Since I was a little kid, on Easter, Christmas, for funerals and the occasional random Sunday, my family would pile into the car and head to my grandparents’ church. The small sanctuary, tucked into a corner of the University of Illinois campus, takes me back to simpler days — sitting in pews, drinking hot chocolate with my cousins, trying not to doze off during the sermon. I can’t step into an old church building without being reminded of the smell — some blend of mildew and fresh coffee — warm and inviting, more nostalgic than words can describe.
It took me years to understand what this congregation truly was to my family: an anchor. The other parishioners weren’t just fellow churchgoers — they were like aunts and uncles to my mom and her sisters. I’d see them at family parties or just around town, their presence so familiar I never thought to question it.
I won’t rattle off every hard thing my family has endured, but through it all — the grief, the sickness, the stress — there was my grandparents’ church family. They showed up with meals, with prayers, with quiet, unwavering care. This is community in its purest form — what I believe is the antidote to the toxic individualism unraveling our social fabric. No man is an island, and he shouldn’t have to be.
When my grandfather died, I didn’t expect to feel so much reverence — not just for him, but for the community that had formed around him and my grandmother over the last forty years. Before that, maybe because of the naïveté of adolescence, I didn’t understand the depth of that kind of bond. But in a world of fraying safety nets and shrinking public space, this kind of connection isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity.
My grandparents — and now my grandma — are some of the most well-supported people I know. And it’s not just because they went to church; it’s because they belonged to one. They served on committees, baked casseroles, showed up week after week. I’ve seen churches where faith feels hollow — where the rhetoric is righteous but the actions are absent. All talk, none of the teachings Jesus actually lived.
Howard Thurman, a theologian who deeply influenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., warned of this dissonance in his 1949 book “Jesus and the Disinherited.”
“It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed — this, despite the gospel,” Thurman writes. What I saw in that small sanctuary, though, was something closer to the gospel in action.
While I wasn’t raised Catholic, I somehow ended up at the largest Catholic university in the country. When I arrived at DePaul, I recognized a familiar spirit in the way Mission and Ministry, the university division tasked with DePaul’s interfaith identity, operates — rooted in faith, yes, but focused more on action and care than on proselytizing. The Vincentian creeds might sound corny to students who’ve heard them repeated or repurposed a hundred times, but I’ll say them again: What are you doing for justice? What must be done? They’re the questions I try to ask myself every day I walk onto campus.
I doubt those questions would have resonated so deeply with me if I hadn’t grown up in a church culture that valued action — one that believed showing up for your community was the highest calling. And while it’s undeniable that religion has caused real harm to many, I also believe it can offer a path back to a more empathetic, community-minded culture.
You won’t get along with every member of your congregation — and that’s the point. Church shouldn’t be monolithic. Your pastoral family should reflect the messy, diverse community we’re all trying to build. What matters is this: when the time comes, you show up for each other. No questions asked.
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