Rather than reminiscing on the various tasks of the day, at 9pm on Monday nights the Honors Residential College (HRC) gathers to worship on the third floor of Memorial in our chapel. The bustle of what many claim is the most dreadful day of the week is finally over. We come together to affirm, through smiles and laughter, exhaustion and frustration, a fundamental truth: we are nothing without Christ.
The HRC is composed of college students, and our chapels are the same. HRC students create and enact all the night chapel services that occur Monday through Thursday of every week. I knew coming to Baylor that all students are required to take at least two semesters of chapel to graduate, and I did not expect the HRC chapel to change the way I viewed my college experience. I assumed it was just another box that I needed to check off my list. I am grateful that I was wrong. Monday chapel has had a profound impact on how I view the HRC and the broader Baylor community. Rather than being another activity I simply go through the motions of, it has become a thoughtful time of peace and recentering with the people I live alongside.
Monday chapel has had a profound impact on how I view the HRC and the broader Baylor community.
We begin our time together with an excerpt from the hymn “Veni Sancte Spiritus” (Come Holy Spirit). Yes, the HRC’s Monday night chapel begins with an excerpt from a hymn in a dead language—quite fitting for Honors students. Following the hymn designed to quiet our minds and bring us to a place prepared for communion with the Lord and each other, we mourn the brokenness of this world together. Like St. Francis prayed, we too pray to be peacemakers and to love others as Christ first loved us. Senior Rebecca Tietze said “these prayers affect our view of the world, and when we repeatedly say the same words, they become ingrained in us. They serve as a reminder that one day when inevitably ‘there is hatred or discord, we have the choice to sow love and union.’”
The evening continues with a responsive hymn acknowledging that although this world is broken, it has been overcome. Then, we join in an ancient Judeo-Christian tradition. We recite a Psalm which proclaims the goodness of God and reminds us of the nature of the God we serve. Following a communal confession where we acknowledge our collective faults in the presence of a merciful God, we bless Him with humble hearts for the love which caused His Son to die for us, that we might be forgiven. These practices are powerful because they draw us into the church. It is through liturgies and confession that we are invited to participate in the historical representation of Christ’s body.
These practices are powerful because they draw us into the church. It is through liturgies and confession that we are invited to participate in the historical representation of Christ’s body.
Then comes the part which changed the way I view my college experience. We pray for the HRC and for the “5th Floor.” Senior Andrew Parks said there is “no 5th floor in the HRC, it is a reference to the general community of Baylor and Waco, the people we interact with daily and those we work with abroad.” We pray that we may love others well, that the Gospel may be shared, that healing might come where there is injury and brokenness, that the outcast may be given a home, and that we, the members of the HRC, would be strong enough to pursue above all else “the love of God, love of neighbor, and love of learning,” and that Christ may use us as his hands and feet in a world which needs hope and truth. Fittingly, following a prayer full of our supplications, we pray as Jesus taught in Matthew. It was incredible to me that a group of college students so very different from one another, living different lives, would pray so intentionally for the needs of others. It has helped rightly reorient my heart and my loves. It is good, true, and beautiful.
To end our time together, we sing to proclaim the truth about the God we serve. We serve a loving God. A God we are called to love with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Matthew 22:37), a God we love because He is Love (1 John 4:7-8), and a Love that bears all things (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). In a world that desperately needs Truth, we are blessed to have the opportunity to share it, in part, through song. The altos go first proclaiming the truth that we love because God is love, followed by basses who proclaim love bears and believes all things, followed by the tenors who sing that God is love, followed by the sopranos who share the Greatest Commandment. Once every part has had its turn, we arise and face each other, each person, each part, proclaiming truths over each other in one beautiful song. Every voice has something different to bring, but we are all singing the same thing. We serve a good God and we need Him. At the close of this song is the benediction where we beseech God to “grant us a quiet night and perfect end.” And thus, the day is complete.