Traveling in Notre Dame circles, and especially visiting campus on football weekends like this, one hears an awful lot about “the Notre Dame family.” Because it represents an emotion or experience that’s difficult to capture in words, the phrase risks being merely a cliché. And yet, somehow, we know its real when we see it or experience it for ourselves.
David Miller, a 1979 alumnus and State District Court judge in Colorado experienced it a little under a year ago when, of all people, his roommate from Flanner Hall was the suitable match he needed for a kidney donation and transplant. Having grown up an only child, Mr. Miller found in his college dorm-mates the brothers he never had – and thirty years later those bonds of family remained so strong, his roommate and friend Chris Nagle risked his health to save David’s life.
Anthony Depalma experienced it in the Fall of 1999 when his son Aahren was diagnosed with leukemia after only three days as a freshman in Siegfried Hall. Mr. Depalma wrote about how the students of Siegfried, and their rector Fr. John Conley rallied around Aahern during his treatments. They sent him a Siegfried sweatshirt, and copies of the Observer, they prayed and lit candles at the Grotto, and did innumerable things to let Aahern know he was one of them and they were with him in his battle.
Mr. Depalma said: “There hadn’t been time for anyone to check any manuals, to find out what the regulations required. They all simply did what they did because that was the only way they knew how to do it. It was a response that had to have been bred deep in their bones.”
On a slightly lighter note, even Pedro Moura, a student at the University of Southern California, experienced the “Notre Dame family” when he visited campus for the game a few weeks back. Back at Southern Cal he wrote in the student paper that, “I must have heard the words ‘Welcome to Notre Dame,’ at least 30 times from ushers and elevator staff to random old guys on the sidelines. I’ve never felt more welcomed anywhere in my life.”
I hope that all of you here – whether you’re a student or an alum, a parent of a student or just a visitor for a football game – I hope all of you have some story, some experience of this thing we call “the Notre Dame family.”
But I’d like you to think with me for a moment or two about what’s really at the heart of this family spirit we all hold dear. What is it that drives this kind of warm, selfless hospitality and generosity? Certainly there are other schools, other institutions with a similar spirit of camaraderie and service – our friends from the Naval Academy provide a perfect example.
What is it, then, about this place, when it’s at its best, that sets it apart? What exactly did Mr. Depalma experience as the soul of the university, bred deep in the bones of all its members?
I’d like to suggest that the faithful women in today’s readings provide the best possible answer to these questions.
In our first reading, the widow of Zarephath is preparing to use her last bit of flour and oil to make herself and her son a final meal. The drought-induced famine that has plagued her homeland is about to rob them of life. And yet, even in these dire straits, when the prophet Elijah asks her to bring him something to eat and drink, she does not hesitate to show him hospitality. She trusts Elijah’s promise that the Lord will provide for her, and that the flour and oil will not run out before the drought lifts and the rains fall. In her generosity and sacrifice, she trusts God, puts her life in His hands and gives everything she has in love of another.
In our Gospel, Jesus notices and comments upon people who are making offertory gifts at the Temple in Jerusalem. He notes that the rich were giving “large sums” to the Temple treasury – but He also spies and privately commends a widow who gave just two small coins. “This poor widow,” Jesus says, “put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury, for they contributed from their surplus wealth – but she from her poverty has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”
This widowed woman could have given nothing, saying that her poverty made her unable to give. She could have kept even one of her coins to ensure just a little bit of her own security. Instead, she sacrifices even the little she has. Frankly, she forgoes prudence and reason for generosity, trust, and faith. She let’s go of everything, including trying to provide for her own future, and has faith that God will provide for her, just as surely as He provided for the widow of Zarephath and her son.
Friends, I am convinced that the hospitality and generosity that marks the “Notre Dame family” has its roots, and its highest ideal, in precisely this selfless service of others that necessarily trusts and relies entirely on God’s providential care.
When Blessed Basil Moreau founded the Congregation of Holy Cross, and sent Fr. Sorin to Indiana to found Notre Dame, he modeled the priests, brothers and sisters of his community on the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. He wanted the community he founded, and the schools they built, to be marked by a true family spirit.
But more than that, he was bold enough to give them as a motto, the phrase “Ave Crux, Spes Unica” – Behold the cross, our only hope. He wanted his band of religious, and the parishes and schools they served, to trust, not in themselves, not in their material wealth or their ability to secure their own future growth and prestige – but to trust in the love and mercy of God’s providence . . . to give everything over to Him, and Him alone. To serve others in love, especially the most vulnerable, trusting that no matter the sacrifice required, God would provide.
That, brothers and sisters, is precisely what Christ did for us, and showed us how to do, as He hung upon the Cross.
So it’s no coincidence that our Gospel this Sunday is the last account that Mark gives of Jesus’ public ministry. The chapters that follow immediately after this reading bring us with Jesus to His death on the cross. So, in today’s Gospel encounter, when Jesus points out the widow who gives away all that she has, He is using her as an image of the total self-sacrifice that He is about to make for us on the Cross.
That’s why Jesus calls his disciples together and makes them appreciate what is happening right there in front of them. He is once again giving them, and all His followers throughout history, an example to follow.
And so to this very day, here at Notre Dame, and wherever the men and women of Holy Cross live and work, we strive to build communities of believers that so trust in God’s loving providence, and in the power of Christ’s cross, that they are willing to give all of themselves in generous, hospitable, self sacrificing love.
Trust in Divine Providence, and confidence in the cross as our only hope – THAT is the soul of this university, and in turn it is the true source of the family spirit, bred so deep in the bones of her loyal sons and daughters.
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