News

When the Congregation of Holy Cross, Indiana Province recently inaugurated the Spirit of Holy Cross Award and named the first eight award recipients—a group spanning the world from East Africa to Latin America to several spots in the United States—the honoree chosen at the University of Notre Dame was someone widely respected by the Holy Cross community on campus, as well as by students, scholars, and many others in South Bend and beyond.

Award recipient Patricia A. O’Hara, a faculty member at Notre Dame since 1981, vice president for student affairs from 1990 to 1999, and dean of the Notre Dame Law School since 1999, has spread to many people a message about “the importance … of Holy Cross to higher education in America,” said the Congregation’s Indiana Province in its Sept. 15 announcement.

Dean O’Hara says she has learned of the religious order’s important role by being invited to accompany Holy Cross on their mission at Notre Dame over the years—a mission grounded in the “holistic philosophy of education” of Blessed Basil Moreau, the founder of the Congregation: He and his followers have integrated intellectual rigor, an embrace of both faith and reason, and devotion to pastoral outreach and ministry within their distinct character.

“The men of Holy Cross work tirelessly to model that integration, harnessing the gifts of their minds to their faith-filled hearts,” says O’Hara.

This is an educational approach that O’Hara says she has seen flourish at Notre Dame, but she has also drawn inspiration from the approach of Holy Cross to people in a range of situations. “They offer a collaborative vision that places them not above others, but in front to guide, behind to support, and side-by-side, working together to build the kingdom of God.”

O’Hara says her work with members of Notre Dame’s Holy Cross community, in positions of leadership, on the faculty, and in pastoral outreach has evinced their compassion and service, reflecting “the faith-filled ‘yes’ of their patroness,” Mary, the Mother of Sorrows.

“They have accompanied me to hospitals in cases involving serious injury to our students,” she says. “They have stood beside me at moments of death and supported families at times of devastating loss.” The men of Holy Cross “give powerful witness to the duality of being Christ to others and seeing Christ in others at one and the same time.”

The Spirit of Holy Cross Award, which debuts this year, was established by the Indiana Province of the Congregation of Holy Cross to acknowledge the critical importance that collaborators play in living out the vision of Blessed Basil Moreau. Award winners, which this year included seven laypeople and one bishop, will be announced annually on September 15, the Solemnity of Our Lady of Sorrows. One year ago, on Sept. 15, 2007, founder Blessed Basil Moreau was beatified by the Catholic Church.

Dean O’Hara continues her very public support of Holy Cross, but she questions whether she deserves a Spirit of Holy Cross Award given the dedication of so many lay collaborators. “To borrow words of a mentor of mine,” she says, “I regard the award as promise rather than fulfillment—a challenge to live the charism of Holy Cross even more fully in the years ahead.”