As Christians enter Lent and begin the journey toward Christ’s Holy Week ascent to Mount Calvary, Hillsdale’s Orthodox Christian Fellowship is fittingly contemplating Moses’ parallel ascent to Mount Sinai — and the Christian soul’s ascent to Paradise — in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s work “The Life of Moses.”
Associate Professor of English Justin Jackson leads weekly reading group discussions of this book in the Formal Lounge of the Grewcock Student Union, usually on Fridays. Students of all denominations are welcome to attend. St. Gregory’s work, according to Jackson, is applicable for all those journeying through Lent, training both soul and body to prepare for meeting God.
“‘Life of Moses’ is actually supposed to be a reading of our soul and our journey in this life,” he said. “If there’s anything that Orthodoxy teaches you, it’s that simple: This world is simply training you for meeting God face to face.”
The reading groups are one of the regular activities of the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, which was organized a few years prior to 2004. Its chief role is simply to allow Orthodox students to come together to pray, since, as Jackson said, “the life of Orthodoxy is one of prayer.” The group carpools to services at Holy Ascension Orthodox Church in Albion and holds Compline twice a week in the Knorr Student Center chapel.
“It’s nice to just have scheduled prayer time, because it’s so hard to fit it in with a busy college life,” freshman Anastasia Frigerio said.
The community of fellow members in OCF has been a great comfort to Frigerio and the other members this year. Though OCF tends to be small, five incoming freshman this year happened to be Orthodox.
“Coming to college and having Orthodox people that I could connect to immediately was really nice,” Frigerio said. “It’s very important to have people with whom you share basic life foundations.”
“This year, everyone has been more focused on socializing within the group because we have so many people,” President senior Tyler-Rose Counts added. “We have tea together fairly frequently.”
Aside from its primary goal of maintaining the spiritual life of Orthodox students on campus, Jackson said another of the group’s informal aims includes helping to educate interested non-Orthodox students in the ancient life of the church. In the past, some have found a home in Orthodoxy through OCF and ended up being received into the Orthodox Church, usually in their senior year or even several years after graduation.
“People as they go through their education in Hillsdale tend to discover Orthodoxy later,” Counts said. “It’s just how the time frame works out for different people to be exploring.”
Jackson notes, however, that the reading groups and occasional speakers OCF hosts on campus are for anyone who is part of a tradition that respects the ancient church or for anyone simply interested in theology.
“Sometimes students have come to my office who aren’t asking about the Orthodox Church but have questions about their own church,” Jackson said. “Sometimes I’m just here to bolster their conviction about their own church. I’m delighted to see a Lutheran or a Catholic who has questions or doubts about their Church find something in the Fathers and then go, ‘Oh, that’s what I’m looking for.’ That bolsters their faith, and that makes me very happy too.”
