Courage and Grace: My Experience with the Parousians

As many of you may know, I came down to LA from way up north to pursue graduate studies in political philosophy. I came from a small, orthodox, Catholic college where studying the relationship between faith and reason is an everyday occurrence, that is to say what the Parousians do here at LSU is my educational background. When I came to Baton Rouge to start graduate school, I was struck with something I always knew existed, but never really dealt with in an academic setting: people who despise Catholics.

For the first year of grad school, I struggled with despair, doubts, and uncertainty about my choice to be pursuing a degree. Why in the world was I still in school? Why didn’t I just get a real job and make money? Why did I need to further my education? Did I really want to pursue an academic career, when the whole environment was just plagued with a whole bunch of relativists anyway? Was I even good enough and smart enough to make it? Surely not. These were my constant struggles, and by the end of my first year I seriously considered leaving grad school and the world of the academy for good.

But for some reason (which I can only attribute to God’s grace, perhaps mediated through the magnificent sisters of the Missionaries of Charity with whom I had spent time this past summer), I decided to stay at LSU. I figured I would at least try teaching, and at the very least earn my Masters. I was sure that after that, I would go and find a real job somewhere making real money.

But then something changed. The first week of school or so, I was talking with a certain political science professor. We were discussing apologetics and helping converts to understand the faith. He asked me if I had heard of a new campus group called the Parousians. I mentioned I had not, and so he sent me an email with one Toby Danna’s contact information. Right away, I met Toby, and all of the sudden I found that I had a group of four very fine Parousian students in the class I was teaching that semester.

I learned so much from those students that semester. At first, I was apprehensive. Did I want my students to know my religious beliefs? How would that affect their perception of the materials I was teaching? Though I began my teaching experience by trying to be ostensibly very quiet about my religious beliefs, I recognized that my attempts to do so were unnecessary and ultimately silly. (All anyone actually needed to do was look at my syllabus to see my Catholicity oozing off the black ink.) But I lacked the courage to evangelize openly inside and even outside the classroom, and I lacked the wisdom to know how to do it in a proper way. However, the friendships I was beginning to forge with people such as Toby, Caleb, Emily, Philip, Juliette, Amanda, Katie, Kim, Michael, Monique – to name a few – began to teach me what I needed to do.

My students showed me that the tremendous hunger for Truth, which I had assumed was disappearing from universities, was still present and growing. I was so impressed by these young people; their passionate zeal for true wisdom gave me hope and encouragement to continue to pursue my education. I began to realize that being in the academy is my vocation.

Even though sometimes I still struggle (and I certainly do not always know the proper ways to evangelize), I find that as I increase my participation with the Parousians, I am able to find the courage and the hope I need to be successful in my education. Instead of doubt, I have become more apt to recognize the tremendous graces God has given to me. Having the opportunity to become active with the Parousians has helped me to continuously recognize the reality of Christ’s love for the world, and it has paved the way for me to answer John Paul II’s call for all of us: "I ask that you never despair, never grow weary, never become discouraged; that the roots from which we grow are never severed; that you keep your faith despite your weaknesses, that you always seek strength in Him; that you never lose that freedom of spirit for which He has liberated man; that you never spurn that love. . . expressed by the Cross, without which human life has no roots and no meaning."