Calling

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August 16, 2009

The Peace Builders Initiative at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, IL

Today, an organic garden sits on the grounds of St. Dismas Parish in Waukegan, Ill. This garden, begun by a high school senior in 2005, and continued by his peers in subsequent years, is planted and tended by the parish youth group. Its fruits are sold to the parish community and the proceeds benefit the local homeless shelter. The entire parish community has been transformed by the presence of this garden and the leadership of its gardeners.

Each afternoon, students at St. Francis High School in Wheaton, Ill. travel next door to bridge the divide between their private Catholic high school and their neighbors in the subsidized housing complex. A tutoring and mentoring program, started by a high school senior in 2006, has grown and been strengthened by successive student leadership and the school has a profoundly different relationship with its next door neighbor today.

These are just two examples of Peace Projects designed and implemented by participants of Peacebuilders Initiative. In the six years since the program’s inception, hundreds of unique and transformative Peace Projects have been implemented and many of them continue today in the high school and parish communities that partner with Peacebuilders Initiative. But more important than the completion of a project is the process by which youth participants move from "doing” a Peace Project to "being” within the Church. As they work through their projects, participants come to know themselves as leaders within the Church. They call forth the leadership of their peers (many of whom become the next applicants to Peacebuilders) and they build relationships with adults within the community who support and mentor them. They often have the opportunity to voice their ideas and opinions to school principals and parish pastors and they see their faith and action impact their community. Additionally, they develop mutual and transformational relationships with people often relegated to the margins of society. Through this process they discover that they have important contributions to make, and thus their sense of and response to their call within the Church deepens.

An alum who completed Peacebuilders two years ago has since started a parish Bible study for teens that has now met for over a year, another joined the parish choir, having never sung in church before Peacebuilders and a third is working with Engineers without Borders and the Newman Center on his college campus to bring a water purification project to a rural Guatemalan village. Our oldest alums graduated from college in 2008. As they share with us their choices to pursue lay ministry and a graduate degree in theology or to teach in Malawi with the Marianist volunteers they tell us, "Peacebuilders has been my foundation as I prepare for a life in ministry…thank you for setting me on this path.”

These young people connect their current vocational choices back to their experiences with Peacebuilders Initiative and the high school and parish communities that first recognized their leadership, affirmed their call and supported their growth and development. As one alum said, "I really consider Peacebuilders a transformational program that turned my life in a great direction. When people ask me where I get my drive to do social justice work, I always think back to Peacebuilders and the people I got to meet there first.”

In his pastoral statement on youth, the late Cardinal Bernardin wrote to the youth of the Church, "You are the Church here and now and you have a contribution to make.” These words have formed the foundation of Peacebuilders Initiative as we have developed partnerships with approximately 30 Catholic high schools and parishes to affirm the gifts, empower the leadership, and support the call of high school youth within their faith communities. Together with these communities Peacebuilders Initiative challenges young people to "be the Church here and now” and their profound responses transform their local communities and the wider Church.

Housed in the Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Peacebuilders Initiative prepares Catholic youth from Catholic high schools and parishes for active leadership roles in peacemaking, reconciliation, and conflict transformation in their homes, schools, parish communities and neighborhoods and thereby inspires them to consider ministry as a life choice.