It’s a foursquare house on 49th Street, across from Old Dominion University in Norfolk. It’s a house with a wide front porch in Blacksburg, at the edge of the campus of Virginia Tech. It’s St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish, Charlottesville, and more than a dozen places in between.
It’s more than a ministry. It’s an invitation to a new life.
Catholic Campus Ministries (CCM) is preparing to greet new students at colleges across the diocese this month, offering them a place to make friends and to grow in faith.
“It’s a home,” said Marissa O’Neil, director of CCM at Old Dominion University. “It’s a safe place where students can find support, but also be challenged, too.”
Campus ministries may differ in size and in their traditions, said Laura LaClair, associate director of campus ministry for the Diocese of Richmond, but their mission is the same: to enrich students’ spiritual lives and to share the good news of Christ.
“We encourage them to love God first and foremost,” she said. “Otherwise, everything goes into disarray without that proper orientation, without having that northern star.”
Faith-filled friendships
“Small groups are at the heart of our ministry, as a way to get students connected with one another and with their faith,” said John Hopke, executive director of CCM at William & Mary.
Each year, the ministry holds a fall retreat off-campus, he said, with about 50 to 70 students. This year, the group plans to spend time at Camp Chanco on the James River.
“It’s amazing to see them, over the course of the retreat, building a community of friends for their time here at William and Mary,” Hopke said. “At the end of the weekend, it seems as if they’ve known one another for years. I think it’s a testament to the bond of our Catholic faith — that we have this faith we share.”
It’s the friendships that are at the heart of the ministry, O’Neil agreed. Not only do the initial friendships formed at CCM provide encouragement to new students, but they also give them the confidence to go out onto the broader campus and try new things.
“That way, you aren’t just a single person trying to navigate it all alone,” she said.
The friendships she made as a student at CCM made all the difference to her in her first year at Christopher Newport University, O’Neil said.
“If I was walking on campus, right away I saw people I knew,” O’Neil said. “They invited me into the fold, and I never left.”
‘A place to ask the question’
“There are three pillars that make up campus ministry, and the first is faith,” said Chris Hitzelberger, director of CCM at Virginia Tech.
The ministry at Virginia Tech offers adoration on weekday afternoons, giving students a place for reflection on a large, active campus.
There is also daily Mass at 5:30 p.m., “which is a terrible time for families, but a great time for college students,” Hitzelberger said, laughing. “They can finish classes, attend Mass, and grab dinner with friends afterwards.”
The second pillar is community, he said. CCM helps students form lasting connections through Bible studies and retreats – “or even just by providing a place to play volleyball, or to sit with their laptop and pretend that they’re working, when they really just want to hang out,” he said.
“And then, the third pillar is service,” Hitzelberger said, which encompasses volunteering at local parishes and schools or within the ministry itself.
“CCM is a place to ask the question: ‘What gifts has God given you? How is God poking at your heart to say, “I need to step outside of myself and give back?”’” he added.
“It’s a place to learn how to become a part of the larger community,” said Hitzelberger.
‘Coming of age’
The college years are “a time of maturation,” said Dominican Father Joseph-Anthony Kress, chaplain of CCM at the University of Virginia.
“These students are coming of age. They are learning who they are, and part of our role as a campus ministry is to make sure they know who they are as sons and daughters of God.”
It’s a privilege to serve as chaplain to students during this decisive time in their lives, he said.
“The stakes are higher,” he said. “They are making intentional decisions to walk across grounds to attend Mass at 9 p.m.”
CCM at UVA is unique in that it is a fully functioning parish serving the broader community of students, faculty and staff. At St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish, students may see a wedding or a funeral in the course of the weekend, or may even serve as religious education teachers to their professors’ children.
“I have courtside seats to watch the Lord in his mercy work,” Father Kress said. “I’ve seen the conversions, I’ve seen the baptisms of the students.”
CCM is a place where students can share the joys of growing up, and a place, too, of solace during its sorrows. Father Kress recalled how UVA students showed their love and care for one another in the wake of the school shooting and twelve-hour lockdown that followed in November 2022.
“Everybody came together and knew that his was a place for healing, that they could cry, and they could grieve. They needed to be together,” he said, “and they knew that this was the place to come together in the Lord’s presence.”
Open invitations
For Max Stelmack, a graduate student at Virginia Tech, an Internet check for local Mass times in Blacksburg opened doors to a new world of grace.
“I didn’t know CCM existed,” he said. “At first, I thought, ‘Oh, wow, they have Mass right on campus.’ I had no idea that we hang out, that we become friends.”
His first retreat, made in his freshman year, was a pivotal time in his life, he said.
“There were lots of opportunities to meet new people, forming a community of faith, but then there was also plenty of time to go off alone and think and pray, for contemplation and reflection,” he said. “It drew me into two aspects of my Catholic faith that I never really had before.”
He began by serving as a lector at Mass and went on to join a small group of young men dedicated to prayer and to supporting one another in their faith.
“I feel that one of the biggest reasons that God led me to Virginia Tech was so that I could be a part of this,” he said.
“My identity – what makes my life worthwhile – is grounded in my relationship with God. That has to come first before all.”
“It’s completely transformed me,” he said. “I know that can sound cheesy, but to say any less is just not the truth.”
From paddleboarding on Lake Matoaka at William & Mary, to an ice-cream social at ODU, campus ministries plan to host a wide range of events to celebrate the start of the school year, issuing open invitations to all who wish to join.
At Virginia Tech, CCM students will be wearing bright orange “Catholic Hokie” T-shirts, hoping to start conversations. Ministries across the diocese will be holding Welcome Week Masses and hosting tables at club fairs.
“I would say, go into college with an open mind and open heart,” O’Neil said. “Just know that campus ministry is there and, if you don’t join right away, that’s fine, too. But know that it’s there for you whenever you do want to join, and they’ll welcome you.”
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