Because I don't have anything else to post right now I thought I would throw up something for school. I wrote this for one of their ministries, Catholics on Call. It's not very good but it served its purpose.
I’ve always had a certain affinity for Simon Peter, and really identified with his call in scriptures. Not just the specific call when Jesus asks him and Andrew to “follow me and I’ll make you fish for people,” but his lifelong calling as depicted in the gospels and the book of Acts.
When I read about Peter I am getting a look at a person who followed Jesus with passion, rarely got it right on the first try, but was still being called by Jesus through the mishaps. That’s me: I’m passionate about God, I make a lot of mistakes, and, yet, every morning I find myself waking up to a God who still loves me. So for a couple of paragraphs here I would like to share my sense of calling – passion, mistakes, and all – through the lens of Peter’s life.
[Jesus] said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt? When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God." –Mt. 14:29-33
In the morning of August 30th 1997 I was a typical junior in high school, but come the afternoon my life changed. My dad was in the kitchen when I got home from school, and he typically never got home before me so I thought right away that something was odd. He was there to tell me that my friend Chris, then 21, had been murdered the night before by Angel Maturino Resendez who would later be known as “The Railroad Killer.” My faith, confirmed by the Church, had found no real challenge up to that point, but before I knew it a strong wind had come, I was frightened and drowning in the confusion that comes with such things. We went out to eastern Ohio (from Indianapolis where we lived) for the funeral where my brothers and I were asked to give one of three eulogies. I really was still in shock all through the funeral and back home in Indiana. Then, one night when the sense of drowning was near I started to read the gospels, and felt overwhelmed by the presence of Christ. After that night I felt called to follow Jesus in whatever way I could, and to live out whatever it meant to say he was “the Son of God.”
“Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.” – John 20:3-7
The fall of my senior year I decided that I would look for colleges with ministry programs. The only school I sent an application to and visited was Huntington University (Huntington, IN), and I enrolled as soon as I could. This decision made little sense to most people around me for one reason or another, but primarily because H.U. is an Evangelical Christian school and I wanted to be a Catholic minister. My youth ministers pleaded with me to go to Stuebenville, my mom said I would not graduate a Catholic, and most of my friends just could not picture me as a minister. Why did I go? I was full of passion, knew there was something good there (via the materials and visit), truly did not see a distinction between Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, etc., and ran on in. I think when you feel called to something it is better just to keep on running, and not bend down and look in because if you do that you may see something you don’t like and turn away. Going to H.U. was illogical, but I met God there in the most amazing and challenging ways. I was forced to articulate my Catholic beliefs to people who knew the Bible so much better than I did; I began running the youth ministry at the local parish; and I learned a lot about being a disciple of Christ from my Evangelical brothers and sisters.
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him "Feed my lambs."… - John 21:15-19
During the senior year at H.U. as a Youth Ministry major the students are asked to locate and conduct a nine-month internship away from school. For whatever reason I wanted to work in an urban environment (I say ‘for whatever reason’ because social justice was not a large part of the curriculum), and ended up working with the Central City Catholic Youth Ministry in Milwaukee, WI. Due to a series of unfortunate events my mentor took a new position early in the internship, and I was left to direct the ministry. Coming from suburban Indiana I did not have much contact with African Americans, so Milwaukee let me learn and experience a new culture. There I learned about slavery, ongoing racism, and the call of Catholic Social Teaching to change the aforementioned problem. Catholic Social Teaching was something I always saw in Jesus’ acts and heard in his words, but had never been able to articulate before Milwaukee, and now that I could I wanted to tell this good news to others. Today, I understand in an even deeper way that to feed Jesus’ lambs means more than spiritual food, even more than a charitable meal, but truly means to change the social systems which cause God’s children to be hungry in the first place.
Today, I still find myself a passionate Catholic, making mistakes, and relying on God's love. I’m in studying for a M.A. and M.Div. now, because I want knowledge and wisdom to go with the passion. And, I imagine the same will be able to be said even when I graduate from CTU, and my call continues to unfold.
