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My Catholic school education formed me with relatively few points of contention, up until eighth-grade confirmation classes because I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around transubstantiation, let alone claim to BELIEVE it as a 14-year-old. Of the sacrament itself I mostly remember having oil smeared on my forehead and hoping it wouldn’t worsen my acne. Unfortunately, somewhere in my education and process of collecting the sacraments (not unlike Pokemon, or Pogs) I internalized the idea that I wasn’t good enough—but maybe if I said all the right things I could be struck with just the right amount of magic to make me holy. To be fair, no one ever explicitly said to me, “Megan, you’re not good enough.” If anything, the list of “good job,” “excellent!,” and “well done’s!” added up to a type of crippling quest to maintain a spotless existence. Somehow, it became the task of a lifetime to hold on tight enough and maintain some illusion of understanding, holiness, and perfection.
Somewhere between leaving Liverpool Township, Ohio, with a deer hauler full of Tupperware containers and moving into Medeiros C, the quest for perfection started to morph into something very much more important. I was given the tools to ask “What about me?” and I did so while sitting—often crying—in the St. Joe’s chapel under Gonzaga every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after classes ended at 3 p.m. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t be perfect, it was that I realized I really truly deeply DID NOT CARE to continue to try. I didn’t want to fight to hold onto the illusion anymore. For the first time in my life I was completely overwhelmed with a desire to just let go.
My sophomore year I participated in the Jamaica Summer Service Program. On a humid Wednesday afternoon in April in a FedEx store in Newton, I applied for my first passport. That summer, I saw for the first time the way we (humans) live in true poverty. I sat on an itchy red couch with my ĂŰĚŇ´«Ă˝ peers, looked at the world in a new way with them, experienced exhaustion and vulnerability, all of our imperfections on full display. And it was beautiful. And my soul stretched out in a way she never had before.
If I claim to believe that I must only say the word and Jesus will HEAL me, then if they say the word in Kingston, Jamaica, will He heal them, too? And if so, what’s the word? And why haven’t they said it yet? And if they have said it, why is He waiting so long? These questions agitated me into a senior honors thesis, a year living in the Caribbean, and a master’s degree in theology. And the truth I have come to know is this: God has no interest in perfection. Being Catholic has nothing to do with being perfect.
Of all the challenging, formational, and at times, seemingly impossible tasks of being a graduate student of theology, one that stands out in my mind was of a prompt from Fr. Richard Lennan, which asked of all of us, “Why bother?” What is the point of “the Church” and why should anyone care to be a person of faith?
As a result of that assignment, I now can say I understand the role of my faith in my life like this: If God’s mission is to bring all of creation back to God’s self, then an understanding of the community of believers as those who live lives witnessing to this truth is a call for an active engagement in the world here and now. To be a member of the Church is to be a follower of Jesus, attempting to live, for the first time in history, as a disciple faced with the current challenges of the modern world.
This attempting to live as a believer and “modern woman” comes with its fair share of challenges. At times I find myself spending time I don’t have explaining my choices and decisions to myself, my peers, or the guy at the DMV who scolded me while demanding I register to vote in my new state (as opposed to maintaining my absentee status in the swing state of my birth).
When questions of conscience become particularly dicey, I tap into my greatest advantage: a place of deep, meaningful rootedness in my faith as a personal relationship. Catholic guilt is a real thing, and there are mornings I wake up feeling like I’ve done something wrong before I even get out of bed. But when God had to finally break into human reality, put on flesh, and walk, and talk, and form friendships just as we do, he was called Jesus. And when Jesus walked and talked and formed friendships in the fullest knowledge of the Love that is God, people followed him. People trusted him, loved him, and tried to live as he did. My conscience, on good days, is my relationship with the friend I have come to know as the Son of God.
Being a person of faith at times becomes overwhelming—especially when there is a new Latin-titled document released on behalf of the Church and I have to find a translation to read and interpret into my everyday life. It can feel like receiving a performance review. It is in times of greatest struggle and distress that I must use all of my gifts and talents to discern what it means to be a woman attempting to live, for the first time in history, as a follower of Christ here and now.
It is at these times I find it most beneficial to circle up my most trusted conversation partners, roll up our sleeves, and hold each other in thoughtful discussion. If I believe I am made in the image and likeness of God, it is not only in my capacity for rational thought, but in my relationality, my co-creatorship in the mission, and in my loving that I am asked to help bring about the fullness of life on earth. My conscience is my call to magnanimity in making decisions not just for others, but for myself, too.
The mission of a community of believers called to witness to the good news of God’s love is to be a living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in something better, deeper, and more. It is to recognize the Truth in Jesus Christ and understand his life as my call to active participation in God’s working in the world. It is to play a role in bringing about the processes that lead to right relationship. This mission unabashedly is to demand better, speak truth to power, and work for change. It is to laugh along the way, recognizing we are all a mess, and to hug people—because sometimes people need hugs. It is to climb mountains, run barefoot in the grass, and jump into the ocean because life is a gift. It is to enjoy what I have, recognize my own privilege, and open my eyes to the reality of the Other—never pretending I don’t play a role in the global economy. It is to be a really, really good friend. It is to love like today is all we have. It is to look for the good, follow the signs, and NEVER apologize for believing that somewhere—and everywhere— amidst all of the muck, is beauty. It is to surround myself with others who believe it, too—because sometimes we need help remembering.
Today, in my life away from Boston College, the School of Theology and Ministry, roommates, late-night study sessions in the library, and a world full of people engaging the same “why bother?” questions on a daily basis, my spirituality looks like Googling “parks near me” and driving to the sound of Siri’s voice. It means recognizing my exhaustion and desire to burrow into a pile of blankets and tea, but dragging myself in multiple layers for warmth to the waterfront to walk, inviting Him to join me. It means making plans with friends around Sunday Mass, and figuring out how to coordinate our participation in “the Catholic Super Bowl” that is Holy Week. My faith to me, today, is the subtle reminder that I don’t have to be perfect, no one ever asked me to be. My faith is the call to try, to really truly try to engage the Truth of the Gospels in the muck of the million-snapchat-per-hour millennial lifestyle. My faith is my anchor. It is my friendship with a God who will never let me down. My faith allows for me to just let go.
MEGAN KRAKOWIAK ’12 M.A.T.M. ’15 was a faculty member in the Christine Doctrine department at Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island.
PHOTO CREDIT: ©Chris Morgan
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