Filling the Great Needs: What am I Called to Do?

I decided to take a break outside the house for a bit and breathe for once. I took some time to relax and reorient my thought on the happenings from the past several months.

I happened to be finishing up on a military chaplaincy discernment retreat when I read that my state would be undergoing a strict stay-at-home order due to the outbreak of COVID-19. A couple of months later, George Floyd was murdered, triggering a sociopolitical powder-keg which had been decades (arguably centuries) in the build-up. Coupled with this was a series of disappearances and murders within the ranks of the Army I loved with my whole heart.

So much brokenness in our country right now. This new decade has indeed ushered in a new chapter in our society: an era of mistrust, violence, and many unanswered questions. Many of my friends, family, and peers are devastated and burnt out by surrounding tensions. I've listened to some of these conversations, and I'm personally afraid of being on the "wrong side" of history.

Then, I remember my time at St. Patrick's Seminary during the retreat. Looking through the notes I took during those talks, I find a note I wrote down about "filling the great need." Now, I know this likely pointed to filling the need for military chaplains, but I think today's situations bring this bullet point to a much deeper meaning and calling.

Much of my prayer time was spent asking God for Him to do something. Unfortunately, this mentality often places God in the role of a holy vending machine which automatically grants us wishes if we say enough Our Fathers and Hail Marys within a particular period of time. Prayer is not magic that demands that God conform to us; it is an exercise which challenges us to manifest the will of God on our part. In other words, we ask God to on how we can answer the "great need" in our daily lives, because "faith without works is dead" (James 2:26).

I currently am on track to commission as an Army Officer as well as to be licensed as an Illinois teacher (by the way, the statements in my blog are by no means official statements or endorsement from the Department of Defense). In light of all the brokenness in America today, I hope I can help fill the "great needs" in the lives of my future students as well as the soldiers I may be leading. I know I can't fix everything, but I can sure as hell plant some seeds. I just hope things do change for the better after this subsides.

"You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. This is how prayer works." --Pope Francis

 Memory Eternal:
George Floyd
SPC Vanessa Guillen
SPC Enrique Roman-Martinez
Breonna Taylor
PFC Gregory Wedel-Morales

Lord, have mercy on everyone lost and broken in these tragedies.

Pursuit of a Dream, Pursuit of a Vocation

I drove home to the sight of emergency lights just down the street from my house this evening. There’s something about sights like this that often make me reflect on the state of the community around me. Of course, living in a city like Chicago, stuff like this is more or less commonplace.

I wonder what sort of situation happened there and who was involved in cases like this. At the same time, I think about what sort of conditions led to this moment. Being the over-analyst that I am sometimes, I can’t help but feel an urge to figure out and do something to better such conditions.

I guess it’s that inner urge to “make a difference”—as corny as it sounds nowadays—that drove me to pursue studies in education. I’d hope it would be the little I could at least contribute to the mess around me. Even as I majored in regular history for my undergraduate studies, I wondered what impact I could make with whatever career I pursued. At this point, I was aware of struggles that some of my fellow students were going through as well as other incidents back home in my neighborhood.

A friend and I helped repaint one of the buildings at a Catholic parish in Jamaica. Back when I had a flowing mane.

I was fortunate to have a lot of opportunities to serve those in need during my undergraduate years at UIC. At the St. John Paul II Newman Center--as it is called right now ;)--I volunteered for a few mission trips to places such as Jamaica and Appalachia, and I participated in a few service projects back home in the city. I thoroughly enjoyed these moments and the people I served, but after finishing my service trips, I longed to do more. I wanted to do service that was long-term, not just a day or two weeks. I now wanted to develop myself more in service and pursue a career in which I could help others and build up my community.

Today, I'm getting ready to begin my master's program this fall. I have committed to getting my degree and teacher's license, knowing that I will be preparing myself to serve today's generation of youth and giving them what they need to take on life and the world ahead of them. I now feel like I've discovered at least part of my vocation, and I'm both nervous and excited to see what God will have in store for me next.