Laying Down Our Lives:
Leadership in a New Generation
Delivered by Claire Noonan
Loyola University Chicago, Madonna della Strada Chapel
April 5, 2004

"This is my commandment, that you love on another as I have loved you. No one has greater love that this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another."

John 15:12-17

Recently, I had a wonderful conversation with a new friend and colleague of mine about the experience of spiritual direction. My friend was speaking eloquently of one particularly gifted director who he had had the opportunity to work with. Her gift, he said, was to help her directees focus their energy and attention on the places in life where the directee was experiencing the grace of God,where God's presence and action could be identified and followed, where life was flourishing or seeds were planted which would bear lasting fruit.

So often, my friend observed, we allow ourselves to be fascinated by the evil spirits. Our energy and attention is diverted from God's friendship and turned toward that which is leading us into death. We are tempted to lose sight of the invitation to love, and we get caught up in fear.

This, I think, was the temptation of the disciples reclining around Jesus at the Last Supper, the danger for the original hearers of tonight's gospel. Jesus knows that the hour of his crucifixion is fast approaching. He has said to them,

"I am with you only a little longer....Where I am going you cannot come," (John 13:33).
And they are confused, afraid.
"Where are you going?" Peter asks. "Why can I not follow you now?" (John 13:36,37).
Thomas is perplexed in his insistence: "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" (John 14:5).

They had one experience of Jesus. It was powerful, it was profound, and they wanted to hang on to it. They were in danger of hanging on so tightly that they would become blind to the new thing that God was doing. They were tempted to concentrate their attention on the betrayal and loss they would soon experience. And in doing so, they could have missed completely the resurrection, the coming of the Spirit, Christ's invitation love, to life, to joy. They were tempted to become fascinated by death, but Jesus chooses them for life. He commands them to love. He appoints them to bear fruit.

Perhaps, like the disciples gathered around Jesus in St. John's Last Supper scene, we Catholics at the edge of the 21st century want to hang on to what we've known. Perhaps we are desperately and with fear clinging to the way He walked and lived among us in the past. Perhaps we have trouble believing that God has chosen us for life, for love, for joy. Perhaps we have lost sight of the presence of the Spirit, and have become fascinated by the operation of evil.

I say this because as I listen to the discourse about our future as a Church, and especially as I hear people speak about my generation and those following me, I notice that much of the conversation centers on our problems and deficiencies. A long list of the faults and failings of young Catholics, and of the generation of Boomers who raised and educated us, rattles off all of our tongues.

We are poorly catechized and don't know the content of our faith. A corrupt, secular culture dominates our lives. Postmodern theory and relativism have ruined our moral thinking. We've selfishly refused to respond to the call to priesthood or religious life. And on and on...I am sure you have your own favorite or at least most familiar flaw.

There is no doubt that profound shifts have taken place in our community of faith...the theological shifts of the Second Vatican Council and the influential papacy of John Paul II. the cultural shifts of a women's movement taken root, and unprecedented immigration and movement of peoples technological shifts in communication and medicine to name just a few.

And we need the help of social scientists, historians, psychologists, theologians to understand the vast changes that are talking place in our culture and how those cultural shifts are affecting our structures, institutions, and indeed the shape of our faith expression. Conversations about the challenges and the temptations that face us are important and necessary.

But we are in a time when many of us do not have the luxury of choosing to remain in the Church we grew up in. And maybe we are not even able to choose the Church we want. But Jesus said to his disciples at the Last Supper and he says again to us in our day,

"You did not choose me, I chose you."

In one manner of thinking He has gone away from us. In the way we as a Church once knew the presence of Christ, He is now arguably absent. But, I believe that Christ is present is new ways. The Spirit has not abandoned us. She is present, planting seeds that are growing into beautiful trees with sweet and plentiful fruit. And I think that we need, like my friend's wise spiritual director suggests, to pay attention to Her.

I am not a social scientist, or a historian, or a psychologist, or a theologian. So, I don't think I'd be much help in deciphering the far-reaching sociological patterns, trends and problems that face us as a Church.

What I am is a practitioner, an under thirty-five, post-Vatican II, woman minister. And so I'd like to take a different direction. In contemplating the future of the Church, I would like to offer some of my experience, particularly some of the joy I have experienced in this life's work. I would like to share with you the stories of some people of my generation whom I've been privileged to meet along the way, and some whom I've been blessed to call friends.

In the verse just preceding the ones Ellen read for us, Jesus tells his disciples that all he is telling them now, he is saying quote, "so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete."

Tonight, I'd like to look together not at the evil spirits that tempt and plague our Catholic community−which all of us know are numerous and serious, even if we might disagree about what and why they are−tonight, I would like to draw attention not to the Spirit's absence, but rather to some of the places, and some of the people in my generation that She so beautifully animates.

I'd like to bring to awareness some of the things we Catholics under 40 are doing right, some places where our love is bearing fruit. I'd like to give some small public recognition to a group of God's most amazing friends who get from our Church neither a lifetime of employment security nor the status of ordination, but who don't do this work for money or power anyway. They do it for love.

There are three groups of God's friends that I would like to call your attention to tonight:

1. university students
2. the lay volunteer and missioner movement
3. the growing numbers of lay people, mostly women, who are engaged in professional eccelesial ministry.

I should add here that many of the kinds of people−and even a few of the specific individuals--I am going to talk about are with us tonight. I know that when our prayer had ended, Lucien Roy will be inviting all of us to a reception. I hope you will come to meet one another. There are more amazing stories of love and friendship to be shared.

As we are at a university, I will begin with some remarkable Catholic university students−who despite the demands of increasing tuitions, diminishing government aid, rising debts burdens and heavy class loads are still giving incredible service to the Church and the world. Some students who are embracing Jesus' commandment to love one another. And some who are teaching their institutions what it means to be Christ's friend.

I wish you all could have been with me in this Chapel a few weeks ago. The Sunday before Loyola's spring break, I got here a little early−about 9:30 p.m.−(yes, for those of you who haven't been on a college campus in a while, that is early) in time to hear the choir practicing. (Aren't they marvelous?)

They were simply marvelous. There they were, 60 or 70 undergraduate students singing of faith, hope and love. Singing with energy and passion. Sitting in the back of the chapel listening, just listening to them I was moved almost to tears in gratitude. Maybe two hours a week is not much of one's life to lay down for one's friends. But the beauty of their voices and the sounds of friendship among them brought love to life.

The Mass began at 10, as usual. Then, after communion, the congregation blessed 90 students who would spend their spring break on one of University Ministry's nine Alternative Break Immersion trips. They were sent to build houses in Appalachia, serve meals in Baltimore, vigil for peace in Washington, DC, pray with the Lakota people of Rosebud, S.D., listen to the stories of the unemployed in Camden, N.J. These 90 students actually had to be selected for those trips. Nearly twice as many students applied as were able to participate in the program.

It was a beautiful sight to see: all of these gorgeous young men and women clad in their matching, bright green T-shirts, standing on this altar, a very visible sign of God's presence and love. The commissioning of the immersion trips brought to my mind a letter that Fr. Peter Phan of Georgetown University and a past-president of the Catholic Theological Society of America wrote a few months ago to the National Catholic Reporter. Fr. Phan pleaded:

"In the current discussions of the American Catholic church's crisis and reform, there is the danger of perpetuating solipsism and self-absorption, which, to my mind, was itself one of the contributing causes to the ongoing malaise in the church. What is urgently needed now is to remind ourselves that the church does not and must not exist for itself and that its purpose is larger than its organization. The purpose is no other than the reign of God of which the Church is but a servant. Indeed, the permanent and most pernicious temptation for the church is idolatry by which it makes itself...the goal rather than the means of God's reign. In our predicament it would be helpful to recall the teaching of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences that the church's mission is to be in humble dialogue with peoples, especially their poor and marginalized, their cultures and their religions. Perhaps this triple dialogue−in which the church truly seeks to learn and listen and not just to teach and proclaim−will help us American Catholics find ways to reach back to the center and heart of our lives."

Of course, these immersion experiences of dialogue with poor and marginalized persons, with the cultural traditions of Kentucky Appalachians and Mexican immigrants to Chicago, with the religious heritage of Native Americans and Catholic Workers these weeks of faith, justice, community and simplicity, these days of learning how to love and whom to call friends, these practicuums in Christian life are not unique to Loyola. They are replicated all around the country.

The member programs of the Catholic Network of Volunteer Service, a Washington, DC-based umbrella organization for lay volunteers and missioners, estimate that over 6,000 college and high school students participate in immersion experiences offered at their sites alone. This must mean that many, many more are actually taking place.

And for many students, these short-term experiences are launching off points for an even deeper commitment to gospel love and Christian friendship. They learn something profound about who their friends are, or should be. And many times, they become the teachers and evangelizers of their institutions.

Sharon Ringe asserts in her commentary on the Gospel of John, Wisdom's Friends, that "God's love encompassed 'the world' (3;16), and it was for the world that Jesus Christ was sent or appointed, so the love that mirrors the love of Christ likewise knows no limits," (p. 69).

That is to say, I think, all the world is our friend if we are disciples of Jesus.

"Friendship," Ringe continues, "is limited not by the definition of its object, but by the difficult and demanding life it entails," (p. 68).

Students stretch this Catholic institution to widen its definition of friendship, to meet the demands of love. A few years ago, for instance, two of our student groups the Student Environmental Alliance and Loyola Students Against Sweatshops, who are both very closely connected with University Ministry, began urging the university community to befriend impoverished coffee farmers of Latin America. From the place of love, giving flesh to the faith that does justice, these students insisted that we First World consumers could and should pay a living wage to the families around the globe who planted, cared for, and harvested the fruit we have the luxury to enjoy. Their insistent voice brought a fair trade coffee contract to Loyola. Their willingness to embrace the great commandment gave the whole university community the opportunity to put our heritage of Catholic Social Teaching into action. Now, the farmers who produce the coffee we drink at Loyola are guaranteed a minimum price of $1.26/lb for their product, while the free market bears the appalling starvation wage of $0.54/lb. These students listened and learned, they began in humble dialogue with the poor and came back proclaiming the reign of God to the rich with strong and persistent voices.

Before I move on to a second group of dynamic, young, lay Catholic leaders, I would like to share with you a portion of an e-mail I received from one of our students currently studying at the Rome Center. Lukas sent a beautiful letter of support to me when he received over his student e-mail account Fr. Garanzini's reminder about this gathering.

"As for your talk," Lukas writes, "know that there are so many young people called by God to ministry and show that room full of older people that the Church has a bright future...and that new leaders will rise and show the world Christ's message, through both words and actions."

Second: the growing movement of lay volunteers and missioners.

In 1973, Dominican Sr. Marcella Connelly returned to the United States from her mission in Bolivia with a notion, a belief and a vision. Reflecting on her life of prayer, community and service to the poor of South America, Marce imagined a new partnership of sisters and Catholic young people. The work she was doing, Marce concluded, did not need to be limited to religious women. She believed her work to be apostolic, that is, it was about being sent by Jesus to proclaim the reign of God. And all Christians, Marce realized were, by their baptism, sent into the world by Christ. So, when she returned home, she and her congregation began inviting graduates of what was then known as Rosary College into their homes and ministries. Young women and men were invited to share in the apostolic life: they would teach in inner city schools, staff shelters for the homeless, direct youth programs in poor parishes, provide nursing care in rural health clinics. They would live communally on small stipends, and pray regularly together. Though the Apostolic Volunteers lived and worked alongside the sisters, this was never meant as a recruiting program for the convent. No, it was the beginnings of a new future for lay people in the Church.

When Marcella founded the Apostolic Volunteers, there were only about 20 other programs like it around. The Jesuits had been recruiting lay people to help teach in their Alaskan schools for about 20 years. Edwina Gateley was bringing young European lay people on mission to Africa. Fr. Ralph Beiting invited friends to share in his outreach ministry to the people of Appalachian Kentucky.

But in the past thirty years, the vision of Sr. Marcella and her colleagues caught on with post-Vatican II Catholics. Now, over 200 Catholic programs are placing lay men and women, the overwhelming majority of whom are under 30, into full-time, faith-based volunteer service around the United States and abroad. These volunteers typically spend one or two years intentionally and with remarkably focused energy living and working with poor and marginalized communities, learning about the social injustices that create poverty, praying over their joys and hardships, living in voluntary simplicity, and trying to build friendships based on gospel love.

I have begun calling these programs the new novitiate because like the traditional preparation for religious life, lay volunteer programs are an intense form of training for life-long commitment to the mission of Jesus. And although I cannot prove this statistically, anecdotally I would tell you that they are now a major cultivating ground for professional ecclesial lay ministers, and for workers in faith-based movements for social justice. Consider this: in the year 2000, 500 new priests were ordained (Steinfels, 316), and 700 women entered religious life (CARA, ) in the U.S. That same year, 3600 young people completed at least a year (some more than two years) of service in a lay volunteer or missioner program. And that number is growing. In 2003, the Catholic Network of Volunteer Service member programs placed over 4,000 young adults in full-time volunteer service. These programs capture the spirit of our age, they give to young adults the opportunity to deepen our faith, knowledge and commitment. They nurture us on a path toward ministry, respecting the lifestyle choice to which most of us feel called. They give us a way to lay down our lives in service of the reign of God, and not necessarily for the preservation of institutional Church structures.

Jesuit researcher Tom Gaunt, in his study of 1400 former Jesuit Volunteer Corps members, concluded, "the one (or 2) year experience of JVC produces more 'influential people' in a person's life than family, school, workplace, church or any other relationship." That is to say, as any former Jesuit Volunteer will tell you, "we're ruined for life." Gaunt's research and results could undoubtedly be duplicated in any other lay volunteer program. Rooted in Christ's self-sacrificing love, grown in a community of friends, our experience as lay volunteers bears fruit that lasts. It is perhaps THE formative experience of our adult lives. It influences our decisions regarding faith, work, family, money, politics from then on. These experiences allow a new generation of Catholic leaders to practice living in the reign of God.

And the effects are great not only on us, but on the church and the world as well. I recently learned that graduates of one program, the Inner City Teaching Corps, now hold the head teacher posts in 6 of 8 grades in Our Lady of the Gardens, a small Catholic school on Chicago's south side. Right here at Loyola, we have 18 full or part-time campus ministers. Fully half of us are alumni of these lay volunteer programs. The Alliance for Catholic Education, which currently places about 150 college graduates in underserved Catholic schools in the South, reports that 75% of its graduates remain in education after completing the program.

There are tens of thousands of graduates of these lay novitiate programs out in the world now. The Jesuit Volunteer Corps alone claims 11,000 alumni. I would like to introduce you to just one of these thousands.

In 1996, after completing her bachelor's degree, Gina joined the Lutheran Volunteer Corps and was placed in a nascent organization called the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice. She was the alone staff member working alongside experienced organizer and justice visionary, Kim Bobo to create a national organization connecting faith communities with low-wage workers struggling for safe working conditions, livable wages, health care, and union representation. During her volunteer year, Gina met and developed relationships with legends of our faith community like Msgrs. Jack Egan and George Higgins. She ended up developing a very close friendship with Jack, who agreed to be her confirmation sponsor when Gina decided to join the Catholic Church. Eight years later, the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice has produced abundant fruits. There are now 65 local affiliate committees building faith-labor partnerships for justice all around the country. They have been a powerful forcing in securing justice for the most vulnerable workers in our society. And they are continually training new leaders in the faith and justice movements through innovative projects like the Catholic Social Teaching Summer Internship. Gina is the Committee's Associate Director.

I tell Regina's story because it is compelling and inspiring, but also because it is emblematic of the community of friends of which she is a part. Gina is an amazing, wonderful woman, but she is by no means the exception. Hers is a story that looks very much like many, many others.

Third, I want to acknowledge the 35,000 lay men and mostly women currently in professional-level formation for ministry in the United States, over 10,000 of whom are under 40 years of age; the estimated 100,000 lay ministers currently serving the U.S. Church; and the uncounted thousands who trained for professional ministry in the Church but have gone elsewhere because they found no place for themselves in the current structures.

Without the financial support of a religious community or its major donors, without the status of social recognition, without the least bit of job security, women and men are responding to the call of Christ for service in the Church in growing numbers. Since the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) first studied lay ministry formation in 1985-86, "the number of programs [preparing lay people for professional ecclesial ministry] has expanded by more that 50%, and the number of participants in these programs has grown more than three-fold." Peter Steinfels reports in A People Adrift, that "almost 3/4 of [lay ecclesial ministers] view themselves as engaged in a life's work," (331). These faithful and courageous Catholics are laying down their lives. They are giving themselves to their friends−that is to say, they are giving themselves to all of us.

Some are creating new ministries imagined freshly for our time. Some are serving in quite traditional roles, positions formerly occupied by the ordained or religious. They are parish administrators and hospital chaplains, liturgical musicians and theology teachers, writers and campus ministers. You know them yourselves.

They are women like Karon of Mt. Pleasant, MI, a vibrant thirty-year-old pastoral associate with a gift for preaching and a wicked sense of humor.

They are university ministers like Ken of Omaha, NE who has a clear vision for forming college students into leaders in faith and justice; and the organizational skills to get them there.

They are artists like Dana of Oakland, CA who has created a new ministry painting beautiful icons of the saints for neighborhood parishes with her own homemade earth-friendly paints.

In his address to the bishops at the historic Dallas conference of 2002, historian Scott Appleby told the assembly, "I do not exaggerate by saying that the future of the church in this country depends upon your sharing authority with the laity," (Gibson, 27). Last week, we lost one bishop who was leading the way toward collaboration and inclusivity. Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, Michigan died of leukemia. He had long appointed lay administrators to parishes in his diocese without a resident priest. He saw to it that lay people were trained and allowed to preach regularly at Sunday celebrations. He knew that lay ministry is not a stop-gap measure put in place until our seminaries are filled up again, but rather a gift to the Church. In his absence, who among the body of bishops will now take up this critical work of transformation? Lay ministers have felt a call from Christ. Who in our ordained leadership will help to discern the call, and create the places where we can use our gifts?

Lastly, one more group I would like only in brief to acknowledge. Since the Boston Globe broke open the story of widespread clergy sexual abuse of minors in 2002, I been graced by coming to know and work with some of the survivors of this abuse. In them, I have found the presence of the Spirit of truth, of self-sacrificing love, of the deepest kind of friendship. I think we need to acknowledge that without them, it is very likely that none of us would be here contemplating our future as a Church here this evening. Their courage in coming forward with their stories of pain and betrayal, their laying down their lives before us on the steps of our churches and in the pages of our newspapers woke us up, and gave birth to the latest chapter in the lay movement for change and transformation of the Catholic Church.

I did not realize when I accepted Fr. Garanzini's gracious invitation to speak in this series that I would be with you during Holy Week. But there is something appropriate about that fact, I think. These days we are remembering and reliving Jesus' most central and profound lesson:

from betrayal, God can forge friendship
from the place of power, God gives service
from the experience of death, God can bring life.

Some in our Church, I think, have become stuck lamenting the passing of a day gone by, or cursing those who do not wish to re-create it. We need to get beyond this, though. We need to release our grief, and stop pining for the past. Like the original disciples, we need to meet the resurrected Jesus, and to receive the gifts the Holy Spirit is offering us now.

I suggest a good place to start is in celebrating those who are already living into our imagined future. David Gibson, in his recent book, The Coming Catholic Church, quotes Notre Dame's John Cadavini who says, "It is only by looking at goodness, by acquiring the habit of noticing it, that we find inspiration and the courage to re-imagine a future for the church beyond the impasse that seems thrust upon us." (Gibson, p. 350)

We need to re-train our eyes to see the places where friendship, service and life are growing. We need to recognize those who have clearly been chosen for ministry in this time. We need to acknowledge those whose lives are bearing fruit, fruit that our community should celebrate, feast upon and enjoy. Because these young people are not only the future of the Church, but also its vibrant present.