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Do Catholic college students eat meatloaf? Sister Michele finds out!
Today we are pleased to introduce you to today’s guest blogger: our friend, Sister Michele Fisher of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth.
This past week, the Sisters in my local community and I had the grace of hosting a group of students from the Newman Association of Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. They were seeking to do a Winter Break Mission Trip and their first requirement was to stay with a religious community and try to find service opportunities sponsored by religious communities. Imagine that!
Our contact started almost nine months ago when I received an e-mail from their president. Strangely enough, the e-mail went into my SPAM folder. Good thing for them that I give my SPAM folder a thorough review before deleting it!
Over the course of months following that initial e-mail, the plans for our week together began to take shape. I know that there was prayer and discernment taking place at both ends of the state (we live in Philadelphia, on the eastern part of Pennsylvania and they are from the northwestern corner of the state). But God had us covered! As the week of the students’ arrival got closer, I began to have all kinds of thoughts – anything from “Did I find the “right” service experiences for them?” to “What if they don’t like the meatloaf?”
Last Monday evening, when I got the call that our long-awaited visitors had arrived, my heart did a little dance and I begged the good Lord to “take the wheel!” I could tell by the joy with which we greeted one another that this was going to be a special week.
The greatest joy for me was watching how freely they related to one another, to the Sisters and to the people that they served during the week. In their simple smiles, willing gestures and even in their tiredness at the end of the day, they filled the place with the fragrance of God.
When they drove past the convent after bidding us all farewell, there was a bit of sadness in the cold January air. We will miss our dear young friends! Thank you, dear friends, for your example of love in action, faith in practice and boundless trust in the goodness of God!
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{ 6 comments }
Sounds like it was a grace-filled time for all involved, Sr. Michele! (And hooray for meatloaf!)
I keep sayin’ – meatloaf will meet many needs of God’s people . . .
‘specially my meatloaf, made right!
Even works for archbishops!
Holy Meatloaf Batman! Who wouldn’t like meatloaf or anything cooked by nuns?! Based on my own experience – good things come from convent kitchens!
I knew someone who went to England to join a religious community. When she visited one night the dinner was liver meatloaf. It is a true sign of her call that she entered that community anyway!!!
I went to a liberal arts college (but not a Catholic one. The school was technically Episcopalian, but only technically). It was a pretty safe bet that in any gathering of any significant size there was going to be at least one vegetarian.
When you’re talking about gatherings of the sort of people who would be spending their break going on service trips, the proportion would go up to maybe 1/3 vegetarians. (This is also the time in my life when I first learned to cook for groups, so to this day if I’m cooking for a group and don’t KNOW who all will be there, I always make sure that it’s vegetarian-friendly. I give up when it comes to vegans. They can fend for themselves.)
I was on one of those trips once and we overlapped with a group from a Catholic college. To our great surprise, in this group of 20 or so students from the Catholic college there did not seem to be even one vegetarian!!! We found this to be quite astonishing.
So I don’t know what to make of that, but this anecdotal report seems to show that with Catholic college students you seem to be safe with meatloaf!
if they don’t eat the meatloaf, send it to me!
i love that you so loved the young people. may many more find you.