Oakland University's Catholic Campus Ministries hosts nondenominational Ash Wednesday gathering in the student center
ROCHESTER — As students, faculty and staff at Oakland University lined up to receive ashes on their foreheads during an Ash Wednesday gathering in Oakland’s student center, other students peered curiously through the windows or paused their game of pool to catch a glimpse.
The Ash Wednesday event, organized by Fr. Steve Mateja, a priest in solidum at St. John Fisher Chapel University Parish in Auburn Hills, is typically held at the parish, which serves as the home base for the university’s Catholic campus ministry.
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This year, however, Fr. Mateja and students from the campus ministry decided to bring the Lenten witness to the university's central campus hub, an auditorium-style event space called "The Habitat" in the student center, where students come to grab lunch, study or play pool.
Sharing and witnessing to the Gospel is not just a task for the clergy, Fr. Mateja said, and shouldn't be confined to homes or church pews.
“Jesus commands all of us to go out and teach all of the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” Fr. Mateja said. “We, as Catholic Christians, have a right to be present in the world. We have a right to wear our faith on our sleeve. We have a right to worship God — the Gospel isn’t meant to be only for our homes.”
Fr. Mateja said any witnessing to the Catholic faith needs to remain respectful, and his hope is simply to let everyone know the saving love and power of Jesus Christ.
After some negotiation with the school's administration to allow the Ash Wednesday event to take place in the center of campus, and despite objections from some student groups, the auditorium was full of representatives from Catholic and Protestant campus ministries, attracting students, faculty members and others who received ashes on their foreheads. Students and parishioners from St. John Fisher led music, served as lectors and assisted in the distribution of ashes.
Catholics publicly wearing ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday is a visible sign of their belief in God's mercy, said Oakland sophomore Grace Bruck, president of the school's Catholic campus ministries.
“There are a lot of souls on campus who are searching for something that they don’t quite know what it is, but we do, and we want to bring them to the Lord,” Bruck told Detroit Catholic. “We’re the leaders of the club, and if we don’t show that we’re living out our faith, how are others in the club also going to be invigorated to live their faith on campus?”
Addressing the students, Fr. Mateja said it might seem “weird” to put ashes on one's forehead as a sign of our faith, but there is a deeper purpose to this symbolic act.
“First of all, it is a sign of penance, of repentance, of remorse — that I mourn my sin, I mourn the fact that I have failed God in some ways, and I want to do better for Him because He is good and He has given me life,” Fr. Mateja explained.
Throughout sacred Scripture, ashes have always been used as a means of remorse. Ashes also symbolize one's mortality and are a reminder that we are not meant for this world, Fr. Mateja added.
“Ashes are a symbol of what’s happening: we are going to die one day,” Fr. Mateja said. “We put them on our forehead, and it’s a death to the world. We give up things during Lent to show the world that we don’t belong to the world, but that we belong to God. We don’t just live for our passions, for our studies; we don’t live for all the things that the world has to offer. We live for You; we live for something beyond this.”
Ashes also serve as a reminder that God loved us so deeply that He offered His only son in order that we might be saved from sin and death, Fr. Mateja said.
“God so loved the world — he loved you, me, everyone here at Oakland University,” Fr. Mateja said. “He loved us so much that He created the world.”
Sin enters the world and causes us to turn away from God and to fall, Fr. Mateja said, but by Christ’s dying on the cross and his rising, God restores us to new life.
“God loved you so much that He sent His only son into the world to win you back, to win us back,” Fr. Mateja said. “He takes up the cross, dies on the cross and then he rises from the dead. So the meaning of these ashes is that, ‘I am a sinner and I am loved, and I have a Savior and so do you.’ So do your classmates — they’re all loved.”
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