The first Sunday of college doesn’t come with much fanfare.
After orientation events, late-night conversations, and the excitement of finally unpacking the dorm room, Sunday morning arrives quietly. The alarm goes off. No one knocks on the bedroom door. No parent offers the reminder it’s time to leave. No family piles into the car.
For the first time, the decision to attend Mass belongs entirely to the student.
For many Catholic students, this can be a crossroads moment, one that marks the first significant step toward developing a personal, conscious, adult faith or the beginning of a journey down a different path.
For Serena Keller, 21, who attends Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, that first Sunday affirmed her own commitment rather than her parents’ encouragement.
“The first Sunday I chose to go to Mass without my parents was at the beginning of my freshman year of college,” Keller recalled. “I think that choice really showed me that my faith is my own responsibility to cultivate. Throughout my college life, going to Mass and deepening my faith has impacted me in so many ways, helping me grow in discipline, keeping me accountable, and giving guidance and direction to every area of my life.”
Like Keller, other students found that anchor during an otherwise uncertain season.
Kristen Witt, 22, who graduated from William & Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia, first attended Mass on her own during move-in weekend. Until then, Sunday Mass attendance had always been something she experienced alongside her family.
Although excited to begin college, she admitted she was also anxious. Mass became her reminder that God was present in her life.
“I kept going to Mass on my own because I knew that even though so much of my life was changing, God was present, steady and there for me. Looking back, going to church on my own became a big step of independence and a place of comfort and consistency in a season of so much change.”
‘I Just Felt God There With Me’
Not every student’s first Sunday follows that same script.
By the time Cammy Cort, 22, arrived at the University of Maryland, a gradual drift from the faith that had begun during high school continued into college.
Sunday Mass had already become increasingly optional during high school because of sports, and her faith had begun to fade. When that first Sunday of college arrived, attending Mass wasn’t even on her mind.
Everything changed midway through freshman year, when she decided to return.
“I was absolutely terrified,” Cort recalled. “I didn’t know where it was. I went alone. I was running late. It was an 8 p.m. Mass, so I was walking across campus in the dark. I was anxious and worried people would judge me.”
Instead, she remembers walking into the chapel and immediately feeling something different.
“I was just hit by the warmth of the chapel, the Mass and the worship that was happening,” she said. “I just felt God there with me.”
Even after returning, Cort said fear of what others might think didn’t disappear overnight. She quietly attended Mass and Bible studies for months before telling many of her friends.
Looking back, she wishes she had viewed Sunday Mass differently sooner.
“It’s something you need,” she said. “It’s something that helps you grow in your relationship with Christ. There’s so much peace to be found when you actually get yourself to Mass, as well as the community that’s around it.”
Newman Center
That community became a reality through Maryland’s Newman Center. Seeing other college students openly living their faith gave Cort the confidence to deepen her own prayer life.
“Seeing other college students be so involved and in love with the faith and with prayer,” she said, “gave me the validation, opportunity and encouragement to grow that part of my life.”
Today, she no longer sees Sunday Mass as something to check off a list.
“I see it as a privilege to receive the Eucharist and to be in communion with Christ and with the Church.”
Anthony Pegis, 21, who also attends Christendom College, doesn’t remember his first independent Mass, but he vividly remembers realizing that everyone filling the college chapel had made the same decision. Looking around at nearly 500 students, he recognized that they were no longer attending because their parents expected it — they were there by choice.
That realization has remained with him.
“The beauty of the transition of responsibility is something that has stuck with me,” Pegis said. “The Mass and the faith will always be there for you, but you will always have to make that personal decision to come every Sunday.”
He says that decision became one of the most stabilizing parts of his college years.
For incoming freshmen nervous about walking into Mass alone, Mark Hart, chief innovation officer for Life Teen with more than three decades in youth ministry and a father whose own children have gone away to college, offered reassurance.
He recalled how one of his daughters arrived on campus knowing no one who shared her faith. After connecting with the campus Newman Center, she found friends who attended Bible studies, Eucharistic adoration and Mass together.
“She found her people,” Hart said. “She found lifelong friends.”
Go to Mass that first Sunday.
“You have an opportunity now to show who you really are and whose you really are,” he said. “You have an opportunity now to become the man or woman God designed you to be.”
Katherine Matt worked as a summer news intern for EWTN News English during summer 2026.
