By Christina Galeone
CFP Correspondent
WORCESTER – The vibrant Campus Ministry at Assumption College offers nearly 50 Catholic programs. But, until recently, there was something missing. “We gradually came to understand that the multiple programs that Campus Ministry offered … were not reaching a large segment of our student population,” Assumptionist Father Richard E. Lamoureux, the college’s vice president for mission, explained. He noted, “We wondered how best to reach out ‘to the peripheries,’ as Pope Francis often puts it.”
The ministry’s response to the problem was to request missionaries from the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). The nonprofit’s recent college graduates, who serve as missionaries to students at 164 colleges and universities in the United States and Europe, personally engage students and invite them into relationships with Christ and his Church. Because FOCUS granted the request, four of its missionaries are spending the 2019-2020 academic year sharing their strong faith with Assumption College students.
Deacon Paul F. Covino, Assumption’s director of Campus Ministry, said that one reason that the ministry requested the FOCUS missionaries was because of the positive experience the college has had with their two missionaries from InterVarsity (an ecumenical group). Like InterVarsity, FOCUS will complement the work of Campus Ministry.
“The five professional campus ministers at Assumption offer many excellent programs and opportunities in three major areas: prayer and worship, service and justice, spiritual growth and development,” Deacon Covino explained. “What we wanted to augment is our one-on-one outreach to students in the spirit of evangelization, especially to our baptized students who were not active in their faith.”
He hopes that, ultimately, the evangelization will allow Campus Ministry to “reignite a life of faith in baptized students whose faith is dormant” due to issues such as the perceived contradictions between faith and science and the devastating scandals in the Church.
“Like all of us in Campus Ministry, FOCUS addresses these issues … and invites students to see the Church as more than the worst things that some Church leaders have done,” Deacon Covino said.
The aim is also to invite students to see “their faith in Jesus Christ and his Gospel as the way to a life of meaning and purpose that can transform our experiences of darkness and death into opportunities of light and new life,” he said.
To share their faith with students, the FOCUS missionaries have been meeting them on campus as they eat, work out, participate in club activities and walk from building to building. In addition to inviting the students to attend Mass and eucharistic adoration, they invite them to join women’s and men’s Bible study groups. They’ve already established seven groups that serve more than 30 students. The missionaries also invite students to SLS20, a national conference being held by FOCUS this winter.
Emily McCall, the FOCUS team director at Assumption, experienced a deeper devotion to her faith when she was studying at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and was invited to a FOCUS Bible study group. She now shares with others what FOCUS brought to her life.
“The hope is that through time of deep investment, prayer and formation, we will raise up missionary disciples … who will then go out on campus to further reach their peers,” Ms. McCall said. She added, “We are so grateful for the many ways that the Lord is already blessing our efforts and pray that the Holy Spirit may continue to open the hearts and minds of students.”
Similarly, FOCUS team member Danny Payne strives to help students remember what’s important. He does so, sometimes, by hiking with them, and he also encourages them to disconnect from their phones and connect genuinely with friends and with God through prayer and the sacraments.
“Although we are the most connected generation, we are also the most isolated,” he said. “Overuse of our phones or social media can challenge us to forget who is right in front of us or draw us into comparison with others around us. This, then, can lead into putting our identity in other things outside of being a child of God.”
Mr. Payne became a missionary, this year, after attending the SLS18 conference and going through 10 weeks of FOCUS faith formation.
“When I returned back to college my senior year at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, I realized that two of the greatest poverties among college students are that of identity and authentic love,” Mr. Payne shared. “After much prayer and discernment, I put my desire to pursue veterinary medicine on hold and applied to become a FOCUS missionary with a burning passion to actively share the Gospel with college students who are attempting to fill the God-sized hole in their hearts with the world.”
Since Ms. McCall served as a missionary for three years at Towson University in Maryland, she knows the joy of overcoming those challenges. “For me, success begins in the little things,” she said. “It looks like praying with a student as they invite Jesus to be at their center of their life, while sitting in the midst of a busy dining hall. It’s when a young woman, who has been scared to go to confession for years and has been held back by the chains of sin, walks out of a confessional with a smile on her face after receiving the love, mercy, and freedom that only our Lord can offer.”
And Father Lamoureux has witnessed that success as well.
“Since their arrival, it is already clear that students are joining them in chapel for daily eucharistic adoration, that more students are attending daily Mass, that some are taking part in Bible-sharing groups, and that others are seeking out spiritual accompaniment,” Father Lamoureux said. “The missionaries are eager to have an impact on campus, but they often enough say how much all of that will be the result of God’s work in the hearts of our students. It’s for that reason that prayer, daily Mass, and eucharistic adoration is such an important part of the ‘work’ that they do on campus.”