We must use reason and thus education to seek God and to serve humanity. When I look at the paths my friends and I have taken since our graduation, I am amazed by how, through a variety of forms, we live this command to seek "the common good in secular life," and to continue to nourish and explore the spiritual life.
For these friends, the spiritual life has been living in a community while teaching at an inner city school on the south side of Chicago and later leading others who are choosing to do the same; it has been running a camp for children who have a parent who is either sick or who has died of cancer; it has been coaching high school volleyball; it has been joining a religious order; it has been mentoring a prisoner working toward a bachelor's degree; it has been finding ways to make their work environment better. Some of these friends attend mass once a week, some daily, some not at all. For some their spiritual and secular lives have become so intertwined that going to work is in a way a type of prayer, a type of worship.
On a beautiful, if slightly chilly, day this past May I officiated the marriage of two dear friends from college. I, being a Catholic woman, could not have presided at any traditional Catholic ceremony. My friends, though both raised Catholic, chose not to be married "in the Church," and instead wanted a ceremony based on a Meeting of Friends, or Quaker ceremony. This type of ceremony understands the role of the assembled congregation to be that of a community of witnesses, whose presence and involvement in the ceremony serve to sacramentalize the marriage itself. The ceremony was clearly not Catholic in form, but the bride and groom were two people who I believe truly exemplify the Catholic call to serve others, who balance the blessings in their lives by extending those blessings to the communities that surround them. It was only fitting that the communities to which they gave so much, were able, in this instance, to give something back to them.
Read earlier installments of Young Women & Catholicism --
- "In All Things,"on the unique identity of young Catholic women.
- "Young, Female, and Catholic," on the "Catholic glue"that keeps us in the Church.
- "Role Models," on the need for models of faith and service.
- "Defending the Saints," exploring the role of saints in the lives of Catholics.
- "Spiritual but Not Religious?,"addressing the ambivalence many young Catholics feel about the religious structures of the Church.
- "This Is What a Catholic Woman Looks Like,"exploring stereotypes of the young Catholic woman.
Rebecca Curtin graduated with her Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School in 2008. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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