Mission Moments Mission Moments Mission Statement

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1 Mission Moments Opportunities to pause, reflect, and reconnect with the deeper purpose and meaning that drives all that we do as Anselmians Mission Moments Founded in 1889, Saint Anselm College was established with a unique mission powering its great success in helping young men and women reach their fullest human potential. This mission continues to ground, guide, and drive all that we do today. During this 125th anniversary year, then, let us take time to reflect upon the deeper purpose behind our work at the college. A brief pause before a class, meeting, special event, or work day makes all the difference. This booklet offers an assortment of quotations and meditations that can help prompt your reflection. However you do it, though, try and take that time, because it will help you put the most into and get the most out of your work here on the Hilltop. Mission Statement Saint Anselm is a Catholic, Benedictine College providing all its students a distinctive liberal arts education that incorporates opportunities for professional and career preparation. It does so in a learning community that encourages the lifelong pursuit of he truth and fosters intellectual, moral and spiritual growth to sustain and enrich its graduates' personal lives, work, and engagement within local, national, and global communities.

2 Hospitality and respect for persons are important values in Benedictine spirituality. Benedict writes that a monastery is never without guests who are to be welcomed as Christ. These words indicate the spiritual meaning of hospitality Our physical plant staff keep the grounds and buildings clean and in repair, enabling the campus to be welcoming. Faculty spend hours with prospective students, helping them to think creatively about a college education. The coaching staff meets with students to give newcomers a realistic sense of what it means to be student athletes. Current students offer their time and energy in giving tours to prospective students and parents. Consider the following questions for your own reflection: 1. How have I experienced hospitality at Saint Anselm? 2. What are some of our failures in practicing hospitality? 3. How might we become more open to people of various races, practices, and beliefs? Stability means that the monastic pledges lifelong commitment to a particular community. To limit oneself voluntarily to one place with one group of people for the rest of one's life makes a powerful statement. Contentment and fulfillment do not exist in constant change; true happiness cannot necessarily be found anywhere other than in this place and this time. For Benedictines, the vow of stability proclaims rootedness, at- homeness, that this place and this family will endure. ~ Guide to Saint Benedict, , The Benedictine Network Come, Holy Spirit, Divine Creator, true source of light and fountain of wisdom! Pour forth your brilliance upon my intellect, dissipate the darkness which covers me, that of sin and of ignorance. Grant me a penetrating mind to understand, a retentive memory, method and ease in learning, the lucidity to comprehend, and abundant grace in expressing myself. Guide the beginning of my work, direct its progress, and bring it to successful completion. This I ask through Jesus Christ, true God and true man, living and reigning with You and the Father, forever and ever. ~ A Student s Prayer, attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas

3 My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore Will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. ~ Thomas Merton Pray as if everything depended on God, but work as if everything depended on you. ~ Saint Ignatius Loyola O my God teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you You are my God and you are my All and I have never seen you. You have made me and remade me, You have bestowed on me all the good things I possess, Still I do not know you I have not yet done that for which I was made. Teach me to seek you I cannot seek you unless you teach me or find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in my desire, let me desire you in my seeking. Let me find you by loving you, let me love you when I find you. ~ Prayer of Saint Anselm of Canterbury Hear, O children, a parent s instruction, be attentive, that you may gain understanding...my child, to my words be attentive, to my sayings incline your ear; Let them not slip from your sight, keep them within your heart; For they are life to those who find them, bringing health to one s whole being. With all vigilance guard your heart, for in it are the sources of life. ~ Proverbs 4: 1-2, 20-23

4 Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for He is going to say, I came as a guest, and you received Me (MT 25:35) ~ Rule of Saint Benedict, Ch 53 The glory of God is a human being fully alive. ~ Saint Irenaeus For I know well the plans I have in mind for you plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future of hope. When you call me, and come and pray to me, I will listen. When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me. ~ Jeremiah 29: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: you are mine. When you pass through waters, I will be with you; through rivers, you shall not be swept away. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, nor will flames consume you Because you are precious in my eyes and I love you. ~ Isaiah 43: 1-2, 4 God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in them There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear. ~ 1 John 4: 16, 18 You have been told, O mortal, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. ~ Micah 6: 8 By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust shall be your strength. ~ Isaiah 30:15

5 Amidst a world marked by moral confusion, intellectual skepticism, material progress and spiritual poverty, there are, as there have been for over 1500 years, Benedictine monasteries and convents The tension between serving the world and remaining true to its religious founding and mission is one which every administrator at Saint Anselm is acutely aware from his or her first day on campus, and with which individual staff and faculty members struggle every day. In order for Saint Anselm College to remain true to its Catholic, Benedictine founding, daily efforts will have to be made on the part of all people in the community Holding to its religious identity in a world that does not understand, value, or support that identity as it once did will require a conscious and determined effort on the part of all those affiliated with Saint Anselm. ~ Being Benedictine, 2005 It could be proposed that the spiritual path of perfection as delineated by St. Benedict is outlined most eloquently in the Prologue to the Rule and in the chapter concerning humility. This chapter, the seventh, is by far the longest and in many ways the first among equals, for it presents a virtue that must by definition include all others. It is in confronting humility that we are forced, often against our own will, to couple it first with obedience, and then with good zeal, etc., etc., until the canon is complete. Ultimately we find that all the virtues are so closely linked that, when properly interwoven, they produce a truly indestructible fabric; prayer is the loom on which this cloth is crafted. ~ Monastery of Christ in the Desert An institution of higher education founded and sponsored by a Benedictine monastery is deeply influenced by the fundamental concerns of the monastics. Therefore, the core values that animate their life love, prayer, stability, conversation, obedience, discipline, humility, stewardship, hospitality and community find a home in Benedictine colleges. Together, the hallmarks of the Benedictine wisdom tradition can shape an overall pattern of life for a campus community.

6 Benedictine colleges and universities should be unabashed about being grounded in love and animated by it. The love of learning and desire for God so celebrated as part of Benedictine culture make demands on all and should be expansive enough to engage persons from all backgrounds who desire to teach and lead, to serve and to study. Benedict integrates a community- based spirituality with a deep respect for the individual person, a commitment to the development of each person, and pervasive attention to the needs of the individual Respect for the person implies a pro- active attitude toward the development of the gifts of each person. In every part of the college, human beings need their gifts and skills called forth. ~ Catholic, Benedictine Values in an Educational Environment, 2002 Two particular hallmarks of Benedictine community familiar to many on campus are stability and hospitality. The oldest religious order in the church, Benedictines, are also the only religious who take a vow of stability, to live out their lives in the community in which they have professed. The implications of this vow for the professed individual and for the monastic community as a whole are such that it is a distinctive part of the Benedictine Charism. The effect that this charism has upon the Saint Anselm College is varied and significant Stability ought to give an individual and a community the ability to grow and develop in dynamic ways, knowing that its foundations are secure. ~ Being Benedictine, 2005 Through many centuries, monasteries have cultivated the arts and science, stewarded knowledge of the past in scriptoria and libraries, and promoted understanding of the earth and the wise use of its resources The Benedictine colleges of our time participate in this great saga, seeking to cultivate understanding among their faculty, staff, students, board members, parents and friends of time honored pursuits that make full and worthwhile lives possible.

7 Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he bring us all together to everlasting life. ~ Rule of Benedict 72:11-12 Benedictine life is unthinkable without obedience, a value that cuts against the grain of much in contemporary life. It is often forgotten that the root of the word obedience is found in audire to listen. When St. Benedict begins the rule with the exhortation listen, he emphasizes the stance of obedience required of all who seek wisdom. He asks for obedience not only to the spiritual head of the monastery, but to the other members of the community. Each has something of value to say about the true fullness of life. LORD, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit and stand; you understand my thoughts from afar Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in the land of the dead, there you are Even there your hand guides me, your right hand holds me fast. If I say, Surely darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light Darkness is not dark for you, and night shines as the day...you formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother s womb. I praise you, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works... Search me, God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts. See if there is a wicked path in me; and lead me in the way everlasting. ~ Psalm 139: 1-14, I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. ~ John 13: In the world today, characterized by such rapid developments in science and technology, the tasks of a Catholic University assume an ever greater importance and urgency. Scientific and technological discoveries create an enormous economic and industrial growth, but they

8 also inescapably require the correspondingly necessary search for meaning in order to guarantee that the new discoveries be used for the authentic good of individuals and of human society as a whole. If it is the responsibility of every University to search for such meaning, a Catholic University is called in a particular way to respond to this need: its Christian inspiration enables it to include the moral, spiritual, and religious dimension in its research, and to evaluate the attainments of science and technology in the perspective of the totality of the human person. ~ Saint John Paul II, Ex Corde Ecclesiae The Benedictine motto Ut in omnibus glorifectur Deus - so that in all things God may be glorified - is not so much a call to do holy things as it is to recognize that the things we do are holy As with the recognition of God in the small things in our lives, so too must we recognize God in the larger decisions we must make as a community. ~ Being Benedictine, 2005 Benedictine life, like that of all Christians, is first and foremost a response to God s astonishing love for humankind; a love expressed in the free gift of his beloved son Jesus Christ. Love, the motive for monastic life, and its goal, tops St. Benedict s list of tools for good works.