‘Operation Carry the Cross’: Sterling native to carry 12-foot cross up Mount Wachusett

By Bill Doyle | CFP Correspondent

Noah Hajdu wants to feel closer to Jesus and he’s chosen a special way to do it.
This Noah will build a cross, not an ark.
Mr. Hajdu, 23, of Sterling, plans to carry a 12-foot high wooden cross up Wachusett Mountain to raise money for Campus Ministry in the Diocese of Worcester. He calls it “Operation Carry the Cross.”
“Maybe if I do this,” he said, “people will say, ‘Wow, he’s so driven in his faith,’ and maybe they’ll question why I’m so driven in my own faith that they’ll look more into it and change for themselves. My main reason for doing so is to be closer to God and do something good.”
Father Derek A. Mobilio, pastor of Our Lady of the Angels Parish in Worcester, and chaplain at Worcester State University, will accompany Mr. Hajdu up the mountain and celebrate Mass afterward at the top.
The date of the trek up the mountain is tentatively scheduled for June 6, pending further planning with the Massachusetts Department for Conservation and Recreation.
A senior at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., Mr. Hajdu was inspired to carry a cross up the mountain after he visited the Fred W. Symmes Chapel, also known as “Pretty Place,” in Cleveland, S.C., last October. The open-air chapel on Stone Mountain overlooks the Blue Ridge Mountains. Mr. Hajdu drove five hours to the chapel while visiting his brother Jake, a baseball player at Elon University in Elon, N.C.
He was so moved when he visited the chapel that a photo of it serves as the screen saver on his phone.
“I was the only one there,” he said. “So I was able to pray on top of that mountain and see the cross overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
The experience motivated him to build a cross and climb up Mount Wachusett with it.
Fortunately for Mr. Hajdu, his father, Charlie, is a master carpenter. On Jan. 5, the two of them built the cross out of Douglas fir in four hours. The cross is 12 feet high and weighs 130 pounds. The horizontal cross beam is six feet wide.
Many historians and biblical scholars believe Jesus carried only the crossbeam, which weighed 70-100 pounds, because the main vertical post had already been positioned in the ground at the execution site.
Mr. Hajdu, who is 5-foot-9, 200 pounds, has hiked up Mount Wachusett many times with friends and he wore a 20-pound weighted vest on a recent trip during winter break. He enjoys lifting weights so he thinks he’ll be able to carry the cross up the mountain.
Father Mobilio has urged Mr. Hajdu to accept help if he needs it, but Mr. Hajdu would like to carry the cross by himself. He said he would be more willing to accept help on the way back down.
“I wanted to carry the cross as a testament of faith,” he said, “but also a testament of how much I can push my body to do.”
Jesus carried his cross through Jerusalem for his crucifixion after being condemned to death by Pontius Pilate. When he was too weak to continue, the Romans forced Simon of Cyrene to help him.
“It’s going to be hard to carry the cross up the mountain,” Mr. Hajdu said, “but it’s not going to be anything compared to what Jesus endured. Maybe I’ll get a little bit more of a sense of what it was actually like for him. If this is difficult, I can’t even imagine what he went through, which is also kind of motivating me. If he did that, then I can do this for my faith.”
“Noah is amazing,” Father Mobilio said. “I’m so impressed with the idea. I think it’s awesome. But also, I think it’s something that we should expect of our young men – to want to do great things and to do difficult things, not for ourselves but for the glory of God.”
When he walks up the mountain alongside Mr. Hajdu, Father Mobilio plans to carry a 15-pound altar stone in his backpack to use during Mass.
This won’t be the first Mass that Father Mobilio has celebrated atop Mount Wachusett. In the fall of 2024, when he was associate pastor at Our Lady of Hope Parish in Grafton, he and college students timed their hike up in the dark with headlamps and flashlights just before sunrise so that when he elevated the Eucharist over his head, the sun was shining over the horizon.
Mr. Hajdu plans to carry the cross up the stone steps of the 1.2-mile Pine Hill Trail. His past trips up the mountain took him about 30 minutes, but he expects to take much longer while carrying the cross on his shoulder.
Mr. Hadju contacted the diocese to see who he should contact about donating funds and he was told to reach out to Father Mobilio and he did. They decided to try to raise as much as possible toward the $70,000 that the diocese pays for the health insurance and summer training for Team Worcester’s four campus missionaries.
To pledge, visit worcestervocations.com/operation. 
Father Donato Infante, director of the Office for Vocations in the diocese, helped Mr. Hajdu create the website to receive donations.
All donations will support campus ministry in the Diocese of Worcester. The suggested donation is $5. If someone donates $20 or more in memory of someone, the deceased’s name will be written on the cross. So far, he’s raised about $1,000.
Mr. Hajdu’s parents, Charlie and Kim, his brother Jake and friends from St. John’s will also accompany him up the mountain.
He spreads the word about “Operation Carry the Cross” each week on 
Instagram at instagram.com/noahhajdu.
Mr. Hajdu played baseball for St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury, the Winchendon School and Lafayette before two surgeries on his left knee ended his playing days. For the past two years, he’s assisted the Lafayette baseball coaching staff by hitting fly balls to outfielders, working with players on base running, compiling scouting reports and helping out with social media. He will accompany the team to Holy Cross for Patriot League games March 27-29.
Mr. Hajdu grew up a parishioner at St. Richard of Chichester Parish in Sterling, but he stopped going to Mass when he became busy with baseball. At Lafayette, a couple of teammates convinced him to return to church and Father Keaton Eidle, parochial vicar at St. Jane Frances de Chantal Parish in Easton, Pa., helped him regrow in faith. Father Mobilio thought raising money for campus ministry was fitting because Mr. Hajdu regained his faith in college.
After graduating from Lafayette in May, Mr. Hajdu plans to move down South to become a commercial real estate broker, but he also plans to continue his “Operation Carry the Cross” campaign by carrying the cross up more mountains in support of other causes.