Back in February, I attended the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress (REC), a three-day event bringing together around 30,000 adults and offering over 300 workshops in addition to evening concerts, Eucharistic Liturgies, and more. During registration, you get to select a total of nine workshops for the weekend, which are all related to the theme of the year. This year’s theme was “Live Mercy – Be Holy”.
Although the workshops are based off of the theme, it’s not the theme that gets me interested in this conference – it’s the content of the workshops. I would always flip through the booklet and read all the workshop descriptions while circling the ones that interest me before going through it again and deciding on the workshops I want to attend. When you have a theme, it only gives you a very general idea of what to expect, but the workshops provide you different perspectives on the theme. Everybody who goes into a workshop hears the same talk, but what amazes me is how everybody is inspired differently from the talk because of our own unique experiences that have shaped us into the person we are today.
There are people who go to certain workshops because they know the speaker will be great, but I think what really matters is, what did you get out of the talk? Even if what you got out of the talk is not the main message the speaker wanted to convey, if you feel like you got something meaningful out of the talk or was inspired by a part of the talk, that is all that matters.
A Talk on Friendship and the Christian Vocation
One of the talks I attended this year was a talk by Dr. Richard Gaillardetz: Friendship and the Christian Vocation – Is Anyone Ever Really Single? We all have a vocation or a calling from God, and Dr. Gaillardetz started off by sharing three vocations as a Christian: the religious life and priesthood, the married life, and the single life. I have always known that these three options existed, but have never actually looked at them side by side as the three paths I could take.
With religious life, you’ve probably come into contact with priests, sisters, and brothers at least once a week – basically when you’re at church with your family. Depending on how you feel about your faith and even the religious orders that you know and have interacted with, you may not have even thought of this as one of your possible vocations until someone approaches you and asks, have you considered the religious life?
The married life is probably what most people see as the default. You have spent your childhood with other children and their families, so it would make sense that your plan is to get married and start your own family when you grow up. Your friends and relatives are probably always asking you, so when is it your turn to get married? It’s hard not to think that this is the path to take.
The most mysterious one in my opinion is the single life. How exactly do you live out the single life? Unlike the religious and married life, it seems like you’re just on your own. There’s nobody you have to report to and nobody you have to be responsible for – you can basically do whatever you want. Some people are single by choice, while others may be single because they haven’t been able to find their match or had their calling yet.
Life right now seems like a box of 120 crayons – there are so many colors to choose from, plus all the expansions with the different shades of every color. Sometimes it’s even hard to find the red, yellow, and blue crayon in that big box, and we often get distracted by the pretty new color that we’ve never used before – the pretty new color is just some variation of the primary colors though right? We are always so focused on deciding which college to go to, which company to apply for, which friends to hang out with, and what to do with our lives that we forget to think about our vocation. Seeing the three vocations listed on the screen, it makes our complicated world seem a lot simpler. It is almost as if we were given new pack of just three crayons or a break from the secular world, and reminded of what we are called to be.
Whether your vocation is to be a priest or religious, a parent, or you are called to the single life, Dr. Gaillardetz asks us to take a few steps back and start with what we all have in common: Baptism. In Baptism, we are all called to universal holiness, all called to be saints. This is a non-competitive category that we all share, regardless of our vocation. All of us are called to universal holiness, but only some of us are called to the marriage or professed religious life. No matter which vocation we are called to, we are still able to do God’s work and live out our call to holiness.
Our call to holiness drives us to have connections, to build a life of friendship, and to have meaningful interactions with others. It all starts with friendship. How do you develop the Christian friendship and create meaningful relationships? Dr. Gaillardetz emphasizes the importance of having not just any friendship, but authentic friendship. He breaks down authentic friendship into five main points:
1. Embodied – We all have the need to connect with people, which serves as the foundation for vulnerability.
2. Affective – You want to be able to interact in way that you can share your feelings and emotions. When you are happy, you want to express your excitement to your friends. When you are sad, you want to be able to embrace each other. Whether you are sharing your pains, your fears, or your hopes, it is important to have this emotional level connection with people.
3. Committed – A genuine friend is different from an acquaintance or a colleague. You’re not there just to have some coffee and have a few casual conversations, but you are there for one another, and are truly committed to each other’s well-being. With so many social media platforms, we are losing a sense of authentic friendship. Conversations can be easily sent, but also easily ignored and hard to have back-and-forth conversations. You can have a lot of followers or friends on your account, but how many of them are authentic friends who actually care for you? The commitment from your friends is what creates a safe space where you can be vulnerable.
4. Vulnerable – In the working world, vulnerability may come off as a weakness. When it comes to friendship, it’s what makes it authentic. By being vulnerable, you are allowing yourself to be known. You are trusting your friend and taking that risk of being hurt to create the opportunity for a more meaningful connection.
5. Mutual Critique – As Dr. Gaillardetz put it, “a friendship that doesn’t include critique is not moved from polite interactions.” If you’re not able to be honest with your friend about what you think and how you feel because you’re afraid they won’t accept your critique positively, you will both have a hard time communicating and getting along. You don’t always have to agree with everything, but if you are not able to express freely, then it’s not an authentic friendship. The critique should not be harsh, and should come out of your love and care for your friend.
This workshop went into more detail on different factors related to the vocations and also marital and evangelical friendship, but those parts did not stand out as much. Overall, I found this to be a pretty interesting talk that is very applicable to life. We can all have meaningful and authentic friendships, both with one another and with God, and Jesus models it for us!