Despite his religious upbringing and early Catholic education, Sean Fitzpatrick ’10 says that it took him a while a find God.
That all changed during a high school service trip to West Virginia, where he helped repair the roof at the home of an elderly couple. There, he felt the presence of God, just as he did last summer during a Habitat for Humanity trip to Malawi with 14 other Holy Cross students.
“Never was God’s love and life so clearly present, despite the relatively intense suffering we were around. People died around us throughout the month. A couple women died in childbirth. Many people suffered from malaria on a daily basis. But God seemed more present there than anywhere I have ever been.”
After Fitzpatrick attended the Spiritual Exercises in October of last year, offered through the Chaplains’ Office, his faith grew even stronger. He switched his major from economics to religious studies and “could not be happier for doing so.”
Fitzpatrick recounted his journey in front of a packed audience in Hogan Jenks Suite A at Holy Cross. His talk was one part of the “How Can I Find God?”series, in which members of the College community speak about their personal search for and experience of God.
Currently studying abroad in Kenya through early June, Fitzpatrick will be doing a Catholic ministry internship at St. Aloysius Gonzaga Secondary School in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya this summer. The students at the school are orphans due to AIDS. The internship is part of the College’s Ministry Internship Program through the Lilly Vocation Discernment Initiative.
Read his entire speech [PDF] »
Related Information:
• Chaplains’ Office
Finding God
Service trips, Spiritual Exercises helped student ‘see’ God
Read Time
1 Minute
