Sheil Catholic Center

No history of an institution can ever adequately record "the spirit of the place," which is a product of the people who compose it. Calendars, building specifications, financial accounts, even correspondence never do justice to the people behind them. Individual memory is usually a very personal thing involving the impact and interplay of other persons; the historian's chronicle, restricted to data, misses most of that. A place may bear its own address, present its own configuration of space, publish its own calendar, but the reality of what goes on there will vary according to the special qualities of those who shape the experience within it. A recorded name from the past can be linked to an office, a committee or an event, but it remains only a name: The persona is missing. The only authentic history of Sheil would be one that gathers together the personal testimonials of all those who have played a part in its life -- an impossible task. Our modest hopes must be that recalling some of the names and events will trigger the more significant memories of persons present to one another, sharing both common goals and special gifts, needs and dreams.

"Why This Building Is Precious to Us"
Father John Krumps' Golden Jubilee Homily
Feast of the Holy Trinity, May 21, 1989

You can't imagine what a total delight it is to have so many alums here for this Jubilee Mass! And People from all over the country -- the Zieners from California, the Bersells from New Mexico, the Baumers from Florida, the Schufreiders from north Evanston.

A little over a year ago Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, the archbishop of Chicago, was the presider and preacher at a festive 11 o'clock Mass here to open our year of jubilee.

Actually, that's not quite accurate. Before April 17th, 1988, we had been working about six months on the jubilee. That adds up to 19 months of "jubileeing" for a lot of us. That is why I want to interrupt this homily and ask Helen and Courtney Smith, the co-chairs of Sheil's golden jubilee celebrations, to stand, and the rest of is to express our admiration for what they have accomplished.

They will be the happiest when this is all over today. But let that applause be enjoyed especially by all whose names are written down in the jubilee program and by all who served in any way on the Golden Jubilee Committee.

It is also extended to someone who wasn't on the committee and whose name is not in the jubilee program, Sheil's gem of an administrative assistantÑJane Kanestrom, who is here with her husband this morning. Also with us this morning are : Msgr. Fred Hillenbrand, who once upon a time was Father Mac's pastor at St. Mary's; Dr. Carol Fowler, the archdiocesan Director of Campus Ministry, who is much loved by all of us Chicago campus ministers as well as by the Sheil students who attended the retreat she gave for us last winter; and Steve Rashid's family, who came down for the baptism of Bea and Steve's baby and to hear his "Mass for a Golden Jubilee." Father Dick Mueller, who served at Sheil from 1968-1973, sends his regrets, as do dozens of others who had schedule conflicts this weekend.

We came this morning to bless this building, which has been a truly wonderful center for the community. It's getting in a bit now, and a lot of the furnishings could be taken away as souvenirs. But to you, Father Mac, and to Ted and Louann Van Zelst and the whole building committee, to all the students, parents, alumni and friends who provided the fundsÑespecially to Mrs. Kenneth Piper, who gave the chapel in memory of her deceased husband Paul V. GalvinÑwe who have prayed and loved and learned so much here in the past 20 years offer our enduring appreciation and admiration.

But, of course, a church is not a building, as Cheryl Fossey said last night, but a gathering of believers. And those believers. Paul tells us, enjoy the gifts of the Spirit, which are to be given in turn to the community, not merely or mainly to the Sheil community but to the community God is making of the world.

We came here today not just because we have received much here but because deep down we know we gave of ourselves here. I don't think the sense of community means very much or lasts very long if there isn't reciprocity. And what gifts of the Spirit have been in evidence here!

Father Mac, the first chaplain, was such a strong, loving, and wise presence here for 29 years. I have 9 years to go to ties, 10 to break his record. But Mac is something I'll never beÑa monsignor! They discontinued that line of priests about 20 years ago.

One of the first endearing things I noticed about Mac was how much he admired the studentsÑwhat they were here, and what they became afterwards. That respect must have rubbed off on anyone who had more than a 10-minute conversation with him.

There's Bill Manago, who lived and worked at Sheil when he was getting his M.S. and Ph.D. from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. He was invaluable help on the building committee. And he and Doug Cole are the editors of the commemorative book that is on the way. Bill and Nora belong to the Sheil high school parents' group. Which shows you how time moves on.

Who could ever count all that Dave Schuler has done at Sheil in the 22 years since he entered Northwestern as a freshman? Music and food are probably the most important ingredients in a Catholic campus church. Thing of the long line of chef/musicians we've had over the years: people like Paul Pastorek, Joe Wolinski and Ed Pacana, Dave, Mike Ritchey, Jim Kaduk, Buck Meyer and many more. Think of all the original music that had come from Sheil composersÑYoder, Ritchey, Becker, Bozzuti; Peggie Telscher, who wrote the setting for Psalm 65-66, our Sheil theme song; Steve Rashid, whose mass we're singing today; and Jim Colofranson, who has also written a mass for the community. And there have been others.

The gifts have been passed down, full measure and overflowing beginning the day when six undergraduates with deep faith and consummate chutzpah went to the chancery to ask for a chaplain. Two of them, Father Tom Neville and Ed Walsh, were here Friday night, and Ed is back this morning. Another of the six, Helen Scholl, wrote and said she "couldn't believe it was 50 years since they did it." She would love to have come, but she was leaving for Southeast Asia early this week. She is still going strong.

So is Alice Ziener, one of the stalwarts of the Sheil Mother's Club, who wrested more than a thousand dollars from the senior Mayor Daley in order to a place where there could be daily Mass on campus. Daley agreed it would improve the spiritual tone of the university but didn't see how it could be done. This doughty lady flew in with her alum son from California and announced that she was coming to everything including Mass Thursday and Friday.

I look back over the last 20 years of Sheil and marvel at how so many people have contributed something special to the community tradition:

Frank Willett of the exquisite Oxford accent first organizing the readers and Pre-Cana with his wife, Connie.

The unforgettable, unlikely, omnipresent monk, Brother Norman, doing things as diverse as initiating three annual retreats and recruiting Sheil teams for the IM's.

Steve Lanza and Fred Baumer bringing imagination, style, and a certain clarity to our liturgy, especially to the Holy Week liturgy. Credit Fred with bringing real bread to our Eucharistic table.
Ardis Collins elevating the Sheil tradition of choreographed reading to new heights during the past several years and organizing an enthusiastic and loyal corps of lectors.
Sheila McGinn-Moorer developing the catechumenate program here.
Jane Antunes, who as a junior devised the "Genesis IV" freshman program and later on as a mother named her first baby Genis.

Mary Kincaid replacing Ann Ferguson as manager of Sheil temporalities but also being the first woman to have an archdiocesan appointment as a chaplain here, counseling students, giving spiritual direction and talks, assisting a young Sheil mother in the birthing room, mounting dinners for 400 and, in all that, bringing beauty, grace and love to this community--a community builder nonpareil.

These are a few of the people who in a remarkable way have not only offered their talents to others but who have contributed to the building of a community at Sheil.

We get a lot of letters from alums. They talk about how they liked the liturgy, or how Sheil got them through difficult times here, or how wonderful their wedding was. But far and away what people talk about the most is the spirit of community they felt here. As one non-Catholic wife of a recent NU Catholic Ph.D. said when they visited here last month, "there's something about this place that you can't match."

The testimony is too general to ignore. I don't know what generates that "something," but I know what it is--the felt experience of community: not a smug, self-righteous community but a "community of seekers."

Walk through the memorabilia display in our library after Mass and you realize the community has changed. The ties are gone, and jeans have replaced skirts and dresses. Years ago, according to Dave Schuler, everything ended with Benediction; now it ends with food. Sheil is no longer about tending docile, committed young Catholics with now questions; Sheil is about evangelizing the already baptized, communioned and confirmed but questioning 19-year-olds.

Sheil is no longer an exclusively student community. It is a real-life community that, while reaching out to over 2,000 Catholic students, also embraces a retired professor who was the first woman to be awarded a doctorate at Oxford, and John Lennon Rashid, 2 months old yesterday, who is being baptized after Mass today, plus more than 400 alumni and faculty from Loyola and other nearby universities as well as Northwestern and associates from as far away as Hinsdale.

While students are its priority, and Sheil, as it has always done, gathers students for prayer, religious, dialogue, service and socials, Sheil is a full-service church, so to speak, like those at large residential universities around the country, Catholic and secular, where all the sacraments are celebrated, where newly ordained alums (like Steve Lanza) return to marry, where students staff includes not only two priests but a woman campus minister and a deacon, where 95 students and associates volunteer to serve Sunday dinner at the Evanston shelter, where there are "Midnight Masses" on Christmas at 5 and 10 p.m. and 12 and where you can get a New York Times after Sunday Mass.

Sheil does something it always did; it makes a lot of marriages, more than half are now celebrated in this beautiful chapel. "To sing is to pray twice, " Augustine said. Our experience at Sheil adds, "To sing in a choir is to put your singleness at great risk. To sing together is to stay together."

Campus chaplains tend to speak of their ministry as promoting the integration of faith and knowledge and bringing students to a mature, personal, faith so that they may evangelize others through their vocation to the arts, business or professions. But maybe the best way we do that in the long run is in providing the climate where students find a spouse with the same spiritual values.

That is true because the absolutely fundamental claim of the Christian religion is that God is love. And the mystery of the Trinity we celebrate today leads to the fullness of God's love can only be experienced with and in others. We can begin to understand the mystery of love only when it has seized us.

The image of three persons whose love for each other is so fierce, so faithful, so accepting evokes the desire in us to do the same. The Trinity dignifies human love, sanctifies human relationships, blesses human intimacy, demands human community.

More than a feast that honors only God, Trinity Sunday also honors people. And the mystery if the Trinity illuminates our calling and our happiness, which is to live lives of such spectacular love that all may come to believe.

More is asked of us nowadays,

In recent years, to paraphrase Vincent Donovan's The Church in the Midst of Creation, we have seen pictures of our planet as it looks from spaceÑa lovely blue, white, and brown planet. We know nothing about life on any other planet, but we know a lot about our planet, Earth. We know that life on our planet is redeemed life, that this is a redeemed planet. We know that the only kind of sin on our planet is forgiven sin and that the Resurrection has already begun on this planet. We know planet Earth is already part of the new creation. We believe Christ has meaning for the entire planet. We are starting to awaken to the implications of the psalmist's ecstatic utterance, "The Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world." That Spirit, the author of Proverbs tells us, delights in the world. God likes us!

That is how we must think when we come to the place. Karl Rahner says, "It is a perpetual tragic misunderstanding when the Eucharist, which is to remind us of the limitlessness of God's grace, is made into an enclosure in which alone God and his grace are to be found." We have come to the day when the Lord will be worshipped in spirit and truth. And that happens wherever and whenever people are brought to life as the gospel claims.

The Samaritan woman is evangelized by Jesus and becomes in turn the first evangelist when she tells her neighbors she has met the Messiah and brings them to him.

Still it is good for us to return here Sunday after Sunday. It was Thomas who insisted on seeing the wounds of Christ. When that happened, he said what not other apostle had said, "My Lord and My God!"

To see and to touch, to hear, to taste and to smell are important for us Catholic Christians. Maybe it explains why Ash Wednesday is one of the most popular feasts on college campuses across America. As Father Donovan puts it, "Young people feel comfortable at a ceremony designed specifically for sinners in which they can participate fully without feeling hypocritical. The best part about it, they say, is Ôthat the priest reaches our and touches us.'"

Yes, we need to see and touch and to be seen and touched. Jesus knew it and told us to stay together and have this meal. This is Eucharist, the sign of the gathering of sinners who believe, the sign of the Word of hope about a sinful world redeemed, the sign of the bread and body broke for us.

That is ultimately why this building is precious to us and why we have gathered today with grateful hearts to rededicate it.

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