COME, HOLY SPIRIT, COME!

     Today we celebrate the beginning of the academic year at Stanford with our annual Mass of the Holy Spirit, a long-standing tradition at Catholic colleges and universities. Originating in the Middle Ages with the founding of the great European universities, this special Mass recognizes the Holy Spirit as the source of true wisdom and as the perfect fount of inspiration, to whom students might turn for assistance throughout the school year as they take up their studies.  This custom, long observed in Catholic universities, has been adopted by Catholic chaplaincies to secular universities where they maintain a presence for the Catholic students.  Catholic students at Stanford University have had a Catholic chaplaincy presence since 1903 when only about 4% of Stanford’s student body was Catholic. At that time, a small group of students formed the Montgomery Club, which eventually became the Newman Club in 1929.   Why a “Newman Club”?

     Most Catholic campus ministries call themselves Newman Centers, or some way invoke the great Cardinal Newman as their patron.  John Henry Newman, was originally a well-known intellectual, writer, educator and priest in the Church of England.  In 1845 Newman left the Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church. In recognition of his writing and his leadership in the Catholic intellectual tradition he was made a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII.    It is for his contributions to the field of Catholic higher education that Catholic groups at universities are named in his honor.  These “Newman Centers” provide pastoral services and ministries to Catholics at non-Catholic universities.

     The “Newman Center” at Stanford had its ups and downs over the years; the university’s good relationship with Archbishop Hanna (1915-1935) was tested by Archbishop Mitty’s (1935-1961) lack of enthusiasm for Catholic students’ attendance at secular universities.  Nonetheless, Catholics made up almost 14% of the university population in 1940, and that number surged after World War II.  A new obstacle arose in 1946 when University President Donald Tresidder attempted to implement a very strict interpretation of the non-sectarian clause in the founding grant.  As a result, Catholics and other denominations lost their right to meet at a campus site they had used since 1915, and other options were curtailed as well.

     This led the archdiocese of San Francisco to purchase a large property in Palo Alto, which provided space for meetings. Claire Booth Luce, whose daughter Ann was killed in 1944 in a car accident during her senior year at Stanford, generously donated money for the design and building of a chapel on this property where Masses could be held beginning in 1951.  Known as St Ann’s, this thriving community attracted a dynamic congregation of students, faculty and local community members, and fostered lively liturgies and loyal participation over the next thirty years.

     However, the need to make Mass more accessible to students living a mile away on campus led to renewed efforts on the part of the Catholic chaplains and other campus religious groups to secure changes to the founding grant and enable the reinstatement of Masses on the campus.  The first Catholic Mass in Memorial Church took place in 1966, on a Sunday at 4:30, a time we have maintained since then.  The need for programming aimed specifically for the student population led to the hiring of a priest especially for campus ministry.  As the ministry grew, it was clear that we needed the campus ministry expertise of religious orders who had extensive experience in a student setting,

     The Jesuits, and later the Dominicans, were asked to assume the responsibility for Stanford’s program. The Clubhouse of the Old Union became a hub of ecumenical activities; religious groups came together as Stanford Associated Religions under the auspices of the Office for Religious Life.  At this time we were requested by the Office for Religious Life to identify ourselves as The Catholic Community at Stanford, in order to make our mission clear to the university as a whole.  Although the title “Newman Center” has been dropped from our official name, the spirit of Cardinal Newman lives on in our hearts and in our programming.  Our recently inaugurated Tuesday night offerings in theological and ecclesial studies are called Newman Nights.

     Today, this thriving Catholic Community at Stanford has become its own parish, so designated in 1997 by Bishop Pierre DuMaine of the San Jose Diocese to which we belong.  With three Sunday Masses and a host of events in our new space on the third floor of the Old Union, we hope to which foster spiritual enrichment, theological development and fellowship for a variety of interest groups and ages, from undergrads to permanent community members. For a more complete history of the Catholic Community at Stanford, visit our website. 

     And so, on this day we thank the Spirit for the continued guidance and care of our Catholic Community at Stanford, and pray for God’s Wisdom to sustain us as individuals and as a community by reflecting on a poem from a late Stanford English Professor and Catholic convert:

THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM

You have brought me so far.

I know so much.  Names, verbs, images.  My mind

overflows, a drawer that can’t close.

*

Unscathed among the tortured.  Ignorant parchment

uninscribed, light strokes only, where a scribe

Tried out a pen.

*

I am so small, a speck of dust

moving across the huge world.  The world

a speck of dust in the universe.

Are you holding

the universe?  You hold

onto my smallness.  How do you grasp it,

how does it not

slip away?

*

I know so little

*

You have brought me so far.

--Denise Levertov, from Sands of the Well