The Church in the 21st Century Center’s Espresso Your Faith Week occurs every year at the end of September, filling the campus with opportunities to “espresso” faith with events such as community-building coffee stations, rosary-themed activities, Adoration, themed lectures, and candlelight Masses. The reach of the event has spread beyond Boston College’s campus; almost 70 universities and high schools have adopted Agape Latte, a lecture-series staple, and several other Catholic universities now host their own Espresso Your Faith weeks.
Seven years ago, the C21 Center student board drafted the first Espresso Your Faith Week, modeling it after the spirit of their monthly Agape Latte events, where the community gathers for coffee, live music, and a faith-based speaker in Hillside Café. The student board of Agape Latte wanted a “weeklong celebration of faith,” that could spread their message of “God working in [their] stories and in [their] imaginations,” according to C21 Center Director Karen Kiefer.
The week was born under the Center’s then-tagline “espresso your faith,” and continued to grow. Throughout the years they added more events, including pop-up coffee stations around campus and even on buses. Once, they also hosted a “beanpot-style” Agape Latte in the stadium before returning to the intimate coffee-house atmosphere of Hillside.
Kiefer says that led the Center staff to think, “Wow, wouldn’t it be really wonderful if we could find more ways to have conversation?” From there, the conversation lunches program began, which led this year to the launch of their new feature, “Faith Feeds,” in which participants are broken into groups of eight to discuss an article or prompt over lunch.
Just as conversation is a focus of the week, so is “shining a light on what others are doing” in terms of faith-filled opportunities on campus. The first Espresso Your Faith Week took place in April, but encouraged by BC President William Leahy, S.J., the week was moved to the fall so that freshman and newcomers to campus could learn about programs hosted by students and Campus Ministry. Some of the featured activities and devotions include Adoration, the Examen, Candlelight Mass, Taize prayer, and multi-faith initiatives.
This year, the week also included a “prayer trees” program. In response to the popularity of the annual prayer ribbons activity, the Center added the practice of writing intentions on trees. The locations of the trees were kept a secret, as to add to the element of God working in surprising ways, and they each had themed intentions, a written reflection, prayer cards, and medals to go along with them.
Other highlights of the week included events such as the annual “Light the Night” candlelight Mass, where several hours of Adoration are concluded by a liturgy in St. Mary’s chapel. There were opportunities to jog with Jesuits, listen to Bob the Bagpiper playing around campus, participate in a rosary project, attend a lunch centered around Kiefer’s new children’s book Drawing God, and listen to a concert on the quad by the Liturgy Arts Group. The week concluded with an opportunity to “set the world aflame” with smores around the St. Ignatius statue, followed by a blessing of St. Ignatius medals by Fr. Casey Beaumier, S.J.
Next year, the C21 Center hopes to expand the prayer trees initiative into BC’s new pine reserve on Lower Campus. They anticipate more innovations to come.
Kiefer explained,
“The only thing I can promise about next year is that we never deliver the same Espresso Your Faith Week. That’s because the Holy Spirit just takes it. There’s a lot of prayer in preparing for this week, for inspiration and imagination. How can we catch students that aren’t even thinking about God, and make them start thinking?”
The concept of “catching” students and letting the Holy Spirit surprise them is one Kiefer holds dear––hoping that the week can share an element of gratitude and appreciation for how God works in the ordinary lives of college students.
“I think it’s a happy week,” she said. “It’s a change, especially for freshmen, to realize this place is something special. Espresso Your Faith Week embraces everything that Boston College is as a Jesuit university. We’re really proud of that, and I believe that the mission of [the Center] is to be a true catalyst and a resource for renewal in the Catholic Church. It’s a powerful testimony to our community here––that we are one, together.”
Previously the Campus News Editor and Catholicism 101 Editor, Olivia dabbles in The Torch’s writing and photography. She is a senior studying theology and applied psychology and human development with a minor in journalism. She is unashamedly passionate about youth ministry, Haiti, all things charismatic, the Oxford comma, and CatholicTV––where she can often be found as an on-camera news reporter or host of the To the Heights podcast.
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