Before the school year started at Chesterton Academy of the St. Croix Valley in Stillwater, school leaders received a surprise gift. An anonymous donor stepped forward to fund a trip to Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s beatification Mass in St. Louis Sept. 24.
Eileen Douglass, head of school at the high school, invited all students who were set to begin grades nine through 12. Thirty-nine accepted and made the 10-hour drive along with 11 adults (staff members and parents). They left two days before the Mass and attended a conference about the life and ministry of Archbishop Sheen the day before. The drive home included a stop at Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
“I think it was great for the students to come to know Fulton Sheen better,” Douglass said of the conference the day before the Mass. “I thought it was a really nice way to prime them (for the beatification Mass).”
Others making pilgrimages included 102 seminarians from The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, with all but two of the school’s seminarians able to make the trip. Blessed Sheen attended the seminary and often talked about establishing his habit there of offering the Lord one Holy Hour a day.
The seminary manned a booth offering a book recently published by The St. Paul Seminary Press: “The Hour: Reflections on Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s Holy Hour Devotion.”
In addition, the Center for Mission, which supports the missionary activities of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, sponsored a pilgrimage of 45 men and women.
Janine Ricker, the center’s global mission outreach coordinator, said many in the group were from the archdiocese, but people also joined from as far away as Fargo, North Dakota; and Green Bay, Wisconsin.
“And we have three priests from the Diocese of Kitui (Kenya) also joining us!” Ricker wrote in an email.
Among the Chesterton students making the trip was junior Pablo Martinez Hernandez, who speaks English and Spanish. The experience was meaningful and informative, and it reinforced a weekly practice of spending an hour every Friday in Eucharistic adoration with his father, Martinez Hernandez said.
But he didn’t immediately accept the invitation to go on the trip.
“At first, I actually wasn’t going to come,” he said. “But then, after prayer and convincing from my classmates, I decided to come.”
He is glad he did. “I think it was really beautiful, honestly,” he said. He noted that the beatification Mass’ first reading and some of the petitions were done in Spanish, and he appreciated that numerous languages were spoken during the Mass.
Douglass said the four-day trip was “a beautiful opportunity. We were so blessed to have it. … It was just beautiful to see how the students themselves bonded and prayed together and enjoyed each other. It was absolutely amazing.”
During the trip, Chesterton students and about 50,000 others who attended the beatification learned of Archbishop Sheen’s devotion to Eucharistic adoration.
Douglass thinks the experience will help reinforce a daily practice at the school of offering a Holy Hour every day during school hours. Each of the four grades leads one, with the fifth one led by faculty.
“It’s purely voluntary … run by the students,” she said. “It’s just beautiful to see that that’s not something we’re imposing on them, but that’s something that grows out of their hearts.”
Martinez Hernandez said adoration is an important part of his life and he was inspired that it meant so much to Archbishop Sheen, too.
“I feel safe and at peace when I go to my adoration chapel,” he said. “I think without it I would be pretty stressed out in my life.”
He noted that he was able to go to adoration and confession the morning of the beatification Mass. He called it “a really good way to prepare myself for the Mass.”