Ministry helps college students and young adults grow in faith
Josh Mears, third from left in the back row, poses with members of his mission team in the church where the incorrupt body of St. Francis Xavier is buried in Goa, India. The mission trip last spring played a large part in Mears, a junior at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, joining the campus’ Catholic Student Organization. He is a catechumen and will be received into the full communion of the Church this Easter. (Submitted photo)
By Natalie Hoefer
Since she was 13 years old, Cheyenne Johnson wanted to become Catholic. So when she arrived on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis in the fall of 2017, she looked up the Butler Catholic Community.
Last Easter, the former southern Baptist received her first sacraments of Communion and confirmation.
She is one of many people in the 18-35 age range in central and southern Indiana who have benefitted from programs created or supported by the archdiocese’s Office of Young Adult and College Campus Ministry.
Johnson, 19 and now a sophomore, serves on the Butler Catholic Community’s peer ministry team. She is part of a women’s Scripture study group, worships at Mass twice a week, and prays with her Catholic friends in adoration.
She also invites to Mass any Catholic student who says they no longer practice their faith.
Johnson expresses gratitude for the Catholic organization and the faith community it provides her.
“It gives me friends who value the same things, hold you accountable, go to Mass, pray and strive to live a virtuous life,” she says. “The college atmosphere is against all that, and it’s easy to fall into temptation. Having a group of people makes it easier not to fall.”
Josh Mears agrees. The 20-year-old junior at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) was raised in a non-denominational church. This Easter, he will be welcomed into the full communion of the Catholic Church at St. John the Evangelist Church in Indianapolis.
His sponsor is the same Fellowship of Catholic University Students missionary who invited him last spring to join a mission trip to India to work at a home for the poor operated by St. Teresa of Calcutta’s Missionaries of Charity.
It was in India that Mears participated in his first Mass. And it was during adoration on the mission trip that he felt the call to Catholicism.
“We have a Catholic student organization on campus [at IUPUI], and they’ve all been helping me through this journey,” says Mears. “Campus ministry is a guidance to help prepare for life. It helps you grow in faith and have a better relationship with God early in life. It’s a stepping stone to keep growing in faith when you’re older.”
Mears says his Catholic friends “challenge me to be a better Christian. If there wasn’t a Catholic ministry on campus, I don’t know where I’d be today.”
The friends Emily Hable, 30, made through Indy Catholic when she moved to Indianapolis last fall have been instrumental in her life as well. Indy Catholic, created by the archdiocese’s young adult and college campus ministry, is a model the office hopes to use as a tool of young adult ministry for other deaneries.
Hable joined one of the ministry’s Emmaus groups. She meets with a group of women to study Scripture and support each other spiritually.
“Just having a group who are all seeking the Lord is helpful,” says Habel, a member of St. John the Evangelist Parish. “Christ lived in community. Man was not meant to live alone. … We’re meant to live in community and care for each other in the community by lifting them up and dealing with sorrows together.”
And that is precisely what Hable’s Emmaus group members did for her when, shortly after moving to Indianapolis, her parents were killed in a car accident near their home in Clinton, Ill.
“They were calling, seeing if I was OK, checking in, sending gift baskets,” she says. “They still ask how things are going.”
With Indy Catholic, Hable sees “a resurgence of people my age seeking more traditional methods of faith. … It’s our own faith, not our parents’.”
(For more information about the archdiocesan Office of Young Adult and College Campus Ministry, go to www.archindy.org/youngadult or contact Matt Faley at 800-382-9836, ext. 1436, 317-236-1436 or mfaley@archindy.org.) †
