CUA Commencement Weekend

This past weekend The Catholic University of America observed its 123rd Commencement Exercises and I was awarded the Master of Arts in History.  Most of the commencement events took place at the beautiful Basilican Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, including the Baccalaureate Mass on Friday evening.

After concelebrating the Mass my parents and I enjoyed dinner at Ray's The Classics with my fellow Holy Cross priest and friend Fr. Terry Ehrman, C.S.C. who was also graduating from CUA with his doctorate in Theology.

Here Fr. Terry and I can be seen in our respective Doctoral and Masters robes and hoods, both of us sporting the distinctive Holy Cross biretta with the academic tassel instead of the more usual pom. It was certainly a great gift to have Fr. Terry with me in D.C. for three of my four semesters, and sharing our commencement made graduation an extra special experience.

Saturday morning's weather for the Commencement could not have been better: bright sun, warm but not hot, and without any humid whatsoever. Against the backdrop of the East Entrance of the Basilica Shrine, University President John Garvey, and University Chancellor Donald Cardinal Wuerl presided at the ceremonies.

This year's commencement speaker was Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and University Alumnus and Trustee.  He was his usual charming and jovial self keeping the crowd laughing with self-depricating humor and a bit of superman frivolity with his ferriola.

Cadinal Dolan gave an excellent address touching on some of the serious issues of the day, including the fight for religious freedom, but highlighting the special calling of Catholic universities.  I was particularly pleased that the Cardinal used a reference to a fellow Staten Islander in a most touching part of his speech.  His full address can be read here.

After the University-wide exercises each College separated for its own diploma distribution ceremony where each graduate's name was read and they got their chance to "walk."

Later that evening, Mom, Dad, and I enjoyed dinner at Virtue Feed and Grain in Old Town Alexandria and then met Bobbie and Jess for deserts at Buzz in Ballston.

Altogether it was a wonderful weekend. My work will continue at CUA through the summer, however. I have planned several research projects for myself and hope to make use of the archives and library on campus until I move to Columbia sometime in August. Ever onward!

Homily for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Gospel today picks up precisely where the Gospel from our other great Advent celebration of Mary left off … Last Wednesday, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception we heard St. Luke’s account of Gabriel’s visit to Mary, announcing that she would be the Mother of God.

Now, in today’s Gospel, St. Luke tells us that Mary “set out in haste traveling to the hill country” to the house of Zechariah, to visit her cousin Elizabeth, whom Gabriel has said is also pregnant, even in her old age.

And when Mary reaches Elizabeth, the infant John the Baptist leaps for joy in her womb, recognizing that the Savior and Messiah, the fulfillment of God’s promise, has been carried to him by His mother, Mary.

Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe: the commemoration of our Blessed Mother’s appearance, in 1531, to St. Juan Diego on the hill at Tepeyac, outside Mexico City. 

In the middle of December, to prove that she was who she said she was, Mary made Castilian roses bloom on that hill.  And when Juan Diego collected those roses in his cloak, and then dropped them at the feet of the bishop, the image of Mary was there, on his cloak, where the roses once had been.

Juan Diego’s tilma, which still hangs in the Basilica of Guadalupe, shows Mary with a mestizo face, mixing both the Spanish and the Mexican in her likeness, and making her, in Blessed John Paul II’s words, Mother of the Americas: these two continents of a mixed cultures.  She also wears a robe covered in stars, the sun shines from behind her, and she stands upon the crescent moon, just as we hear St. John describe his vision in our first reading from the Book of Revelation.

But perhaps most interestingly, Mary’s image on the tilma shows her wearing a black cloth band tied around her waist – the sign in Aztec culture that the young woman is pregnant. 

Our Gospel text is therefore the perfect reading for this feast, because at Guadalupe the pregnant Mary brings the Christ-Child in her womb to Juan Diego, and to the peoples of the New World, just as surely as she brought Jesus to Elizabeth and to John at Her Visitation.

With the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, today’s Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is also, therefore, the perfect Advent celebration.  Mary shows us precisely what it means to wait in faithful expectation for the fulfillment of God’s promise – she assures us of the hope that her Divine Son offers the world – and she encourages us to follow her example in carrying Christ’s life to our brothers and sisters.

More than anything else, these are the central messages of Advent, and the central messages of this Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Christ is the hoped-for Messiah, whose coming answers our every longing and desire, and we too can carry Christ to the world as we await His Second Coming.

Now amidst all of our fretting about getting ready for Christmas – and especially in the midst of all of our anxiety over exams and papers, it’s easy to lose sight of the hope that Advent brings.  We’re so stressed and haggard at this time of year. 

And that’s precisely why we need this season so much, and that’s why we all need this Feast of Our Lady of Gudalupe as well.  Listen to the words that Mary used to comfort Juan Diego that day, speaking in his native tongue: 

“Listen – Put it in your heart, my youngest and dearest son, that the thing that frightened you, the thing that afflicted you is nothing.  Do not let it disturb you.  Do not fear … any sharp or hurtful thing.  Am I not here, I who am your mother?  Are you not under the shadow of my protection?  Am I not the source of your joy?  Are you not in the fold of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms?  Do you need something more?  Let nothing else worry you or disturb you.”

Since that day on Tepeyac, Christero rebels defending the rights of the Church in Mexico, migrant farm workers demanding just wages and safe working conditions in California, and volunteers defending the lives of the unborn and serving unwed mothers throughout America, have all marched under the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

That’s because as her words to Juan Diego make clear, and as this Advent season celebrates, there is no struggle, no situation, no sin that we might find ourselves in that is beyond the hope that Mary bears to the world in Her Son. 

So today, in the midst of Advent, in the midst of whatever worry, doubt, or sin we might find ourselves, we commend ourselves once more to the care of our Blessed Mother, the Virgin of Guadalupe.  And we ask her to intercede for us, that we might have an increase in the hope her Son brings – and we ask her to speak once more to our hearts, the way she spoke to Juan Diego: “Listen – Put it in your heart, the thing that afflicted you is nothing … let nothing else worry you or disturb you.”


 (Homily for the Knights of Columbus student Mass at The Catholic University of America, December 12, 2011)

Come Holy Spirit!: The Start of a New Academic Year

Yesterday at Noon, I concelebrated the Mass of the Holy Spirit for the opening of the new school year at Catholic University. These pictures from the University's website show all of the concelebrants with our Chancellor and Cardinal Archbishop, Donald Wuerl. I think you can make me out in the larger versions of each photograph.

Once again, our President, John Garvey gave an eloquent and enjoyable address to the faculty and staff. In part, President Garvey announced the kick-off of a volunteer service program aimed at celebrating the University's 125th anniversary. Already an amazing number of hours of service have been pledged by the members of the university community.

The final repairs were also made on the handful of campus buildings that sustained minor damages in the earthquake. Here, the chimneys on McMahon Hall are being refurbished. One other hall, Marist Hall, remains closed so that structural repairs can be made. Marist Hall is directly east of the former Holy Cross College (now O'Boyle Hall).

Christmas at Catholic

In the last few weeks of the semester, amid all of the research and writing, there was still time to enjoy some of the Christmas decorations that sprang up across the District and especially on the campus of Catholic University.

The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was nicely decorated . . . 

. . . as were the academic buildings on campus.

And back home, at Little Flower, the rectory was also nicely lit for the season.

I hope to be able to get some more pictures of the trees and nativity scenes at Little Flower and the Basilica Shrine, as they went up after my departure for New York in the fourth week of Advent.

Opening of The School Year Mass

This afternoon I joined a large number of priest faculty and students, and Archbishop Donald Wuerl, in concelebrating Catholic University's Opening of School Year Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine. The Mass was televised live on EWTN and was followed the annual University Picnic.

The Liturgy was very well attended by the faculty and students of the University who filled the nave pews. After Communion, CUA's incoming President, John Garvey gave an excellent address about the nature of a Catholic University.

Among other things he said that . . .

"The Incarnation is centrally important – to our salvation, of course; but also to our faith; and (more selfishly and closer to home) to the intellectual life of the University. Jesus tells us who God is, how He loves us, and what He wants from us. If we believe in him, then the Gospel is as relevant to the work of the university as the general theory of relativity is to the work of the physics department.

But the Gospel is not just the special concern of the School of Theology and Religious Studies. In my own field of law, our belief in the Gospel affects the way we think about our relationship to the environment; our obligations to immigrant populations; the forms and limits of criminal punishment; the construction and support of families; and our care for the unborn and the dying.

Or think about the English department. Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor express a very Catholic vision of the world in post-war Southern fiction. Annie Dillard gives us a modern understanding of the message of Ecclesiastes in "For the Time Being." And Dana Gioia, one of our best modern poets and (would that this happened more often) chairman of National Endowment for the Arts for six years, writes that 'the Catholic, literally from birth, when he or she is baptized, is raised in a culture that understands symbols and signs. And it also trains you in understanding the relationship between the visible and the invisible. Consequently, allegory finds its greatest realization in Catholic artists like Dante.'"

(Photo Credits: The Catholic University of America)

Given that, even at Catholic colleges and universities, English departments today are largely wastelands of post-Christian secularism, I was pleased that President Garvey focused on these examples - and he quoted a Laetare Medal winner to boot!

After Mass, Father Terry Ehrman, C.S.C. (who is finishing up his doctorate in theology here at CUA) and I introduced ourselves and congratulated our fellow Domer on his appointment as President. He's already off to a great start.

A New Home: Little Flower Parish

I mentioned earlier this spring that I had been looking for a parish to reside in during my graduate studies in Washington D.C.  During my visit to campus in April I visited several parishes and spoke to several priest friends about parishes with a history of housing student-priests.

Since that time I've been pleased to accept an invitation from Monsignor Peter Vaghi to reside at Little Flower Parish in Bethesda, Maryland.  I met Monsignor Vaghi last fall when he attended a football weekend at Notre Dame. He was hosted by Ave Maria Press, the Congregation's publishing house, for which he has written two books and is contracted to write two more. 

He was also accompanied by Mr. Don Longano, a parishioner of Little Flower Parish, an ND alum, uncle to Old Collegian John Whittaker, and as of Saturday, a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. With wonderful "family" connections like this, I figured I couldn't go wrong at Little Flower Parish.

I was also thrilled to know that I would be the fifth priest living in the rectory and that there is a convent full of I.H.M sisters who work in Little Flower School! It will be a great to have priests and religious to share community and ministry with while I am in studies.

This past week I packed a rental car with all my things and drove from Notre Dame to Bethesda. With help from John Whittaker, who was visiting Bethesda for his uncle's ordination to the diaconate, I settled all my boxes into my new room on Wednesday. John and I also spent an afternoon touring CUA's campus and visiting with his family.

I simply could not have been more warmly welcomed by Monsignor Vaghi and the other priests of Little Flower Parish and I am very grateful to them. Though I left for New York after only forty-eight hours, my arrival in Bethesda has made me all the more excited for my final move in August.

CUA's New President

This morning, Archbishop Allen Vigneron, Archbishop of Detroit and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, announced that Dean John H. Garvey of the Boston College Law School has been elected as the 15th president of the Catholic University of America, succeeding Bishop David O'Connell, C.M. who retired as president last month and has been named by Pope Benedict XVI as Bishop of Trenton, New Jersey.

Thankfully, long before he was associated with Boston College, Dean Garvey was a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a professor in the Notre Dame Law School. When I was visiting CUA's campus earlier this spring I was assured by a fellow ND alum on the faculty that there are indeed many "Domish" influences at Catholic University . . . and now there is a Domer in the President's Office! Congratulations and blessings to both Bishop O'Connell and President-Elect Garvey.

The Catholic University of America

After my weekend in Philadelphia, I traveled south to the nation's capital to visit The Catholic University of America, where I will be enrolled in the M.A./Ph.D. program in American History this fall.

Founded in 1887, Catholic University is the national university of the bishops' conference. As is so often the case, there is a deep connection between this important Catholic institution and the Congregation of Holy Cross. From its earliest days, Fr. John Zahm, C.S.C. was a major supporter of CUA, building Holy Cross College on the campus, which served as a seminary for members of the Congregation.

During my visit I stopped by the Graduate Admissions Office in McMahon Hall (above) and was pleased to spend time chatting with Andrea Parisi, my cousin Brendan's girlfriend, who now works in that office.

I also met with a number of the professors in the History Department, which is housed in Cardinal Hall:

The real architectural highlight of the campus is also its spiritual heart: the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Begun in 1920 and dedicated in 1959, this national shrine is dedicated to the patroness of the United States. It is a truly magnificent building and I look forward to praying there regularly.

Besides meeting with professors and touring campus, I spent time looking into parishes where I might reside while in graduate studies. I have several good options and I look forward to finalizing my plans in the very near future, and sharing them with you here.

I'm excited to be heading to Washington and to be beginning studies at CUA this fall. Washington should prove to be an exciting place to live, and I am looking forward to being in the same city as my cousins Brendan and Bobbie. And CUA will be a great place for me to pursue the study of the Church's history in America, as it plays such an important part in that history.