A Reflection for Campus Ministers

Tonight, I had the gift of listening to Fr. Kevin O’Brien, SJ reflect on what it means to love as God loves. His presentation was not abstract or theoretical, it was deeply human, grounded in Scripture, and attentive to the lived realities of suffering, mercy, and encounter. As I sat there, I found myself thinking again and again about campus ministry: about students, about service, and about the daily choices we make to draw near or to stay at a distance.

The reflections that follow are shaped by that evening by Fr. O’Brien’s invitation to consider how God loves, how Jesus moves toward people, and what that means for those of us entrusted with accompanying students on college campuses. At its heart, loving as God loves is not about having the right answers or maintaining the right posture from afar. It is about proximity, compassion, and the courage to stand where Jesus stands.

One of the quiet temptations in campus ministry is distance.

Distance can look like professionalism, boundaries, or even self-protection. It can also look like service that stays safely organized, projects that are meaningful but never personal, impactful but never interruptive. Yet the Gospel, and our daily experience with students, tells a deeper truth: formation happens through proximity, and authentic service grows out of encounter.

Jesus does not love humanity from afar. He draws near and then he sends his disciples to do the same.

Compassion Begins With Seeing

Campus ministers are invited into moments most people never see: grief behind closed doors, anxiety masked by achievement, doubt hidden beneath humor, and longing buried under cynicism. The first act of ministry, whether pastoral care or service, is not fixing these realities, but having the courage to see them.

Seeing requires vulnerability. It means allowing ourselves to be affected.

As Empowered by the Spirit reminds us: “Campus ministry is essentially relational, calling ministers to accompany students as they search for meaning, belonging, and purpose in their lives.”

This accompaniment does not stop at conversation. When students are truly seen, they begin to notice others differently as well. Compassion expands their circle of concern. Service ceases to be an obligation and becomes a response.

No One Is Defined by Their Worst Moment

College campuses are places of becoming. Students are forming identities, beliefs, habits, and commitments, often while carrying wounds they did not choose and questions they have not yet learned how to name. In this space of growth and vulnerability, one truth matters deeply: no one is defined by their worst moment, their deepest doubt, or their most visible failure.

This truth is foundational not only for pastoral care, but for how students learn to engage service and justice. If students first experience themselves as problems to be fixed or projects to be managed, they will unconsciously carry that posture into the way they serve others. But the Gospel offers a different starting point.

Jesus never encounters someone as a project. He meets the woman who washes his feet not as a moral problem to be solved, but as a person who has loved much. He sees her dignity before her wounds, her desire before her past. In doing so, he models a way of seeing that campus ministry seeks to form in students.

Anne Lamott names this human reality well: “When you’re a flawed person, you are not a villain. You’re just a person who’s suffering deeply for love.” When students begin to recognize this truth in themselves, that their struggles do not disqualify them from love, they are freed to see others more honestly and more tenderly.

This is where service and justice take root. Students who have learned to receive mercy are less likely to reduce others to causes or categories. They approach service not as saviors, but as companions. They begin to understand that faithful service is not about fixing people, but about standing with them in shared humanity. This interior shift is the soil in which just, humble, and transformative service grows.

Agape: Love That Moves Us to Act

Empowered by the Spirit names love as self-gift at the heart of campus ministry. This agape love does not remain abstract. It moves outward.

Agape is the love that refuses to calculate return. It is the love that stays present when service is inconvenient, when justice work is slow, and when encounters complicate our assumptions.

John Steinbeck once described this kind of love as the love that allows another person to relax into goodness they did not know they possessed. Campus ministers see this when students discover that service is not about rescuing, but about mutual transformation. Service rooted in agape does not ask, What do I get out of this? Or What will happen to me? It asks, Who am I becoming through this relationship? And what will happen to him?

Getting Close: The Good Samaritan and the Cost of Service

Vincent van Gogh’s The Good Samaritan offers a striking lens for campus ministry and service. The Samaritan is not standing at a distance offering advice or charity. He is straining under the weight of the wounded man. Their bodies are pressed together. Helping is intimate, costly, and disruptive.

This is not clean service.

The Samaritan does not analyze how the man ended up in the ditch. He allows himself to be interrupted and inconvenienced and he gets close enough to be changed by the encounter.

When students engage in service that involves proximity, listening, relationship, and shared vulnerability, they begin to understand something essential: justice is not an issue to debate, but a relationship to enter.

Jesus himself responds to suffering with a visceral reaction. The Gospels tell us he is “moved in his gut.” Compassion draws him toward people, not away from them. Campus ministry that integrates service and formation reflects this same movement.

Standing in the Right Place

We often ask, What should we stand for? But the Gospel presses a deeper question: Where are we standing?

What we see depends on where we stand.

If we stand only in places of comfort or control, our vision will be limited. Jesus consistently chooses to stand with those on the margins, not to fix them, but to reveal their dignity.

Service becomes transformative when it is not about doing for, but standing with.

As Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ, reminds us, we are not sent to the margins to make a difference; we are sent there so the margins will make us different.

This is what Pope Francis calls a “revolution of tenderness.” It shifts the focus from What will happen to me? to What will happen to them? and ultimately to What will happen to us together?

Love Is Still the Strategy

St. Óscar Romero said it plainly:

“Let us not tire of preaching love. Love must win out; it is the only thing that can.”

Not service hours alone.

Not programs alone.

Not statements alone.

Love.

For campus ministers, this is both consoling and demanding. Students do not need us to be flawless organizers of service projects. They need us to model integrated discipleship where prayer leads to action, action leads to encounter, and encounter leads back to prayer.

Empowered by the Spirit calls campus ministry to form students who can hold faith, compassion, service, and justice together. When we choose proximity, agape, and faithful action, we stand where Jesus stands and we invite students to stand there too.