And he told the university crowd that evangelization could not be successful without organizations such as CCO.
“To say that it is challenging to bear witness to the Catholic faith on a university campus is an understatement,” he said. “It requires a conviction that is fed by a prayer life. And these young people have both.”
CCO is a university student movement that was founded in 1988 at the University of Saskatchewan to support evangelization on campus. It now encompasses hundreds of university students across Canada. It was founded by André and Angèle Regnier who were inspired by Pope John Paul II’s call for a “new springtime of Christianity.”
Today, CCO “incarnates” the vision Pope Francis laid out in his recent Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), Miller said.
CCO lets people know the “Church isn’t here to condemn them” but instead offers mercy, Miller said. The organization reaches out to students and “welcomes them home” through an affirmation of God’s mercy, he said.
Miller was speaking at a banquet in late March that drew several hundred CCO supporters, including Canada’s new Apostolic Nuncio Luigi Bonazzi, Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, newly ordained Ottawa Auxiliary Bishop Christian Riesbeck and the General Superior of the Companions of the Cross Fr. Scott McCaig.
Two students shared testimonies of CCO’s impact on their lives. Carleton University’s Dennis Barry said he was raised a Catholic but it was “more of a chore than a choice.” He attended youth conferences while in high school because his grandmother paid him to go. He admitted he “felt broken” throughout high school, but by the time he reached university he was “ready to be fixed.”
He came in contact with CCO and re-connected with his Catholic faith but for a while was “leading a double life.” He kept his faith private because he was afraid of being judged or ridiculed. Then Barry said someone challenged him to lead a CCO faith study. He initially refused but changed his mind. Though he was “terrified,” he led the study and found his breakthrough.
University of Ottawa student Stephanie Xavier said her pursuit of biomedical science had her focusing on facts and logic and pursuing her own view of what it meant to be a good person. She worked hard at school, but felt “tired, homesick, anxious and despairing.” In her second year, she had an opportunity to live in community with other Catholic women and discovered she was missing a personal relationship with God. She said a priest told her to “pray for joy.” While attending a CCO event featuring adoration, she was able to make her commitment to Jesus Christ and experience the joy of knowing and loving Him, she said.
“CCO has changed my life,” she said. “God is always reaching out to us and it is up to us to say,
‘Yes,’ ” she said.
Miller described CCO missionaries as “first responders” in the field hospital of the Church, an image that has been used by Pope Francis.
“So many young people — and many not so young and far removed from a university campus — are spiritually wounded: alienated from God, stuck in the no-man’s land of moral relativism, adrift in an abyss with no sense of direction or purpose,” Miller said. “They need healing — and fast. CCO is there on the field to heal the wounds of studied indifference, sadness and hopeless wandering that mark so many young lives.”
CCO also shows the rest of the Church how to evangelize by presenting the Gospel as “far more than a moral code or a list of do’s and don’ts,” Miller said.
“When the Church addresses tough issues which touch the intimate, especially sexual, lives of people — and she must do this — these questions make sense only within the context of the full Gospel,” Miller said. “Such is the position of Pope Francis, and such is the approach of CCO.”
The CCO’s focus is on the beauty of the Gospel, making salvation in Jesus Christ a priority, he said.
Miller told the students that Pope Francis has urged Catholics to go out to the peripheries, pointing out universities are just such a periphery. He said CCO “has taken up the challenge by taking the Gospel to one of the most difficult and most neglected sectors of Canadian ecclesial life: the students in our colleges and universities.”
He noted two out of three young people who are brought up Catholic no longer attend church. Yet if CCO missionaries are able to reach these people on campus, then it is feasible to reach people in offices, factories, communities, neighbourhoods and homes, he said.
“That’s why the movement opens the door of hope to Canadian Catholics. It inspires us to do likewise: to ‘speak’ to others by the witness of our lives and the power of our words, to take the step of reaching out to others.”
CCO missionaries understand college students desire more than the “fleeting pleasures of a routine life and a secure job,” the archbishop said. “They yearn for something truly great. Even if they don’t articulate it, they bear witness to St. Augustine’s insight that ‘our hearts are restless until they rest in God.’ ”
Miller also praised CCO’s focus on peer ministry: students evangelizing fellow students, another example the wider Church can follow. “CCO’s person-to-person approach encourages us to evangelize wherever we find ourselves,” he said. He applauded the “sheer boldness” of CCO missionaries.
“In many ways they manifest the almost reckless courage of the first Christian communities born from Pentecost,” he said. “CCO missionaries tell us that it is really the Holy Spirit who evangelizes through us. We are but His instruments.”