I’m originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, and I grew up in the Church. I received the sacraments, but I had an abstract understanding of faith and Christ. My family in large part viewed religion as a built-in moral and ethical framework. It’s a lot easier to differentiate between right and wrong when you’ve got the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. When I left for college, my family left the Church. Independently of my family’s withdrawal, I also struggled. I floundered through most of my college years, resembling the man described at the end of Ch. 14 of The Religious Sense, drowning and grasping onto scraps and onto ideologies that promised truth and freedom.

I came back to the Church when I started to teach, when I was standing in front of young people. I was forced to face my doubts and decide if the proposal of Christianity was true. But I still felt very alone in my faith. I prayed for community for three years and dragged myself to small groups and functions with other young adult Catholics, hoping to find others to help me. Each time I went to any party or brunch or group, I felt uneasy. I have a past and wounds and a complicated history with the Church—I think most people do if they are honest with themselves and others—and I did not feel like I could reveal myself. I wasn’t free. So, I continued grappling with my many questions about life and faith and Christ alone.

On the first day of school last year, the Theology department chair came walking up with her new hire, Madeline from Minnesota. I stuck out my hand and said, “Hi, Madeline, I’m Molly. Welcome to Bishop Ireton!”, to which she responded with alarming intensity, “Are you happy here?” Those were her first words to me—not “What do you teach?” or even “How are you?”—no— “Are you happy here?” I stammered out something incoherent and got out of the conversation as quickly as possible. I walked back to my seat shaken up a bit.

Slowly, Madeline and I grew in friendship. She didn’t talk about Giussani and Communion and Liberation or anything about the Movement. She reached me through simple invitations to drinks, dinner, and dancing. I noticed that she already had many friends and knew more people in the Washington D.C. area than I did after three years. It was the quality of friendship that made me most jealous. Her friends were faithful and free, unafraid of any question or topic, nothing like the more scrupulous and moralist crowd I was used to in the Catholic sphere. I was jealous of Madeline’s community.

One evening, a group of us sat around the table for dinner. Brigid led us in the Angelus, and after a moment of silence, I asked, “Are you all some kind of cult?” I half expected there to be Kool-aid in my wineglass. Brigid was simple with me, patient. She laid out the proposals for Communion and Liberation and invited me to the next School of Community on Capitol Hill.
But what compels one to show up? To respond is to risk. Sometime after meeting the movement, Francesco and I had a conversation about our School of Community and his desire to live life intensely with the people he’s been given. He referenced John 13: 35: “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” This is what I saw around that dinner table in October when I was first invited to School of Community. I saw how these friends loved each other, and I was struck (and continue to be struck) by how these friends stay with each other. This is why I continued to show up.

Since then, I’ve experienced Christ as a concrete person. I’ve encountered him through the movement and in the faces I’ve been given. This year has been intense—heartbreak, loss, frustrations at work, questions about my own path in life—and I’ve been accompanied by Christ in a way that I can reach out and touch.

Before meeting the movement, I brushed off the difficult and even tragic moments with banal platitudes and called it faith—“Everything happens for a reason” and “It’s all a part of His plan.” When I lost my cousin in February, I was tempted to soothe my sorrow with these platitudes, but Madeline corrected me and challenged me not to exist on the crest of the wave of reality. She said that I cannot ignore any part of my life.

That week, I went to School of Community angry and with questions, but when I spoke, I articulated myself poorly. When this happens, I want to disappear. After the meeting, I hurriedly said goodbye and walked to my car. As soon as the door shut, I began to cry. Not ten seconds later, Madeline opened my front door and pulled me to her. Christ sent her to me. She was His face in that moment. I was seen even when I wanted to disappear, and it was then that I knew I belonged to something, to Someone.

Sophia put it simply for me one day. We can confront the circumstances of our lives in either an engaged way or an unengaged way. We can blindly accept what is given to us or we can stay active and attentive, always asking what we are meant to see in even the most tragic circumstances. As Giussani said, “Everything has a positivity.” By entering reality, Christ redeemed even the darkest moments of our lives. Remaining attentive does not always make my life easier—often life is more painful this way—but my attention to reality makes everything more beautiful and meaningful. I, however, can’t do this work alone. I cannot make judgements on my own. I need the larger community to help me. I am dependent.

Molly, Alexandria VA