Song of the day.

So, we are entering into the Last Days! Not quite as apocalyptic as those preceding the Second Coming, perhaps, but still - there are big changes ahead. We now have less than three weeks left in Philadelphia (well, I've got three weeks + one year, but we're speaking about this JVC experience). My community members are getting ready to become FJVs - finding jobs, signing leases for apartments, packing up clothes and books, figuring out class schedules for the fall. The "real world" is calling.

My hope and my prayer for all of the JVs on the East Coast who are getting ready to transition out of this experience is that the JVC lifestyle will become part of that "real world" they will soon be entering. I hope and pray that the values of community, simple living, social justice, and spirituality will be more than a one-year experiment. Each of us will, of course, take something different from this JVC year, and each of us will leave certain things behind. But wherever life takes us, I pray that we'll always be able to recognize the mark of this year in one another. I pray that being "ruined for life" is more than a catchy slogan. I pray that it's a reality that will manifest itself uniquely, but still deeply and substantially, in all of us.

For my part, I've been gearing up for big changes as well. I may be staying in the same house and the same job, but I've got six new community members arriving in August - which means six new perspectives on how exactly the JVC life is meant to be lived. I'm so very excited to meet each of these men and women, and to talk, pray, struggle (and hopefully laugh) with them as we learn what exactly it means to be in community with one another while living simply and working for social justice.

May God be with us as we go!

I just heard a wonderfully encouraging talk on the Eucharist from a Redemptorist priest named Father Bruce. While I really can't do justice to his words, the part that struck me most powerfully was something along the lines of "you may be the only Eucharist some people ever have."

This past weekend, two of my community members and I drove up to Trenton for an ecumenical Christian conference entitled "Revive". The conference (or, rather, "revival") took its inspiration from that often-quoted passage from Luke 4:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free" (Luke 4:18, NAB).

I have to admit, I had mixed feelings about going to this conference - mostly because the prospect of rubbing shoulders with Christians from all points along the theological and political spectrum threatened to disturb the comfortable Catholic bubble I've been creating for myself here in Philadelphia. At the end of the day, however, I found myself renewed and encouraged.

Most of that renewal came from meeting Shane Claiborne, one of the founders of the Simple Way, an intentional community in the Kensington area of Philadelphia; and Bart Campolo, founder of Mission Year (a program very similar to JVC), who now lives in an intentional community in Cincinatti. Both of them talked about the challenges of trying to live a radical Gospel witness in contemporary American society. After ten months of living in community in the inner city and trying to be present to the needs of the poor and marginalized, it was incredibly inspiring to hear from two men who have walked this path for decades.

Both Shane and Bart talked about community as a huge part of what sustains them in this path. They talked about it only being possible to really love all of the broken people they encounter in their neighborhoods if the love within their community is strong enough to overflow and draws others in - (which is exactly the model of the Trinity - three Persons Whose eternal love overflows and draws in all of humanity!) They talked about a theology of place and a ministry of presence. They talked about the great Christian mission to love people, not to fix people; how it is our mandate as Christians not only to construct a just society in which our systems actually work for the people they are intended to work for - not only to staff soup kitchens and after-school tutoring programs - but also, and perhaps most importantly, to be in relationship with those around us, to truly love our neighbors, regardless of how broken our neighbors are.

And honestly, it was just really exciting to think that this way of living that I'm discovering through JVC could be more than just a one or two year stint after college. It's exciting, and terrifying, to think that it could be a calling, a vocation, a way of life. Or maybe (probably?), something in between the two extremes.

This is currently one of my favorite songs: Love Will Hold Us Together by Matt Maher. I especially love the lyrics of the refrain:

Love will hold us together
Make us a shelter to weather the storm
And I'll be my brother's keeper
So the whole world will know that we're not alone

It's what Jesus told us - the world will know that we are His disciples by our love.

I was blessed today to attend a day of reflection for young adults living in the Philadelphia area. We gathered in the Temple University Newman Center for prayer, Eucharistic adoration, group reflection, and Mass. The focus of the retreat was living a Christian witness in the midst of the city - an especially pertinent topic for me at this point in my JVC experience. My colleagues in the shelter keep asking me why in the world I'm staying on for another year - and secretly, I've been asking myself the same thing. Why I am staying in a place where there is so much pain and suffering, violence and poverty? Why I am working in a job where I net $85 a month, and where my best efforts often yield no results? Why am I living in a city of abandoned lots and run-down tenements, of gunshots and sirens, of drugs and human trafficking?

My community just came back from a four-day Silent Retreat at a Jesuit retreat center in Morristown, NJ. We spent 40 hours of that time in silence, following guidelines laid out by St. Ignatious in his Spiritual Exercises.

Although I had been looking forward to this retreat for months (nothing is so precious to an introvert as some silent time!), when we arrived, I was not in the greatest of moods. Work at the shelter had seemed unusually stressful for the previous few weeks, and the last thing I wanted to do was get trapped inside my head with my thoughts.

Looking back, however, I'm pretty sure that this mood was all part of God's providential plan for me during this retreat. On the advice of the awesome spiritual director I was paired with, I tried to put down my expectations for the weekend and just relax and let God come to me. Which, of course, He did. I spent hours in the retreat center's tiny chapel, just sitting with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and being reminded yet again of how deeply and intimately God loves us.

Coming into the retreat as I did forced me to confront the darkness that is so often part of the spiritual life, those times when God seems far away from our struggles on earth. It forced me to lay down all of the pain and brokenness I had been carrying around with me from the shelter, to come before God and say, Lord, this is where I am, and I can't find You here.

And the miracle is, God found me. I struggle so often to see God amidst the chaos of the shelter, where change is slow and hope often seems far away. Yet what this experience taught me is that if I simply ask God to reveal Himself, He will. Jesus reminds us that whatever we ask of God in prayer, He will give us - even if it is simply the gift of His Presence, which is sometimes what we need most.