Feeling Buried
 To look around campus right now, you would think we were at the North Pole. We are buried in snow, and as I write this I’m told there is even more on the way. This feeling of being buried may be all too familiar to our students in other ways as the new semester begins to intensify. At our recent presidential assembly our campus counseling center shared some sobering statistics. In 2018, 69% of our male students and 92% of our female students reported feeling overwhelmed by all they had to do at some point in the past 12 months. Similarly, 61% of male students and 84% of female students reported feeling exhausted (not from physical activity) in the last 12 months. In addition to carrying full class loads, many of our students work one or more jobs. Pile onto that the emotional stress of “self-discovery” typical of this time in life, relationship stress, family concerns, worry about the future, employment, college debt, etc. and it would be easy to feel “buried.” At the beginning of this new calendar year and semester, we need to hear Jesus confidently proclaim, as he does in the Gospel this Sunday, that he has come “to bring glad tidings to the poor...liberty to captives...sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord,” quoting the prophet Isaiah. When we are the most overwhelmed, we also most need to turn to Jesus to hear his reassuring voice speak in the depths of our hearts and to feel his consoling presence. In time the snow will melt, the green grass will break through, and we will feel the warm sun on our faces. Fr. Thom |
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