Luceat!

I’ve been thinking about how the training and battlefield experience of soldier-saints like Ignatius of Loyola must have formed their approach to evangelization. I like to imagine that the founding of the Jesuits looked something like the opening scene from Patton (which you can find on youtube), but with less profanity.

More likely is my supposition that the soldier-saints of old would have agreed with Gen. Patton’s famous maxim, “Fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity.”

France poured 3,000,000,000 francs into the construction of the Maginot line, which was touted as rendering the nation nearly impervious to invasion. The Germans took over in under a month. (See wikipedia’s article for more.) While it may be too simplistic to call the French strategy merely ’stupid’, the good general was onto something that was proven by his brilliant successes on the battlefield: the best way to capture territory is for a mobile and tenacious fighting force to engage, engage, engage.

What does this have to do with campus ministry?

In the next few weeks, thousands upon thousands of Catholic college students will move (or return) to campus. By most estimates, the vast majority of them will either violently break away from practicing the Faith or simply drift out of the Church.

A Maginot-line approach to campus ministry will not remedy this problem. While facilities are needed to hold programs and a brick-and-mortar structure is needed for the celebration of the sacraments, these will not (as many in the Church well know) fill themselves with eager undergrads merely by virtue of the “Catholic” or “Newman” on the signs above their doors. To meet the deep spiritual needs on our campuses requires a cadre of dynamic souls willing and able to engage students–to meet them where they eat, play, and study, to speak their language, to invite them into a real relationship with Christ and His Church.

The seriousness and zeal with which the members of such a ministry group take up this mission is a testament to the depth of their encounter with Jesus and His teachings. If they are really willing to conform to His image, to “set out into the deep”, those given the task of preserving and deepening Catholic identity of college students will go far beyond the establishment of just another club or hangout. If they realize that their efforts–or lack thereof–greatly impact the eternal destiny of eternal souls, they will be gripped by a powerful desire to invite students to the sacraments, to study of the Word, and to the joy of sharing in an authentically virtuous fraternal life.