McGrath Institute Blog

The smell of homemade apple coffee cake wafting from the kitchen, mornings waking up without an alarm, ample time to read novels while curled up by my mom’s bookshelves, an affectionate dog whose curious eyes follow me from room-to-room; these are some sure-fire signs that I am home. Even as I traverse the country and the globe, making new homes for myself far from Rhode Island, there is a peace that washes over me upon every return to this place, my first home. 

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!

Three years ago, on the top of a mountain, the voice of a waterfall opened the eyes of my heart. During one of the most amazing journeys of my life, I spent six days strapped into a forty-pound backpack hiking and climbing with eleven other girls and two guides. Six days of hiking led me through forests with alder trees that snagged at my clothes, across slippery logs serving as bridges over rivers and waterfalls, alongside meadows of heather and wildflowers and over boulder fields hugging the sides of cliffs. Six days of hiking gifted me with panoramic mountain views, sunsets more glorious than any seen from sea level and nights spent drifting in and out of sleep underneath the glow of the full moon. The nature around Mount Pearkes, our mountain home, radiated with beauty. It filled our sights with snowy peaks and glimmering ocean water. Needless to say, this trip was incredible.

“‘Come. Follow Me.’ It was the Lord Jesus calling.” These words, the very beginning of the Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross, seemed to come not from the seminarian who proclaimed them, but rather from the majestic crucifix hanging above the altar. Or they could have come from the flickering flame of the Paschal Candle, standing in the middle of the chapel, giving light amidst the pressing darkness. Regardless of where they came from, whether from the seminarian or the crucifix or the Paschal Candle, these words floated in the air, carried by the blue and purple and green light that shone from the magnificent stained glass windows behind the altar, light that reached even to the back of this ark-shaped chapel.

Contrary to popular belief, I think it is incredibly exciting to visit nursing homes. Sure, there are times when you might want to nod off like literally every other person in the room, but there are also times when I visit and my friends Helen and John are both talking to me at once, someone’s yelling because their toe got run over by a wheelchair, the nurses are running around with sweaters and glasses of water, and the Hallmark channel is playing so loudly in the background that the elderly preacher in the corner doesn’t even need his hearing aid. Especially when you’re on a college campus and all the people you live with are between the ages of 17 and 23, even just seeing an old person is exciting.