I began my Holy Cross career by taking a class entitled “The Meaning of Life.” We read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, The Book of Job, Plato’s Dialogues, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, and more. The class, perhaps for the first time in my life, sparked an interest in the meaning of life and the significance of suffering. After all our reading and discussion of what makes life meaningful, our final assignment was to do a research project on someone whose life and writings exemplify the meaning of life, and to share what we thought this meaning was. I chose Mother Teresa and paraphrased the Greatest Commandment, saying, “I want to live a meaningful life, like Mother Teresa, by doing all I can to love and serve God and my brothers and sisters on Earth.”
I was saying more than I knew. I had forgotten what I wrote in this final Montserrat paper. As I re-read sections of it to write this reflection, I expected to disagree with what I wrote as a freshman. I do not disagree at all. I believe what I wrote in freshman year now more than before. What has changed throughout my 4 years at Holy Cross is my understanding of what it means to love God above all things and my neighbor as myself.
My education has introduced me to saints, martyrs, and holy fools. When I said, “to love and serve God and my brothers and sisters on Earth,” I think I, with the best intentions, meant, “to be a good person.” Not to be too weird or over-the-top about the faith, but to be kind, pleasant, and helpful to others. To go to church on Sundays, some other days as well. But even then, I felt a longing for something deeper. The saints, martyrs, and holy fools I have encountered showed me what it means to truly and deeply love God and neighbor. They are more than what we think of as a “good person.” A good person is kind to his friends, maybe even to those he does not like, but he does not necessarily die rather than renounce his faith. A good person is grateful when things are going well in his life, St. Paul sang a hymn of praise when he was imprisoned. A good person goes to Church on Sundays out of mere habit, a saint goes because he recognizes it is Heaven on Earth.
I encountered these saints and deepened my faith thanks to my education, both inside and outside the classroom, at Holy Cross. I like to think that I got the experience of a Holy Cross of which St. Ignatius would be proud. I think he would have negative feelings towards a lot of what happens on the Hill, but I am happy to report that hope silently lives on here. A handful of great professors have taught me language, literature, theology, and philosophy, and they have nourished my mind with wisdom (and folly). They have taught me what it means to live out our noble mission statement, to be “men and women for and with others,” but they have taught me this by teaching me the necessary prerequisite to all love: to know Love Himself. To do all for the greater glory of God and to live a meaningful life.