My Dear Parishioners,
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever! As I am sure you know, for the past few years we have tried to increase communication and participation in important matters and decisions facing the parish. To this end, we have begun this column, blogs, increased the usability of our website and most importantly in my mind, had a series of “State of the Parish” potlucks throughout the summer months with a presentation and time for questions and input. We had our first of two potlucks on June 17th and had a good turn out. The amount of material presented was substantially less than in years past and so we mostly just had a good time! The second one will be August 12th at 6:00 p.m. I hope you will be able to join us. For those of you who are not able to attend either event, I am publishing a summary of its content this week and next.
A Year In Review
This past year has been truly eventful. In September, we began our 100th year of Catholic Campus ministry at the University of Colorado and celebrated with two primary events: an open-air Mass on Norlin Quadrangle and the January debate between Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens. Both events drew crowds of over 2000. October saw a substantial updating and renewal of the church with the addition of kneelers and a new tabernacle. These changes have added substantially to an atmosphere of prayer and a renewed focus on Christ in our midst. In addition to these “big” events, there are so many day-to-day events that are so rich and beautiful that make me so proud to be the pastor of such an excellent parish with truly fine and holy people. I am especially pleased with the excellent staff we have here at St. Thomas. The Religious Education, Sacramental Preparation, Music Ministry and Youth Ministry programs continue to flourish and indeed are growing. Thank you to Patty, Myrna, Judy and the Parish Council!
Campus ministry, the focus of our mission, is flourishing and growing as well both in quantity of students and the quality of ministry. The amount of student participation in Sunday Mass, FOCUS Bible Studies and leadership training, Buffalo Awakening, theological education, outreach on campus, Eucharistic Adoration, Daily Mass and Confession have all increased this year. We have also continued to refine our approach and expand our options so as to reach more students with different “tastes” and needs. A huge thank you to Father Peter, Matt Boettger, Kelsey Wicks, Hilary Rowe and the FOCUS team, Megan Dillon and Margaret Stortz for all of their hard work and creativity.
Our parish, both students and families, is growing and is on much firmer financial footing than in recent years past. Although these are not the only indicators, three of the biggest are the Sunday Mass attendance, the offertory collection and our efforts at developing relationships with alumni, parents and friends of our ministry asking them to contribute to the mission. Here is a brief look at the numbers:
Sunday Mass Average 2007: 950 (Oct); 2008: 1120(Oct); 2009: 1190(Mar)
Offertory Collection 2007: $ 643,700; 2008: $ 664,000; 2009: $ 688,000(est)
Advancement Income: 2007: $ 0; 2008: $ 165,000; 2009: $ 345,000(est)
I am giving these numbers in order to thank you for your generosity and commitment to the Lord Jesus, Sunday Mass and the ministry of this parish. This parish is entirely dependent upon you and you have shown your love. I would especially like to thank all of you who, despite the difficult economic conditions, have committed to weekly electronic giving or been consistent in your offertory contribution as the basket passes and those who were extraordinarily generous during the “matching gift collection” in March. It is due to these factors, especially the matching gift collection, that we are ahead of our budget projections for the offertory for this year. A final financial report for Fiscal Year 2009 will be given to the parish in September. Last year we ended positive after many years “in the red”, we are hoping for the same this year. A special thank you to Terry Shroba, our office manager, Phil Perez our business manager, our Finance Council (Steve King, Betty Valent, Don and Rose Boselli and Dennis Maloney), Megan Dillon, our director of development and the Monday morning money counters.
Many Partings
As I mentioned above in several places, we have been blessed with an extraordinary staff, deeply committed to the intellectual, spiritual, social and apostolic excellence of our ministry to the University of Colorado and broader Boulder community. While staff turnover is quite normal especially in university ministry, we have also been blessed with staff longevity. But this summer, we are saying goodbye to three wonderful staff members. The longest serving is, of course, Myrna Deemy who has retired after 19 years of excellent service. I am so grateful for her and her ministry among us. We miss her already and are currently looking for a replacement. This has proven quite difficult as she combines so many disparate talents and gifts. As of this writing, I have offered the position to someone, please pray that he accepts! If he doesn’t, we will continue to interview until we find the right person for our parish.
As you probably know, Kelsey Wicks, who has worked in campus ministry for two years, has discerned a call from God to enter the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecelia in Nashville, Tennessee. We will greatly miss her and her smile, but are proud to send her forth to such a noble calling. We have hired a successor for Kelsey’s job: Bob Siemens who will join us in August from Sioux Falls, SD along with his wife and five children. I can’t wait for you all to meet this wonderful man and his family.
Margaret Stortz has worked as the office manager at the student center for the past year. She recently decided to pursue missionary work with the Salesians in Bolivia. I suppose if we are to lose staff members, losing them to the convent and missionary work is the best way! I am grateful for Margaret and her time among us. You will see an advertisement for this position in the Denver Catholic Register throughout the month of July and we hope to have someone in place before the beginning of the school year.
Hopes for the Future
One of the reasons my presentation at the potluck was shorter than in years past is because there are no “grand” plans for the coming year. We plan to focus on the continue growth and refinement of our current ministries. With that being said, there are two major issues that I hope we can continue discussing and hopefully come to some resolutions by next summer.
As you may know, in April we began a discussion on the future of the food bank, its potentialities and facilities. As a result of that potluck, we have established a “task force” to evaluate this ministry, the facilities and all the possible options for the future. I am very pleased with the results so far and hope to update you as soon as there is anything concrete to report. Thank you to all the members of the task force (Agnes Stupp, Judy Cardell, Mike Freece, Patty Quinn, Dennis Creese, Pat Coates and Karen Harrison).
Finally, we have been discussing our current facilities and their many needs for years. I have placed that discussion on the back-burner for three years now. I am hoping to re-open the discussion at some point this year. Please do some dreaming and come up with some ideas!
I am blessed to be the pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thank you very much for your continued support, love and prayers. Please know that I keep you in my daily prayers and long for all of us to reach our full happiness and potential, holiness in Jesus Christ. With prayers and blessings, I remain
Your brother in Christ,
Father Kevin Augustyn
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Vocation to the Priesthood
Here is a column I wrote this morning for the upcoming ENDOW (Education on the Nature and Dignity of Women) Newsletter. Hope they don't mind me publishing it early!
I love being a priest. In fact, it is a far greater reality and joy than I ever imagined while in the seminary. It has its challenges: being overworked, fatigue, frustrations with spiritual apathy in myself and others, scandals within the Church, negative influences within the culture, and my own inadequacies and sins among other things. But after five years of priesthood, I continue to discover that God is in charge, it is His Church and that He is able to make up for all that is lacking in us.
I didn’t always want to be a priest. I had never thought about it seriously until I was 19 years old. And even then, it was a very difficult process of discernment with many mental and spiritual obstacles to overcome over the course of the next seven years. To explain all the influences and the winding path of my discernment would be a long story, and tedious reading. But a few things are worth mentioning in this context. I grew up in a Catholic family that faithfully attended Mass on Sundays and Catholic schools. I was surrounded by Catholics and Catholic culture. Yet, I deeply misunderstood the Catholic Church. I thought it was an institution, albeit an extraordinary one, but still just an institution.
Two events changed this for me and contributed mightily to my embracing of my vocation as a priest. The first was my mother’s prayers, or rather my discovery of my mother’s prayers. Like St. Monica, she prayed for her wayward son every day; that he would embrace the Catholic faith more deeply and find his vocation. When both of these things began to happen in my life, my mother simply said to me, “I have been praying for this every day.” Unfortunately, due to the overly-privatized nature of Catholics with regard to their faith, this was news to me. I often wonder if I had known this earlier it might have saved me from many bad decisions. Be that as it may, when I heard this it changed my life. I finally had a sense of the “communion of saints,” the interconnection and sharing of spiritual goods we possess because of our belonging to Christ. In other words, I realized that the Church is not merely an institution but something far greater, namely, the “Mystical Body of Christ.” God heard my mother’s plea, my mother’s prayers had deeply impacted my life, brought about a complete change of direction. Finding about them did as well.
The second event is similar. During my sophomore year of college I took a class called The Theology of the Church whose main textbook was Henri de Lubac’s Splendor of the Church. This book opened my eyes to something I had totally missed: the Church was not primarily an “it,” the Church was a “she,” the Bride of Christ. I finally realized Christ “gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her…that he might present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle…that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5: 25-270). With this discovery came others. Namely, it is this same spotless bride that is on pilgrimage through history, mud-stained by the tumults of history, by persecutions and by the sins of her own members. Furthermore, I realized that to be a priest is to be a bridegroom of the Church for Christ. When I realized all of this, I fell in love with the Church, with her beauty and her plight, and wanted to give myself to her, to marry her, to serve her and only her on behalf of Jesus.
At present, I find myself as the pastor of the University of Colorado-Boulder with thousands of young Catholics in my care. Some of these young people have enthusiastically embraced their faith while others have drifted away or even rejected Jesus and His Church. It is an enormous gift and task to try to bring the Catholic Faith to the university; it is filled with great joy and much sadness. Despite the sadness and challenges, I am very grateful to Jesus for the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ and His Bride, for my mother’s prayers, good theology classes and for the share in his priesthood that he has given me.
I love being a priest. In fact, it is a far greater reality and joy than I ever imagined while in the seminary. It has its challenges: being overworked, fatigue, frustrations with spiritual apathy in myself and others, scandals within the Church, negative influences within the culture, and my own inadequacies and sins among other things. But after five years of priesthood, I continue to discover that God is in charge, it is His Church and that He is able to make up for all that is lacking in us.
I didn’t always want to be a priest. I had never thought about it seriously until I was 19 years old. And even then, it was a very difficult process of discernment with many mental and spiritual obstacles to overcome over the course of the next seven years. To explain all the influences and the winding path of my discernment would be a long story, and tedious reading. But a few things are worth mentioning in this context. I grew up in a Catholic family that faithfully attended Mass on Sundays and Catholic schools. I was surrounded by Catholics and Catholic culture. Yet, I deeply misunderstood the Catholic Church. I thought it was an institution, albeit an extraordinary one, but still just an institution.
Two events changed this for me and contributed mightily to my embracing of my vocation as a priest. The first was my mother’s prayers, or rather my discovery of my mother’s prayers. Like St. Monica, she prayed for her wayward son every day; that he would embrace the Catholic faith more deeply and find his vocation. When both of these things began to happen in my life, my mother simply said to me, “I have been praying for this every day.” Unfortunately, due to the overly-privatized nature of Catholics with regard to their faith, this was news to me. I often wonder if I had known this earlier it might have saved me from many bad decisions. Be that as it may, when I heard this it changed my life. I finally had a sense of the “communion of saints,” the interconnection and sharing of spiritual goods we possess because of our belonging to Christ. In other words, I realized that the Church is not merely an institution but something far greater, namely, the “Mystical Body of Christ.” God heard my mother’s plea, my mother’s prayers had deeply impacted my life, brought about a complete change of direction. Finding about them did as well.
The second event is similar. During my sophomore year of college I took a class called The Theology of the Church whose main textbook was Henri de Lubac’s Splendor of the Church. This book opened my eyes to something I had totally missed: the Church was not primarily an “it,” the Church was a “she,” the Bride of Christ. I finally realized Christ “gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her…that he might present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle…that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5: 25-270). With this discovery came others. Namely, it is this same spotless bride that is on pilgrimage through history, mud-stained by the tumults of history, by persecutions and by the sins of her own members. Furthermore, I realized that to be a priest is to be a bridegroom of the Church for Christ. When I realized all of this, I fell in love with the Church, with her beauty and her plight, and wanted to give myself to her, to marry her, to serve her and only her on behalf of Jesus.
At present, I find myself as the pastor of the University of Colorado-Boulder with thousands of young Catholics in my care. Some of these young people have enthusiastically embraced their faith while others have drifted away or even rejected Jesus and His Church. It is an enormous gift and task to try to bring the Catholic Faith to the university; it is filled with great joy and much sadness. Despite the sadness and challenges, I am very grateful to Jesus for the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ and His Bride, for my mother’s prayers, good theology classes and for the share in his priesthood that he has given me.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
The Solemnity of Holy Trinity Homily
Holy Trinity Sunday is always the dread of seminarians and even priests. We had an entire five credit course at the seminary aimed at providing us with material for preaching so that we didn’t just say it was a mystery and sit down. I wish I could do that but this doctrine is at the height and heart of our faith as Catholics.
Sometimes I do think it would be best if I simply acknowledged the mystery and sat down. It is so difficult because the formal theology on the Trinity, while extremely interesting, is difficult to bring down to the level of practical Christian living. It seems so abstract, so foreign to our normal ways of thinking. Of all the doctrines of the Church, this seems to be the one that has the least impact on how we live our lives as Christians. We are usually content to stick with our favorite person of the Trinity and hope that he communicates well with the others.
But nothing could be further from the truth, from the reality. In reality, it is the highest teachings that that have the most impact on the lesser ones. This is preeminently true of our faith in the Most Blessed Trinity. In fact, I think that is why the Church has us celebrate this solemnity: to remind us that if understood and taken seriously, faith in the Holy Trinity has a tremendous impact on how we see the world and how we live our lives as Christians in the here and now.
We believe that God is not solitary, that at the source of reality, of the universe, is not an aloneness or an impersonal force. Rather, we believe that the one and only God is an eternal exchange of life and love and that that exchange of life and love spills over into creation and into us. God has revealed his innermost secret: that at the source of reality, God is a family or communion of persons, eternal self-giving and fruitfulness. The Father communicates the entire divine nature, except “being the Father,” to the Son, the Son reciprocates the gift and the love between the two is itself a person, the Holy Spirit.
By ourselves, by our reason, we can know THAT God is, that he exists and even that he is One. But by ourselves, we cannot know WHO God is. That he has to reveal, stoop down, so to speak, and teach us. Because he has “let us in,” we are able to know him and thus we are able to be in relationship with him; we are able to cry out Abba Father! as sons and daughters.
This should change everything, our worldview and our life. I would like to point out three ways that this should be so.
First, this belief is the source of an especially Catholic way of seeing the world. Because God is both one in essence and a family of persons, both one and many, both unity and diversity, both infinite and personal, both truth and love, both community and individuals we should always be a “BOTH/AND” type of people. In God, all these things are unified. In our lives they are in tension, and usually separated by sin and sloppy thinking. As a redeemed people, who belong to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God in Three Persons, we have the task to reunite within ourselves, through God’s grace, those things so easily separated: the one and the many, unity of faith and diversity of gifts, body and soul, faith and reason, the human and the divine, the institutional Church and the people of God, respect for the individual and the common good, firmness and gentleness, truth and love and the list goes on and on. It is this type of thinking, this BOTH/AND thinking that makes us such outcasts in the current political process and scene. Have you noticed how one-sided and crazy things seem to us and how we never quite fit in? It is faith in the Trinity that flows down into our thinking and makes us sane!
Second, because the One God is a Trinity of Persons human life and salvation is inherently communal in nature. Because the source of reality is a communion of persons, so too is the human race, so too is the Church. In other words, God forms a human family in creation and in salvation history because that is what God is. Family is what God does, because that is what God is. This, of course, has huge implications. It means that we are not merely saved as individuals but are always save within the community, within the ecclesia. We are saved because we are incorporated, either implicitly or explicitly, into God’s covenantal family, the Church. The subject of salvation is God’s family, the Church. If we are saved, it is because we belong to her.
Thus, the goal of the Church’s ministry can never be simply about individuals. It has to be about the formation of the community and a culture: a family that worships God in the unity of faith with all of our individual differences and gifts. From this flows the importance of marriage and family, that primordial community that is at the foundation of creation, the Church and society. The Church will never abandon the importance of marriage and family in any of these sectors as it is tied up with our very identity flowing from the Trinity. In other words, if the source of reality is a Family, the source of the Church and broader society is the family. If marriage and family fail, we fail.
Third, if God is an eternal exchange of life and love then at the source of reality is self-giving fruitfulness, not individual selfishness or strife. Since creation and especially the human person are meant to “image” God, we are called to live that same type of self-giving love. His self-giving fruitfulness is meant to “spill over” into our lives so that we can live as God lives, and be our true selves. How does one do this? By living for the other, by spending ourselves, our gifts, resources, time, energies, sorrows, joys for the Other and the other. If we give ourselves to God, we are able to then truly give ourselves to others.
Our ways of thinking and living are supposed to flow from the fact that God is an eternal exchange of life and love, to mirror that reality within ourselves, the Church and society. Our world has a desperate need to hear such good news! It is not something we can keep to ourselves. But first, we need to contemplate this, to incorporate it into our worldview, the way we see the Church and the world. Then, like God, it will “spill over” into all those that we meet.
Sometimes I do think it would be best if I simply acknowledged the mystery and sat down. It is so difficult because the formal theology on the Trinity, while extremely interesting, is difficult to bring down to the level of practical Christian living. It seems so abstract, so foreign to our normal ways of thinking. Of all the doctrines of the Church, this seems to be the one that has the least impact on how we live our lives as Christians. We are usually content to stick with our favorite person of the Trinity and hope that he communicates well with the others.
But nothing could be further from the truth, from the reality. In reality, it is the highest teachings that that have the most impact on the lesser ones. This is preeminently true of our faith in the Most Blessed Trinity. In fact, I think that is why the Church has us celebrate this solemnity: to remind us that if understood and taken seriously, faith in the Holy Trinity has a tremendous impact on how we see the world and how we live our lives as Christians in the here and now.
We believe that God is not solitary, that at the source of reality, of the universe, is not an aloneness or an impersonal force. Rather, we believe that the one and only God is an eternal exchange of life and love and that that exchange of life and love spills over into creation and into us. God has revealed his innermost secret: that at the source of reality, God is a family or communion of persons, eternal self-giving and fruitfulness. The Father communicates the entire divine nature, except “being the Father,” to the Son, the Son reciprocates the gift and the love between the two is itself a person, the Holy Spirit.
By ourselves, by our reason, we can know THAT God is, that he exists and even that he is One. But by ourselves, we cannot know WHO God is. That he has to reveal, stoop down, so to speak, and teach us. Because he has “let us in,” we are able to know him and thus we are able to be in relationship with him; we are able to cry out Abba Father! as sons and daughters.
This should change everything, our worldview and our life. I would like to point out three ways that this should be so.
First, this belief is the source of an especially Catholic way of seeing the world. Because God is both one in essence and a family of persons, both one and many, both unity and diversity, both infinite and personal, both truth and love, both community and individuals we should always be a “BOTH/AND” type of people. In God, all these things are unified. In our lives they are in tension, and usually separated by sin and sloppy thinking. As a redeemed people, who belong to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God in Three Persons, we have the task to reunite within ourselves, through God’s grace, those things so easily separated: the one and the many, unity of faith and diversity of gifts, body and soul, faith and reason, the human and the divine, the institutional Church and the people of God, respect for the individual and the common good, firmness and gentleness, truth and love and the list goes on and on. It is this type of thinking, this BOTH/AND thinking that makes us such outcasts in the current political process and scene. Have you noticed how one-sided and crazy things seem to us and how we never quite fit in? It is faith in the Trinity that flows down into our thinking and makes us sane!
Second, because the One God is a Trinity of Persons human life and salvation is inherently communal in nature. Because the source of reality is a communion of persons, so too is the human race, so too is the Church. In other words, God forms a human family in creation and in salvation history because that is what God is. Family is what God does, because that is what God is. This, of course, has huge implications. It means that we are not merely saved as individuals but are always save within the community, within the ecclesia. We are saved because we are incorporated, either implicitly or explicitly, into God’s covenantal family, the Church. The subject of salvation is God’s family, the Church. If we are saved, it is because we belong to her.
Thus, the goal of the Church’s ministry can never be simply about individuals. It has to be about the formation of the community and a culture: a family that worships God in the unity of faith with all of our individual differences and gifts. From this flows the importance of marriage and family, that primordial community that is at the foundation of creation, the Church and society. The Church will never abandon the importance of marriage and family in any of these sectors as it is tied up with our very identity flowing from the Trinity. In other words, if the source of reality is a Family, the source of the Church and broader society is the family. If marriage and family fail, we fail.
Third, if God is an eternal exchange of life and love then at the source of reality is self-giving fruitfulness, not individual selfishness or strife. Since creation and especially the human person are meant to “image” God, we are called to live that same type of self-giving love. His self-giving fruitfulness is meant to “spill over” into our lives so that we can live as God lives, and be our true selves. How does one do this? By living for the other, by spending ourselves, our gifts, resources, time, energies, sorrows, joys for the Other and the other. If we give ourselves to God, we are able to then truly give ourselves to others.
Our ways of thinking and living are supposed to flow from the fact that God is an eternal exchange of life and love, to mirror that reality within ourselves, the Church and society. Our world has a desperate need to hear such good news! It is not something we can keep to ourselves. But first, we need to contemplate this, to incorporate it into our worldview, the way we see the Church and the world. Then, like God, it will “spill over” into all those that we meet.
Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Nevermind, it is as hard as I thought! For some reason, it won't let me copy my text. Will do so when I find help!
I'm Back
Dear Friends,
It has been a long time since I have posted. Like many things, it seems harder than it really is. Now that Totus Tuus training is over (and my review of St. Thomas Aquinas on the virtues) I plan on posting on a regular basis. I am going to start with once a week and see how it goes. This week for Holy Trinity Sunday I actually wrote an outline for my homily (I usually "write" it in my head). Thus, translating it into text didn't take that long.
It has been a long time since I have posted. Like many things, it seems harder than it really is. Now that Totus Tuus training is over (and my review of St. Thomas Aquinas on the virtues) I plan on posting on a regular basis. I am going to start with once a week and see how it goes. This week for Holy Trinity Sunday I actually wrote an outline for my homily (I usually "write" it in my head). Thus, translating it into text didn't take that long.
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