A Choir Family

In high school, choir was my main source of community. Though I was often referred to as “Megan the dancer,” the choir room was my sanctuary. The goofy choir teacher who was basically my big brother the kind but intelligent accompanist who let us cry about our boy drama in her office, and, of course, my friends. As the choir kids, we had a close bond and we spent most of our time in and out of school together: at musical rehearsals in local restaurants during lunch breaks, in music theory study groups, and basically any other time we weren’t in choir. It wasn’t even that I loved singing so much or that I was particularly talented. I was just so drawn to the community created there. Choir was my family. It was where I felt safe and at home. When looking to college, I knew I wanted the same experience.

            

Before I arrived on campus, I decided Folk Choir was the best equivalent to my high school choir experience, and I started planning my entire college experience around it. I looked up when they rehearsed, performed, and I started making sure that all my other extracurriculars and classes would fit around it. I was packing my bags for their international tour and worrying how I would go home for a weekend if I had to sing every Sunday in the Basilica. I was already feeling the pressure of such little time and so many things I wanted to do. But I told myself it was worth the sacrifice to have a choir family once more.

            

Late in the summer before my freshman year, I caught a cold. It kicked in full blast just as Frosh-O was starting. My Folk Choir audition was that Saturday. I was trying to save my voice, but it was already going out Friday night. By Saturday, there was no way I could talk, much less sing! When I arrived at my audition, I was told that there was no way I could audition and to come back again in November.

            

As I walked back to my dorm, I wasn’t sad or angry or upset. I felt freed. I was able to take on all the other extracurriculars that I didn’t think I had time for. I had time for dance and quiz bowl and theater and teaching catechism and my weekends were free to going to visit home whenever I wanted. But now, the only thing missing would be a choir.

            

Just two days later, a solution arrived. One of my friends told me that she had joined Celebration Choir and invited me to join too. After one rehearsal, I was convinced. I loved how its weekly rehearsal fit neatly into my schedule. I loved how wonderful it felt to sing familiar vocal warm ups. I loved the rewarding feeling of mastering a difficult piece of music. I loved our choir dinners before rehearsal and the different events and tours we got to take. I loved the diverse group of students in our choir and the different insights they brought. It was exactly what I had been looking for.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll now that I seem to look for God everywhere, in the way the disjointed pieces of hopes and prayers seem to fall into place all at once. Finding Celebration Choir was such a blessing and I know that only God could have led me there. God has given me the best of both worlds: a chance to still sing despite my busy schedule and a beautiful, unique choir family for my Notre Dame journey.

To learn more about the Celebration Choir, check out http://campusministry.nd.edu/basilica-of-the-sacred-heart/basilica-choirs/celebration-choir/ or email Choir Director, Karen Schneider-Kirner at kschnei1@nd.edu.  

           

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Evangelization: A Journey in Love

“Daddy, why don’t you go to church with us?”

Every Sunday I would head to church with my mom, but my dad always stayed home. I was only six, but it had taken me all six years to work up the courage to ask why my father abstained from our tradition.

“I believe in God, but I’m not Catholic,” he replied.

Seven years later, I would watch as my dad received his First Communion and Confirmation at the Easter Vigil. It was a beautifully joyful moment. It was a uniting of my family with the church community. The tiny, old priest beamed with happiness seeing my father join the church and insisted he come up and talk. My mom, who was the RCIA coordinator at our church, made jokes about how she ran out of people to sign up and had to “scrape the bottom of the barrel,” but we all knew how happy it made her to have our dad at church with us at last.

Perhaps I wasn’t old enough to appreciate the beauty behind the decision at the time. Deciding to join the Catholic faith is huge choice to make. Reflecting on this, I decided to have a conversation with my dad that’d I never had before. In the same way I mustered up my courage as a six-year-old, I decided I needed to find the same courage to ask my dad about his decision to become Catholic. Having never talked to him about anything faith related before, this was a huge step, but very rewarding.

I learned my father decided to join the Catholic Church for two reasons. The first was our parish priest. Our church is very lucky to have Monseigneur Peter Lentine as our pastor, though we lovingly call him “Father Pete.” He is a tiny man, currently 95 years old. For several years, the only appearance my dad made at church was for the Christmas Pageant and the Easter Egg Hunt. Despite my dad’s seldom appearances in our parish community, Father Pete didn’t hesitate to make my dad feel welcome each time he visited. “He was also so respectful, even though I wasn’t Catholic,” my dad told me. Father Pete’s welcoming attitude helped my dad decide to start coming to Mass with our family and determine if this was something he was ready for.

My father contributes the other part of his decision to our family. Being able to participate in Mass with my mom, my sister, and I was something important to him. He wanted our family united together in our faith. “It was something I had been thinking about doing for a long time. It was a decision I was ready to make and it seemed the right time to make it,” he told me.

This was probably one of the most personal conversations I’ve had with my dad. Though my mom and I often discuss faith together, it’s a rare topic of discussion with my dad, as our father/daughter relationship consists mostly of us making jokes. Despite being initially uncomfortable, it was a really important conversation to have, because it showed the real impact evangelization had on his life. A huge part of my dad’s journey to becoming Catholic came from Father Pete and my mom.  Through Father Pete’s welcoming and respectful attitude and my family’s love and need for unity, it slowly changed his heart.

It’s easy to shrink from evangelization. It’s a scary word, but it doesn’t always mean preaching on street corners or passing out bibles. It can simply mean loving and accepting people for where they are in their journey and reaching out to show them the love that you’ve experienced in your own faith. I look to Father Pete and my mom as examples of evangelization in its simplest and truest form. And I hope that one day I can evangelize as they do, with respect, and with love.

Discernment Advice from the Pope

Discernment is a word we hear again and again as Catholics. We hear it tucked into the homilies at Mass. We hear it in small groups during retreats. We see it on the brochures pushed into our hands by smiling priests and nuns. It’s whispered by the stones in the grotto, our academic textbooks, and in our late night conversations with friends, when we sigh and say, “I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

For better or worse, discernment isn’t just a college thing. In the same way that discernment doesn’t necessarily mean deciding between married life or a religious vocation or what career to pursue. Discernment can mean deciding if you want to pursue a relationship, if you want to try out for a musical, or apply to spring break in Appalachia. It can mean small decisions, big decisions, and everything in between.

Pope Francis recently said, “Discernment takes time. For example, many think that changes and reforms can take place in a short time. I believe that we always need time to lay the foundations for real, effective change. And this is the time of discernment. Sometimes discernment instead urges us to do precisely what you had at first thought you would do later. And that is what has happened to me in recent months. Discernment is always done in the presence of the Lord, looking at the signs, listening to the things that happen, the feeling of the people, especially the poor. My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.”

We all want fast answers, quick fixes. We want our lives to make sense easily. The Pope tells us though, that making good decisions through true discernment takes time. It means taking time to reflect on all we experience and seeing, then listening to God’s voice in it. I often tell the kids in my catechism class, that God has many voices. Sometimes it is a loud voice telling us exactly what to do. Other times God speaks in whispers, giving us little hints, signs, and feelings that help us decide.

I was recently with another Domer at a job interview. When discussing why he decided to apply he said that he had been reflecting on this quote from the Pope: “Do precisely what you had at first thought you would do later.” He had always assumed he would apply for this job later on in his life. Hearing this quote though helped him realize that this job wasn’t something to put off, but do right now.

Our lives are constant practices in discernment. Just as we must approach prayer in different ways, we all must approach our own discernment in different ways as naturally we are all called to different vocations.

A New Way to Pray

My Monday evenings for as long as I can remember mean one thing: catechism. Growing up and still today, it means a quick dinner, then jumping in the car and driving to spend an hour and fifteen minutes in classroom. As I’ve grown up, my role has changed from student to teacher. Teaching catechism is one of the highlights of my week. Thanks to the Institute of Church Life, I’ve been able to continue teaching catechism while in college as a part of their Catechist Program. This is my second year teaching 5^th/6^th Grade at Holy Family Paris. I look forward to watching my students discover their faith learn more God’s love for us.

            

One particular activity that I always look forward to sharing with my class is called “prayer stations.”  It is one of the most fun, but also most important lessons that I teach. I arrange several stations around the room- one for journaling, one with prayer books, candles, and rosaries for silent prayer, one tucked into a corner for partner prayers and faith sharing, and one in the hallway for meditative walking. After giving kids an overview of each station and how to use it, I put on some peaceful music and let them try each station for 5 or 10 minutes before rotating. It’s a chance to see a different side of many of students. It’s a chance to watch the boy that struggles with answers in class smile thoughtfully into his journal. It’s a chance to see the troubled student walking peacefully through the hallway. It’s a chance to overhear a conversation from the faith-sharing corner where two students are praying for one’s grandfather in the hospital or discussing how they learned about their faith. As often our catechism curriculum is tied down to textbooks and curriculum standards, it’s one of my favorite opportunities to see my own students take their faith in their own hands and explore prayer.

            

A few weeks ago, while on Sophomore Road Trip, the tables were turned. Our first on the road trip, we were presented with a “prayer buffet.” I’m not going to lie, the SRT leaders did a much better job than I did at creating prayer stations. They had stations for drawing and using clay, some for reading the Bible, prayer books, and sacred readings, some for writing intentions, some for silent meditation, some for praying before the cross… there were honestly so many different opportunities to pray there. I loved it! It felt like a wonderful gift to escape the business of life and spend an hour exploring prayer. By the end, I realized different forms of prayer that I never would have tried or thought worked for me, ended up being wonderful chances to escape in God’s love.

It also made me realized what a great gift I give to my students. As they often come from families where faith isn’t important or they rarely attend mass, giving them tools to form a prayer life is such an important ministry I can offer them. At the same time, I realized that in order to be a good catechist, I need to continue to explore my own prayer life. I can only help my students grow in faith, when I make the commitment to do the same thing myself.