With students joining along the way, the Grizzly Catholic club carried out a Good Friday Procession on April 3rd. While carrying the cross in the now annual campus tradition, the religious group has seen a steady increase in fellowship in recent years.
Like in many places around the world that celebrate the Christian Holy Week, OU was also witness to a crucifixion procession put on by Grizzly Catholic in collaboration with St. John Fisher Parish. The ritual, event organizers said, reinvigorated faith and community in preparation for Easter.
“We’ll be praying the stations of the Cross and bringing the Rosary and just being a witness to God’s love on campus, especially on this day that is a day of penance, a day of mourning, a day of recognizing the example that Christ gives us,” Matthew Hood, chaplain and administrator at St. John Fisher said.
Starting at the Elliott Tower for the third year, around 40 participants carried the Cross around campus reflecting on their relationship with faith, graciousness and sacrifice.
“We started a renewed effort to be a presence here on campus and we’ve seen a lot of growth every year,” Hood said. “College students are hungry for truth and hungry to be challenged and hungry to discover the purpose and meaning of their lives.”
At the same time, student leaders like Angelina Bojaj, a computer science senior, say that a sense of fulfillment is what made them stay with Grizzly Catholic. For her, the faith-based organization came at a time of doubt, shyness and questioning.
“One day I was outside, actually, at the beginning of my junior year and I had really been praying to develop fellowship, but also to find a community,” Bojaj said. “Then, one of our focus missionaries, who works over at our parish, she actually came and introduced herself and was like, ‘You want to join a Bible study?’”
Four missionaries specifically work to connect with students seeking similar opportunities to get involved with the parish and community, alongside campus minister Drew Tonti. Attracted to the tradition and critical thinking of the church, he said he has seen a renewed fervor for faith at OU.
“Our ministry continues to grow and we’re reaching a lot more students. I noticed that more and more students are just aware of us on campus,” Tonti said. “This year’s cross procession, we had a number of new faces that hadn’t really come to our events before, so that was really exciting to see.”
After the procession was done, chants and kneeling in behind, some students reminisced on how the procession was what initially got them involved not only with Grizzly Catholic but also with catholicism.
“It was last year and I was early to class and I was just walking around. I saw that they had a poster up saying, ‘cross procession,’ so I just came out of the blue and I showed up,” Sebastian Mora, a sophomore, said. “Looking back a whole year later, I’ve been involved now, it all started from just randomly seeing a poster on one of the boards.”
Soon to be confirmed, Mora explained how he felt very close to a catholic identity in a community that has welcomed him fully. In his testimony, he captured the essence of what Grizzly Catholic has been striving for in recent years.
“I come to campus now and I see people that I know and I look forward to meeting new people,” Mora said. “The church is right there, so we just go from class, go to the church and we just hang out. We have Thursday night dinners and enjoy the services.”
