On Sunday I returned from a week with a group of American, Canadian, and Swiss students and teachers who were at the Meeting in Rimini, where we presented on the lives of certain American saints—three Jesuit martyrs, Junipero Serra, Damien of Molokai, Katharine Drexel, and Kateri Tekakwitha. We characterized these saints by their desire for Christ, especially in the encounter with the different "other", more than by their accomplishments. Indeed, Kateri and some of the Jesuit martyrs seemed to achieve so little that we would be asked by the people of the meeting, “Why is she is a saint?” Answering this question in terms of Christ would be a major educative point of the exhibit, most especially even for us as guides.

I had arrived in Italy ten days prior, eager to discover a major insight, a major realization for my time there. This determination resulted for my first two days in a certain frustration and anxiety. I was enjoying my time and the people I was meeting, but something seemed to be a bit off. Even though I knew from past experiences at the Meeting, the New York Encounter, and elsewhere that I needed and wanted the simplicity to say "yes" to the proposals given to me in volunteering, a fear prevailed that I was missing out – had I chosen the wrong talk to attend, the wrong exhibit to visit, even the wrong people to be with?

This came to a head for me on Saturday evening. I found myself begging God, asking Him to come, but also, in my difficulties, I fell back into a certain dualism—God is here, but not really. Rather than trust the people and the proposals given to me, I decided that night that my problem was placing too much hope in these things, wanting too much from the friends I was making and the experiences I was having. I prayed to be more content simply with God, in an (unarticulated but) ethereal sense, without worrying about the rest.

In his mercy, God did not answer me this way! Sunday morning I headed to the bus stop alone, actually looking forward to a quiet bus ride to the meeting. Instead, as soon as I got aboard, new friends who were staying in a nearby hotel greeted me with cheerfulness and excitement. Immediately I felt grateful and happy that they were there. One friend told me about an exhibit she had seen, You Will Never Walk Alone, involving vulnerability in front of the other and companionship at work. This spoke directly to a concern of mine in my workplace, as I have found myself a bit intimidated by two new hires in my company.

Meeting these friends and having this exhibit proposed to me, which seemed tailored exactly for me, helped me remember God’s specific attention to me. Accepting what is given means recognizing affirmatively that it is for me, not the passive endurance I had striven for the night before. I went to mass with these friends and then lunch, and from that moment felt aware that this group had been given to me to discover the Meeting.

This opened up in me a new question. I felt happy and embraced by this new group, but also a certain sadness, because I did not know how to handle it. Last year’s Meeting had been one of the defining moments of my life; I recognized, in an irreversible way, that the experience of the Movement was mine. What then did that make this year? Last year the friends I made at the Meeting and I formed a fraternity with one another. This year I similarly did not want the experience to just end, and for us all to go home, but if it wouldn’t be a fraternity, I didn’t know how to understand these new relationships.

I brought this question to Giorgio Vittadini at an Assembly the next morning. He told me to remember the focus of the two exhibits. With the first exhibit (The Millennial Experience), we looked at our experiences from the heart, asking ourselves if it was possible to live as Luigi Giussani proposed; whether, when looking for beauty and goodness, the heart really could see the exceptional in reality. This marked a new way for the heart, of being an adult in society, and so for us a fraternity was the next step—to continue to verify how this could be possible for us in friendship with one another. With the second exhibit we are looking at American saints and discovering what happens when one lives fully in this way, with the heart. One becomes useful to humanity. The American saints are an example of friendship, but one that is for everyone.

The next step, Vittadini continued, is to verify for ourselves that our friendship can be for everyone, not just for us. When a friendship is lived in Christ for the world, it is forever, like the example of the apostles who separated after Pentecost. In this way, the second exhibit is important for going deeper after the verification of the first exhibit.

I was amazed at how particular his answer was to me. With this response, I felt the various experiences of my life united in a single path for me to follow. Once again, God did not answer me with a moral imposition, but with mercy. The desire to grow in this certainty and to pursue this path—to discover how this friendship is for everyone—gave me a freedom for the remaining days.

As the week progressed, I could see myself growing with these friends and was pleased to discover how this growth became something to offer the people of the Meeting. By the end of the week, almost every point in our presentation carried with me a meaning derived from how one of my friends had helped me. I borrowed from Elisabeth’s explanation of Serra’s humanity and desire for relationship in his longing to baptize an Indian child. With Damien, I cited Marta’s help to me in understanding his pipe as an acceptance of his human limits. With Katharine Drexel, I remembered Miriam’s description of Drexel’s relationship with O’Connor, as she and I ate piadina kabab. Or rather, I ate, she talked.

I would often even make these connections explicit in the tours, referencing how a friend had helped me with a certain element of a saint’s personality or history. In this way, as the week progressed, we were able to offer ourselves to the people of the Meeting as more than a set of historical facts. This was the beginning of a deeper discovery of the communion of saints, one of our original goals.

The final night of the Meeting I felt exhausted and carried a bit of sadness. The Meeting was ending. Shortly before I was to go for dinner, a small group asked for an English tour. I did not want to do it and I asked how much time they had, and one responded with a smile, “A lot!” I laughed because I had hoped for a different answer. And yet the process of giving the tour made me very happy. I was grateful to God that through these faces I could end the Meeting in this way, closing the week not turned into myself, but looking out at others, remembering one more time the saints by offering them to these people.

Shortly after the tour finished, we began deconstructing the exhibit. I return to the U.S. with the desire to continue to pursue this step this year—to discover how this friendship is for everyone. At work for me, this means embracing my two new colleagues and preparing for the beginning of the next Supreme Court term in October. One hire began this past week and I can already laugh at myself for my fears. Vittadini asked James what the American Dream was at our assembly, and he responded, “to be me.” Grateful for a new step for this year, a path to follow, the dream continues.