Our semester joyously came to an end unofficially here at St. Joseph’s with the last student mass this week. Final Exams are in full gear and semester departures for the holidays begin soon. I’ll be heading over to the medical school tomorrow for the student’s anatomy final, providing a post-exam meal for the first year students that I have grown to have a lot of respect for.
I got a note from a student the other day asking about conducting a prayer service of some kind for those who gave their bodies to the school. The school usually does that in the spring and I’ll participate, but it filled me with hope to have a student reach out to me and ask about this. It made me feel like a visible campus minister to a segment of the school with whom we’ve worked hard on cultivating a relationship.
A young first year med student who I see often, but haven’t really come to know all that well, came over to the table where we had our donated “final exam carepackages” for all students. I called her by name and asked how things were going. She replied, “I’m impressed that you remember my name.” A two-fold sign to me that the old noggin still retains information well and that I need to reach out a bit more to students who I see often so there’s no surprise when I call them by name. Nonetheless, she realized that she has been in my prayers and there’s no denying the value that students hold for our prayers and support.
We had four of five students who were leaving our community last night. Early graduates some. Post-docs. And more. It always chokes me up when I see them receive a blessing of sending forth.
But mostly, it has been a semester of being inventive. Of growing into a role and feeling comfortable in it. Of standing up for students at times when they are harassed (believe it or not), of comforting students in times of trouble (like when some think their house is haunted or more tragically when grandparents die and parents grow sick), of teaching and preaching and being present. It was a semester of looking for colleagues and finding other higher ed professionals who see me as not just being a minister who serves a faction of the campus, but one who can look out for all the student’s needs and their academic success.
At mass, we stand together after communion in our church. It’s something I initiated this semester because I heeded the words of that great liturgist, Fr. J. Glenn Murray, S.J. who said “that we are requested to stand after communion because it’s one of the few times that we have the opportunity to publicly stand together as one body.”
We don’t often do that. We don’t often look at each other as the body of Christ and after receiving Jesus we literally are teeming with Christ in our bloodstream. Mingling in our muscles, Christ can not be sedated, but rather forces us upright and strong. We stand, we look, we see the other, the Christ who cannot help but to come to us; nor sit idly in the corner separated from such communion. Rather we are propelled to become what it is that we receive. Broken though we are, we come together as one, connected by the Eucharist which gives us the strength to bind the fabric of our lives together, even if just for a moment. The pot smoker stands with the professor and the recluse with the raucous. It is our lion and lamb that stand together in peace.
Last night, a cold winter’s night, I put on my warm winter’s hat and exhaled the steaming carbon dioxide into the Buffalo night. As the frosty steam disappeared, I let the semester go into that night. Each student was grace, each moment was gratitude, all was filled with hope and learning.
In the stillness, of a dark advent night, I echoed a simple prayer:
You have brought me here. And I am filled with joy. Amen.