Time Is a Luxury

When reflecting upon my experience of FrancisCorps, a personal insight that I’ve made, which has been somewhat surprising, was how much I took having a schedule and being a master of my own time for granted, and overall how much of a luxury it is. When I first started FrancisCorps, the experience was initially challenging for an unknown reason. It wasn’t until I had reflected more on the meaning of community that I realized that the transition from having roommates in college, where my friends lived together, to living in an intentional community was what was hitting me hardest. Having roommates and having community members is not the same. For one, living in an intentional community is, as the word implies, intentional. This calls for making intentional time for your community. Whether that be through spontaneous or planned activities, meals, or prayer, intentional time means the intentional sacrifice of things that sometimes people aren’t used to sacrificing and for me, this was my time. The further I got adjusted to living in community, I began to realize how much I had taken it for granted. This realization in turn helped me serve the refugee population at Catholic Charities. More often than not, the people that are being served at Catholic Charities need to be able to show up to Catholic Charities at a moments notice. This is primarily due to the nature of some of the appointments they need to attend. The result is the refugees often have to completely sacrifice most of their time to Catholic Charities and any semblance of a schedule in order to be able to arrive when prompted. For some of them, this was true in the refugee camps they came through, and even for some in their home countries. Some of them haven’t had the luxury of a schedule for a long time, which is something that FrancisCorps showed me throughout this year.

My next steps are pursuing something within the field of Catholic Education or Ministry. Something that became apparent to me throughout this experience was how life giving it was to be surrounded by Catholicism, whether that be through routine exposure to the sacraments, spending time with people that share the faith, having discussion on matters of faith, or walking alongside those who may need accompaniment. It started off small but the more that I thought about it throughout the year it dawned on me that maybe surrounding myself with Catholicism would be what would be most life giving. I’m hoping to spend some time this summer looking at places to intern or work such as local campus ministries, parish offices, shadowing Catholic educators and more.

Categories: General

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