ends.

Devotedly Yours,

Fr. Larry

Ash Wednesday 2012

Here we go again. Your favorite season is just around the corner. Yes, Lent begins on February 22, Ash Wednesday. One might easily think from all the myth that surrounds the season in the popular mind that it’s all about chocolate, smoking, swearing and liquor (not necessarily in that order). Interesting combination that. Tradition requires that one “give up” one or more of these things to have a productive Lent.

Yes, “giving something up” is the phrase most commonly associated with Lent. While giving up swearing or, say, smoking may improve the environment, yours and the planet’s, giving up chocolate’s just designed to make you suffer.

Now, I don’t want to downplay the redemptive value of suffering but couldn’t we look just briefly at how to have a good Lent while keeping the chocolate? The smoking and the swearing are another thing altogether. Think of all the good intentions you’ve had since the beginning of 2012 that have fallen by the wayside. Pick one, just one, and develop a strategy for realizing it. Practice it. Repeat it. Get good at it.

Lent is a training season, time to brush up on some rusty skill, polish up some talent for sharing, a time for giving, for loving. Really, Lent is about Baptism – a sacrament experienced for many so long ago that it lives now only in photographs and family stories. Baptism is an encounter with the living God. It gives life and welcomes us into the body of Christ. This is so important an event in our spiritual journey that the Church asks us each Easter to renew the promises made for us at our Baptism.

Well, before we launch into the training season on Wednesday the 22^nd of February at 5 p.m. with Mass and the distribution of ashes, let’s have one last fling. We’ll get together this Saturday, the 18^th, to celebrate Mass at 5 p.m. as usual in Harkness Chapel and then go into the Chapel Library for pizzas and partying to celebrate Mardi Gras.

There will be a Mass every Wednesday during Lent at 5 p.m. in the Chapel, in addition to the Vigil Masses on Saturday evenings at 5. Although you will be going on Spring Break soon after the beginning of Lent, the same schedule will continue upon your return.

If you’re confused about the customs and requirements about Lent see last year’s letter at http://goo.gl/Qkacf.

Keep up on happenings and schedules for events of the Catholic Community here at the college by visiting our website at www.conncatholics.com.

Whatever you do, know that you are always welcome, that you can contact me through the website, by email or at the Chapel (ext. 2452). I’m usually on campus on Wednesdays and Saturdays and would welcome the opportunity to chat with you.

God bless you in these spring-like days and all year long,

Fr. Larry