This month we highlight our school Chancellor, Father Beau Schweitzer. Father Beau continuously impacts our students lives through his self-sacrificial love and bold ideas.
It was my privilege recently to join Father Beau and one of our World Youth Day students, Selenie, as he took her to get her passport on his day off. Attending World Youth Day is one of Selenie's lifelong dreams, and with the next available appointment months away, she was in danger of not getting her passport in time to attend.
The trip was an act of love and bold indeed. It ended up being a true testament to the character of our Chancellor. Our destination was over an hour away, and the Lord blessed that short journey with an abundance of human interactions. We stopped to talk with many of Father’s friends as we would run into them while leaving Benque. From encountering a JPII alumnus, whose child we checked in on post-surgery, to chatting with the gas station worker who told Father he had begun praying the Rosary every day, Father Beau knew all of their names and important details of their lives.
When passing someone walking along the road, he would honk and say hello and then turn to Selenie and me to share their name and story with fatherly affection. On our journey he gave Selenie his full attention, but did not pass by a family on the side of the road in need of a ride. He got the job done in Belmopan and helped Selenie get her passport, but instead of rushing home, prioritized celebrating the victory by heading to the co-cathedral to offer prayers of thanksgiving. Selenie’s mother works around the corner so we offered to take her out to lunch, and the Lord blessed us as we ran into her father on the way who was making a delivery in the area.
Selenie's father made the time to join us as well, providing a lunch where we all gathered around pupusas and ice cream donated to us by a gracious friend, laughing at the shoe shiner who decided to sit with us, and bearing witness to our student with her new passport and two loving parents.
Father Beau’s gift of his day off turned into a true banquet feast for the Lord. Days like these are typical for our Chancellor. His priesthood is that of Christ's, giving himself for the salvation of souls.
Father Beau was ordained as a priest in the Society of our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity on June 15, 2015. This came after years of preparation within the walls of the seminary and beyond. Most of our students could tell you about Father Beau’s time as a teacher with ACE Teaching Fellows, where he taught 8 subjects a day in inner city Los Angeles, or about his time at an orphanage in Honduras, where he served as principal, or maybe even about his time studying for his B.A. in Philosophy at Notre Dame, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. Father Beau learned many lessons from all of these phases of life, and he passes them down to all who he serves.
We are grateful to have a Chancellor who has a masters in both Theology and Education, who always graduated at the top of his class, and who was chosen by his peers to give the commencement address at their own graduation. However, we are even more grateful to have had 5 years with a Chancellor who truly loves our students and wants to spend his day off helping them achieve their dreams.