Campus Ministry

By Fr Ted Cassidy, SM

I love having Faith Chats with our students. Their being from different places, with numerous gifts and interests, having lived with various faith twists make the conversations very interesting. They are full of creativity- delights in sports, family, service, friendships, struggle to know what is next; digging deeply into what is happening and what may come. The part I like most is to ask what gifts they have and then they search with frustration to finally name what is going on inside of them. 

I like to ask what the student has loved and where love will be found in the career choice, in the friendship or in activities. What most often develops is an unexplainable zest and a search for possibility.

The readings for this Sunday in Lent are a chronicle of Faith Chats. The God of the Hebrews is relating with the people; St. Paul with the First Christians and Jesus in Nicodemus. The ancient Hebrews, like us, were trying to find out what was going on in their lives. St. Paul is the master guide helping his friends see the richness of their lives. In the reading from John 3, Jesus is dialoguing with dubious Nicodemus trying to pull out of him what could be his potential.

What would it be like to have a Faith Chat with Jesus as Nicodemus had? Like him, we come with all our possibility and discerning to face with Christ who suffered from evil, but triumphed in love. What will he pull out of our journey of discovery?

A Sunday like today is a gifted time to come with all that is really going on in us and to discover like the Hebrews, like the first Christians, like Nicodemus and those Christ lived with, the creative and loving ways we are to live out gifts and the love we have in us.