Riding the ‘May Train’ from St. Olaf College to Catholic religious life

Jim May might not fit most people’s image of a man known for inspiring young people to embrace a Catholic religious vocation. A distinguished Classics professor, he served for years as provost and dean of the college at one of the nation’s premier Lutheran higher education institutions — St. Olaf College in Northfield.

Yet through his Catholic faith and his ability to extend Christian friendship, as well as his understanding of music as a bridge to the true and beautiful, he has opened the door to religious life to an impressive number of St. Olaf students. In each case, the journey began in a van packed with students that Jim and his wife Donna drove each Sunday for 40 years on the 100-mile round trip from Northfield to St. Agnes in St. Paul. The students affectionately dubbed it the “May Train.”

The May’s youthful protegees have included a young Classics scholar who went on to enter the Church and become a cloistered nun; a student who became a Dominican priest and then director of music at the Pontifical North American College in Rome; a third who experienced a conversion and is now pastor of St. Hubert in Chanhassen, and a fourth who is a priest in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. All credit Jim and Donna with opening their eyes to the beauty and richness of a religious vocation.

Some might say the fruits of the May Train’s weekly 100-mile round trip would be enough for one lifetime. Not so for Jim, who is a true Renaissance man. He is a world-renowned expert on the great Roman orator Cicero. He rowed in the world’s only replica of an ancient Greek trireme battleship and built from scratch a harpsichord that’s a perfect replica of an instrument played by Handel.

He also built, with his father-in-law, the elaborate log house in rural Northfield where he and Donna live — and hand-crafted almost every piece of furniture in it. On weekends, he often scours the country for additions to his collection of antique vehicles, which includes nine antique John Deere tractors, a fire engine, and his pride and joy — a 1938 ¾ ton panel truck. Twice, he was state doubles handball champion in his age category. If that’s not enough, he retreats each night to the top floor of his log house and watches satellite television from Greece to keep up on his conversational Greek. “Needless to say, my sleep requirements are minimal,” he quipped. Jim and Donna, both now 71, have two adult sons and four grandchildren.

Life-long Catholic

Jim, a life-long Catholic who grew up in Ohio, spent his career as a Classics professor at St. Olaf, retiring in 2017. The college, which was founded in 1874 by Norwegian Lutheran immigrants and is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has the nation’s largest undergraduate Lutheran enrollment.

Jim’s Catholic faith integrated naturally with his teaching of Greek and Latin — ancient languages that played a vital role in salvation history. “I had occasion scores of times to teach New Testament Greek or Medieval Latin, where issues of faith and morality surface continually,” he explained.

His influence extended to campus life outside the classroom, as an adviser to Catholic student and pro-life groups on campus. Every day for 40 years, he wore his faith “on his sleeve”— displaying on his lapel the pin of the pro-life movement, which depicts the tiny feet of an unborn child at 12 weeks gestation. “My little pin was frequently a conversation starter … or ender,” Jim said. “Often, you couldn’t tell what people thought of it, but a number of folks in the St. Olaf community seemed to think it was at least a brave stand to take.”

Still, Jim’s Catholicism might have remained a footnote in his St. Olaf career, were it not for the extraordinary story of the May Train.

One of the former regular riders entered the Church in her sophomore year at St. Olaf and is now Sister Cecilia Maria, 38, a cloistered Passionist nun in Kentucky. “It was 100 percent by word-of-mouth invitation — friends inviting friends to ride ‘the May Train’ to experience the liturgy and have fellowship in the car,” she observed.

Another former student, Patrick Behling, 33, cold-called Jim after hearing about the May Train during his sophomore year at St. Olaf. “The next Sunday, Jim rolled up to campus in his pickup truck to take me to Mass, and he and Donna ended up driving me to and from St. Agnes every Sunday for the rest of my time in college,” he said. Behling, who said he was “won over” by the May Train and the St. Agnes experience, went on to become Father Behling and is now a priest in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

St. Olaf College is renowned for its music department, and many of the students who rode the May Train were initially drawn to investigate Catholicism by the beauty and reverence of St. Agnes’s music and liturgy, especially within the Novus Ordo Latin Mass celebrated there. For some, it was an encounter with Gregorian chant. For Jim’s students in the Classics department, it was an opportunity to see their study of Latin come alive. For others, it was Renaissance polyphony, including the opportunity to sing in Donna’s Chamber Choir. “Sharing the faith through sacred music is one of the greatest joys of my life,” Donna said. “To fill your senses with the beauty of art, architecture and music can bring you closer to the Maker of all that is good, true and beautiful.”

Worship at St. Agnes “drew me deeper into that language of rite and beauty, of mystery, of history, of the physical and spiritual senses,” explained Sister Cecilia. “It gave me a living context for my favorite subjects of study, Latin and Renaissance polyphony. Who knew that they actually had a world in which they lived and breathed, not just as a fun and beautiful thing to learn?”

“The austere beauty of Gregorian chant made a deep impression on my soul: made my soul sing with the power of tradition and continuity with the past,” explained Father Rolf Tollefson, 51, a convert who is now at St. Hubert.

Father Vincent Ferrer Began, 39, who was inspired by the May Train to join the Dominicans and recently left Rome’s North American College to become diocesan and music director at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington, Virginia, put it this way: “It was such a blessing to be able to sing this music in the context for which it was written and for the end for which it was written: the praise of God in the Church’s public worship.”

Jim summed up these students’ attraction to the faith like this: “I learned early on that young adults are searching — whether they know it or not — for their vocation, or their path in life, which will lead them to everlasting happiness.” At St. Agnes, he believes, this search began to yield answers: “Humans are affected in profound ways by the good, the true, and the beautiful.” In his view, St. Agnes successfully offered the Eucharist to these young people in a fitting environment of beauty through the treasury of sacred art and music.

Benefits of this exposure to St. Agnes did not flow only in the direction of the St. Olaf students. Donna said she has often needed additional singers, especially tenors and “a soprano who could pop out a high C for Allegri’s ‘Miserere Mei Deus’ on Good Friday.” She often found those singers at St. Olaf. “The Holy Spirit has many ways of fostering vocations … another win-win for the choir and the Lord,” she said.

The conversation on the May Train’s return trips from St. Agnes to Northfield offered “ample time for reflection on what we had just experienced,” Jim explained. Jim and Donna came amply prepared for these in-transit discussions. “I have made it almost a hobby to read widely on Church history, doctrine, and dogma,” says Jim, “and Donna taught religion in school for many years, so we were well-versed in the faith, which was a critical first step in imparting the faith to students.” In the end, however, he downplays his own role: “We only provided the transportation — the Holy Spirit and St. Agnes did the rest.” Sister Cecilia added that “worshipping and commuting with the Mays invited me to process what I experienced, to listen to their conversations and begin to experience the world and daily life through ‘Catholic eyes.’”

Open door

In addition to the weekly round trips, the Mays regularly opened their home to students who were far from family. Donna said when she was growing up, her family’s house was often filled with neighbors and friends. “Jim and I have tried to carry on this hospitality, and food is an important component. Inviting our priests, friends and local college students to share a home cooked meal and a good conversation opens hearts to the work of the Holy Spirit.” She added with a smile, “I often fall into playing Martha instead of Mary at these dinners.”

Sister Cecilia forged a familial relationship with the Mays during Thanksgiving and Easter celebrations at their home. “I’ve affectionately called them my Catholic Mom and Dad for years.” In the Mays, she says, “I witnessed Catholicism fully alive, so much the more beautiful and challenging as it was thoroughly real, incarnate in the joys and sorrows and frustrations of sometimes-messy real life.” She could see in their hearts and lives “a lived and earthy version of the sublime realities we encountered and celebrated in the high liturgies of St. Agnes.”

Jim emphasizes that Donna was a key influence on these students, especially in her role as director of the St. Agnes Chamber Choir. “When the students sang Renaissance music in her choir—in the surroundings of a beautiful baroque church—they were definitely moved closer to God. Donna and I are firm believers in the old adage that singing in church choir is like praying twice.”

In addition to her impact on the students, Jim credits Donna’s constant self-gift to him as essential to all his accomplishments — whether it be his impact on St. Olaf students or “all the wild and crazy ideas and activities I’ve gotten myself into, from handball tournaments, trips to Texas to pick up tractors, rowing triremes, and the rest.” Through it all, Jim is convinced “I couldn’t have done half the stuff I’ve accomplished if it hadn’t been for her unending and selfless support — I often end up getting the credit, but she deserves it as much or more than I do.”

When some of the May Train riders began considering religious life, the Mays became steadying confidants in this momentous decision. After Father Behling told them he was thinking about entering the seminary, he said, “Jim and Donna told me about the priests they most admired, and the St. Olaf students who had converted in the back seat of their car and gone on to become priests and religious.” “To them,” he added, “it was totally normal for a young Catholic man to want to be a priest, and that confidence gave me some important freedom for my discernment.”

Father Tollefson, too, believed that “Jim May verified the call that I already felt deeply stirring in my soul.”

When asked about his and Donna’s remarkable impact on religious vocations, Jim answered by reflecting on their own vocations. “At a very young age, I decided I wanted to teach Latin and the classics — that this would be my vocation—and Donna decided on teaching as her vocation just a few years later in college. We have always viewed ‘vocation’ as a call from God, every bit as sacred and serious as those calls to others who enter the religious life.” In explanation, he invokes one of the old Baltimore Catechism’s first questions: “Why did God make us?” and points to its answer: “God made us to show forth His goodness and to share with Him His everlasting happiness in heaven.”

He added that, “while I never openly wear my Catholic faith on my sleeve, in a proselytizing fashion, I tried throughout my 40-plus years of teaching to provide a model of someone who is attempting to live his life in accord with his Catholic faith.”

Father Behling believes it’s simple: “The Mays just live proudly, robustly Catholic lives. They have internalized the spirit of the liturgy, which is the very breath of the Church’s life.” He also believes their lightness of spirit is key: “The obvious fulfillment they derive from life in the Church is winsome and attractive, especially for young people who so often have been adrift their whole lives and are looking for rootedness and identity and meaning, whether they know it or not.”

Sister Cecilia said she was inspired by Jim and Donna because they are “thoroughly and unabashedly Catholic.” “For the first time in my life,” she said, “I discovered that Sunday worship and daily life are not two different things; they are just two different settings of the same glorious music.”

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EMBRACING CHRIST’S CALL

In struggles that Sister Cecilia Maria, a cloistered Passionist nun in Kentucky, experienced as her attraction to religious life grew, she said Jim and Donna May offered “a safe sounding board.” However, especially as she drew near graduation, Jim had become an academic mentor as well as a spiritual adviser. She remembered one episode in which these roles “whipped up a bit of a storm in my spiritual life and in my discernment.”

Sister Cecilia, an outstanding student, had long dreamed of an academic career that would begin with a Ph.D. in Classics or Scripture Studies. In her senior year, she was accepted at a number of prestigious universities, and all offered fellowships.

At the same time, however, it became clear to her in prayer that God was asking her to pursue a different course of study elsewhere. “The only reason he gave me at the time was that it was because of the vocation he had in mind for me,” she recalled. She decided to follow the course God set for her in answer to her prayers. It was a difficult choice, she said, “but the grace and clarity of this ‘message’ from the Lord seemed so certain that I believed the matter was settled.”

Shortly afterward, at lunch after Mass, Jim asked her if she had decided where to attend graduate school. When she joyfully announced her decision, he responded with shock and asked her to explain. She described her experiences at prayer, then asked, “Should I just ignore all that?” Jim leaned back and answered a long “nooo!,” she recalled, but added with deep seriousness, “You need to know that if you make this choice, you are throwing away your academic career.”

“The next morning, after a rough night, I shared with Jim how he had really scared me,” she recalled. In response, “he fully supported my sense of vocation and fidelity to God’s grace,” but reiterated that she needed to embrace its lifelong consequences. “His challenge to me, as both Catholic father figure and academic mentor, helped steel me in my resolve to follow Christ crucified wherever he led: To begin to choose hiddenness and littleness, rather than the praise and acclaim of this world.”

Jim was not unique among those, including other professors and mentors, who warned her about the consequences of her choice, according to Sister Cecilia. What was different about him, however, was that “he did not treat me or my vocation as ‘less than’.” Jim told her the truth, that “by choosing to follow the Lord on the path he was setting before me, I was turning away from my dreams and aptitudes in academia. But at the same time, he admired and supported and encouraged in me the strength needed to make such a choice.” Jim “believed in the value and beauty and power of a religious vocation, and he knew that I would hardly be ‘less than’ by following God’s call to become a nun.”