Gonzaga Witness

Issue date: 10/1/09 Section: Letter From the Editor

It's true. We are in school again despite the fact that some of us would like to resist that idea and pretend like it is still summer. I get an overwhelming sense, from speaking to friends, that after about three weeks of school most people are already about three weeks behind on work. With everything getting started up once again, seeing friends again for the first time in a while or making new ones, and trying to figure out exactly what clubs and organizations with which to be involved, it can seem so chaotic in the first few weeks. Of course, I guess it is mostly chaotic all the time, but that is just part of being human.

It is easy, however to get caught up in the chaos, because it truly is fun and exciting most of the time, and to let life pull you along without taking the reigns. I know I have! (Literally, I almost had an incident with a horse last week.) It is especially in these beginning weeks and months, however, that it is so important to establish priorities and think about how we will spend our time, in both action and in thought. Even if we schedule in Mass every Sunday or time to go on University Ministry retreats, it is easy to think of God as a piece of our lives or a part of our day rather than the very center and heart of who we are and why we are even here. It is so easy and so dangerous!

I, along with many other students, participated in Mass on the Grass during the first week of school, and I think that was the first time I had truly felt God in quite a while. I think anyone else who was there could say the same. The wind was crazy! A tree fell down in the middle of Mass! Luckily (or providentially) the rain started right after Mass, but after the rain, I saw one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen - partly because it was physically beautiful, but mostly because of the meaning that it held. There was a double rainbow perfectly framing the twin spires of St. Aloysius church. (This is the image on the cover if you hadn't noticed.)

I mean, seriously! What better way to start off the school year than with God's own image of renewed covenants?

After a semester of studying abroad and attempting pretty poorly to readjust during the summer, I finally felt and saw God saying, "I am with you."

I think this is also God's message portrayed throughout the articles in this issue. As I read through them, I continued to be reminded of what makes Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, so extraordinary. God is not only with us in spirit, but offers himself to us physically. He offers Himself in winds and rainbows and the work of priests (The Love of the Heart of Jesus, page 5). He offers himself in the Eucharist and in the hearts of our friends and family at home and at Gonzaga (note the curious similarities in most of the Freshman and Senior reflections). Even in a more long-term transformational process of love and forgiveness like the one Matt experienced this summer (Creating a Culture of Life, page 14), God is constantly telling us, "I am with you."

My prayer for us this month, and throughout the year, is that God gives us the grace to see Him and that we take advantage of his physical presence. Just as He renewed His covenant with us through the rainbows at Mass on the Grass, may we renew our own promises to God, to others and to ourselves to put God first on our "To Do" lists and join hands in praising Him in all that we do.

May God be with you,

Katie Infantine
Editor-in-Chief
The Gonzaga Witness

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