Like the Church, the Center for Social Concerns is more than a building. The Center is defined primarily by the people who have been making it an active reality for the last 25 years. This year is no different. Although the location is different - behind the Rockne Memorial - the flesh and blood of the Center is every bit as lively as usual. Students are carrying on with regular service locally, nationally and internationally through immersion trips, experiential learning, lectures (like the upcoming presentation by William Joyce Wilson Jan. 27 on poverty and inequality), community work, or coursework toward a Catholic Social Teaching minor. The new site is already abuzz with students registering for spring courses, conferences, spring break trips and other service and educational opportunities.It is fitting, too, that the diverse community that makes the Center for Social Concerns a flesh and blood reality should be christening the new transitional site just as the Holy Cross community (also known as CSC) celebrated the first feast day for its founder, the recently beatified Basil Moreau, on Sunday. The recent conference at McKenna Hall on saints in the Christian tradition paid great tribute to this essential teaching of the Church.The Catholic Church has traditionally understood itself as a community of saints, some who are listed in the canon because of their martyrdom, miracles and lives of exemplary Christian service and faith. Most saints in this Catholic tradition, however, are less well-known. Certainly it is good to recognize how people like Basil Moreau demonstrate how to live out the loving example of Christ in service and faith, but it is also good to recognize the saints next door, those who show us the love of Christ by taking out our trash, by recycling, by offering a warm greeting on that cold January morning when we need it most, by calling to see if we need a little more money to pay for textbooks this semester.It is this long tradition of serving together, praying together and acting in loving solidarity of our neighbor near and far that provides the flesh and blood of the living Church on earth. You don't have to go to the Center for Social Concerns to find saints in our midst. If you do come to the new Center site, however, you will likely bump into some extraordinary people.
Mary Tracygraduate studentoff campusJan. 18
