I find it difficult to remember many specifics about my first semester at Notre Dame. Mostly I just recall a general sense of being overwhelmed, in all senses of the word. It was exciting and exhausting and amazing and lonely and everyone was so smart and so impressive and just so everything. Some days I would run from class to class to activity, and suddenly it was 8 PM and I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. It’s not that I didn’t want food – I was literally so busy that I had forgotten to eat. Busy with many, many good things, to be sure – but there was just so much to do!
I am a senior now, three years removed from freshman Matt. When I look back at my old self from those first few months, I recognize a sort of lost-ness that I was too tired to feel. I was running around like a madman, making sure I got my good grades, found clubs to participate in and had my life “put together.” When I was lonely in those first few months, missing my friends and family from home, I would walk down to the grotto, partly to pray, but partly because I did not want my dorm-mates to see me in my weakness. When I would break down and cry, I made sure it was at times like that, when no one who knew me was around.
I was a late arrival to my freshman Compass group. I did not know about the weekly discussion groups when I arrived on campus, and I signed up only because of a chance remark that I might like it. I don’t remember many specifics from my freshman year, but I recall many details about the room where we gathered: Coleman Morse 331. We always had to start by pushing the conference room tables out of the way so that we could form a circle. We made small talk while Tim, one of our leaders, collected our cell phones and placed them in a baseball cap—a movement both practical and symbolic, to help us share intentional time together. Then we settled down into the chairs; these exquisite, enormous leather chairs with armrests, soothing chairs that rocked forwards and backwards in moments of uproarious laughter and in pregnant silences. My strongest memories, though, are of faces. Tim and Luisa, the group leaders. Annie, Michael, Mia, Bridget, Abby, Peter, Riley and Sarah, my fellow freshmen. These were the faces which called me out of myself.
We didn’t do anything special. We opened each meeting with a passage from Scripture, and then our leaders guided us in the discussion for the day. Sometimes we stuck to the prescribed questions, sometimes we took enormous tangents. But even in those early days of the first semester, the conversations had a different tone from what I was used to. I find it hard to explain exactly what I mean by this, but I think it’s because even in the beginning, we were learning how to be vulnerable with each other.
“Vulnerability” might be one of those words where you don’t really know what it means until you’ve done it. Consciously or unconsciously, every freshman in that group was seeking genuine friendship. Anyone who’s ever moved to a new school or place knows that there is rarely a shortage of acquaintances to keep you company. But for true relationship to flourish, someone must take the plunge. Step off the high dive, make a leap of faith. The stakes are high. If your acquaintance is not prepared to accept the bid for something real, you risk crushing rejection and embarrassment.
It began slowly, with:
“I really miss my siblings.”
Then:
“Actually, I’m not sure what I want to do. I’m signed up for the math major, but I don’t know if I want to do that for the rest of my life.”
Or:
“How am I supposed to pray, anyways? I sit down and I’m thinking about homework and friends and activities and it’s really hard to focus on God.”
Or:
“It seems like everyone on this campus is so with it, and I’m just drowning over here.”
Pretty soon:
“I don’t know what to think when people talk about providence and God’s plan. I mean… what if I mess up God’s plan?”
We shared with each other and listened to each other. We couldn’t answer every question or cover every topic in an hour on a Tuesday night. But over the course of the year, my friends showed me the answers with their lives. We came from from different places, but it became clear that we were all after the same thing. It wasn’t only friendship with each other – we also were seeking a life with God. We saw in our leaders people who had been doing it on their own for a year, models who had chosen a life of faith. And we tried it too.
We closed each meeting with a prayer, and when the weather was not terrible, we walked to the grotto. Before we left, each of us wrote a prayer intention on a small slip of paper, put it in the middle of the table and then took someone else’s intention with us to the grotto. We lit our candles for our friend’s intentions and carried them in our hearts as we left from that place.
There was something beautiful about those walks. It was always dark by the time we left. We walked usually not in one large gaggle, but split into pods of two or three, different permutations every week, still filled with a sense of belonging and peace. When we spoke, our voices were not the loud and obnoxious ones that we used with our new classmates in the dorms. Rather, we spoke in muted tones, hushed and respectful: this time was sacred. I remember the moon looking down upon us from over Mary’s shoulder as we approached to offer our intentions. We came together after kneeling to offer one final prayer together, and then we went our separate ways.
This story does not end with my freshman year. I continued to grow in relationship with many of the members of the group. I number some of them among my closest friends in the entire world. We look back fondly on that time, when we were all figuring it out, learning from Tim and Luisa and each other what it meant to live a life of love. When I imagine heaven, I look forward to seeing the face of God, but I do not think that his is the only the face I will see. I think I will also see those same faces which once looked mercifully upon me in those Compass meetings. They will behold me once again, now with transfigured expressions of unimaginable joy, singing exuberantly: “Welcome home!”
