Is single life a vocation?

I recently exhorted a group of young adults to be open to discovering their vocations (see the previous post--it's from a modified homily, actually). I specifically mentioned priesthood, marriage, consecrated religious life.

The next morning I received a very thoughtful, fair, and clear email from a young adult at the Newman Center in which she expressed the following concerns, which my homily had brought up by omission. She wrote (by the way, she gave me permission to use excepts) that I "neglected one other vocational state: Single, just single; i.e., not called to marriage and not called to be a religious brother or sister, or third order whatever."

In her opinion, Catholic singles are the "forgotten vocation."

She went on to explain that, in her view, "the great majority of Catholics view all single people as in tension; i.e., trying to decide whether to choose the married life or to choose the priesthood/religious life."

And more, that "It never occurs to them that a single man or women might not be trying to decide anything. They’ve already chosen to be single."

The bottom line for my friendly and concerned interlocutor seems to be expressed when she writes: "it would be nice if the Catholic community at large, both priests and laity, recognized that the unconsecrated, unattached single life is a legitimate vocation too."

How would you respond to these comments? Can single life be dubbed a "vocation" in the same way as marriage, priesthood, and consecrated life?

Here's three elements of a good response.

1) Baptism is the fundamental "vocation" of each Christian, a consecration to be priest, prophet, and king through union with Christ. It is has a nuptial significance already, oriented as it is to completion (i.e., full initiation) by Holy Communion. From this perspective, there is no such thing as an "unattached" or "single" Christian.

This means priests and consecrated religious are not a special "caste" of those called to holiness and lay people are the lowly second-class citizens called to spiritual mediocrity. Why not? Because they are all baptized, and therefore consecrated to God.

Nonetheless, priesthood and marriage constitute two unique consecrations at the service of Communion in the Church. Far from downplaying baptismal dignity, these actually highlight it in specific ways.

2) To remain unmarried for the Lord is, in some sense, preferable and normative, in a symbolic though not statistical way. Recall that St Paul says in I Cor 34: "An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit." So in a way my friend is dead right: no one should be shocked at the unmarried status of Christian women, assuming that her virginity helps her to be concerned about the Lord's affairs, i.e., as we would say, living out her baptismal promises.

This "preferable" or "normative" dimension of Christian virginity we see in St Paul does not mean that a majority of Christians are to remain unmarried; rather, it points to the profound and thorough "texture" of baptismal, and in fact all authentic Christian, spirituality. Hey, we belong to the Lord, married or unmarried. Once in awhile I like to remind people of the radicality of Jesus Christ by saying something like, "If you've met Jesus Christ, how can you possibly think about any body else?" It gets the point across...even if it's totally unnuanced. All this being said, I'd gently offer one corrective to my emailing friend:

3) Virginity, to be properly ordered "to the Lord," benefits greatly from, and perhaps is ordered to, an ecclesial form.

I don't want to sell short the spontaneous reactions that my friend received from average Catholics. She wrote: "it would be nice if the Catholic community at large, both priests and laity, recognized that the unconsecrated, unattached single life is a legitimate vocation too."

Would it be nice? Perhaps what causes some hesitation in Catholics in general toward easy recognition that the unattached single life is a vocation is just that--its unattached. Sure, it's "attached" to Jesus, interiorly, spiritually. But as Catholics we are used to (rightly, I think) the invisible becoming visible, the interior becoming exterior. If you are attached to Jesus, you want to show it--and our instinct is to show it (the attachment to Christ) in some form in the Church.

The Church document which addresses this is Vita Consecrata. It says in paragraph 7:

7. It is a source of joy and hope to witness in our time a new flowering of the ancient Order of Virgins, known in Christian communities ever since apostolic times. Consecrated by the diocesan Bishop, these women acquire a particular link with the Church, which they are committed to serve while remaining in the world. Either alone or in association with others, they constitute a special eschatological image of the Heavenly Bride and of the life to come when the Church will at last fully live her love for Christ the Bridegroom.

If priests or lay people raise eyebrows at the validity of "single vocations," perhaps it is because they simply don't see the "witness" aspect, linked as it is to the public, ecclesial consecration of the diocesan Bishop. Note that this allows the single woman to "acquire a particular link with the Church, which they are committed to serve...." This is huge. It resolves the tension, to some degree. Because after all, as Pope JP II reminded us, every man is called to be a husband and father and every woman a wife and mother, physically, spiritually, or both. Everyone is called to love, to "lay down their lives for their friends." This requires commitment; it demands attachment.

Granted, we can always grow in our appreciation for the dignity of any baptized person, and be sensitive to those who feel "left out" of more popularly understood forms of consecration. But I wonder if we also need to remind folks who have discerned an authentic call to permanent virginity outside of priesthood and religious life that the Church has a place which may be for them, and that they are not forgotten: the ancient, and now newly growing, Order of Virgins.

An Icon of Life: Two men going up to the temple

Throughout the long and rich Catholic spiritual tradition there are any number of images to describe the “work” of the spiritual life. Dante’s Divine Comedy, Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain, and St Theresa of Avila’s Interior Castle all come to mind. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus gives a number of parables which provide tightly-packed images of what He Himself does in human souls, and how we respond, and what the great consequences are.

The parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector is one of these tightly packed images, reflecting three basic moves of the spiritual life, the life of a disciple of Christ. Using and modifying Fr Barron’s three steps (from his excellent “Three Paths of Holiness” DVD—did you see it on WGN recently?), I’d like to look at this parable as a picture of these three steps. Here’s how I see the three basic moves of the spiritual life:

1) Turn to the Lord. 2) Know you’re a sinner. 3) Find your mission.

The first one: turn to the Lord. This is the most foundational move of our hearts, the most necessary. It’s the dirt floor. This is where we “turn”, spiritually, interiorly, from all the good things in our life—including our very life itself—to God who is, even now, creating me, loving me, giving rise to my very existence. In the early centuries of the Church, there was a public call to prayer: “Conversi ad dominum!” Turn to the Lord!

We see this move on display in the two men in the gospel today, the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Both “went up to the temple to pray.” What they do physically—physically turning to Jerusalem, to the Temple, the physical place where the Most High dwelt—we are called to continuously do spiritually, just we physically turn to the altar at Mass. This is the deep meaning of our prayer at Mass, when the priest says, “Lift up you hearts,” and we respond “We lift them up to the Lord.” Life with the Holy Trinity is our origin and goal: at this moment we offer our free “yes” to this “direction.” We must strive to turn to the Lord, interiorly, at every moment of our lives.

The second move: know you’re a sinner. Think of the tax collector in the gospel today. He doesn’t even lift his eyes to heaven, says Jesus, yet he says, “O God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Now having turned interiorly to the Lord, the pure Light of God, he sees clearly where he is off, where there are smudges on the windshield. But he has learned a new way of seeing, a vision which sees not only his sinfulness, but God’s mercy and power to heal, implied in his unlimited confidence to proclaim his sinfulness publically.

The Pharisee—renowned as a religious expert—never managed to turn to the Lord interiorly, so what does he notice in his blindness? His illusory greatness, and other people’s sinfulness. He prays not to God but to himself. And his pseudo-prayer recounts not God’s greatness but his own litany of marvelous deeds: “I fast twice a week, I tithe, etc”. He also proclaims the sinfulness of the tax collector: greedy, dishonest, adulterous. He perceives the Tax Collector lacks the three things that matter: hope, faith, and love.

And at first blush, he's dead right. Tax Collectors were notorious for those vices.

But the irony is that the Pharisee is all of these things as well—like the Tax Collector, sure—but he is worse off because he cannot see it. Though he tithes, he is greedy, self-centered, unable to be truly giving and generous in his prayer. Though he fasts, he gorges himself in lies about himself and his self-sufficiency; though he goes to the temple to pray, he commits perhaps the worse form of spiritual adultery: self-adoration. He worships himself. Isn’t this form of idolatry—the terrible closed-circle of self-worship and community-centered worship—among our greatest temptations today?

Humans on earth can't be divided between sinners and saints, but only between those sinners who know it and those who don't (yet). G.K. Chesterton said something much like that.

Finally, the third move: find your mission. This parable may not seem to be a tale of mission, but look--Jesus says of the two men:

"I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former."

To be “justified” means to be untwisted; to be brought into a dynamic relationship to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To dwell in God, which is to dwell in love, and so be healed of our self-adoration. The implication? The tax collector has been healed; he has turned to God, he knows he is a sinner, and now he has discovered his mission—and off he goes! He leaves the temple, exalted as an apostle of God’s power and mercy. He truly “went home justified,” he went home healed; while the Pharisee remains a slave to himself and his lies.

Jesus calls himself our “physician.” Think of these three steps in this analogy: we turn to the doctor’s office, we tell him what is ill, and he heals us so that we can begin to live our lives, knowing and fulfilling His wonderful will for us.

How often in our fear we are like the man—like the Pharisee—who has a massive cancerous growth on his pancreas or liver, and goes to the doctor to brag about his healthy diet and exercise routine. Either this man is delusional, or does not trust his doctor’s skill.

Any of these three steps are happening all the time in our lives; we enter in at any step. Which one are you most in need of right now? Perhaps an experience of addiction has deflated you; perhaps an experience of beauty has captivated you; perhaps discovering that Christ is calling you to the priesthood, religious life, or married life is enflaming your soul with a desire to turn to God in a new way. The "steps" all go together, and form the single experience of our life as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Turn to the Lord. Know you’re a sinner. Find your mission.

talkin' angels to a bunch of (curious) materialists

Recently an upper-level religious studies class at Arizona State University came to the Catholic Newman Center, where I work as a priest, as part of a class observation project. They came to observe the strange and exotic behaviors of us Catholics in our native environment, the Mass. Afterwards, they wished to engage in a two-hour question and answer session with me, a priest.

So that is exactly what we did. It was very interesting.

ASU is in many ways a typically twenty-first century American university: a surface-level pluralism appears across the student body, while what actually pervades their way of thinking and believing (very generally speaking) is a vague and often unreflective--but strong nonetheless--brand of materialism and Enlightenment-style suspicion of religion.

What the heck am I supposed to preach to these kids at Mass? That's what I thought as I prepared for Mass that day. Part of me was hoping for a nice, vaguely spiritual ordinary-time feast which wouldn't cause too much cognitive dissonance to my young materialist and anti-Catholic compatriots. So I opened the "ordo" to check the feast day and got the exact opposite of what my bashful side wished for: a feast of great Catholic verve, color, and snappiness.

The Feast of The Archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.

I'll spare you the details of my homily and talk with the students and say this: Catholicism is at its most fascinating, most riveting, most attractive when it doesn't re-package itself to suit modern intellectual tastes. I was tempted to tuck tail and say the squishy swill they wanted to hear: "Catholicism like everything else out there...it's about being nice, and just being yourelf!"

But, alas, a) that's really boring and b) that's totally not true. Heck, Catholicism is about angels, in a huge way. The more I spoke this, the more interesting things became, the more confident I felt, and (it seemed to me) the more the non-Catholic group sat up and showed some curiosity about it all.

Catholicism becomes inviting when its "thick" worldview--God, angels, heavenly temples, exorcisms and all--is presented without the weak-sauce blushing demanded by Enlightenment-style philosophical systems that can't understand it. With all the proper intellectual nuance, to be sure. But without blushing. If St. Michael is real (which he is), there's no need for it.

Do we really believe in angels? Uh, yeah, we do. Shoot, we know their names (a few of them), for crying out loud. To speak to a large group of students of any number of religious, ethnic, and ideological backgrounds is a privilege. But to speak about angels and archangels was a true delight. It snapped me out of my own fearful tendencies to pander to the intellectual pre-commitments of an audience, in exchange a more reasonable and Catholic model in which I proposed to them a more Biblical and historical (and less Cartesian) worldview.

I challenged my open-eyed interlocutors to consider reality on the broadest possible spectrum (perhaps angels are real after all), and to also consider that maybe, just maybe, materialism (the belief that only physical things are real) is a narrow-minded and weird and rationally untenable position to hold.

Strangely, the topic that garnered the most attention is the existence, nature, and attributes of angels. Maybe it was safer for these students than asking questions about God and Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. But that's fine, isn't it? The students were, as far as I could tell, authentically interested and curious. They seemed a little surprised that much of what Catholics believe about angels comes less from the Bible and more from philosophy (e.g., the nature of how angels know things intuitively, choose, move, etc.)

They giggled--but only a little--when I told them that, if they wish, they can pursue their questions about angels in a field called "Angelology," which is a rich and impressive field in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

If, like Blessed John Henry Newman said, a University is a meant to be a place where all the human areas of knowledge and understanding come in contact with one another, then perhaps Angelology at ASU isn't so strange after all.

Hating the body

Recently some family members came across, in a Catholic circle (we'll leave it at that for the sake of anonymity), the idea that St Augustine is "anti-body," meaning he essentially espouses a "soul=good, body=bad" theology.

My family members were bothered. Isn't Augustine a doctor of the Church? they asked. How could he be so wrong on an essential teaching of the faith? Emails went back and forth, and I remained silent...until today! I finally weighed in on the matter. He's the effort, for what's it worth. Next time you hear someone trash-talk Augustine, remember this entry. I'll include the email to my family in it's original form.

Dear Fam,

I don’t know if you’re still thinking about the recent discussion over St Augustine. If you are, read on! I thought I’d make my own contribution to the discussion.

The basic question at stake, it seems, was whether St Augustine’s teaching is anti-body, perhaps tainted by the remnants of his former manicheism, whether implicitly or explicitly. Should we be suspicious of his teaching on the body?

It is good to remember that St Augustine wrote over a span of many decades, and in response to many different situations. But for my purpose here, I’m going to ignore the complexities of the development of his thought. It is true St Augustine was a disciple of the philosophy of manicheism before his conversion. This philosophy was strongly dualistic, meaning the universe was seen as divided into two great principles: light and dark, good and evil, spirit and body.

Later, Augustine was a disciple of Neo-Platonism, which saw the universe as a great chain of being, with the material reality of physical bodies being on the lower end of the chain. Death was an escape from the body, and entrance into the purely spiritual, and therefore better, realm.

But only a cursory reading of St Augustine’s Confessions, his autobiography, shows that he saw these philosophical forays as just that—dead-end paths from which he had been saved when he discovered Christ and the Church.

A theologian I once heard said, “Aquinas reads like a freeman; Augustine reads like a freed man.” Augustine was always conscious of his liberation from the bad tendencies. Still it is fair to ask if those tendencies (in this case, anti-body ones) remained in his thought despite himself, even into his years when he was a bishop.

As far as I can tell, Augustine’s teaching on the body reflects a nuanced and properly ordered understanding. He writes in his famous and fundamental Christian Doctrine:

“And when some people say that they would rather be without a body altogether, they entirely deceive themselves…For as, after the resurrection of the body, having become wholly subject to the spirit, will live in perfect peace to all eternity; even in this life we must make it an object to have the carnal habit changed for the better, so that its inordinate affections may not war against the soul.”

In writing this, Augustine draws claims that the body is in fact good, but unruly, inveterate. It is to submit to the spirit and so become what it is meant to be, which is fulfilled in the resurrection of the body. This whole section is set in the context of Augustine’s reflection on St Paul’s words, “No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishest and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church.” (Christian Dotrine, Chapter I, book 24).

Augustine teaches that we are to learn to “love the body”, provided it is in the proper way. He writes, “[Man] is to be taught, too, in what measure to love his body, so as to care for it wisely and within due limits.” (Christian Doctrine, Chapther I, book 25).

Augustine even sees the body as ingredient in the command to love God and neighbor “as thyself.” He writes, “Now, if you take yourself in your entirety—that is, soul and body together—and your neighbor in his entirety, soul and body together (for man is made up of soul and body), you will find that none of the classes of things that are to be loved is overlooked in these commandments….it is evident that our love for ourselves [including the body] has not been overlooked.” (Christian Doctrine, Chapter I, book 26).

From Augustine’s own words, it seems clear to me that his understanding of the body is consonant with the bulk of the great Christian tradition. The body is good, but not the highest good; it is an essential element of the human person, and destined for glory, albeit through the discipline of the cross.

From where comes the notion that St. Augustine is somehow anti-body?

I recently read an article from the scholar Eamon Duffy (in "Beyond the Prosaic", a collection of essays) in which he points out that much of the theology of the late 1960’s failed to understand Augustine’s very biblically rooted notion of the relationship between temporal and eternal things, between nature and grace. He claims that for these inadequate schools of theology any hint of ordering (or, God forbid, denying) the natural order of things or appetites to the supernatural, demands an automatic verdict of Manicheism. These strains of thought continue, no doubt, in thinkers today, including those within the Church.

Still, to be fair, the thought of St Augustine, though he is a doctor of the Church and a great saint, is not without some limitations. Joseph Ratzinger once wrote that Augustine did exhibit a tendency toward a “spiritualizing theology” which “caused him [St Augustine] great torment;” this spiritualizing, while in no way manicheism, prevented Augustine “from carrying their insights through consistently” (Ratzinger, Feast of Faith, 112).

In other words, the biblical principal that Catholic theology describes as “grace presupposes and perfects nature,” which runs like a thread from creation to incarnation to resurrection to the Church to the “new heavens and new earth,” deeply informs Augustine’s thought. We saw it above in his writings on the body. Still, he hesitates at times, and doesn’t carry this thread “all the way through” in some areas of thought. Ratzinger sees this inconsistency in Augustine’s thought, for example, evidenced in Augustine’s highly suspicious attitude toward music (and the senses) in Christian worship.

Nonetheless, this occasional “spiritualizing tendency” should not make us lose sight of the bulk of Augustine’s teaching on the body’s basic goodness and capacity for redemption and glorification.

Afterall, St Augustine is a saint and a doctor of the Church, meaning that he was a holy man and that his writings are trustworthy. We should trust his teachings, and not be dismayed by lesser theologians who can't understand him and presume to insult him. It is never a good idea to be suspicious of a doctor of the Church.

Augustine understood well the potential problems that his previous philosophical loyalties posed against the Christian faith, and, as a Bishop and a teacher, he sought diligently to always follow the Scriptures and the Church’s teaching, wherever a conflict arose.

I hope this “paper” helps to rehabilitate the great Augustine, the Doctor of Grace, if his name was besmirched in any way in our little circle.

why do you believe?

Pope Benedict XVI released a special message for the young people of the world, with an eye to the upcoming World Youth Day in Spain. Filled with beautiful truth and pastoral wisdom, there is one theme that particularly struck me:

How can faith in Jesus Christ become mature, "grown-up," authentic?

I recently visited a univerisity campus in which a speaker asked a group of Catholic students if they believed that Jesus Christ is God. They all said yes.

But then he asked why they believed this, and no hands went up. A few feeble attempts to defend their belief (e.g., "the Bible says so..."; "My parents told me..."; etc.) and the speaker effortlessly swatted away the responses like flies.

He concluded: "Most of you believe because your mommy and daddy told you to." The room was silent. These students, mostly college freshmen, realized how truly immature their faith was. It demonstrated how and why so many young Catholics weakly surrender their tradition and feebly acquiesce to whatever ideology the herd happens to be feeding on at the moment.

The Holy Father knows this grave situation among many of our young people, and offers us young people a real solution: because faith is knowledge of God, we must come to real and personal knowledge of God. This is how faith becomes mature.

Pope Benedict says as much, in his Aug 6, 2010 letter to youth:

Enter into a personal dialogue with Jesus Christ and cultivate it in faith. Get to know him better by reading the Gospels and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Converse with him in prayer, and place your trust in him. He will never betray that trust! “Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 150).

The Holy Father knows how dangerous and ultimately fruitless childish faith is, and how as we reach a certain age, we cannot believe because "our mommy and daddy told us." By personally encountering Jesus Christ in prayer, the Gospels, and in the teaching of the Church, an immature faith--which fails so many high school and university students today--becomes mature and true. The Pope writes:

Thus you will acquire a mature and solid faith, one which will not be based simply on religious sentiment or on a vague memory of the catechism you studied as a child. You will come to know God and to live authentically in union with him, like the Apostle Thomas who showed his firm faith in Jesus in the words: “My Lord and my God!”.

This is no abstract theory for the Holy Father. He himself knows the great interior struggle that this poses for young people, but also that it is a hopeful struggle. He describes this with respect to his discernment as a young man about whether God was really calling him to be a priest or not. The Pope writes:

Here, once more, I think of my own youth. I was somehow aware quite early on that the Lord wanted me to be a priest. Then later, after the war, when I was in the seminary and at university on the way towards that goal, I had to recapture that certainty. I had to ask myself: is this really the path I was meant to take? Is this really God’s will for me? Will I be able to remain faithful to him and completely at his service? A decision like this demands a certain struggle. It cannot be otherwise. But then came the certainty: this is the right thing! Yes, the Lord wants me, and he will give me strength. If I listen to him and walk with him, I become truly myself.

Faith is a kind of certainty, although because it deals with knowledge of God, it is different from the empirical or mathematical certainty that serves us in other areas of knowing. This is why access to prayer, divine Revelation, and the tangible gifts of the Church and the Sacraments are essential components.

When high school or college students come to me, their priest, and confess that they are "losing their faith," or "having doubts," I respond without any surprise; in fact, I try to reflect a fatherly hope that their faith is ready for new maturity.

Like a child bursting out of his toddler pants, they know something doesn't fit. Their pants are fine; they are just too small, suitable for a younger sibling. Often, though, they are uncertain that more age-appropriate faith is either real or accessible to them.

So I encourage them to describe their faith, and almost every time we discover together that is nothing wrong with their faith. It's just that their faith is appropriate for a nine year-old. It lacks intellectual content, a capacity to be rationally defended, a clear connection to action and values, and has little motivational power in their daily life.

Losing that faith is, in a certain sense, a necessity--provided that the young person is ready to embark on the struggle involved when God calls faith to mature.

Aliens and evangelization

"Father, do you believe in aliens?"

The question caught my attention, especially because the student (of chemical engineering) asking it claimed to be a fallen-away Baptist now-turned atheist.

I thought, "Well, that's enough of an opening right there!"

A lively conversation went back and forth on the topic, but soon turned to matters of more existential import--life in general, specifically the purpose of human life. Avoiding anything too explicitly "religious" for the sake of my young but unconvinced atheist, I sensed an opening at one stage and said on a whim:

"We were created to be loved--do you think this?"

Instead of a philosophical response, this time the answer was awkward silence and eyes filling with tears.

The conversation ended abruptly and uncomfortably after that, and I thought, "Way to go, Father Clumsy...you'll never see this student ever again."

As I said goodbye, I couldn't think of anything to offer accept a house blessing for her and the new place she just moved into with her six guy roommates--none of whom are Catholic. "Uh, okay. Bye," she said, and left.

Should I have been suprised when the phone rang the next day, and she said that her household wanted me to come and bless the house?

Well, I was surprised. But I also marveled at the strange ways of God, who took me from aliens to booking an improbable house blessing with seven students who had probably never talked to a Catholic priest before.

Soon I was whispering "Wash me O God, and I shall be clean..." and walking around the most typical college house you've ever seen, sprinkling Bob Marley posters and lacrosse sticks with holy water, as slack-jawed and wide eyed college students stumbled nervously in tow behind me as we marched from room to room.

I can't think of another time in my three years as a priest when I have been more conscious of the fact that priests are ordained and sent not just to Catholics, but to the every human person, to the whole world.

Kind of like aliens.

Go Devils!

There's nothing quite like a night in the desert in late August. A mild monsoon breeze accompanied the rising moon this past Sunday night as I stood gazing up at the old steeple on the red-bricked St Mary's Church at Arizona State Universitsy in Tempe, AZ.

As I bid goodnight to the last of many students after the late Sunday Mass, I caught my breath and thought with joyful astonishment: "I can't believe I'm here!"

My second pastoral assignment as a priest in the Diocese of Phoenix has taken a few months to sink in. Joining Fr Rob Clements as one of two full time priests at the All Saints Catholic Newman Center, I find myself with an assignment that didn't even exist for diocesan priests in Phoenix for decades.

In April of 2000, before I entered seminary, I interviewed for a position with an organization dedicated to Catholic evangelization. With a gut sense that it just wasn't time back then, I didn't accept the position. But apparently the good Lord just wanted to give me a good ten years of preparation for such a noble task--ministering to college students and all others at the University level.

Somewhere between 15,000 and 18,000. That's an estimation of the number of "Sun Devil" Catholics at Arizona State University. It's Notre Dame and Georgetown rolled into one.

People occasionally ask me if I feel overwhelmed by the immense task that lays at our feet at the Newman Center. The answer is, "Yes!" How many young persons at ASU don't know God! How many are imprisoned in one of the countless counterfeit promises of happiness that our culture imposes!

But like the warm refreshing air of an evening Arizona monsoon breeze, the grace of God blows from the deep lungs of the Church--especially when we humbly beg the Holy Spirit to come to us, and to renew the face of the earth.