CAMPUS PREACHING:
BY GOD’S GRACE AND YOUR SUPPORT
By Father James Brent, O.P., and Father Benedict Croell, O.P.
From the bottom of our hearts, we want
to thank you for supporting our mission of
itinerant preaching to college students and
young adults.
Recently, sixty-five students and FOCUS
missionaries from the University of Texas
and Texas State University gathered in
a retreat house with a spectacular view
overlooking the dry plains of Texas.
The sunsets were amazing. For
three days, we held spiritual
conferences on the Holy
Spirit, celebrated Masses,
and allocated a lot of time for
Eucharistic
adoration
and confessions, as
well as singing praise
and worship songs
together.
There were some
spectacular emotional
healings
for
the
students and missionaries. It is hard to
describe just how much students are in
pain. Many come from broken homes and
have broken hearts from promiscuous
lifestyles, binge drinking, and drugs.
These students wander around in
universities that provide them with a
lot of information but no real wisdom
for life except various conventions
of political correctness. For
these reasons, the message
of healing resonates deeply.
At the end of this retreat, as students
lingered during Father James’ Q & A, a
student came from campus asking for
a priest. No one had ever seen him before,
and he was not at the talk. He was in crisis
and very emotional. The chaplain was
gone, so Father James met with him
outside on the curb (the only private
place to meet). There he began to share
Father Benedict Croell, O.P.
details of his life. The student was a junior,
and, so it happened, a philosophy major.
With a father who is Catholic but hates the
Church and a mother who is a Methodist
minister, he had spent his high school and
college years studying and practicing a
homemade blend
of eastern religions.
He had been having
bizarre
religious
experiences
for
some time and was
distraught. Hence,
he came in search
of a priest looking
for answers.
This is only a cursory review of all that the
Lord did. Each confession, each conversation,
each person we “ran into,” each retreat, and
everything that happened was full of grace.
The Lord did many more things than we could
have imagined or planned, and even now so
much has receded
into memory as
we prepare for
another semester
on the road. This
time, we will go
for three months.
We have learned
to slow the pace,
take longer breaks
between events,
and pack fewer events in a day. Even if we
do less, the Lord will not do less. He may
even do more.
“All together, we had face
time with almost three
thousand college students–
many of whom were far
away from the Church.”
Father James was able to connect with him,
share the Gospel with him, introduce him to
the FOCUS missionaries, and, the next day,
to the chaplain. Even now they continue to
follow up with him. It seemed so very clear
that God brought him there that night.
The Lord did so many things this year. By
our count, the Lord granted us to lead eleven
retreats and visit twenty-three campuses