The Call

Day 2 of Rochester
Today we began the day off with going to mass at St. Monica’s parish in Rochester. The pastor there was Fr. Ray Flemming. He is from Butte, MT. The mass was wonderful. I was so shocked to see the way that the community was so open with everyone whether they knew them or not. At the sign of peace, the entire congregation left the pews they were in and traveled around the entire church to give peace to everyone they could meet. The love and compassion that we saw at this church really spoke to me and showed me that we need to be like this no matter where we are.
When we returned to the Sister’s home, we reflected on what we heard or saw at mass that stood out. For me, the first reading was what stuck out to me the most. The story was the call of Moses in the burning bush. I saw this as a call for us. We are all being called this week to go to the people that are oppressed and lonely and show them the love of God.
In the afternoon, we traveled through the city and learned about all of the different places that we will be serving this week. We prayed and blessed the people that will be serving in these places through this week. While traveling through the city, we were all able to get a sense of the world that we will be entering into for this week.
At the end of the day, we all had a reflective prayer with the sisters. During this reflecting we all shared about the wonders that we are going to be expecting this week. We compared our experience with a pool. We are all in the shallow end of the pool and are just wading in. This week, we are all holding hands are ready to jump into the deep end of the pool and see where the waves will take us.
Alex Chopyak