Every Wednesday night in the Coleman-Morse Lounge, students gather for Abide, a night of praise and worship, small group discussions, and a guest speaker talk. This weekly event, sponsored by Campus Ministry and run by students with the help of Sister M. Paula Van Thienen, S.S.M., aims to welcome students into a community that will aid them in their faith journeys.
Bethany Berlage, a senior at St. Mary’s College, serves on the Core Team for Abide, a group of six students who help with the planning and logistical aspects. Reflecting on what makes Abide unique, Berlage told the Rover that new students show up each week, often by themselves: “You get to share … things with people you don’t know. It’s a welcoming space where community is created even among people who are theoretically strangers.”
Core Team members begin the night by leading the attendees in a group icebreaker and introduce upcoming news in Campus Ministry. Then comes an opening prayer and a time of praise and worship. A guest speaker is invited to offer a twenty-minute talk on a particular topic.
“We first choose the topic, then the people,” Berlage explained. Each topic typically follows a semesterly theme. During the fall semester, the theme was “Hot Topics: Cold Cereal,” in an attempt to engage hard and controversial topics through a Catholic perspective. Session topics included talks such as “The Death Penalty is a Pro-Life Issue.”
One freshman attended a session titled, “Is it Safe to Come Out to Jesus?” with a talk given by Raquel Storey, who struggled with same-sex attraction and has worked with Eden Invitation. He characterized Storey’s message to the Rover as: “Because I love God, I’m going to trust in His plan for me and figure it out, or wait for and find out eventually what He’s calling me to.” The student continued, “After all these struggles, the Lord came through for her … and she did a really good job of balancing the sensitivities of the topic with the truth.”
More recently, Abide finished a Lenten series titled “From Darkness to Light: Journeying in Hope.”
Collin Noon, a member of the Core Team and a senior studying electrical engineering, reflected on the completion of the Lenten series. He told the Rover that he was better able to “see the glory of God through this time of struggle … especially through the speakers we lined up.”
One of those speakers was Fr. Pete McCormick, C.S.C., who gave a talk about a Chicagoan who, after falling away from the Faith, had a transformative encounter with a broken statue of Mary near a dumpster. Noon commented, “It was just this beautiful story … God created us as whole, as beautiful, but even though we’re broken, we’re beautiful in our brokenness, and we can all go back to God no matter what situation we’ve been in.”
Another speaker during Lent was Nick Ramirez, a first-year Ph.D. student in moral theology at Notre Dame who gave a talk on building a healthy relationship with alcohol.
Ramirez told the Rover that his focus was “giving some ideas and principles about how to engage virtuously with alcohol as a Christian.” Ramirez mentioned that Abide is on a mission to “invite people to speak about different topics that the students thought were relevant to their lives.”
Students are encouraged to engage with the speakers’ messages in small groups led by members of the Core Team with guiding questions given by the guest speakers. Noon commented on the community built by the small group discussions, “It’s the social interaction that still keeps you coming back.”
Afterwards, snacks are provided with time for socializing. Ramirez, when asked if he would be open to coming back as a participant, answered, “I definitely would … it’s open to all students, both graduates and undergrads.”
Noon explained that Abide doesn’t have a specific series lined up for the last few weeks after their Lenten Series, but that “we’re trying to … go along with a similar theme … of how do we still put God as number one despite going through everything that we go through in college?”
When asked about what sets Abide apart from other Campus Ministry events, Noon told the Rover that at other events, “You get praise and worship, or you get a speaker that comes in, or you get small groups discussing different topics, but you don’t really get it all combined in one. And I feel like that’s what I love about it and what’s kept me going this whole time.”
Betsy Weber is a freshman studying theology and physics. When she’s not putting her flag up in the math help room, you can find her out running in South Bend, soaking up sun in the Lewis courtyard, or dreaming about her next Target run. If you’re interested in any of the above, feel free to reach her at jweber23@nd.edu.