Transitions

Before returning to the regular blogging festivities, a quick word on the72: thank you to everyone who wrote and read posts to the72. Though I'll return to blogging on my own for now, all the72 posts remain active in the archives, and there's always the chance that I will undertake a second wave of recruiting to restart the72. Until then, I hope you'll enjoy my return to semi-regular personal entries. I'm aiming to start with a series of reflections on some of the recent, current, and ongoing transitions in life right now...

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At the final all-school Mass of the year at a high school where I used to work, Communion occurred a little differently. Rather than having each class return to their section - freshmen back to freshmen seats, sophomores back to sophomore seats, etc. - we had each class come forward for Communion and then return to the seats of the class they were ascending to in the coming year. Meanwhile, the seniors had to vacate their seats and come forward to stand as a group for the remainder of Mass, yielding their place in the school to the growing underclassmen and confronting their impending graduation and commissioning onward to the next step.

I have never really shyed away from transition, which I take as welcome gift, since life is full of transition. I didn't cry when I moved out to college, when I was dropped at the airport to go study abroad, when I graduated from Notre Dame, etc. (though I did cry each time I left my now-wife after a brief break during our long distance dating).

In a lot of ways, life is largely about leaving. And it's not about getting good at leaving; it's about having the right perspective and reflection as you go. When it came to graduating from Notre Dame, to moving on from four years in the Folk Choir, two summers of Notre Dame Vision, and four years in Zahm, I really took to heart the challenge of bringing Notre Dame to the world.

If what I experienced, learned, and was formed by really was to take root an grow in me, I needed to carry it with me to new places where it could encounter the different things in other worlds to create a dialogue that helped me and my new community grow. And my life took me to places where I had every opportunity to do so.

In Ireland, it meant confronting sacrament-hopping Catholics whose culture kept them on as more than lapsed Catholics but less than all-in Catholics; it meant engaging with the norm of a 45-minute Mass and a culture that was socialable and slow-paced except when it came to leaving Mass. It meant bringing catechesis to children in their schools while they were between First Communion and Confirmation and trying to minister to those who were fully initiated. It meant ratcheting up the catechesis in Confirmation prep. And it meant engaging the parents while we knew we had them, hoping to hook them more profoundly into their faith again.

Then in California, it was confronting kids who generally bought in to our school but resisted more deeply buying into their faith, whether as wishy-washy Christians or full-on skeptics, all while trying to help the kids who had retained their faith all along but now needed to find why it was worth keeping and owning. It meant engaging in social and ethical discussions that made great space for doubt and criticism and demanded that students understand Church teaching, even if they don't agree with it. It meant growing Mass ministries to train new Eucharistic Ministers and altar servers, incorporate more readers, and get more students involved in Mass planning. And it meant ratcheting up retreats to be less superficial fun and games and more small-group faith-sharing and personal witness talks.

Then at Bishop Noll, it was confronting a new frontier - a wide open landscape with little to harvest because few had been given any chance to plant on it before me. It was confronting almost-zero retreat literacy, engaging with decent predisposition to faith, and empowering and utilizing untapped adults. It meant creating a retreat curriculum that built something from month one of freshmen year to the last go-round before graduation and college. It meant weaving ministry life into student life, such that joining Campus Ministry for liturgy planning, service, or retreat leadership was cool and sought after. It meant creating sturdier, more intentional overnight retreats and designing an overnight immersion that engaged the spirit and made you want to come back for more.

Each time, a move to a new home, to new roommates, to a new neighborhood, to new explorations and day-to-day life. Each time, to new halls and rooms, new worship spaces, new co-workers, and new clergy.

Each time, finding diligent co-workers in the vineyard, with similar yet different visions for pastoral ministry. Each time, a faith community at work and at home that, even when imperfect and flawed, gave thanks and praise to the Lord and sustained me with the Sacraments.

Each time, a new challenge for work and vocation, for social and spiritual life, and for personal and romantic life. Each time, more challenges and opportunities presented and more chances to engage with tensions to navigate a pastoral response.

I don't want to describe such repeated transitions as easy, but I think a rhythm of faith and consistent discernment has reinforced the sturdiness that has underpinned this whole thing for me. Even when I'm not praying as often as I'd like, even when the day-to-day grates on me more caustically, I've always kept the Sunday heartbeat to life, just as my parents and family taught me. Even when I'm not as present as I'd hope during Mass, even when I'm not critically engaged with the readings and prayers, even when I don't retain the point of the homily, I am somehow regrounded, relaxed, poised, and heartened by being there - by hearing it all, by participating personally and communally, and by receiving Word and Sacrament consistently.

That's what I received and learned being raised in faith by a loving family. That's what I learned at Catholic school, especially in high school Campus Ministry. That's what I owned for myself with God in theology classes in high school and college. That's what I experienced profoundly and personally through Notre Dame Vision, the Folk Choir, and four years of undergraduate life. That's what I carried with me to Ireland, California, and back to Chicago.

I composed a talk to give to my seniors at Bishop Noll on their senior retreat, and I was never more heartened by the response of these students in faith than when one our most promising students used my same line in her retrospective reflection on four years of volleyball at our school. I walked them through the major transitions in my life, from high school to college, with leaving Folk Choir and Vision, to Ireland to California to Chicago. And as I explained how I got into each community, I also explained what I faced and what I learned, just in time to have to move on from that community.

And as I concluded each piece of the story, I repeated the same refrain, which I'll use now, just before I begin my new job as Campus Minister at St. Benedict Parish and School in Chicago:

Leaving only hurts if you leave behind what you found.