Entering Into Authentic Community

By Elisa Maguigad

When I first arrived at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, I became friends with a group of people that most parents would be content with after sending their daughter halfway across the country. There was no pressure to drink or party, and everyone was hard working and wanted me to succeed academically.

For the most part we were all on the same page when it came to values, but in matters of faith I found myself as the outlier. They would relentlessly questions and criticize for the sake of creating conflict, and the began poking holes in the very foundation of how I perceived myself as a Catholic.

I was exhausted. And the frustration from having my faith battered daily led me to begin questioning why I would bother fighting for beliefs that I didn’t fully understand.

On top of being doubtful, I felt so isolated that it seemed like my only options were joining the party scene, continuing to deal with my critical friends, or just making it through the next four years on my own.

ENTERING INTO AN AUTHENTIC COMMUNITY

Luckily, I had a friend in the group who was pursuing the Lord and saw that I was struggling. He said to me, “You know those guys I play Frisbee with on Wednesdays? I think there’s a girls’ section to that.” He didn’t quite do SPO justice with that description! However, I agreed to a coffee date set up by him with one of the female Missionaries.

We exchanged numbers and she invited me to Adoration the following Thursday. That initial invite was the introduction to the community I needed to help support my wavering faith.

Finding community with the people of SPO has done more than I could have imagined for my college experience. I have never seen a group of people more ready to lead and love each other. I feel safe with the amazing men in the SPO community, and that’s a luxury that a lot of girls in college don’t have.

I can now look back on my freshman year and realize that my faltering faith came from my lack of personal relationship with the Lord. Being a good student growing up, I was more concerned with knowing about God than knowing Him in my heart. With the support of the Missionaries and the other faithful students in my life, I’ve been given an environment where I can both pursue those questions that I have about my faith, and also foster that life-giving relationship that the Lord desires to have with me.