Students spark the fire of faith during mission trip
Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:2)
Recently, for the fourth time in five years, a group of students from Stevens Institute of Technology chose to travel to Louisa, Ky., during a prescribed school break under the banner of the Newman Catholic organization, looking to collaborate with the Father Beiting Appalachian Mission Center in serving the local community. A few of the students had been to Louisa before; most were like me, seeing the town and embarking on the mission trip for the first time. Once there, the students’ and my days were filled to the brim with works of service, prayer, and reflection.
On the first night of the week, one of the senior student leaders offered the verse from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans as the theme for the mission trip: “don’t conform, be transformed.”
Merely by being there, these students had already fulfilled the first of those commands. Over the past few months, I have become very familiar with the high expectations that Stevens holds for its students and, more importantly, the higher expectations that they hold for themselves. They shoulder impressive and oppressive course loads while finding time to pursue valuable internships and jobs in their respective fields. I remember being a college student and feeling as if I had earned my breaks; the Stevens students that I know have earned those breaks 10 times over.
This break sets itself apart from others in a particular way. In stereotypical college mythology, spring break enjoys a peculiar character among these respites that the institution affords its students. Just the phrase “spring break” conjures up images of white beaches and crystal-clear water, invaded and overwhelmed by bass-boosted debauchery. Cultural understanding of “spring break” offers the typical college student an alluring license for licentiousness—a permit that these students refused.
Students from Stevens Institute of Technology on a mission trip in Louisa, Ky. 
Students from Stevens Institute of Technology on a mission trip in Louisa, Ky. 
Students from Stevens Institute of Technology on a mission trip in Louisa, Ky. 
Students from Stevens Institute of Technology on a mission trip in Louisa, Ky. 
Students from Stevens Institute of Technology on a mission trip in Louisa, Ky. 
Students from Stevens Institute of Technology on a mission trip in Louisa, Ky.
The students who embarked on this mission trip were offered rest from their nonstop work but chose to wake up early in an unfamiliar place for prayer and service. They chose self-sacrifice over self-indulgence. These eight students did not conform themselves to this age. They chose to answer the call to Christian service—a particularly potent one during Lent. The Church asks us to renew our commitment to Christ through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In the structure of the mission trip, the students put on all of these with grace and holiness.
The second command from Saint Paul should give us more pause. The call to “be transformed” is inherently self-directed and therefore can be misappropriated in the context of service. Too often, the act of giving is monopolized by its effect on the giver, considered with the incentive of “feeling good” because of helping others.
While this attitude does not turn a good deed into a bad one, it does trivialize the meaning of mission trip. We did not go to Louisa to assemble decks, attach them to trailers, and leave; we went as missionaries. The Catechism offers an explanation of what that entails: “in order that the message of salvation can show the power of its truth and radiance before men, it must be authenticated by the witness of the life of Christians. ‘The witness of a Christian life and good works done in a supernatural spirit have great power to draw men to the faith and to God.’” In other words, our undertaking of a mission trip is not a mandate to “feel good” as a result of service; it comes with the implicit imperative to communicate the truth of the Gospel through all that we do.
The ‘language of sparks’
The faithful and generous Mission Center staff acknowledges this imperative. In our first conversations with them at the outset of the week, the director noted the necessarily transient and insufficient nature of our material work. He reminded us that while the two decks we would build that week would help two families in need, neither the center nor the many volunteers it welcomes during the year are equipped to address the crises of underemployment, drug abuse, or the myriad other contributors to the quagmire of poverty that many residents cannot seem to escape.
Yet he encouraged us by reminding us of what our work does accomplish. He offered us the “language of sparks” and said that our material help in improving a family’s home would spark the fire of faith within them. He told us that our service to them can open their eyes to the love of God and, in turn, open their hearts to trusting in Him.
This call to “be transformed” was not an invitation for us to use our fleeting interactions with the people of the Louisa community as stepping stones for our own maturation and edification—at least, not chiefly. For Saint Paul and for these remarkable students, the primary focus of transformation is not after the work but before; it does not proceed from service but enables it. Like the refusal to conform, this transformation is an active choice. Saint Paul says we must renew our minds, reconfigure our natural processes and open ourselves up to something new.
As another senior leader said in his talk on the second night of the trip, this new thing that we must open ourselves to, this agent that achieves truly profound transformation, is none other than the mercy of God. By becoming aware of the awesome love that God has for us—the love that called us to the Newman community, the love that called us on this blessed mission trip—we may become better representatives of that same love for all those we encounter.
Sharing this openness to mercy with the students was a beautiful experience. We entrusted ourselves to God together, beginning each day with a celebration of Mass, praying with the families before and after a day’s work, filling some of our free time during the week with Rosary nature walks and Eucharistic adoration, and closing each day with personal reflection, group sharing, and night prayer. While the expertise of the Mission Center staff and some students’ significant construction experience were certainly instrumental in the service we did during the week, I found that it was this collective choice to be transformed, to let God’s mercy work in the world through us, that sustained and sanctified the trip. The decks and stairs made of lumber are only traces of the more fundamental labor: letting the work of our hands and the witness of our tongues bring God’s mercy to the families, the Mission Center staff, and to one another.
What privilege, what grace it is to be an ambassador for Christ!
The author, Dan Apadula, is the Campus Minister for Stevens Institute of Technology and New Jersey City University for the Archdiocese of Newark. To learn more about Campus Ministry in the Archdiocese of Newark, click here.
Featured image: Students from Stevens Institute of Technology in Louisa, Ky., during a Spring break mission trip with the Father Beiting Appalachian Mission Center. (Photo courtesy of Dan Apadula)
