The Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross speak of our feasts giving us occasions as a religious family to pray and celebrate together. (C:29) Throughout the year, these moments of prayer and celebration give expression to the things that we value as a religious family. I think of our Patronal Feasts, but also about Final Professions, ordinations, jubilees and funerals.
In my work as a Campus Minister at King’s College, it is my hope that our College community also shared moments of prayer and celebration that help our students, faculty, staff and friends give similar expression to the things that we value communally.
One of the big ways this happens every fall is through our Homecoming and Family Weekend. All of our alumni and the family, friends and loved ones of our students, faculty and staff are invited back to campus to soak up all the things that we love about the King’s College community. It is a fun time, but also a celebration of what we as a community value. There is a block party, football game and sporting events, recognition of different alumni groups and the whole weekend culminates with a celebratory Mass at our College Chapel. All the things that we value as an educational institution in the Holy Cross tradition -past, present and future – are celebrated throughout the Homecoming and Family weekend.
Homecoming this fall was especially poignant for me because closely following the annual festivities, we celebrated a different kind of homecoming for one of our alumni: his funeral. The alumnus passed away out of state and his previous local parish had been merged with another. When his family was planning his funeral, they turned to King’s College and asked if they could have his funeral in our Chapel. While it wasn’t part of the original Homecoming plan, the funeral became an extension for me of the very things that we were celebrating during the rest of the festivities: that the time at King’s College is about more than just getting a degree – it forms a community and shapes a life.
The Constitutions also speak of the fact that wherever we go as men of Holy Cross, we do so to “support men and women of grace and goodwill everywhere in their efforts to form communities of the coming kingdom.” (C: 12) As an institution of higher education in the Holy Cross tradition, we hope to build and celebrate a community at King’s College in which our students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends can be signs of hope for the coming of God’s kingdom. Our faith allows us to celebrate both the gathering of people for a festive weekend as well as for a funeral mass as evidence of such a community being formed.
We labor and pray that all of our efforts might make the communities we are a part of and the ones that we help form an even stronger sign of the coming of the kingdom prepared for and promised to each of us.
Fr. Brogan Ryan, C.S.C. | King’s College
Published 08 November 2024
