the72: Jerome Hall - Service in All Things

For most of my life, I’ve been particularly fond of service-focused activities. I’m not sure when exactly it started, but I have a sneaking suspicion my parents are at least partly to blame for it. While I was growing up, they often dragged me to all kinds of service events. Somewhere along the line, I started not only enjoying those events, but making decisions to seek them out myself.

This desire to serve took on various forms. Sometimes it was simply a desire to help out in a behind the scenes capacity, like when I started altar serving at Mass (highlight of third grade). Other times, the service was more driven towards solidarity and understanding, such as the 30 Hour Famine I participated in every year in high school.

When it came time to look for colleges, availability of service opportunities was one of my criteria. I don’t think I ever thought about it in concrete terms, but in all the mailings and campus tours, any mentions of a service-friendly environment stood out to me. In the back of my mind, I’d begun to realize that a major part of my Christian ministry was to serve.

During my senior year of college, in the midst of looking for a job, I was concerned about how I was going to be able to fulfill my desire for service "in the real world." Sometimes I felt self-conscious about my major and its lack of immediately obvious benefits to the world. A bunch of my friends were going into various service programs after they graduated to do things like teach at understaffed schools or volunteer at medical clinics.

Compared to those options, my eight-to-five office job made me feel like I was turning my back on my calling to serve. I felt that I was settling for the comfort of a regular paycheck instead of pursuing options more directly aligned with service. Despite my reservations, I accepted a job with a software consulting firm in Chicago.

After moving to Chicago, I had an easy time finding service opportunities outside of work. There are plenty of problems in big cities, which meant plenty of challenges and opportunities to address them. I joined a parish with an active young adult community, full of opportunities to serve both internally and externally. I got involved with a local domestic violence shelter, helping plan fundraising events. 

For a while, I thought that maybe this was just how it was going to be. Work was work, and I could find opportunities to be a good Christian and live out my ministry in my non-work time. It wasn’t until Dan asked me to write this blog post that I really did much reflection on those conflicting feelings I had during senior year, but looking back, I think my concern was based mostly on the idea that my job was my ministry.

I was feeling a struggle between doing what I had spent four years getting good at (programming) and what I felt called to do (serve others). What I have discovered since then is that not only can my ministry exist outside of my job, but that I can also incorporate my desire to serve as a part of my job as well.

Not only could I bring my ministry into my job, but it was something I’d been doing already without realizing it. When I empty all the mugs in the dishwasher (not just the one I need) or take the time to help a new hire get familiar with how certain aspects of our office life works, those are opportunities for me to help out and serve. They may not be big items – I’m not about to solve world hunger with some sweet HTML – but they are still ways that I can further live out my ministry. Ways that I can incorporate my ministry into all parts of my life.

Jerome Hall graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2012 with a BS in Computer Science. While at Notre Dame, Jerome was a Resident Assistant in Duncan Hall, a Mentor-in-Faith with Notre Dame Vision, a sports photographer for Scholastic Magazine, and belonged to the Disc Golf and Juggling Clubs. Originally from Fort Branch, IN, Jerome now lives in Chicago, IL, where he works as an associate at Pariveda Solutions doing software consulting. Jerome can be contacted at jeromephall@gmail.com.

FaithND Daily Reflection - February 9, 2015

This post is part of FaithND's daily posts, serving as the Reflection to go with the daily Gospel and saint bio. Visit faith.nd.edu for more info or to subscribe to their blasts. The original post can be found here.

In the Gospel, Jesus gets flocked by people seeking advice, guidance, and cures.

Often, it takes begging and pleading to get to Jesus: The paralytic’s friends have to climb the roof of a house, break through, and lower their friend to Jesus to be healed (Mark 2:12). The centurion has to plead on behalf of his servant before he is healed (Mark 8:5-13). The blind beggar Bartimaeus has to plead with the disciples to get Jesus to stop before having his sight restored (Mark 10:46-52).

Seemingly, everyone is hungry for the love of God and the healing that God brings. In fact, Mark tells us in this Gospel that people in the time of Jesus “begged that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak.” Even the briefest encounter with Christ brings peace, for all who touched his cloak were healed.

Though we can’t stake out the next road Jesus is walking and touch his cloak, the healing of God is no further from us than it was from the people of first century Palestine. For us, healing comes in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in prayerfully reflecting and investing in our Penitential Rite at Mass, and in making conscientious apologies and offering others authentic forgiveness. We just need to make some effort to reach out, like the people in this Gospel.

Maybe we don’t always make time for Confession. Maybe we enter into the Penitential Rite mechanically. Maybe we take our relationships for granted. But if we can focus ourselves in these moments and reach out in faith, perhaps we can at least graze the cloak of Jesus and find healing—for he is always looking for us, even before we seek him.

__________

The Gospel passage this reflection reacts to is Mark 6:53-56:

When they had crossed over, Jesus and his disciples came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.

And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

the72: Melissa Cedillo - Faith for the Both of Us

I have been involved in campus ministry, read about other people’s ministry, and I even googled the definition of the word ministry. As I’ve understood it, to live out one’s ministry simply means to live out one’s vocation, to find those gifts God has blessed one with, and use them every day. Being that I am college student, I am still unclear of what my vocational call is quite yet. So when the question, “How are you living out your ministry?” was asked, I was kind of taken back.

So, just like any Jesuit school student would do, I began to reflect.

When thinking about where God had been in my life, I thought of a friend. It was in the midst of challenges with this friend that I had to lean on my God-given gifts to overcome my friend’s doubt. Consumed in a cloud of depression, this friend had begin to lose sight of the big picture.

My friend had come to believe because of all of their mistakes, God could no longer overlook their flaws. This friend began to see themself as unworthy of God’s love and forgiveness. For months, I watched my friend struggle with faith and hope, which in return, stumped me as well. How do you give advice or support when statements like “Give up it to God, and pray” simply do not cut it.

Lucky for me I had seen the way this friend had shined once before. This friend had demonstrated friendship to many so many times before that they had defined unconditional friendship. Last semester, I had started college at a school in Oregon. While I was up there, I, too, began to slip into a gloomy outlook on life. I felt unproductive and unmotivated. There were a good three weeks where all I did was go to class, and watch Netflix. I missed God, and sunk into a self-created depression.

I firmly believe that when you are about to go through a rough time in life, God places people in your life to help you get through that event. I was able to survive last semester because my friends refused to see me lose my faith. My best friends and boyfriend would remind me how to be myself. It sounds so silly, but it’s true. They would call to make sure I did things with my day, or send funny care packages.

When our good friends lose their way, it’s our job to remember their blessings. It our duty to recall the things that made them happy, and most importantly to remind them of the relationship they once shared with God.

Regardless, of the hardships last semester brought, my friends reminded me that the best had yet to come. These friends’ being present prevented me from ever thinking that God was absent or had given up on me. Looking at where I am this semester, at a new school, loving life, and watching God work through my daily life, I had just lived out the advice I needed to give my friend. While my friend had thought they had no self-worth left, they were the very face of God for me.

They way I think about it is, my friend and I are looking at the same downhill street. I can kind of see the end of the street – it’s not clear, but I know it’s there. I can kind of make out a flower that survived a rainstorm, and sort of see the sun starting to come back out. My friend is standing right next to me, looking down the same street.

However, from their perspective, there are untrimmed trees, bushes, and vines blocking the view. The end of the street is cloudy and grey, and the sun looks like it’s never coming back. The ministry of friendship calls us to pull them to where we are standing, and show them the bigger picture, to remind them that the sun does in fact come back out.

It’s apparent that in the Gospel, Jesus didn’t just say he would be a friend of faith; He showed it too. I realized that I was at a solid place in my faith, and this could be used to my advantage. I needed to be creative on how I was going to help my friend. So I began to think differently. I would go to Mass and dedicate all the love I had gained from a homily to this friend. In moments where I was hopeful, I asked God to show my friend the same type of hope. I would pray for enemies when they couldn’t, and loved them even more at their worst moments. I would send my friend devotionals that spoke about losing hope, and made sure they never stopped going to Communion.

I remembering thinking, “For now, I’m going to have enough faith for the both of us. You will get through this.” I was going to love my best friend through it, just as God does for us.

Friendship is such a powerful gift. It challenges you to be God’s voice, when your best friend can’t find their own light. It reminds you that God is always rooting for you, not against you. Eventually, your friend will ask how you have hope, or why. It is then when you get to share the good news, and remind them that the best has yet to come.

God teaches us how to be a good friend, and embrace suffering. More than that, He teaches how to find ones faith again. This is what I would call the ministry of friendship. I believe that it’s a ministry we are all called to, and it can accompany any vocation.

Melissa Cedillo graduated from Xavier College Prep in Palm Desert, CA, in 2014, where she was involved in Campus Ministry and Student Council, among other things. From Palm Desert, CA, Melissa is currently a freshmen at Loyola Marymount (CA), where she is beginning a double-major in Theology and Biology. Melissa can be reached at melissann19@icloud.com. (Editor's note: I was Melissa's confirmation sponsor.)

the72: Colin Campbell - A Sense of Ministry

A couple weeks ago, at 6:36pm, I opened my phone and was met by a mysterious message…

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is simply – “how do you live your ministry?”

How do I live my ministry? Immediately I was hit upside the head with words and emotions and memories and impressions:

• Poorly
• Enthusiastically 
• Successfully 
• Half-heartedly 
• Joyfully 
• Humbly 
• With laughter 
• With tears 
• Accidentally 
• Instinctively 
• LOVE THEM 

Every day brings a different situation and every situation brings different answers to the question of how I live my ministry. But in the midst of that chaotic cloud of words banging around between my temples there was one unifying theme… I live my ministry. I (me, Colin Campbell) live (with my whole self) my (the specific role I was called to) ministry (vocation as a minister). I live my ministry with every part of my being.

Right now, my ministry is my life, and my life is my ministry. It’s not an easy idea to express and many times it’s not an easy life to live, but I don’t want an easy life… I want a life that fulfills me. And I know that that will only happen when I am following God’s call for me. God’s call for me right now: “Love them. Love them with your whole mind, heart, soul and body.” Three of those make sense… but how do I love them with my body?

This is my reflection on that question.

Eyes

They say a really good teacher can prevent 90% of classroom discipline with just their eyes. A look of disapproval, a look of love, a look of what are you doing, can do amazing things. But sometimes there are things that are seen that just can’t be ignored. This is one of those moments…

I was in my normal place outside the cafeteria when the bell rang and the stampede began. In the middle of the chaos a student of mine pulled his hand out of his pocket to give me a hey sign as he passed, but something else slipped out of his pocket at the same time. It was purple, and rubber, and open, and definitely not supposed to be in school. A condom on the floor in a high school can’t be ignored.

My eyes saw something and in dealing with it, amazing things happened. Who could’ve guessed that this student needed someone to talk to about his sexuality? He had questions that he couldn’t talk to his friends about. He had reservations about what he was doing. He needed something to start the conversation… and believe you me, a condom on the floor was a pretty unavoidable beginning. Was it uncomfortable, yes. But it was 1,000 times more rewarding.

Mouth

The things I say and the way I say them are an enormous part of my ministry. But recently I’ve realized that what I say out loud is only a part of the words that form my life of ministry. The words of my personal prayers are equally, if not more, important.

A Spiritual Mentor of mine, Fr. Ted Hesburgh, has a favorite prayer and it has quickly become mine as well. Many times every single day I find myself murmuring his (and now my) personal prayer –“Come Holy Spirit.” Come, give me the right words. Come, help me speak like you. Come, help me not to laugh! Come, be with this student. Come and join in the fun! In every moment in my ministry I hope that the Holy Spirit feels welcome, I just need to use my words to invite him in.

Nose

Loving with my nose. I guess it might be safer to say loving in spite of my nose in this case.

In my ministry at the parish we have spent the last 10 months dreaming about creating a space for our high school youth group and it finally happened! It sounds like a great idea to invite the young people to help until you have a room full of wet paint and shoe-less high school students… IT SMELLED! Seriously, there was something ripe happening in that room, but there was also something amazing that made it all worth it. These students realized that their parish cared about them. In giving them a place to call their own they realized that they have a place in the Church (a physical place and a proverbial place) to call home. If it takes a couple hours of a smelly room to make that happen then I would do it any day.

Touch

For good reason there are limitations on how a minister can physically interact with students, but a lot of ministry can be done with just a simple touch. And it can happen in so many ways!

A fist bump on the way into an exam. A high-five celebration for getting that GPA back up to a 2.5! Handing over a box of Kleenex at just the right moment. A hand on the shoulder during prayer. A touch of affirmation from a friend during a retreat activity. Holding hands during group prayer. All of these are ways of communicating love without a single word being spoken, and sometimes the message is all the clearer for it.

I once had a student tell me in an application to be a retreat leader: “...at that moment I was sitting there crying because I had never had a male role model in my life. I thought I was the last one in the room but someone stopped and put their hand on my shoulder and I knew it was Mr. Campbell. It seemed like he was telling me that he was there and that he cared about me. I realized then that I was surrounded by men who would be there if I needed anything.” I could’ve spent 15 minutes telling him that I would be there if he needed anything, but he got the message loud and clear in just a couple seconds of praying for him with my hand on his shoulder.

Ears

Maybe the most important skill in ministry is listening, and it’s the one that I needed to work on the most when I first started. Here’s one final story that shows that it isn’t always necessary to have the right words to say.

I was sitting there in my Campus Ministry Room, in my ugly green recliner when he came in. I had never had a real conversation with him but he started in nonetheless…

Student: “I need to talk to you”

Me: “Sure thing. Table or couches?” (an important and sometimes revelatory choice)

Student: “That table’s fine… So, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. What has happened was… A lot of stuff is happening at home… I haven’t seen my dad in a long time… my mom and stepdad really aren’t getting along… my stepdad mistreats me and my mom… he’s a lot bigger than me… it makes me so mad, but I can’t stop him… they’re getting a divorce but we can’t move out… the only thing I have left sometimes if my faith… I just pray that God is with us…”

Me: “Name that’s amazing that you still turn to your faith. It’s true that God is always there and sometimes that’s the only thing that keeps me going too. But I hope you know you’re never alone, a lot of people at school are here for you. What can we do to help?”

Student: “I don’t know… I just needed to talk to someone… (more that I won’t include)”

Me: “Let’s plan to keep checking in regularly”

Student: “That would be good.” He stands up and starts to stretch like he’s going into a boxing ring and with a little smile on his face, “Man! It feels good to just get that stuff out!” He smiles and leaves the room.
_____

So there are five little glimpses into how I live my ministry and how I love in every way I can. It can be exhausting at times, but when it does I always come back to my current favorite Bible passage… (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17) Always be joyful, never stop praying.

Colin Campbell graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2013 with a BA in Theology. At Notre Dame, Colin sang and played percussion in the Notre Dame Folk Choir, served twice as a Mentor-in-Faith for Notre Dame Vision, and worked as a campus tour guide. After graduating, Colin was accepted to Notre Dame's ECHO Faith Formation Program. ECHO placed him in Indianapolis, IN, where he serves both as the assistant Campus Minister at a Cristo Rey High School and as the Youth Minister at a nearby Catholic parish. Colin will take his comprehensive exams this summer for his MA in Theology through ECHO. He can be reached at ccampbell0203@gmail.com.

One Thing at a Time

I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning, laptop in lap, with my Sunday morning SportsCenter on the TV, kind of par-for-the-course multi-tasking. But I just turned it off, because I was hardly paying attention to most of the content and frankly it was letting me procrastinate from doing anything I really wanted to be doing and ought to be doing - in this case, on this Sunday morning, writing.

10-15 years ago, when laptops were just getting realistically portable, or when we still relied primarily on desktop computers, would we really have acted like this? How silly would it look to have an entertainment center with TV on adjacent to the desktop computer work station, both screens on and delivering information and input into your face? Yet today, it's commonplace for anyone sitting in front of a TV to have one or more of their laptop, tablet, and/or phone in use while the television blathers on "in the background."

I've become a lot more aware of my defaulting to multi-tasking, or multi-media-ing. I try to sort through the situations in which I default to it and really decide if I'm overloading myself or if it's fine and innocuous. Sitting down to check sports, news, social media, and email and pop on the TV? Too much. Setting up The Simpsons on my iPad while I cook dinner? Perfectly fine. Taking out my iPad to tool around while the live sporting event I sat down to watch is in action? Too much. Firing up ESPN Radio or NPR at my desk at work? Fine.

So far, I don't really have a clear sense of the reasons why I feel like it's more ok some times than others. Starting from instinct, I kind of ask, "is there any reason to have both going?" When my butt's on my couch at home, it's silly to put on ESPN since half or so of my internet dabblings will give me the same (or better) news and analysis the TV will provide. When I'm cooking, most of the time, I'm going off time-tested recipes and routine, so I'm not really focused on intricacies and enjoy the light-heartedness and humor of a funny show while I complete meal prep.

I think, for me, what it comes down to is whether or not I have a task at hand that demands, merits, or invites greater focus. What's the point of going through my go-to sites for stories to read if I'm only skimming them while listening to the TV and opening more tabs to stories I'm going to half-read? Why make a point of sitting down to a live sporting event if I'm going to compulsively check my email or social media feeds during the live action? I'm trying to be more conscious about reading stories through to their full conclusion instead of anxiously rushing to get to the next tab. I'm trying to leave my iPad closed until commercial breaks or at least until intermissions and halftimes.

And I see it in my peers, too. As a non-subscriber to Netflix, I remember being extremely jarred the first time I witnessed a friend put on a long-running comedy they said they were catching up on, only to find that they just let it play in auto-play while reading and doing other things. While sitting around the other day, two friends and I had completely tuned out the TV until I noticed a marginal college basketball game that none of us cared about was blaring on in the background - white noise to our overloaded senses.

And I think looking at the effect that multi-tasking has had on me shows me that the threshold for what gets one's full attention is getting super high.

DVR, streaming services, and pirate sites have made TV a bit too accessible; whereas before it was appointment viewing, now we take highly for granted the opportunity to watch a desired show. The proliferation of WiFi, hotspots, and cellular data has made the internet ubiquitous, and now we search for an endless stream of apps, games, and bookmarks to give us a steady inflow of material to scour all day long. The ever sleeker, thinner, higher-battery-life laptops, tablets, and smartphones allow us to perpetuate this plugged-in mode anytime, anyplace.

Rarely do we ever find ourselves anymore in a situation where we simply have to let whatever is going on around us be the focus of our attention. It used to be that these behaviors were reserved for waiting rooms, when you'd pick up a magazine and read whatever was there since you were held captive by the appointment slate behind the reception desk.

Now, we take the waiting-room mentality everywhere we go. We do the modern technological equivalent of magazine-reading-in-a-waiting room every time we get a chance, even when we're in a colorful scene outside, in the midst of watching a show we specifically put on, or even if we're in the company of friends.

We default heavily toward needing to personalize all aspects of what garners our attention, and it makes it difficult for anything to break into our preference shield. Basically, are we willing to take in the world around us? Are we willing to give a teacher our attention, on the chance that we might learn something unexpected? Are we willing to wait an hour, a half hour, even five minutes to refresh our social media feeds while paying attention to something outside our control?

Why am I attempting this scattered rant on a spirituality blog? This is a dangerous trend for our faith and spirituality.

People have always complained about Mass as being long and boring, but how much worse could that aversion get in this culture? Can people go 60 minutes? Will believers give the Scripture lections any attention? Will we pre-tune-out priests' homilies even worse than before? Will we slog through the Eucharistic prayer knowing it's the last part before we can bust our phones back out?

Can we sustain personal prayer with our hands empty and our devices more than arm's length away? Will we leave God enough open-ended-ness in our thought processes to speak to us?

Computers thrive on Random Access Memory (RAM), their ability to run multiple applications and keep the user's activity steady. I think it's a good thing for humanity to use, maximize, and increase its RAM. It enables us to maximize our gifts and talents to create, innovate, and serve one another. But more isn't always better. If we each have 8GB of RAM running through our brains and hearts, we have to be equally able to distribute our RAM across various tasks at once and to be able to focus our RAM on one particular task.

I'm trying harder to turn the TV off when I'm on my computer, to leave my iPad aside while I'm watching a show or game I made time to watch, and to embrace opportunities to focus 100% of my tasking on one thing, like writing a blog post or doing Sunday Mass.

Do you have enough space in your brain to give God and others the attention they deserve? Are you too busy watching Netflix while you surf Twitter and listen to music? What good is our multi-tasking ability if we can laugh at a TV show while texting friends and surfing the web but can't choose moments to focus all of it on our God who loves us?

the72: Bella Bianco - Strike a Balance

Finals are all consuming. For months at a time you cling to a never-ending to-do list of assignments that leads up to the dreaded finals week. Usually, it is a time of controlled panic: caffeine addictions surface; breakouts pop up from stress; dark circles take hold; and sickness often looms.

One can feel like he or she is drowning in material that must be studied. That feeling is only intensified if a particular final could make or break a grade in a class. For that week nothing else seems to matter, not even your health.

However, this finals week I was given the opportunity to step back from it all. My friend Amy and I had decided to take a break from studying for our bio exam to get some dinner. I was cursing my roommate for getting me sick at such an inopportune time, and Amy was stressing about a particularly challenging chapter in bio. We both wanted the week to be over as soon as possible.

Our trek back to the library took us by the front of the Golden Dome, and without speaking, we both stopped and looked up. Even with a grey backdrop, it was as beautiful as ever, and after a silent moment, Amy said something out loud that I had been thinking just a couple weeks earlier: “You know what, everyone is all stressed out about finals, but we are so lucky just to be taking finals at Notre Dame! Pshh even if I fail all of my finals I will be happy to have had the opportunity to take them here.”

With that remark I was pulled from my own head and my focus shifted from what had to be done in the future to the present. She was right. Not only did we have the opportunity to attend college, but we were attending our dream school. It was an opportunity I had fantasized about as a middle- and high-schooler, and I was so caught up in my grades and test scores that it was passing me by without notice.

What was even more scary was that I had vowed just a few months earlier not to let that happen and just a couple weeks earlier that I would remain grateful for the opportunity to take finals at such a great place regardless of how difficult they might be. I promised myself I wouldn’t lose sight of God and all that He had given me and yet I still fell victim to finals week.

I am thankful that, in an ordinary walk back to the library, God reached out to me through Amy and called me to be present and therefore also thankful and happy during a time that is filled with anxiety and stress. I was better off that week because of it.

This however was not a one and done occurrence. There will be more finals weeks, more times in my life when there doesn’t seem much to be thankful for, when looking forward seems like the only option. So the question begs, how can I be more attuned to God’s call to be present?

I think there is a way in which I can work backwards. If God’s call to be present opened the doors to being thankful then being thankful can lead one to be present. The act of giving thanks requires you to recognize that which you have already been given. Intentionally naming those things that already bless your life raises a greater awareness to their existence and lessens the chance that something, as simple as a sunny day for example, will be overlooked and taken for granted.

But God’s call to be present goes beyond just being thankful. Authentic presence to God, friends, family, and the like requires a giving of self. Naturally, I only have so much of myself to give away. If I spend more time and energy being truly present to a friend then I have less time and energy to devote to schoolwork.

In order to live out my ministry as a student and perhaps one day as a doctor, I must strike a balance between assignments and friends, family and work, patients and myself, in a way that is oriented towards God. My ultimate ministry is to be Christ-like, to give myself completely over to God. My human nature is that I simply cannot be present to everything all the time.

So as student, friend, daughter, doctor, etc. I must abstain from getting lost in any one of my other ministries in a way that detracts from my ultimate ministry. During finals week I had become so focused on my current vocation as student that I lost sight of my vocation to be Christ-like. And it wasn’t until the moment in front of the dome that I was able to reorient myself in gratitude towards God.

Bella Bianco graduated from Xavier College Prep in Palm Desert, CA, in 2013, where she was involved in softball, soccer, Mock Trial, Campus Ministry, and Student Council. A native of Indian Wells, CA, Bella is currently a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame. She worked this past summer as a Mentor-in-Faith for Notre Dame Vision and is a member of the Anchor Leadership program. Bella is double-majoring in Pre-Health Studies and Philosophy. Bella can be reached at ibianco@nd.edu.

the72: Katherine Jones - Wordlessly Communicating God's Love

I am blessed with many wonderful, wonderful friends. They are the kinds of people who have dedicated their lives to ministry, who tirelessly studied Theology in college, who overcommit themselves in the pursuit of bringing God’s Word to others. Somehow, most of my best friends are teachers at Catholic schools, campus ministers at Catholic schools, or parish ministers at Catholic churches.

And here I am, dedicating my life to a fully secular work, in which I could likely be fired--or at least heavily chastised--for openly speaking the Gospel. However, as I have learned, the workplace doesn’t have to have the word “Catholic” in it for the job to be ministerial.

My favorite time of day is roughly 0637. No, I'm not a morning person; the jaws of life pry me out of bed on a daily basis. But by 0610 I'm on the train (God willing), and by 0636 it pulls into my downtown Chicago stop where I hustle out of the carriage and into a crowd of commuters. The group glides up two escalators like highly intelligent salmon (I said it), and by 0637, it spills out onto the street.

And then I see it: a veritable army in scrubs, moving swiftly east on Chicago Street towards the two-block long cluster of hospitals on Chicago’s lake shore. We never talk or even make eye contact, but there’s always a sense of solidarity: even though we march amid the suits and business-casuals, our mission is different. And so at 0637, we shuffle off to battle.

And, let me tell you, it is hard on the front lines. As a Patient Care Technician at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, I am at the beck and call of my patients, my nurses, and my bosses. My allotted half hour for lunch frequently goes unused, and I never file for the extra pay that’s otherwise automatically docked. I am expected to transfer patients twice my body weight, to clean every dirty diaper (even if I had changed it a mere minutes previously), to keep track of how much each patient drank and how much they peed, and to make sure that they are comfortable and safe at all times. I go home at the end of each shift aching and exhausted--but also strangely energized. Because, despite the fact that I make a living wiping someone else’s ass, I love my job. And here’s why: the grunt work grants me the opportunity to simultaneously serve and witness.

This army of scrubs, this branch of the Church Militant, allows me to channel my natural instinct for anonymity into something productive. I am never offended when my patients ask for my name multiple times; a hospital room is a rotating door of personnel. Instead, I sink into the anonymity. In losing myself in these acts of mercy--caring for the sick, counseling the doubtful, comforting the sorrowful--I lose myself in Christ. Although I may leave the hospital questioning the technical adequacy of my care, I never question the spirit in which it was done.

The skills will come with time; the ministry prevails. By carrying God in everything that I do, I hope to wordlessly communicate His love to those who need it most, reassuring them that human worth has nothing to do with health status.

Love Actually begins in an airport terminal with images of loved ones embracing after periods of time apart, Hugh Grant’s dreamy voice narrating: “If you look carefully, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that love actually is all around.” Our love, God’s love, is always with us; but in the hospital, that love is piercingly, achingly present. It reveals itself in the wife who daily visits her husband, the victim of a terrible brain injury that has left him vacant-eyed and unable to focus; still, she gazes at him like a newlywed, with unbridled affection that makes you marvel at the strength of her love. I have come to find that the greatest hope and love often abide alongside the deepest despair.

Most recently, I was one on one with a newly admitted patient who had suffered a brain injury. He showed glimmers of recognition and cognizance, but had not yet spoken and was unable to sit still. In my time with him, I talked with and observed this patient’s father.

The father worked a solid blue-collar job. He waxed on about his “man cave” garage, watching the Bears play with all of his friends, and drinking lots (and lots) of cheap beer. If I had met him in any other situation, I likely would have turned my nose in distaste and rolled my eyes. But he was there, in the hospital with his son when no one else was. I watched him watch his boy; I watched him marvel at the improvements he’d made in such a short span of time; I watched him tear up when he recounted the accident; and I teared up when I watched him tenderly kiss his son’s forehead to say goodnight. He trusted me with these private moments, and no matter how he chooses to live the rest of his life, this hurting father showed me the best of himself.

Hospitals are battlefields. We battle for life and death, for family and dignity and love, for humans, for souls. We serve and we love, and in turn we are witness to humanity at its best. Every day, we don our armor and march off to battle, every action saying: you are human, and you are loved. Working in a hospital has taught me how to love with each moment, with each breath, with each movement.

My ministry doesn’t take place within a church. It takes place where God is ever-present but rarely acknowledged. I am challenged every day to present my best self, to witness humanity, to speak the Gospel with my actions and not my words. And during those long hours, I am fulfilled. I am my best self. I am closest to God.

The challenge, of course, is bringing this lesson home. Loving in the midst of despair is easy, but how do I love with comparable temerity in the grocery store? Or, even worse, how do I love with such wild abandon those I take most for granted, without expecting some sort of tragedy? I will be struggling to find this balance, I expect, for the rest of my life whilst I soldier on through the ages of war yet to come. In the meantime, I will continue to march swiftly and tenderly, allowing my ministry to shape me into an ever-clearer image of God.

Katherine Jones graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2013 with a BA in English and also studied pre-medicine. Through the Center for Social Concerns at Notre Dame, Katherine did Appalachia service immersion and a Summer Service-Learning Program in Syracuse, NY. She was also a Mentor-in-Faith for Notre Dame Vision and a member of the Notre Dame Folk Choir. After graduating, Katherine went on to the Masters Entry to Nursing Practice program at DePaul University. Raised in Highland Village, TX, she now lives in Chicago, IL, where she will soon complete her graduate program, take her nursing licensure exam, and begin her nursing career. Katherine can be reached at kajones0@gmail.com. (Editor's Note: And I'm marrying her in July 2015.)