Shadows on campus

How many times did I make this walk?

As I acknowledged last week, it has been a long time since I finished my undergraduate studies: forty years.   Much has changed since then in the world and in the lives of students.  

Princeton University announced this week that beginning next fall it will proctor all exams, reversing a mandate that had been in place since 1893.  So confident in the honor code was the university community in those days, faculty and students alike, that there was a rule forbidding the monitoring of students taking exams. 

Not anymore.  The advances of information technology, the internet, and most recently artificial intelligence, have made cheating so easy and so pervasive that desperate measures are being sought to force the students to think, write, and prepare their own assignments and exam responses rather than present something they
obtained from another source.   Such cheating may obtain a passing grade, or even an excellent one, but it undermines the whole purpose of being a student: to learn.

My college, too, has (or had) one of the most effective and rigorous honor codes in the nation.  Marked by the “single sanction,” that is, any violation would obtain the unique penalty, expulsion from the school, it was also administered entirely by the students in a clearly constituted process.   Arrival on campus of new freshman was the occasion of rigorous instruction in the expectations and consequences, along with the institutional and personal pride that membership in this society of trust bestowed.

One of the proverbial benefits was that a student could leave his wallet on his library carrel for an hour or a week without fear of losing it or any of its contents to sticky fingers.  I knew several guys who tested this proverb, and they did not find it wanting. 

The most practical benefit for me that I quickly identified and learned to exploit was that all exams were student scheduled, since we didn’t have to take them together as a class or in the presence of the professor or any proctor.  Since foreign language knowledge was most perishable, I would place that exam in the first available slot, always Saturday afternoon.  Then my hardest subject would be Monday afternoon, allowing two days and nights for intensive study but also some rest.  Freshman year that meant my calculus exams, with which my strategizing met its match.  After resting Monday afternoon, I would take another hard exam Wednesday morning, then my last one on Thursday.  The plan served me well for four years and many brutal (three-hour!) exams.

But the best illustration of the honor system came fall semester of sophomore year when I took my first economics class.  Of course I got the hardest instructor, Prof. Gunn, whose nicknames were “Tail-Gunner” and “Gunner John.”  Late in the semester, our second section quiz fell on a Friday, and that morning a chronic medical issue I had nursed for weeks became acute.  Minutes before the exam was to begin, I presented myself in Prof. Gunn’s office to ask to be excused from the test.  When he heard what I was dealing with he sent me off with a worried “Don’t bother with the exam – go take care of yourself!”  Later that afternoon, after a dramatic hour or two at the hospital produced a very happy result, I returned to the professor’s office.  He took a copy of the exam he had given to the rest of the class that day, put it in an envelope, and handed it to me and told me to give myself ninety minutes and complete it anytime over the weekend.  There are few exams on which I recall working so hard, or so carefully.

As you can doubtless see, all this led to my career as a bigwig economist (hah!).  No, it was part of a great and fruitful educational experience that taught me that whereas most people must develop long-term relationships in order to build trust, I was able to offer and enjoy trust as the foundation for forming and enjoying excellent long-term relationships.  

The trust I enjoyed motivated me to work harder and more carefully on everything I did, as on that economics exam.  This resulted in in my obtaining some pretty good grades, though I admit there were a few clunkers, too.  But mainly it helped with what was my number one priority: to learn. 

I pray that students in this time of artificial intelligence find a way to enjoy the same. 

Monsignor Smith

Decades

The decahedral vaulted nave
of Saint Gereon Church in Cologne has ten sides,
which makes it just like one decade,
and one of a kind in my experience.

Now once I mention decades it would be perfectly laudable if you were to assume that I am speaking of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Indeed, the mysteries associated with the ten-counts of Hail Mary should be foremost in our minds in this month that we began by crowning Our Lady in the church.  But my reference is less pious, and honestly less impressive than the mysteries of our salvation in the life of the Divine Son of the Holy Virgin.

Before we kicked off the Month of Our Lady here last weekend with First Holy Communion and the May Procession, I slipped away to the southern Shenandoah Valley to the scene of my undergraduate education.   That effort was completed four decades ago, and I spent a few days enjoying the beauty of the place and the company of classmates and faculty in my reunion.  All the attention was heaped on the classes marking fifty and twenty-five years, but the keynote speaker for the kickoff was one of us, so we got the spotlight for a minute.  He was both affectionate and brutal, calling us out on a few things of which we might not choose to boast.  He did, however, ratify my recollection that classes were really hard.

Four decades is nothing to sneeze at and was a good reason to travel, but how about five?  Later this week I will slip away for an overnight in Wheeling, West Virginia, for the golden jubilee of priestly ordination for Bishop Mark Brennan.  Originally a Washington priest, he served as Vocations Director here when I first applied as a tentative and possible future priest.  That’s a pretty important role in the unfolding of my vocation, and like many of my peers I remain quite fond of him.  Now, you might suggest that a trip to Wheeling is hardly a posh vacation, but don’t forget that my dad’s family is from there and I am happy to have the occasion to revisit the place of many happy memories of my grandparents.  My hotel will be across the creek from the campus where my parents first met.   

Four decades and five, now how about two?  Later this month our own Father Larry Swink will achieve the twenty-year mark since he was ordained a priest of Jesus Christ.  A local boy in the truest sense – he grew up just up the road – it is good that he is at home now here with us.  Be alert for an opportunity to celebrate his priesthood later this month; Saint Bernadette is the best at throwing a party, but we are still pulling it together.

Four, five, and two decades, no small measure of time and life.  This is the function of the decades of the rosary, too, which mark out the events in the life of Our Lord at the same time they measure the minutes and meaning of our own.  Every day and every life reveal the love of God in the working out of His Divine will, our salvation, so the distinction between types of decades fruitfully blurs.

The gratitude that is the fruit of such reflective counting brings us back around to the beginning of the lives for which we are grateful, and on this Mother’s Day there is no more fitting gift and celebration than to offer a Rosary for our Mom and her intentions.  Five decades cannot be better spent.

Monsignor Smith

Priority

The first communion on the road

Which came first? is the opening line in an ancient riddle.   This weekend, first things come to mind.  It is the most beautiful weekend of the year as the seasons announce life coming back to the earth, and our children present themselves to receive for the first time the Author of Life Himself.  It is the time of First Holy Communion.

This is a great and glorious instant in the lives of our first communicants and their families, but that very first-ness brings both excitement and promise – promise of more, promise of second and third and beyond.  There is a lot of first-ness to be found in our relationship with Jesus.

The first thing the Church did, back before she even knew herself to be the Church, back when she became the Church, in fact how she became the Church, was to celebrate the Eucharist.  The disciples who had encountered the risen Lord on the first day of the week, then again eight days later, continued to worship God on this new day in a new way.  Not with Sabbath-worship on the seventh day, but with thanksgiving to God, and the breaking of the bread, on the first day.

The Sacred Scriptures describe this first action of grace, so they themselves clearly come later, that is, not first.  Communion with Jesus is the root and foundation of the Church, first when He passed through locked doors to say and give “Peace to you,” then as the Apostles anointed with the Spirit took bread and did this in memory of Him, saying, “This is my body.”

It is clear that to be in the Church, to live the life of grace, we need that communion – our bodies to be in union with this glorious body. This must come first, before we can even hope or attempt to do “what Jesus would do.”  Before the doing, before the imitating, there must be something else there, first.

This firstness is not, of course, something that the Church could make or take, but that Christ himself must and did give.  The firstness of this giving is essential to the communion, for it cannot be earned or bought or won.  Communion is necessarily something for us to receive, and the first foot forward is that of Him who gives.  Look at the faces of the children who come.  They bring nothing but their receptivity to what they He will give, and to Him Who gives.   Having received they return, their eyes alight with the gift to Whom they give their own flesh.

Also this month we celebrate the first giving of flesh, as we mark or devotion to our mother Mary, who gave her flesh to Him who became flesh and dwells among us.  This first giving is the first first communion, as God Himself, the Eternal Word, took flesh, and dwelt in the tabernacle, the Tower of Ivory that is His most pure mother.  For the unique response to the giving God is likewise to give, which makes room for that great first giving.  No one has done it better, but we all strive to imitate what she did, to give our flesh to be one with His flesh, to renew what she did first.

It is my hope that giving these first Communions to these receptive and rejoicing communicants is to kindle not nostalgia for something that was and will be no more, but delight and desire for what is coming into being, and what will be done.   Not only I, but parents, and grandparents, neighbors, friends, and cousins, all watch and see and smile, knowing the momentousness of this meeting, the union of heaven and earth in an innocent soul.

It is my hope that this also be their desire, as well as mine: to enjoy that same moment, not the firstness, but the communion.  That desire itself is a gift, given freely and without prejudice, nurtured in all who would receive, who would take the gift by giving themselves, giving their flesh to Him whose flesh gives life; to know, to enjoy, to experience this same second that comes second, flowing forth from the gift of God, who came first.

Monsignor Smith