Today the parish of Saint Anthony of Padua in Hillsdale is celebrating its patronal feast day. In recent years, the small parish has often garnered the largest number of Eastertide converts of any parish within the Diocese of Lansing with many of those received into the Catholic Church being students at Hillsdale College. Why? Kelly Cole is a parishioner at Saint Anthony, a Hillsdale College alumnus, and a Catholic convert to boot. We asked her to reflect upon this apparent Catholic moment at Hillsdale. Kelly writes:
This fall, it will be 25 years since I arrived as a freshman on the campus of Hillsdale College. Though I was raised in a very traditional, conservative manner, there was no practice of religious faith in our home. When I started studying the liberal arts at Hillsdale – and especially our Judeo-Christian heritage – I realized that there was great spiritual meaning behind much of what I already believed. Thanks to so many of my professors just doing their job teaching me the history, philosophy, and literature of Western Civilization, I came to have faith in the triune Christian God (without actually taking a single theology or religion class!).
After continued study and prayer, I came to believe in the Catholic Church as the one true Church founded by Christ. My progression was similar to what one of this year's college converts, Carly Moran, described in a video filmed by the diocese this spring: “As a student at Hillsdale College, [there is a] firm belief in following the permanent things. It was the permanent things in Church history that made me realize that I had to be Catholic.”
As I also came to that realization myself over two decades ago, I started attending Saint Anthony's, where I found an extremely welcoming spiritual home in which to begin living the faith. I was not a lost “article” (or set of keys!), but a lost soul that Saint Anthony of Padua – and the parish community – helped to “find.” During the Easter Vigil of my senior year, I was baptized, confirmed, and received my First Holy Communion at Saint Anthony's.
A few years later, when I moved away from Hillsdale and left Saint Anthony's, I felt like I was leaving home again. Thankfully, after seven years elsewhere, I was able to return with my husband and our children in 2011. It has been wonderful to raise our family here and experience how the parish continues to flourish. As a former college convert myself, I am especially proud to see how the students continue to grow in their faith through the efforts of our beautiful parish community. Through the parish’s generosity, Saint Anthony’s was able in 2012 to start a college student ministry centered at “The Grotto,” a home less than a block from campus that serves as a meeting place for students to pray, study, take a break from campus pressures, and find an active and faithful Catholic community. The greatest gift of the Grotto is its chapel, which reposes the Holy Eucharist. Mass is said there weekly, with confession, adoration, prayer, and formation events also happening every week – not to mention many social gatherings! Our parishioners, parents, alumni, and some of the students themselves financially support this truly life-changing ministry. Likewise, the students support the parish with many volunteer hours throughout the year—helping with our youth religious education programs, at our family center, and with parish events and fundraising endeavors.
For the past several years, Saint Anthony's has had 15+ students enter the Church each Easter (as was highlighted in another diocesan video of this year's Vigil Mass). Last month’s baccalaureate Mass was said by alumni Father Henry Hoffmann of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, who converted during his senior year of college in 2013. His experience was similar to that of Carly and me, where studying history opened his eyes to the truths of Catholicism. As he explained in a 2021 interview in The Catholic Telegraph: “I studied history at Hillsdale College, and, as Saint John Henry Newman would put it, ‘To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.’”
The day after the baccalaureate Mass at Saint Anthony’s, Bishop Robert Barron gave the Hillsdale College commencement address on campus. In it, he quoted abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who spoke at the college in 1863: “There's no such thing as new truths. Error might be old or new, but truth is as old as the universe.” Bishop Barron continued in his own words: “At the heart of the curriculum at Hillsdale College, is a presentation of those truths… that are indeed ‘as old as the universe.’ These permanent things that participate in the eternity of God.”
It is a very great blessing for Saint Anthony’s to walk with these college students – cradle Catholics and converts alike – as they study the “permanent things and participate in the eternity of God.” We pack our pews most of the year, but especially when college is in session, and grow in faith and love of Our Lord together. Like so many other alumni converts, I am supremely grateful to Hillsdale College for exposing me to the eternal truths – and to Saint Anthony of Padua Catholic Church for being just down the road with a kind, encouraging welcome when I realized that the Catholic Church was where I would find the fulfillment of these truths.
Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.
Citations:
Carly Moran: https://youtu.be/pvMKBW-6hGM
Easter Vigil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNL-GMvDbO4&t=53s
Fr. Hoffmann article: https://www.thecatholictelegraph.com/brothers.../77962
Bishop Barron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFJYF3MiZLU&t=2s