Dear Parishioners and Students of St. Paul’s Parish Newman Center,

I am very excited to be your new pastor.  In these next few weeks and months I will be eager to meet and talk with all of you. With God’s help, I look forward to serving you in the years ahead.  St. Paul’s has a unique function, since it is simultaneously a parish and a Newman Center for Catholic college students.

Please know that I will hold you up daily in prayer, and each day you will be in my heart and mind.  I will sink my heart, mind and soul into serving you to the best of my ability.  The word pastor in Latin means shepherd.  And here, I must also ask for your prayers, so that each day I might become more like the Good Shepherd. If there is ever anything I can do for you, or if you would just like to talk or come in for spiritual direction, confession or whatever it might be, please feel free to contact me anytime at 684-6896 or by email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Fr. John Hay

Once again I have packed up my books: theology, saints, Church history, and others.  And I ask myself, “Am I living this?”  “Am I sharing in the experience of St. Phillip Neri, or the soon to be beatified John Cardinal Newman?” St. Paul writes for us this Sunday, “I have been crucified with Christ; yet live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.”  I wish I could live up to the way of life St. Paul has for himself.  Yet, I have the desire in the midst of the failings.  There is a real dying to self that a parish priest enters into with each assignment.  The two greatest commandments call us to love God and neighbor.  So, the love of Christ urges me on in and through my humanness.  During the journey of life it seems that we can run from our humanness.  Not that we desire the flesh.  There is a great battle, which is very real, between the flesh and the Spirit. (Rom 8)  Through the Incarnation, we have a redeemed and saved humanity—we live for Christ.  The experience of Jesus gives us identity and purpose and makes it possible to love.   “The love of Jesus Christ has been poured into our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Rom 5)  Our hearts are real, as real as the heart of Christ and the saints.  I must pray to allow my life to be conformed to the heart of Christ so as to walk with the saints.  Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of Communion Liberation movement writes that in encountering Christ, we experience what is beyond in a man among us.  “To understand that there’s a world beyond, you must have an experience of the world beyond, here in this world—not a dream , not an image but an experience of the world beyond, here in this world…you must have the experience of the incompleteness of the things you do, which would be an impotent anger if it weren’t for the hope and sweetness found in abandoning yourself.”  Christ walked among us.  The saints lived the real experience of Christ through their very lives.  I have experienced Christ in this season of life.   It has been God’s plan for me to minister at the Newman Center and to receive the ministry of this place.  For a small community, I have met a wide variety of persons, and from all over the world.  It has been a learning and growing experience.  I pray that each of you may experience the Lord Jesus Christ in the Sacraments and in each other as you continue on your journey of sacrifice, dying to self in the love of Christ.

Over the last two days the diocese has had ordinations for the priesthood and the transitional diaconate.  We have seen names and pictures in the Catholic Advance of the five new priests and four new deacons.  For these blessings in the life of the local church of Wichita we are profoundly grateful.  All of this takes place during the Year of the Priest.  It is indeed a cause of great joy.  This year I celebrate my 10^th anniversary of ordination.  On May 27, 2000 Bishop Eugene Gerber ordained Frs. Joe Eckberg, Hien Nguyen, Joe Tatro, and myself at the Cathedral.  Through the grace of God we are serving the diocese in a variety of capacities.  Explaining my call to the priesthood sometimes seems as difficult as explaining the Trinity.  It is a mystery, and only in the grace of God can I serve as a priest.  This is important for me to remember as there is always a temptation to rely solely on my own meager talents.  This past Thursday I offered a Mass for my anniversary.  The prayer over the gifts is as follows: “Lord, in your mercy, accept our offering and help me to fulfill the ministry you have given me in spite of my unworthiness. Grant this through Christ our Lord.”  Pope Benedict XVI recalled the joyful celebration upon his ordination day He said to himself, “It’s not about you Joseph.”  How true that is.  Many of the faithful are joyful about the priests serving and those to be ordained.  Indeed, we have many vocations compared to the vast majority of dioceses in America.  Nevertheless, we can only compare ourselves to Christ, for the true standard is the cross.  To go to Christ is to go through his pain.  The Son of God condescended to be one of us, returned to heaven bringing his wounds and humanity with Him so that the Holy Spirit would come to us.  The Trinity is a love relationship in whom we are sustained “for there is one God , the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” The Spirit is the procession, the inexpressible communion, of the Father and Son.   We understand the Trinity through the missions or actions of each person of the Trinity.  May we allow the Spirit to move within us.

We receive the Spirit of truth so that we can know the things of God.  In order to grasp this, consider how useless the faculties of the human body would become if they were denied their exercise.  Our eyes cannot fulfill their task without light, either natural or artificial; our ears cannot react without sound vibrations, and in the absence of any odor our nostrils are ignorant of their function.  Not that these senses would lose their own nature if they were not used; rather, they demand objects of experience in order to function.  It is the same with the human soul.  Unless it absorbs the gift of the Spirit through faith, the mind has the ability to know God but lacks the light necessary for that knowledge.

This unique gift which is in Christ is offered in its fullness to everyone.  It is everywhere available, but it is given to each man in proportion to his readiness to receive it.  Its presence is the fuller, the greater a man’s desire to be worthy of it.  This gift will remain with us until the end of the world, and will be our comfort in the time of waiting.  By the favors it bestows, it is the pledge of our hope for the future, the light of our minds, and the splendor that irradiates our understanding.

(From the treatise on the Trinity by Saint Hilary of Poitier)

Greetings to all of you.  I pray you are well.  I return spiritually strengthened and not a little tired from my trip to the Holy Land.  My brother, Fr. Jim, and I have travelled to the Holy Places where our Lord walked and proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven to be at hand.  I remembered the parish in my prayers at the holy sites and during the Masses I celebrated.  I hope to be able to share about this pilgrimage before I leave.  As I mentioned last week, I had planned on this trip, but not on announcing any changes in my life.  When I began last summer, I told Janet and JP that I would be here for a year.  Well, the prediction rang true.  I had a hunch that I was in a holding pattern for another parish.  Not that I want to leave.  Being at St. Paul’s is not administratively taxing, and there is enormous potential to be had here in a college environment.  Nevertheless, I got the call and I must respond. These transition moments are never easy, and my short stay here does not change that.  Please pray for me as I prepare for this move.

From the Liturgy of the Hours  6th Week of Easter

At Easter, beloved brethren, it was the Lord’s resurrection which was the cause of our joy; our present rejoicing is on account of his ascension into heaven.  With all due solemnity we are commemorating that day on which our poor human nature was carried up, in Christ, above all the hosts of heaven, above all the ranks of angels, beyond the highest heavenly powers to the very throne of God the Father...And so our Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments.  Our faith is nobler and stronger because sight has been replaced by a doctrine whose authority is accepted by believing hearts, enlightened from on high.  This faith was increased by the Lord’s ascension and strengthened by the gift of the Spirit.