Kieran Emmons– Baltimore, Maryland
Since reading Pope Francis’ underrated Evangelii Gaudium in college, I have been struck by his beautiful articulation of a culture of joyful encounter at the heart of the Christian message. Francis succinctly sums up this culture with an invitation to work for encounter “as Jesus did: not just seeing, but looking; not just hearing, but listening; not just passing people by, but stopping with them; not just saying ‘what a shame, poor people!’, but allowing yourself to be moved with compassion; and then to draw near, to touch and to say: ‘do not weep’ and to give at least a drop of life.”
Prior to joining this wonderful community at the CSTM, I spent the last three years in two different settings of Catholic high school education. Right out of college at Notre Dame, I joined Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Baltimore for a year as a Jesuit Volunteer. Living in intentional community with (initially) four strangers, right out of college, I dove headlong into the unglorified work of daily service. It was humbling work—unvarnished, difficult, yet overflowing with grace. I encountered individuals and families whose lives had been upended by forces largely beyond their control: inadequate housing, poverty, and systemic cycles of violence. I also encountered in these same lives a tremendous resilience, clarity, and authenticity. Francis’ appeal for authentic encounter resonated deeply in my daily experience as a JV in Baltimore. At the end of this year of service, it was not a trite theology but a lived reality—in my intentional community, in my Campus Ministry office comforting a student, and in the after-school food deliveries, soup kitchen visits, and community cleanups we organized for our school’s service program.
After my Jesuit Volunteer year, each day of the past two years, I had the privilege of teaching and mentoring hundreds of students in a welcoming Catholic high school community at Bishop O’Connell in Arlington, Virginia. As at Cristo Rey, my daily encounters with students and staff at O’Connell were so life-giving. “Bring Joy!” was our school motto when I arrived, and I can attest that the halls of O’Connell regularly overflowed with joy. This joy came naturally from a deeply-committed culture of making every member of the community feel known, rooting ourselves in the life of Christ to thus be the face of Christ for our students. A tall order, no doubt, but one exuberantly lived out in post-class conversations, candle-lit retreat nights, and fundraiser dances, to name but a few scenes.
In my experience, building the culture of encounter has been endlessly fruitful, dynamic, and challenging in a high school setting. Every day was its own unique challenge but also a sacred opportunity to walk with my students in all of their doubts, questions, joys, and hopes. It is this same desire for authentic encounter that drew me to the CSTM. Only a few months into my experience here, I can confidently say that Pope Francis would be pleased by what he saw in the halls of Simboli: “not just seeing, but looking; not just hearing, but listening…”