“To Magnify God’s Greater Glory” ft. Boston College’s Rev. Casey Beaumier, S.J. I Saturdays at Seven – Season Four, Episode Six

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In the sixth episode of the fourth season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Rev. Casey Beaumier, S.J., the Christian W.E. Haub Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Boston College. Beaumier begins by offering a brief overview of the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola, how he came to establish the Society of Jesus (or the Jesuits), and how his life and writings inform the charisms that animate the ministries the Jesuits lead. With education being one of the ministries on which the Jesuits focus their energies, Beaumier explains how he and his colleagues seek to share those charisms with new members of the Boston College community as well as with other communities through efforts led by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies. Beaumier shares the details of his own calling to the priesthood and Jesuit order, how editing and the study of American religious history came to play critical roles in how he expressed it, and how the most critical expression to that calling to this day remains presiding over the 10:00 PM Mass each day for Boston College students. While mission and ministry at Boston College focuses its efforts on providing formative spiritual opportunities for students, Beaumier explores the ways he and his colleagues seek to provide comparable opportunities for all members of the Boston College community including faculty and staff members. Beaumier concludes by detailing the virtues campus ministers need to cultivate and pray to receive as they seek to magnify God’s greater glory for all they strive to serve.

Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University. 

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Our guest is Father Casey Beaumier, the Haub Vice President of Mission and Ministry and the Director of Campus Ministry at Boston College. Thank you for joining us.

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: My pleasure. Good morning. Good to see you.

Todd Ream: I’ve had the privilege of joining in conversation with several members of the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, as well as several laypersons serving as faculty members and administrators on Jesuit college and university campuses. And while we talked about the ways Jesuit charisms are integrated into co-curricular and curricular efforts, one thing I have yet to ask them about is St. Ignatius of Loyola, arguably the human point of inspiration for those charisms.

Would you please begin our conversation by offering a quick overview of his life and focus in particular on how he came to faith in Christ and established the Jesuits?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: Very good question. St. Ignatius of Loyola was a Basque nobleman from northern Spain, that Basque region, and had been trained as a courtier in the courts and then went on to a battle in Pamplona against the French. It was during that battle that he was wounded by a cannonball and then was carried by his fellow soldiers back to Azpeitia, to the Loyola castle in northern Spain.

And he was a vain man, had a surgery on his leg and then was not happy with the result and had a second surgery because he didn’t want to have any sort of a limp. So he endured these very delicate and detailed surgeries on the leg, and had time to convalesce in the castle in his room. And it was in his convalescence that his conversion was born.

He had only a few items to read. He had romance novels, and he would read these romance novels and then think about how he would curry favor with popular people and gain attention from others. And while that was entertaining and interesting to him, it left him, in the long run, feeling barren and second-guessing, a little bit arid in his thoughts.

And then he had “The Imitation of Christ” and “Butler’s Lives of the Saints” and when he would read about Jesus and when he’d read about the saints, he would ponder, “Well, if Dominic did this, I wonder what I could do,” or, “Francis did this, I wonder what I could do?”

And that his imagination was triggered and deepened. That was the seedbed of what we call the discernment of spirits, that he discovered certain things that he prayed about, that he pondered were life-giving. They came from the good spirit. Other things were self-focused and vain. They came from the bad spirit. And those little reflections at the very beginning caused a change heart.

He eventually made a pilgrimage. Destination was Jerusalem, but on the way, stopped and made a confession at the monastery of Montserrat, which still exists to this day, and then went into a little town near Montserrat called Manresa, and he was only gonna do a stopover there on his way to Barcelona, but stayed in Manresa in a cave that we still visit today.

And it was in that cave that he composed the classic Spiritual Exercises, and that’s the seedbed of all of the Jesuit spirituality comes out of those spiritual exercises. He made his way to Jerusalem. His hope was to stay there and serve the faith in Jerusalem. That did not work out. He ended up going to Rome, and the rest is history. That’s the beginning of the Society of Jesus in 1540.

Todd Ream: In terms of the Spiritual Exercises then, would you argue and offer for us today, what beyond the discernment power of reflection he sought to initiate, and in what ways does that book then to this day animate the commitments of the Jesuits?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: So at the very beginning of the Spiritual Exercises, he describes their aim, and the aim of the Spiritual Exercises is to overcome oneself, to defeat oneself, so that one could be free of making good decisions without being motivated by disordered affect. That’s the focus. So to get over oneself in another way, of saying this, and by doing that, by defeating the self, studying and pondering the person of Jesus and all of what Jesus does becomes the mode for which we want to do.

We want to be like Christ in order to magnify the greater good for the glory of God. So to get over one’s pettiness, the temptation for comparison, the desire to be pleasing to others, and to discover a capacity to be pleasing to God and to contribute to the upbuilding of the kingdom on Earth as it is in heaven, what we would call the apostolate. That’s the venue where we strive to be more and more Christ-like in what we do, and that’s what Jesuit works hope to achieve through their education, through retreats, through all these kinds of outreach programs that we’ve run over the centuries.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. In terms of those Jesuit college and university campuses that I mentioned earlier, and now adding the Spiritual Exercises into this, in what ways do the Spiritual Exercises that St. Ignatius offered sort of animate these charisms that one encounters on these Jesuit campuses?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: So, for example, at Boston College where I am, we try to offer a robust variety of retreat experiences for students and faculty and staff and alumni to be able to participate in making spiritual exercises. And the hope is that the more people have that kind of experience of sacred silence and pondering possibilities and learning about their desires and visions that we believe are holy, that has an imprint upon the community.

And the more we can do that, the more people get on board and the more the desire to be Christ-like for one another, for our world is the context that we want to create through a Jesuit school. And I think that there are certain ways of doing that are very appealing, and retreats are often the mode for that.

We offer a lot of spiritual direction opportunities too. Having that capacity to be listened to, to speak of God and the movements of God in one’s life, and to have somebody who’s listening attentively to that, that also I think magnifies this glory of God through the work of the Jesuits.

Todd Ream: Perhaps the answer to this question then is reflected in some of what you just said, but if I were to immerse myself in the life of a Jesuit college campus and had no previous sort of knowledge of its identity, its history the charisms that animated it, in what ways would I find these charisms then sort of woven into the social fabric that even I would encounter as a visitor?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: Well, it’s interesting. So in the history of Jesuit education in the United States, often our schools were named for the location in which they were found. And part of that strategy, I think, is to be subtle and gentle in the presence of Jesuit works within a community. So for example, here at Boston, Boston College, by the name, you would not know that it’s a Jesuit Catholic university, and I think that’s very intentional.

It’s first and foremost a university. That’s the work of what we do at BC. We’re a school of the mind. But when people come here, for example, for orientation, every orientation session, all seven sessions begin with a Catholic Mass, and everyone attends those as the start of their orientation.

And it’s not to be forceful of the charism or to be directive of what we think people should believe or not believe, but it’s to set the tone of who we are and what we hope to offer and welcome people into. So we do that through the very, very beginning of exposure to life at BC, and then we try to provide early information about the different opportunities of what I think of as the school of the heart, so the interior life that accompanies the school of the mind.

There’s no transcript for the school of the heart, so the opportunity and the burden is on us to try to present that in a way that’s utterly compelling for people who come to be part of the university community. So there’s no force, there’s no coercion, but we try to make as irresistible as possible those kinds of opportunities, whether it’s some service outreach, some retreat opportunity, a lecture, some sort of a reading experience, a pilgrimage.

These are all tools that we have in our tool chest of the charism of Ignatius to be able to offer to people who come to the university, and that becomes the social fabric of the religious charism that we can offer.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. One of the roles in which you’ve served at Boston College is as director of the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies. Can you offer an overview of the institute’s history and mission, and in what ways it draws from these charisms that we’ve discussed that are reflective of what St. Ignatius sought to offer in the Spiritual Exercises?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: So the Institute actually began in the city of St. Louis, and it was a work of what was then known as the Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus. And that was an initiative that came out of the Vatican II spirit of the Catholic Church universally. And its mission, that publishing house, the Institute for Jesuit Sources mission, was to make available into English language the key documents of the Society of Jesus, so the spiritual exercises, the constitutions, the history of the society.

Up until that time, those things were not available in English language. They were in Latin or Spanish or French. So for decades in St. Louis, some of our great Jesuit scholars had the mission of translation. And that publishing house really served a very important purpose at that time.

But as it continued, it did not really predict its future, and it started to languish a little bit. So there was an opportunity for it to be moved. There wasn’t a successor in place in St. Louis, so our Jesuit president, Father William P. Leahy of the Society of Jesus, he asked if I would consider staying on to run the institute.

I was a doctoral student in history here at Boston College. I arrived in 2006. So when I finished the degree, we moved the Institute for Jesuit Sources onto campus, but we had a year to do that transfer, and that was a beautiful year of exercises of imagination. He and I, along with a couple other companions imagined what would we do with this publishing house, and that’s where Advanced Studies came from. And we developed a new mission for the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, with the publishing house as the focal point of what we would do.

So that’s where our focus on promoting Jesuit history, spirituality, pedagogy to the community at large, to Jesuits and to people who work within Jesuit works, so that deeper appreciation of Jesuit history, spirituality, and pedagogy would animate this new initiative.

And we did that not just through publishing scholarly materials, but also teaching courses both in person and online, developing a certificate in Jesuit studies. We’ve created a massive research database called, “The Portal to Jesuit Studies,” and we’ve created venues for the giving of spiritual exercises, the training to give spiritual exercises to young people, to older people. We’ve worked on formation opportunities for faculty, staff, administrators, and trustees.

So in a very short amount of time, that institute has flourished, and it’s probably one of the more external entities within Boston College, whose aim is to be able to assist all English-speaking works of the society by providing content for deeper appreciation. To me, the operative word of what the institute does is to deepen people’s exposure, their knowledge of history, spirituality, and pedagogy, and it’s been a really beautiful project.

We have, in a short amount of time, been able to do, I think, some magnificent things for not just the order, but for the works themselves. And now the institute is in good hands as we continue in developing and expanding its offerings for the future.

Todd Ream: Can you offer an example of how that deepening process perhaps benefits the 27 Jesuit colleges and universities, but then also perhaps some of the other ministries that the Jesuits lead?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: So I’d say principally the certificate in Jesuit studies has been the entree into all sorts of great influence within Jesuit secondary and higher education. So we do that by starting with an immersion course. We go to Spain and Rome every year, and we teach Jesuit history in place. So we go to Loyola, we go to Xavier, we go to Manresa and Montserrat, and we visit the Gesù and Sant’Ignazio, the Jesuit archives in Spain and in Rome. And that becomes a very compelling experience for people.

When they get a taste of the realities of the historical roots of the charism of Ignatius, then they want to go deeper. And we have a course on the Exercises, another course on the Constitutions, two courses on Jesuit history, a course on pedagogy, a course on the social apostolate. And when we do that, we’re aiming to help contribute to the formation of future leaders within Jesuit high schools and colleges and universities.

When we do that, we use our own materials. So the books that we create are the texts that we use. And then because all of these people are working with young people, we invite them to come into our Ever to Excel program. That’s the motto of Boston College.

And people come in high school years to be able to make spiritual exercises, and we host their faculty and administrator chaperones, get them on board, and then we expand our offerings to those groups with new programming, get them a little bit more interested in some online retreat work. And what happens is everything works together, kind of like Romans eight in Paul’s letter, that all things work together for those who love God.

So when we begin with the love of God and the desire to magnify God’s greater Glory through our efforts to promote a greater good, it has a ripple and magnifying effect throughout the network. And what’s been fun for us, and I think it’s been a real joy, is that in the long view, we’ve been able to see that holy process of the multiplier effect.

Think of both the loaves and fish, the wedding feast at Cana. We have little examples of how that has unfolded and has magnified the programming throughout the institute. And I, I’ve seen this happen several times, and it energizes us to continue to be creative and to deepen access to more opportunities than what we’re offering today.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I want to ask you now about your own calling as a priest and as a member of the Society of Jesus. You earned an undergraduate degree from Marquette, master’s degrees in philosophy and American studies from St. Louis University, an MDiv and a licentiate in sacred theology from what is now Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry, and then a PhD, as you mentioned, in American religious history from BC.

At what point did you discern the study of history would prove important to how you understood your vocation? And then what experiences sort of contributed to that discernment process?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: So at Marquette when I was an undergrad, my degree is in magazine journalism. I’m trained as a magazine designer and editor. That was my love and my passion as an undergrad student.

Simultaneously, I was also a resident advisor for freshmen. I lived in freshman housing for three of my four years at Marquette. And at that time at Marquette University there was a Jesuit chaplain in each of the dorms. And we had a Jesuit chaplain who was a very happy priest.

Growing up in the Midwest, I didn’t have Catholic schooling as a youngster, so I only knew priests through churches, through parishes. So coming to Marquette and meeting Catholic priests who lived in dorms and who taught and who administered and who spoke of God with familiarity and who had human lives that we could see, like throughout the full day, it humanized the priesthood. And the priests that we had in our dorm had a tremendous availability for us as RAs and as residents.

And as I grew at Marquette, this Jesuit in particular became very much a spiritual father for me. And although I wouldn’t have used the language of spiritual direction, I think in many ways our conversations became very much like spiritual direction.

And my senior year, I knew that there was something compelling about this good example of priesthood that God put into my life And I’ve tended to be this way throughout my life. If I see something that I want to do, I tend to just do that, and that’s been good for me most of the time. That’s worked out well.

So I entered the Jesuits out of college, and then the love for history was not something that I grew up with. In fact, I would say I was one of those younger people who probably didn’t like history courses growing up. But growing up in the Society of Jesus, there was a Jesuit high school that we operated in the Midwest in rural Wisconsin that closed abruptly in 1975.

I entered in 1993, and still after those years, people in the society whom I came to love often spoke about this school and the perplexity of its closing, I got hooked on this. I became kind of obsessed with the history of this particular school and wanting to know more and more about it.

So when I was sent to St. Louis University for studies, the archive of that school was at the Jesuit Archives of St. Louis, and I kind of geeked out and spent my three years obsessed with going and passing time at this archive, learning about the school, but then falling in love with historical research.

St. Louis and St. Louis University at that time were among the most influential places and periods of my life where trajectory became very clear, and I fell in love with historical research when I was at St. Louis U., and in this particular case, with this particular school, that became my focus for the license that I did in theology, and then that’s what I wrote about for the dissertation for for life here at BC and doctoral studies in the history department.

And that Jesuit mentor I had as an undergrad, he taught at that school, so a lot of his remembrance animated this. And now he’s our president at Boston College, just stepping down this coming spring. But I’ve been able to be with him and learn from him all of these years of my life in the society built upon those good years as an undergraduate at Marquette U.

Todd Ream: Yeah, I believe Father Leahy has served in that capacity for 30 years. Is that correct?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: It’s true.

Todd Ream: Yeah, wow. Two of those three decades then that Father Leahy was president, you’ve also served then at Boston College. And one commitment you fulfilled over the course of that long tenure is service as a residence minister in Fenwick Hall. Now, I wasn’t surprised to hear you say something about your service three out of four years in a first-year student residence hall, because not only is Fenwick an undergraduate-serving residence hall, but it’s a first-year serving student residence hall.

In what ways then have you found over the course of, say, your time as a Jesuit priest and a member of the BC community, you found that service vocationally fulfilling?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: Well, I would say it’s the most important thing that I do at Boston College. I consider myself an apostle for the freshmen. Freshman year is a very, very important year in the life of college students, but I would say in life in general.

And to accompany people through that process of growing into a college student, learning about independence, managing schedule and time, and so much happens in that first year.

Todd Ream: Sleeping?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: Yeah. So we’ve had a candlelight Mass, Monday through Thursday at 10:00 PM at St. Joseph Chapel on upper campus, just a minute walk away from my room at Fenwick Hall. That’s become my parish. In many ways, that’s the place where I’m most available, I’m most effective for our students. That’s when I, I get the bulk of my prayer and my, my contact with students accomplished, and I, I love that.

That’s become the place where I seek out future mentors for the programming that we run through the institute. It’s where I learn about students’ struggles and how to accompany them if they have a parent who’s dying or if they’ve gotten into some trouble on campus. The candlelight Mass is the venue for hearts encountering hearts, and it becomes a place where I can have the most imprint upon the freshmen, and actually all four years.

We have kids that come every single night throughout their four years, and that becomes a real community for us. And I’ve, I’ve loved being able to make that an availability for our students, but also for me to be able to be a good priest for them in their home, which is the residence hall.

Todd Ream: Yeah. Two decades, you’ve obviously seen some cultural changes that come through youth culture over time. In what ways have, if any, have you sought to sort of adjust your interactions with them as a priest and a member of the Society of Jesus?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: That’s a beautiful question because it’s both ways. You know, in many ways, I’ve grown up by being in that dorm too. I mean, I came there in my mid-30s, and now I’m 55. And all my 40s, the bulk of my late 30s, and now almost all my 50s have been spent with freshmen.

And I’ve adjusted from being a bigger brother to a father figure for them. That’s been very, very helpful for me as I grow and stay age-appropriate and learn how to, to navigate older life. It’s a joy to be able to live with freshmen. 

Consistent issues are always on the freshmen plate, and I would say two of them that I often invoke for the parents. A big, big takeaway in first-year housing is helping students learn how to be assertive where assertion is called for, helping them learn to be accommodating where accommodation is called for, and especially to know the difference.

All these things sound self-evident, but they’re not. They’re absolutely not. And some of the things that our students get themselves into and the challenges that they face, those two takeaways would be among many that are so very important. Those are life lessons that happen that accompany the intellectual and spiritual development that we offer.

Those practicalities of how to learn to interact with earth people. That’s a big, big deal. But I would say there have been major changes over the course of time, too. And one of them I would describe through COVID. COVID, for all of us, was a game changer.

But I’d say, especially for the young, the quality of conversation, of kinds of topics that they bring up, for me, is noticeably different than it was pre-COVID. I think students had time in their younger years to ponder bigger questions about the fragility of life, the purpose, the meaning, why we’re here, how we need each other. That has had an imprint on the quality of interaction that I’ve had since 2020 with students.

And then I would say, too, the other thing that’s very noticeably different is that they show up. I think that social isolation has made deeper appreciation for the opportunity to be with one another. And I, I haven’t seen that change back. I think that being in the company of others, especially in the younger years, is not something that they take for granted. They know what it’s like not to have that, and to have access to that is something that I think they still continue to treasure, and they can’t get enough of it.

Todd Ream: Yeah, that’s wonderful. Now, you mentioned you’re now 55. From one 55-year-old to another 55-year-old then two decades in a residence hall, two decades in a first-year service, serving residence hall, regardless of one’s depth of commitment is still impressive.

In what ways have you invested in particular practices that have allowed you to stay engaged and present with those students who come to you and to come to Boston College each year?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: You know, it’s tougher. I’ll be honest with you, it’s tougher for me now than it was when I was, when I was in my thirties and my early forties. Part of it is I don’t feel like I’ve changed, but I know I have. And in the students’ eyes, I’m old, and I, I get that. I pick up on that. I’m, I’m super perceptive, and I pick up on that. I understand that.

So some of the access that I had in terms of direct interaction with students in the first year, that’s not as easy as it used to be. So I pivot, and I work directly with the RAs as a medium for deeper communication with the freshmen. And that’s been very, very helpful. I have a couple RAs this year that are gold. They’re just awesome, awesome persons. So I have relied on them to be a good connector.

The other thing is that in COVID era, we would Zoom every day with students who were in quarantine or isolation. And that year that we came back in the fall of 2020, I developed a one-on-one way of keeping up with kids on the floor, and I’ve continued to do that.

So I make myself available for a one-on-one conversation at the start of the year with every person on the floor, and I leave it to him to decide whether he wants to take me up on that. But that’s been something that more often has happened than not.

And then we have Google calendars here at BC. I’m sure many people on the call would know what those are, but there’s a function in that where you can set up appointments that people can sign up for on their own. I make this little link available to any of my students. So if there’s something that comes up, they can easily just sign up for a time to see me, between dinner time and setting up for candlelight Mass, those are the hours that I try to make myself exclusively available to students to come and have a chat.

And my evenings are always spent with students. So I go from 7:00-9:30 with nonstop appointments with students almost every night. And then I go and set up the candles and have Mass and then chitchat on the piazza outside of St. Joseph Chapel. And then I go back to my room and pause, then I go to bed.

Todd Ream: Yeah, it sounds like a very enriching and vocationally satisfying routine then. And arguably, you know, something that when summer does come, the change of pace is welcomed, but there is something amiss, too in that routine probably in the students’ absence until they return, their next generation comes in the fall.

In June 2025, you were appointed the Haub Vice President for the Division of Mission and Ministry. Your predecessor in that role, Father Jack Butler, will be installed as Boston College’s 26th president in the fall of 2026.

Would you describe the discernment process that led to your appointment in that role?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: Well, this is a really important question, because it’s the university and the Society of Jesus at work together, and I think this is a good example of governance, and I think it’s also a good example of discernment. So our board of trustees has the task of naming and selecting the president of the university.

And Father Butler’s been at BC for longer than I’ve been, and beloved in the community and with the board of trustees and in the Society of Jesus, and he’s very close to Father Leahy, too. So in many ways, this decision of the board was a perfect opportunity for all of us because it provides continuity of the good spirit and vision that’s been in place at BC for the past thirty years.

And because of the work that I do for the institute, in many ways, mission and depth of mission of how I’ve been wired in my work at Boston College. So when he was named the succeeding president, both he and Father Leahy had invited me to, to be his replacement.

And in some ways, it’s been the perfect job because what I did at the institute was remote preparation for the work of leading the Division of Mission and Ministry. And because of Father Leahy’s great passion for the Jesuit mission, he and Father Butler were able to develop, I think, a very robust division. There, there’s no way that somebody could say that they didn’t have opportunities to get involved in the mission at Boston College because of the many, many on-ramps that have been established. 

So to be able to be the successor of helping to, to invite people into the mission has been pretty delightful because so many good things have been already in place. And then the further delight was that we were able to move the Church in the 21st Century Center and the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies into the division as well, and those are two entities that I care deeply about. Accompanying them as they move into the division, as I move into the division, has been a real fun first year of work in that area.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Can you offer an overview briefly of those on-ramps, the departments that then comprise the division?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: Certainly. So in our mission and ministry, we have campus ministry, so that would be the biggest entity within the division itself. And I’m running the campus ministry for a little bit at the beginning, just because the director of that office entered into a semi-retirement. So I’ve taken that on too.

So we have campus ministry, and then we have for our faculty and staff formation an office called the Center for Ignatian Spirituality, and attached to that Center for Ignatian Spirituality is a program called Intersections, and that’s all about faculty and staff and administrative formation.

And then in addition to those offices, we have our first-year experience, so the office that runs orientation and then the programming for first-year transitions, the retreats for first-year students. FYE is also within our division.

Then we have an office called the Montserrat Coalition. Montserrat is that Benedictine monastery in Spain that we just talked about. That’s an office that Father Butler developed to be able to help provide financial resources for students who come to BC, but who don’t have some of the financial background to be able to participate in retreats or activities like intramural sports if there’s a registration fee or something that they need.

The Montserrat Coalition office helps to provide not just the financial assistance that they need to be able to fully participate in the life of the university, but also to be in the company of peers who also are having that benefit. So that’s a community initiative as well.

And then Father Leahy created at the time of the sexual abuse crisis that had ground zero beginnings here in Boston in the year 2002, he created what’s called the Church in the 21st Century center, this is a beautiful, beautiful initiative that’s externally focused but with an internal impact, it’s run by a woman named Karen Kiefer, who is a masterful, creative, imaginative programmer, and she and I are very close.

We worked on the spiritual exercises for high school program that we run through the institute. So bringing C-21 into the division this coming year is a real opportunity for us not just to magnify its external benefit but also to have it be better known within the university, like the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies. Both of them have been external in many ways but with an internal impact that’s continuing to unfold.

And then we have two retreat houses, one on the Atlantic coast and one on the Charles River that our division also oversees, so we help schedule programming for those places And we do some programming through Lilly Endowment support that are also within the division itself. So it’s a robust division with many, many entry points and with a beautiful staff altogether of about 55-56 full-time employees.

And many of our graduate students from the Clough School of Theology and Ministry serve as graduate assistants. And then we have undergraduates who help us as work-study students as well.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Before we move on to the last component of our conversation, I do want to ask you about one of the opportunities or on-ramps maybe that’s offered within the Boston College community. And I believe it’s offered actually through, and correct me if I’m wrong here, the C21 program, and this is Agape Lattes.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that, and then perhaps offer a couple of examples of efforts that you’ve contributed to these sessions? Some of which I will share with our listeners are available on YouTube.

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: Yeah, I’ll never be a YouTube influencer, but I have my little impact through things like this. 

Todd Ream: Yes, you do.

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: Agape Latte is this program that Karen Kiefer created. And I think back in earlier times, you might have had Theology on Tap. It’s not so much unlike that. Here at Agape Latte, we have opportunities for faculty and staff to be able to come before our students and to share a faith story, somehow an experience where God was at work in their lives.

So it’s a storytelling initiative with a direct pointing to faith experiences and the impact of faith in life. And the hope is that that impacts the way that students start to interpret the stories of their lives, too. And we do this in a little venue at Boston College called Hillside Café, so it’s a coffee house.

C-21 makes available all sorts of coffee drinks and then a bunch of different desserts. It starts off with some music, maybe a little student band of some sorts, and then the speaker presents, and then there’s some time for question and answer.

And then they upload these things into YouTube, and C-21 has a treasure trove, magnificent collection of all of these different videos of Agape Latte. And this is a program that Karen was able to franchise, so there are different high schools and colleges and universities around the world that have Agape Latte programming, including our Jesuit high school in Tokyo.

We have this beautiful relationship with this high school. They have started to do Agape Latte, but not with coffee, but with tea. So that’s, we adapt. We are, we are adapters. And for me, as I’ve grown, especially because Karen and I are good friends, sometimes we’ve done Agape Lattes together. I think it’s so important to be able to help students reflect upon things like the gift of friendship.

So I look at opportunities to cultivate friendship. That’s been a topic that I’ve talked about for Agape Latte or the use of technology. That was also a talk that I gave about email and my draft folder. So I try to come up with ideas that I think they’re gonna get right away, something that’s familiar to them, and then I try to put in a couple deep insights that I think could be good conversation points.

And the hope is that the kids that are drawn to Agape Latte go back to their dorms, and they continue the conversation. We’re not in charge of that, but our, our hope is that in the art of spiritual conversation that we try to cultivate through the experiences of the division, that programming like Agape Latte builds upon those good practices and then students take that into their everyday life. And I, I think we’ve done that well. And C-21 has been magnificent in the creative ways of expanding that capacity, not just for our students, but I think for people around the world.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. For our last couple of questions then, I want to start by asking you about the virtues that campus ministers, in your estimation would be served well to cultivate.

And to begin, what intellectual and/or moral virtues do you believe they need to cultivate? But then also, which theological virtues do you think they need to pray to receive to flourish in their chosen vocation as campus ministers?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: Well, I think of three that are so very important to me. They’re the triptych of virtues that I turn to in my petitionary prayer every day. And I’ve never met anyone who would say she has too much virtue or he has too many virtues, you know? I mean, all of us are in constant need of those gifts of the Spirit to be able to be better effective and present in the apostolate.

But the three that I think of for us in campus ministry, courage, fortitude, and perseverance. Courage to be able to witness the faith in venues and times where sometimes being a faith practitioner can, can be a little bit unpopular or maybe even misunderstood. So, to be courageous in faith practice and witness, I think that’s so very important.

Fortitude, to have the strength to continue and to endure. And I think there are many, many challenges of getting people’s attention, staying focused, being persistent and, and consistent in the apostolate. Fortitude is the virtue that we can draw from that can be so very helpful for the long view.

And then to persevere, to have this capacity to trust the long view, and that what brings us into the ministerial life at one time continues to be beckoning and inviting and meaningful. To have the persistence of the long view, I think is very important.

And then the fourth virtue that I think has become so important in our times is the virtue of gentleness, and I talk about this a lot with our students. Gentleness is a virtue that I think gets a bum rap. Sometimes people look at gentleness and they think it’s weak, and that if I’m gentle, I’m being weak.

Todd Ream: Correct.

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: And I’d say that’s the work of the bad spirit to keep us from pursuing gentleness. Gentleness is the balm that soothes all those jagged political, social tensions that we encounter. When we cut ourselves some slack, when we give the benefit of the doubt to others, we can propel through circumstances that without gentleness can become very jagged.

They can become very, very much places of getting stuck. And with gentleness, we can endure through everything that life brings. So I’m a huge proponent of asking students to pray for gentleness and then to be practitioners of it in action.

And the reason why that speaks to me is I have to do that. I mean, I think gentleness is at a deficit in all of our lives, and it’s a virtue that’s in abundance if we seek it. And I think it’s actually one of the great strengths that’s a hidden strength in our times for people.

Todd Ream: Thank you. For our last question then today, I want to ask you, in what ways do you believe campus ministers can be of greater service to the Church and perhaps their fellow clergy persons who serve in parish ministry? But also, in what ways do you believe the Church can be of greater service to campus ministers here in the years to come?

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: So campus ministry is a curious phenomenon. I think it needs renewal. It needs rethinking, because I don’t think that there was ever developed within it a structured way of growing. And I think this is always the challenge of campus ministry is, how do you continue to do something year after year without it becoming stagnant or without getting stuck?

To be refreshed in the ministry and to be creative, to be receptive, this I think is the opportunity at hand in terms of renewal of campus ministry. And I think too, one of the great challenges for all of us who are believers is the challenge of the tension between the vision of belief the reality before us.

And I think that that transition those two interactions, they need accompaniment. They need care and guidance, because the bad spirit always wants to tempt campus ministers, clergy, people of ministerial hearts with cynicism.

And to safeguard the vision, to safeguard the vision is the most important thing that we can do, and especially those of us who have the beautiful opportunity of working with the young. I think the most important thing, absolutely the most important thing is to protect the vision and accompany young people through their encounters with difficult realities without becoming cynical. 

Maintaining the vision in difficult realities is one of the most Christ-like things that we can cultivate regardless of age. And you think about it, if we looked at Jesus, the limitations that He had to put up with among those apostles, they were not perfect. They were flawed, but He accepted their gifts and talents where they were, because He had a vision of what could be.

He had the vision of the kingdom within His heart and mind, and then He took what life offered in the human realm, and here we are two thousand years later, and we continue to work on the same thing. And the more the merrier. But I think the vision has to be protected and accompanied so that as we encounter realities, when a campus minister faces a difficulty or a disappointment, it’s so important to meet that reality where it is, to understand it, but to not let that reality become defining.

To let the, the kingdom is defining. It’s very important that that be the vision that we’re seeking and that we protect and that we propel toward without being naive or Pollyannish. Like, we, we have to have both. We have to be people of our present reality, and we have to deal with that reality. We have to interact with it, we have to adapt to it, we have to be people of vision.

And those two together, that’s the kingdom. That’s the kingdom on Earth, and its perfection is for us, God willing, that we get there after this life. That’s what we’re all about. That’s what we’re seeking, and that’s what we’re pointing people toward.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Our guest has been Father Casey Beaumier, the Haub Vice President of Mission and Ministry and the Director of Campus Ministry at Boston College. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.

Casey Beaumier, S.J.: My pleasure. It was a real pleasure and a joy. Thank you so much.

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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.