Collegian at Tolton Catholic assembly: “Go ‘all in’ for Christ”
Austin Stewart remembers what it was like to be in high school.
It wasn’t that long ago for him.
“I know what they think, I know how they act, I know what they want,” said Mr. Stewart.
“Therse’s a lot of pain, a lot of sorrow in high school,” he noted. “We have a lot of problems in our lives. And Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is the answer. Plain and simple!”
Mr. Stewart, a junior at the University of Missouri studying business and marketing, and a member of St. Thomas More Newman Center in Columbia, addressed an all-student assembly at Fr. Tolton Regional Catholic High School during Catholic Schools Week.
He urged his audience to move toward making a full commitment to living for God — beginning, if necessary, with just a few minutes of prayer each day.
“When you devote yourself to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, you stop thinking so much about yourself and you start thinking about Jesus and how blessed you are,” he said.
That reality, now as clear to him as a spring dawn, changed his life.
“I love sharing my belief in the Eucharist with people, because it is one of the few things that I am so confident about, no matter how anyone responds to me,” he said.
Mr. Stewart talked about his journey from a Catholic upbringing, through religious indifference and adolescent self-indulgence, to finally being “all in” for Christ.
He spoke of falling away from practicing his faith shortly after Confirmation his sophomore year.
“Long story short, my junior and senior year of high school, I was involved in a lot of sin and drinking, partying and all that stuff,” he said.
He had continued on that trajectory into college, when his sister invited him to a Christian worship service.
He went with her and felt drawn to the community there, but he wasn’t ready to give up the life he was living.
“So, I kind of entered into a state of apathetic indifference,” he recalled. “That state is considered an even more dangerous state than if I were completely separated from God.”
He remained there until attending a massive Christian conference for young people.
“It was there that I had an encounter with our Lord, and I was all in!” he said.
“I was able to assess my life and see how God had blessed me with family and friends and many good things in general, and here I was, not being grateful for it.
“I needed to give my life back to Jesus!” he stated. “So, I decided to do that. And I mean radical! Super-radical. Everything.”
He stopped drinking and partying.
“Because I knew those things were bad, and if I was going to be a Christian, I had to live a holy life,” he said.
For the next nine months, he pursued holiness but was constantly aware of a deep longing that he could find no way to fulfill.
“I continuously caught myself thinking, ‘There has got to be more for my faith,’” he recounted. “Jesus didn’t get up on that cross for me to just be okay, for me just not to do bad things. He got up on that cross for me to be transformed and continue to transform.”
The search was on. Mr. Stewart went to other churches, asked people about their faith and tried to figure out what the Bible means.
“I got really close but was not really satisfied with anything,” he said.
His mother reminded him of the 8 p.m. Sunday evening student Mass at the Newman Center in Columbia.
He went and sat in the back pew.
In short, “it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever witnessed,” he said.
“And at the end of it, I was like, ‘What was that? What did I just encounter? What was so special about this?’”
He found a priest to talk to and found himself getting closer to what his heart was longing for.
Mr. Stewart came back for Adoration the following evening.
“I was really tired, so I kind of put my head down and rested,” he recalled.
“I remember looking up at Jesus in the Eucharist on the altar, in the Most Blessed Sacrament,” he said. “And my eyes were so fixed on him that everything around him faded and it was just him.
“I had the knowledge that Jesus was truly present in the Eucharist,” he proclaimed. “And if that is true, I am gazing on Jesus Christ, and he is gazing on me!”
Mr. Stewart left there with greater peace than he had ever known.
Jesus was calling Mr. Stewart home, and he could not respond with anything but “yes.”
Now a junior, Mr. Stewart has been practicing his faith for a little over a year.
“It is still the most beautiful thing I have ever witnessed, the most beautiful thing I have ever lived,” he said.
It hasn’t necessarily made life any easier for him, but it has made life worth living for him.
Fully present
Mr. Stewart devoted most of his presentation at Tolton Catholic to the Eucharist and the Scriptures that back up belief in the Real Presence.
“You need to recognize that Jesus is present in the Eucharist, and then your life will change,” he stated.
“Yes, he died for our sins, but the cross means so much more than that,” Mr. Stewart continued. “Jesus Christ is a real-life, living human being. And he’s not in the past. His presence is in the Catholic Church. His forgiveness is in the Catholic Church. His life. His peace. All of this is in the Catholic Church.”
Mr. Stewart spoke with passion, urgency and intensity.
He held nothing back.
“I don’t want to follow a God who just makes me feel good,” he said. “I want a God who is real and is in reality and knows my suffering and is with me in my suffering and my joys and trials.
“It’s about the journey, the pilgrimage, and the Bread from Heaven is our food for that journey,” he stated.
Mr. Stewart now understands why Jesus allowed himself to be crucified.
“He did it because he loves us. There is righteousness. There is holiness. And it is possible to have that!”
He emphasized that while God is ultimately in control, he gives each person freedom to choose to collaborate with him.
“Because we live in a fallen world, we have to discern how to say ‘yes’ and how to say ‘no,’” Mr. Stewart emphasized. “And that’s where the beauty is. Because in that, we experience God’s love even more.”
Close to home
Mr. Stewart hopes that if the students at Tolton Catholic forget everything else about his talk, they’ll remember how God has filled him with joy and conviction.
“Ultimately, their soul longs for the same thing,” he said.
He could see students in the audience listening and maybe recognizing something they were longing for themselves.
“People want to hear the truth,” he insisted. “Even when they don’t want to hear the truth, they want to hear it!”
Some in the audience walked away without thinking much of what they heard.
“But maybe down the road, they might wind up saying, ‘Yeah, that guy was right,’” he surmised.
