On Remembering

October is the best month of the year (according to me). The images that fill this month take me back to my childhood and the moments of yesteryear when everything seemed simpler somehow, and life (at least in part) made perfect sense. It is also the time of year when my birthday slides into my mother’s birthday, immediately followed by grandmother’s birthday that was celebrated on Halloween—the Eve of All Hallows.

Could it have been a coincidence that two of the most important female influencers of my life were born on the days after my day of birth, and that the very next day is the time in the liturgical calendar when the universal Church celebrates All Saints' Day, the day when we collectively recall that God is calling us to be saints? It was a fact that I was born into, and still it is a mystery that I continue to embrace as part of my identity.

My grandmother, Lula Fern Hicks, died when I was eight years old of cancer to the liver at the age of 63, but her memory is etched eternally into my heart. Though her life only touched mine quite briefly, I recall with great gratitude her love, joy, and faithfulness. Furthermore, I know her as an eternal friend. When I was five years old, a conversation between her and me began as she was creating a quilt for me. Though I did not understand what she was telling me then about sickness and cancer, her words still sing a melody inside of me now: “No matter where I go, I will always love you.”



Likewise, my mother has always been a beacon of light in my life. She prays for me every day, celebrates my life in creative and varied ways, and always has a good word to say about all people. I admire her selflessness and generosity, her love and good example. Each day in prayer, I thank God for the gift of a mother and grandmother who left a deep mark on my own life. Of course I could say the same about my father, brother, grandparents, sister, uncles, aunts, and friends, for all who have touched my life have been a gift to me.

At this time of year, I remember what has been and wonder what will be. As the leaves change their hue to reds, purples, yellows, oranges and gold, I am reminded that my eternal family is much larger than the particular family that I was born into. Mysteriously and beautifully, we are called to live into the mystery of the communion of saints. So I begin my meditation on the time of year that we are situated in right now. This birthday slide of mine at the end of October takes us into the month of November, the month we remember our beloved dead. We begin to recall and celebrate those lives that have met death, remembering how they have played an active role in our own lives—who we are and who we are becoming.

Determining the exact moment when Hallowe’en came into being is a bit complicated, but it first appeared circa 1745 AD and is of Christian origin. The term itself means hallowed or holy evening. It is noteworthy as well that the phrase All Hallows Eve predated the abbreviation Halloween and is found recorded in text as early as 1556 AD.

All Saints' Day (also known as All Hallows) was born into the Church in 609 AD and was first celebrated on May 13th in the Western Church. In the Eastern Church it is still celebrated on the Sunday after Pentecost to close off the Easter (Pasch) season. The Western feast moved to November 1st circa 731-741 AD, and a festival of saints was widely celebrated in the time of Charlemagne. The feast celebrates all saints who share in the beatific vision, that is, those who at this moment behold the face of God.

All Saints Day can be distinguished from All Souls' Day (celebrated on November 2nd in the West) insofar as All Souls' includes all of the dead. On November 2nd of our beloved dead and pray for them, as God is the one who judges and seals the fate of all of humanity.

Let us recall this year on Halloween night that Christ is our light. The veil between heaven and earth is always thin, but at this time of year the Church focuses the people of God on the life beyond. Thus, I personally believe that if we quiet ourselves for a moment and whisper a prayer to God, we might actually feel the tickling of the communion of saints dancing around us. Yes, we can always do this. But, much like our remembrance of Jesus’ Birth at Christmas and Resurrection at Easter, these coming days assist us to remember our loved ones who have gone ahead of us.

Can you hear them laughing, singing, and praising the Lord? Listen carefully, attune your spiritual ear, and begin to grasp the glory of the life that is already a part of you through those who have gone before each of us on earth to their heavenly abode.

Christy Hicks is a Campus Minister in Griesedieck Hall.

"Look what I can do..."

There are not many toddlers living in the Coronado.

Nor in Marchetti. Nor in Grand Forest. Nor anywhere else at SLU. And this is probably a good thing! I’m not sure if having small children is very conducive to being a successful student. Actually, after playing a lot of monkey-in-the-middle and more than a few games of hide-and-go-seek over the Fall Break, I know that it is not conducive at all!

When I interact with children, I am able to see the child in myself. I am able to connect the deep longing I have to run life’s race wholeheartedly, to climb the mountainous difficulties of life the way I used to climb the tree in my backyard. And I see the child in myself in more subtle ways, too.

Like many children,

I want to be noticed.

And seen.

And known.

And loved.

This is what I most covet.

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“Look what I can do.” It is a phrase that children say all the time. I heard it this weekend, and looking back on my own childhood, I am sure that I said it a lot as well.

“Daddy, look what I can do.” Little-boy Sito whizzes Thomas the Train down the incredible train-track he has just constructed all by his lonesome.

“Daddy, look what I can do.” And little Sito leaps as high as his little legs can take him, sticks his tongue out like Michael Jordan, and dunks the basketball as hard as he possibly can.

“Daddy, look what I can do.” And toddler-Sito shows his Daddy that he can make pizzas too, and dance salsa too, and speak Spanish too. “I can do it too, Papi. Look what I can do.”

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Do we ever outgrow this sentence? Do we ever stop saying “look what I can do?”

Sometimes college feels like one long course on how to get noticed. How to be different and study abroad and put it on the résumé and stand out. We learn how to prove our own worthiness.

These things are not inherently bad. But can we earn an identity with our lists of accomplishments? Do we have to get God’s attention by saying, “look what I can do?”

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Month-old babies can do no such thing.

Meet Fabrizio, my cousin from Peru.

Fabrizio is beloved to my sister, Maria. But if you were to ask my sister why she loves him, she could give you no reasonable answer! Right now, Fabrizio can’t do much except eat and sleep and soil diapers. There is nothing that his 8 pounds and 8 ounces can do to make my sister love him. There is nothing in him that can earn Maria’s love. He’s not even old enough to say, “look what I can do.” There’s nothing he can do...Maria just loves him, with no obligations and no conditions and no merit. She just loves him. With her whole heart, she just loves him.

So it is with God and us.

And sometimes, I want to have a hand in it. I want God to look at my ministry. For Him to look at my weekly report. “God, look at all the stuff I’m doing. Don’t I deserve your love?” I want to give God a reason for His loving me. But no such reason exists. . .He just does.

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Look what I can do?

Look what He can do.

Vinegar, nails, and blood. For me and for you, in our place, on our worst day possible. When we had no résumé to show.  When we had soiled our diapers like Fabrizio. This is when love proved true. (See Romans 5:8)

And it proves true now, as well. In the people He has given us and the places to which he has brought us. So here we are. Another Monday. Another precious gift.

And thus, we are more than noticed.

We are cared for like Fabrizio.

Sito Sasieta is the Campus Ministry GROW intern.

We are stardust...in the highest exalted way.

I shared this with the students on the Nature Retreat last month, and with the Campus Ministry staff last week, but I can only hope they don’t hold it against me for doing the same thing again. I keep coming back to it in my own prayer life, and even though it’s just a picture, it continues to feed my theological and spiritual imagination. Below is a picture of what is called the “Hubble Extreme Deep Field”; it was taken by pointing the Hubble Telescope at a single, tiny spot in what looked like a nondescript section of space and leaving it to collect light for weeks on end.

Imagine holding a grain of rice at arms’ length – that’s about how much of the night sky this image represents – and then remember that this tiny area was chosen precisely because it looked uninteresting. That is, just about any grain of rice-sized segment of space would look more or less like this. There are on the order of 5,500 galaxies (not stars – GALAXIES) visible in this tiny little slice of the night sky, some as far away as 13 billion light years – nearly to the absolute origin of the cosmos.

Here’s a question for you: looking at this image, imagining the scope and scale of the cosmos that it represents, do you find yourself feeling small, or feeling big? It is easy to feel small – the universe has been around a very long time, I am infinitesimally small in comparison to the scale of the cosmos, and when I die, I don’t imagine that the universe will much notice. But what if you looked at this amazing photo, imagined the sweep of the cosmos, and felt big? Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson notes that the atoms in our bodies can be traced to the hearts of stars that forged light elements into heavy elements and then went supernova at the end of their life cycles, exploding and scattering their “enriched guts” (as he puts it) across the cosmos. In a very real way, then, we are stardust - we are a part of the tremendous and magnificent unfolding of the cosmos, we are connected to one another and everything around us, we are caught up in a grand story in which the universe becomes conscious of itself in us.

What does any of this have to do with a Campus Ministry blog? I love my job, but the one part of this work that I hate is encountering wonderful students who don't feel comfortable around Campus Ministry because they expect it to be only for the Catholic students at SLU. On the other hand, my FAVORITE part of the job is walking with students (and staff! and faculty!), wherever they are in their spiritual journeys, as they attempt to wrestle with the big questions of what it means to be fully alive, what touches their hearts, what breaks their hearts.

Much has been made of the (often) acrimonious relationship between religion and science, and while I have neither the space nor the expertise to lay out a theology of that relationship, let me simply say that the passion for the tremendous and fascinating mystery that animates the theological enterprise seems alive and well among people like Dr. Tyson, who calls himself an agnostic but uses religious language like someone who is on a deep spiritual journey. This should not surprise anyone - the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner spoke of all people being inherently oriented toward a horizon of mystery (he calls it the supernatural existential) - but it is easy to forget that members of organized religions don't have a monopoly on spirituality. Wherever we are in our relationships to organized religions - theist, atheist, nontheist, posttheist, what have you - AWE remains the appropriate response to the wondrousness of the universe around us, in us, and between us and our fellow human beings, and there is incredible untapped conversation and community and shared work for dignity and peace to be opened up in the sharing of that sense of wonder.

Patrick Cousins
Campus Ministry

Encountering the Living God

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Mt. 5:17-8). With these words, Jesus reminded his followers that laws, or rules, are important. All of the major religions have a moral code—some more elaborate than others—that structures the lives of their adherents. Within ancient Israelite practice, the Law (Torah) was seen not as a burden, but as a source of life. In the words of the psalmist, “The one who delights in the Law of the LORD is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in due season, and its leaf does not wither” (Ps. 1:3). We should be careful, then, not to neglect the moral tradition of our faith or to pit God’s grace against the demand to live an upright life.

Nevertheless, if our spiritual practice begins and ends with a strict observance of rules, we miss out on a key facet of the faith. Mere external conformity, besides running the risk of hypocrisy, normally cannot be sustained for a long period of time. As Jesus warned the religious leaders of his day, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give away a tenth of your goods. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” For this reason, Jesus compares the scribes and Pharisees to whitewashed tombs: outwardly, they appear righteous to others, but within they are “full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (see Mt. 23).

So, how do we honor the moral teachings of our faith tradition without falling into the trap of external religiosity and hypocrisy? The key, I think, can be found in a word that Pope Francis has been using throughout his papacy: encounter. Human beings cannot live on bread alone, nor can they live on rules alone. To cultivate a healthy spiritual life, we need to have an encounter with the living God.

How do you plan on encountering God this semester? Obviously, there is no one-size-fits-all method for going about this, and finding what works best for oneself usually requires some practice. If you’ve had a powerful encounter with God in the past, you might want to think about the circumstances that laid the foundation for this occurrence. For me, silence is always a good start. For you, the medium of transcendence might be music or a delicious meal with close friends. Yes, sometimes God surprises us with God’s presence, but there is also something to be said for seeking out that grace.

If God does feel distant right now, don’t give up!In another passage from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus promises that everyone who asks will receive, and that the one who seeks will find (Mt. 7:7-8).One of the great joys of being at a place like SLU is that we don’t have to travel the path of life alone. My prayer today, then, is that as a community we can walk together on this spiritual journey, fully confident that the One who started a good work in us will be faithful to complete it.