Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
Most people come to be trained to help others. But they discover they undergo a deep personal transformation, finding God at a deeper dimension. This energizes them to help others discover God at this same level in their own lives.
By Jon Nyatawa
There was a new liturgy course at Creighton. It was not Father Richard Hauser’s idea.
So, during a summer session decades ago, the chair of the University’s Theology Department sat among the students and took it.
Fr. Hauser often thought diligently about how to ensure the Christian Spirituality Program helped students recognize God’s presence in their lives and prepared them to become religious leaders in their communities.
When it was introduced in 1975, the Christian Spirituality Program was one of the first of its kind in the country. A master’s program rooted in Ignatian tradition that trained spiritual directors. It directly reflected the heart of Creighton’s Jesuit principles, and its significance was not lost on Hauser or the numerous faculty who contributed to the curriculum.
That’s why Fr. Hauser entered Eileen Burke-Sullivan’s classroom each day.
“I’d said to him, students need to hear about the importance of this course – and he told me, ‘Well, you should try it,’” said Burke-Sullivan, MCHRSP’84, STD, a long-time faculty member who led CSP from 2010 to 2020 while also serving as Vice Provost of the Division of Mission and Ministry.
“Dick sat in the whole course, start to finish. He not only brought it into the Christian Spirituality Program, but he made it a requirement for students. There were many other instances like that. Dick was so open, and very practical.”
Fr. Hauser’s insight, influence and leadership over the years contributed to shaping the success of Creighton’s Christian Spirituality Program, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this summer.
A special, on-campus weekend reunion, commemorating 50 years, takes place on June 8 for alumni, students, supporters and friends. Learn more.
The Christian Spirituality Program has graduated more than 1,500 individuals across a wide range of ministries and denominations. It’s contributed to the personal growth of staff and faculty who are living out the University’s mission every day on campus. It’s influenced hundreds of international students who are making a difference in cities and towns around the globe.
Sister Madeleine "Maddie" Lane, MCHRSP’79, SSND, who taught courses in the program for 12 years, founded a nonprofit family counseling center in St. Louis. She said the Christian Spirituality Program was the “foundation of my ministry and my whole life.” Countless graduates feel the same way, she said.
“Most people come to be trained to help others,” Fr. Hauser said in a 2000 Creighton Magazine article. “But they discover they undergo a deep personal transformation, finding God at a deeper dimension. This energizes them to help others discover God at this same level in their own lives.”
On the ‘cutting edge’
Word spread quite rapidly about the impact of the Christian Spirituality Program. Right from the start, really.
In its first three years, enrollment increased from 40 to 170, according to a 1977 Creighton AlumNews article.
By 1989, it was drawing the highest enrollment figures of any of Creighton’s summer sessions., according to an AlumNews article. CSP counted graduates from dozens of countries across five continents.
Father John Sheets, SJ, created the program with the help of Father Eugene Donahue, SJ, Father Dennis Hamm, SJ, Father Kevin Waters, SJ, and Fr. Hauser in 1975. There were initially two four-week terms in the summer. The student participants were an eclectic collection of men and women, aspiring priests and lay people, and Catholics and Protestants and individuals from different denominations. They prayed and studied theology in a spiritual community.
Sr. Lane, who was part of the second student cohort, remembers taking a course led by a French Jesuit and hearing Fr. Sheets eloquently stressing the importance of living life with “intentionality.” When she was invited back to teach in the 1990s, she experienced firsthand the care and diligence of Fr. Hauser, his staff and the faculty to help cultivate a meaningful experience for students.
Fr. Hauser, who passed away in 2018, was the Christian Spirituality Program’s director from 1993 to 2010. He overlapped that role by also chairing the Theology Department for nearly two decades. He taught courses and mentored students. He also offered guidance to Burke-Sullivan, who served as associate director before following him as director.
Hauser later would note that his and colleagues’ early work with the program coincided with the Catholic Church’s interpretation and implementation of perspective from the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II).
Burke-Sullivan said the timing of the Christian Spirituality Program’s adoption at Creighton certainly wasn’t a coincidence.
“This deep sense that you are called by something higher than you, and that your Christian faith orients you to practice social justice — that vision is so well articulated now,” Burke-Sullivan said.
“But CSP, when it was formed, was on the cutting edge of that. The attentive, prayerful Jesuits at Creighton — God pulled them here with intention. They meshed well together and created a wonderful program that met students’ spiritual needs.”
A strong CSP community
For a month each summer in the '90s, Sr. Lane moved into McGloin Hall. Faculty members got an RA’s room. To be together in that setting — people from different nationalities and backgrounds who were learning, growing and fellowshipping — was unforgettable, Sr. Lane said.
“It was a real, heartfelt, life-changing, community experience,” Sr. Lane said.
There is an online component available now for the Christian Spirituality Program. Zooms and discussion boards. But even virtually, the course work is so intimate and personally revealing that participants tend to form close relationships with their fellow classmates. They’re connected for life.
They maintain active email threads, Facebook groups and WhatsApp chats. The alumni celebrate each other’s achievements and offer words of encouragement.
“The community of the program is a real strength,” said Creighton professor and current CSP director Jay Carney, PhD. “The relationships that form during the summer, the community of alumni that continue to support each other. There’s this vulnerability that students show, and even as alumni, they carry a hunger to learn both academically but also spiritually and to continue to learn from each other after they've graduated.”
From the beginning, Fr. Sheets described the Christian Spirituality Program as more than an academic degree. It’s a faith and prayerful experience, he said in 1977.
Creighton, with its Jesuit roots and close-knit campus culture, was the ideal host for it.
“Why is Creighton special?” Fr. Hauser asked in a 1987 Creightonian article. “It is because our community works together as a caring and loving institution for the sake of God and one another.”
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