Fr. Ted Said…Cultivating Hope, Part 5: Rev. Pete McCormick, C.S.C., '06 M.Div., '15 MBA

 Topic: Rev. Pete McCormick, C.S.C., ’06 M.Div., ’15 MBA

In his inaugural address, University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., called us to be “sustainers of hope and builders of bridges.” But in a world where optimism often feels in short supply, where do we find the inspiration to keep nurturing the good? Plant those seeds through a revitalizing experience where you can pause, exhale, and allow your spirit to blossom. Come hear this calling echo in powerful, personal stories from Notre Dame alumni and faculty who are living examples of what it means to cultivate hope—just like Fr. Ted.

Speaker:

• Rev. Pete McCormick, C.S.C., ’06 M.Div., ’15 MBA, Assistant Vice President of Campus Ministry, University of Notre Dame

Rev. Pete McCormick, C.S.C., ’06 M.Div., ’15 MBA serves as the Assistant Vice President of Campus Ministry at the University of Notre Dame. A native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Father Pete entered Moreau Seminary following his graduation from Grand Valley State University in 2000. In 2006, he earned a Masters of Divinity and was ordained a Holy Cross priest the following year. From 2007 to 2013, Father Pete served as rector of Notre Dame’s Keough Hall. Following his time as rector, Father Pete pursued his Executive M.B.A. from Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, completing the degree in 2015.

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Transcript

Speaker 21 0:00

One of the happiest times of my life was living in a residence hall. Was the first rector of 330 freshmen over in Farley Hall. Well, with 29 halls, it's a very lively place, but the nice thing is it's a very friendly place. You walk across this campus, and kids say hello to you. And this isn't just because I'm wearing this collar, because if it's dark at night, they still say hello. I have to say that they're a wonderfully generous group of youngsters. I used to go to the halls every Sunday night for one of those Sunday night masses, and I can't hardly remember a hall that wasn't not just all fill up in the pews, but overflowing down the aisles, and everybody receiving communion

Juliana 0:44

Please welcome Notre Dame's Assistant Vice President of Campus Ministry and Chaplain of the Notre Dame Men's Basketball Team, Father Pete McCormick, CSC who, who holds a 2006 Master's of Divinity degree and a 2015 EMBA, both from Notre Dame

Rev. Pete McCormick, C.S.C., ’06 M.Div., ’15 MBA 1:12

It's so great to be with you all this afternoon, and I just wanna start and make sure that I hit the main point first, which is, what is my reason for hope? Why is it that I stand here in witness to what it is that I believe most profoundly? Well, first and foremost, it's Jesus, that Jesus overcomes sin and death, but a way that I see that lived out most expressly on a daily basis is our students. And I wanna talk a little bit with you about a particular experience that I had with the Notre Dame student body this past year. It's an experience that some of you might have seen in the news or might have seen on social media, and that was St. Olaf's Mass, or also known as the Ice Chapel Mass, that occurred in mid-February this past year This is how it all came about. I was minding my own business on a very cold Thursday night, and I received an email from two seniors living in Coyle Hall. These two seniors were also RAs. One happened to end up becoming the valedictorian. Martin Soros is his name, and Wesley Bonerbo. These two send me a note, and they say the following in the title, all caps, "Crazy idea:" and then it says, "Outdoor mass!" And I thought to myself, "Well, that's an email that I wanna read." So I dug into this thing, and I got a sense of, like, what it is that they were proposing. Now, truth be told, as the director of campus ministry, I had heard about or- outdoor masses in other venues, in other places outside of the university. I always thought to myself, "How cool would it be if we couldn't do that here? If we could make that happen some way, somehow." And then all of a sudden, that incredible gift showed up in my inbox that night. So with a few details that I had to manage, I quickly responded back to them and said, "Absolutely. Count me in." And then as soon as I finished that, I started to think how many articles of my own personal clothing could I get on underneath my alb 'Cause it was a historic cold this partic- particular year. So things begin to unfold in a very unique and special way over the course of the next few days. The students, in a way that only students can do, begin to promote this, whether this be via social media, but they also went old school. They constructed a rather crudely designed sign, and it said, "Outdoor mass, Monday night, 10:00 PM with Father Pete." Now, students didn't necessarily think that this was true. They thought that they were getting spoofed somehow, some way. And so ultimately, on Sunday night, I had to come back out after mass and BP at 8:30 at night, and I had to say to everyone on social media, "I'd like to welcome you and invite you to come to mass tomorrow night at 10:00 PM, right here at what is now known as St. Olaf's." What was really cool is, is that begins to spread the word. Energy, excitement, anticipation. But the whole time, and I mean this, and this is where I just didn't cooperate well with the Holy Spirit. The whole time I thought, tops, we're getting 500, maybe 700 crazies who are willing to come out late at night and attend mass. After all, we have a lot, and I mean a lot of chapels on this campus. So why we couldn't use any one of them, I don't know. But here we were in the middle of North Quad, praising God out at St. Olaf's. So I round the corner. I'm making my way, uh, from Baumer Hall, which is in the way south part of campus, all the way to the north, and I make my way and I round into North Quad and I see an incredible number of people. But you really can't tell exactly how many people are there because they're all, like, together. They're all like, "Hey, listen, if we stand close enough together, we're all gonna keep each other warm." So, uh, what ends up happening is we roll into this mass. Now, you should know, just to set the scene, it's 19 degrees out. Um, it is also a night in which we have somehow, some way assembled what seems to be a professional student choir. They just emerged out of nowhere. Uh, and so they're singing and leading us. In addition, um, the architects, these two, Wes and Martin, had thought through every single detail. So we literally processed in between all of the students with t- two things that I probably will never see the rest of my life. One is an icicle crucifix. And icicle candle holders. One funny story is, is one of the old boys who was serving forgot his gloves, so he was barehanded. He was barehanded the, uh, the candle, and I just thought to myself like, "Mad props, buddy. Mad props." There's no way in heck I would ever do that. Um, I don't love Jesus that much. So the moment which we get a sense of how many people are actually there, we had anticipated, in fairness to us, we had anticipated, we thought about 1,600 individuals would ultimately show up to this thing. Now that, by that I mean we had 1,600 consecrated hosts, but we did not think that many, but we wanted to be just ensured, protected, just in case. Well, anyways, we start handing out communion, and what we begin to find rather quickly is that, well, we didn't plan enough. I ended up handing out in a line, and I started with full-size hosts, generous. And then I look at down the line and I think there's no way this is gonna work, and so I start breaking them in half. And then at that point, I look down the line, it's still long, so I start breaking them into quarters. And at that point, the line keeps trucking, so I start breaking the quarters into halves. At one point, there's a young man who comes up to me, and he is, uh, he is so reverent and so prayerful, and I have the smallest piece. And I say to him, and I look him in the eye and I say, "This one's really small." And I say, "Body of Christ." That particular night was profound for so many reasons. But I think I wanna compare it now with a moment in my own experience with Father Ted. When I entered into, uh, the Corby Hall community with all of the priests, it was 2006. At that point, Father Ted's legacy had largely been established, right? He had done the civil rights, he had received a Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, he had more honorary degrees than he could count, and the list went on and on. Who was I? I was some random kid from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who had just been ordained and was serving as an assistant rector in Dillon Hall. And so in a way that I said yes and participated when Wes and Martin reached out, with Father Ted, I kinda minded my Ps and Qs. And I think to myself now, what is it that I missed by not engaging this individual, who, by the way, who had spoken about his own personal priesthood as a bridge builder? He was an individual throughout the globe who had established relationships and mentored and guided. Why I didn't take him up on that opportunity, I will never know. But it's something that I will live with, and it's something, by the grace of God, I have ways of learning from what it is that he taught by other Holy Cross priests, and certainly by the great institution that is Notre Dame and the way that we share his legacy over and over. But what I would say to all of us is, is as we think about our own lives, there are moments that we can no doubt begin to reflect and think, "Yeah, I participated in grace at that moment. I said yes when the Spirit prompted. I-- even though the odds seemed to be against me, I said yes, that I would be willing to do this thing, even though it didn't make any real kinda sense." And there are gonna be other times in your mo- in your life where you say, "Ah, you know what? I was too conservative. I was too risk-averse." And for those moment, we have to recognize that in both instances, they teach in their own way. They afford us a chance by having not taken a particular path to, in the future, be mo- be more attentive and focused on what it is that the opportunity is before us. But I also wanna point out something else, and this is why these students are such incredible beacons of hope for me. Because they also knew, they were aware that this work that they were doing to build St. Olaf's, it wasn't gonna last forever. Invariably, St. Olaf's would melt. Invariably, it would just become a random spot on North Quad where there's a patch of grass that, to the untrained eye, no one was ever going to be able to appreciate or understand what had happened in that precise moment, in that time, in that place, in the way that these people participated so profoundly and beautifully with God's grace We can't get caught up in the legacy, friends. We have to get caught up in participating with what it is that God is inviting us into each moment. That's a lesson that I've learned throughout the course of my life. It's a lesson that all of us are invited to continue to reflect upon. The invitation for us is always and will always be, how is it that we use the time that we've been afforded? Not to worry about how it is that people will remember us, but the fact that we participated in the promptings of the Holy Spirit, that we were faithful disciples of Jesus, that we sought to use our gifts, our talents, our skills to be able to bring hope to people that so often and desperately need it. These students reminded me what it is that my source of hope is. Through giving praise to the Lord, drawing a community together, they not only inspired this campus community, but frankly, and I don't think I'm being over the top here, I think they inspired the world. And so thank you so very much for the witness that all of you give in your own communities. Let us pray that we don't get caught up in legacy building, but instead that we continue to focus as Father D- Father Ted and so many others have focused on, giving praise to Jesus, seeking to proclaim the kingdom, and to allow those who are desperately in need of that message to hear it, to receive it, to draw strength from it, and in all things, to give praise to God because of it. Thank you so very much for your time today, and God bless you. Go Irish.