How I Met the Home - Caitlin Grant

I had actually chosen to go to Ave Maria University because I wanted to start taking my faith more seriously, but the way that I lived my life did not coincide with that desire. Even though I was going to daily mass, my life was entirely overridden with vices.

I wouldn’t let God talk to me personally. I knew God was asking me to give up some things that I was doing, so first I stopped going to daily mass and then ultimately I stopped praying all together. Once I shut God completely out, my life was almost entirely immoral. That was one of the darkest and most confusing times in my life and I was very miserable.

During my second semester, however, God gave me the grace to start to change my life. He showed me clearly how my sins were hurting not only myself, but other people as well and that if I didn’t change my life right then, I would probably never come back to Him. I then began to stop committing the mortal. God, nevertheless, made it clear to me that I was just changing in order to make my life here on earth better. I still wanted God to give me whatever I wanted for my life. But He wanted me to live for heaven. And so He made it plain that instead of living my life on earth for myself, I needed to live for Him and to do His will.
Around that time, I began to think about my vocation, but not that seriously. The idea, however, would not leave me. It was like something was haunting me. I knew something was there and I definitely did not want to look at it. I really wanted to get married, but I saw even then that it was my desire and not something that God was asking of me or calling me to.

That was my attitude when I first met the Home in the summer of 2006.

I had always wanted to go to Europe, so when someone suggested that I go to visit the Servant Sisters for a couple weeks, I went. I didn’t really know anyone, and I had no idea what to expect when I arrived in Spain. I always think it’s funny looking back and remembering my first impressions of everything. It was all so new and strange to me. But as my time there went on, even though I was struggling a lot interiorly, God began to open my eyes to the beauty of a life lived completely for Him.

Since I had given up my old way of life, I felt that I didn’t know what to do, what to fill my life with. To me, I was just giving up things. I couldn’t see at the time that I had to give up those sins in order to receive the good that God wanted to give me. I remember one of the first days in Mass, there was a reading from the book of Amos that commanded: “Hate evil, and love good.” That really struck me because I realized that I needed to stop loving my old sins and to start loving the good—the true good for myself, not just whatever I wanted the good to be for me. In the Sisters, I saw that good come alive. They obviously were not women who were lacking anything or acting as if they were living a life that was just giving things up. They were actually living—they were in love with the good and it showed forth in their lives.

The Home also helped to change my concept of sanctity. I had always had the impression that holy people were kind of pushovers and that they were boring and not normal. People in the Home, however, didn’t just sit with their eyes raised to heaven. I believe that when one’s relationship with God grows, it is reflected in one’s works.

There is a call in the Home to maturity and discipline, but when one starts to live out these demands, one can see the truth about what it means to be a human person more clearly. These demands, however, must be lived out in the freedom of God’s love for us.

I especially love how my relationship with Our Lady has deepened since I met the Home. I’ve come to see her as more present to me and really as a mother looking out for me. And I love to hear people in the Home talking about her strength, her love, and her fidelity. While before I didn’t think about her personality, now her virtues reveal to me her true inner strength. She was not, and is not, just some holy painting. She is a real person, who is the Mother of us all and someone who is willing to do anything to help us.

I often tell people when we’re talking about Spain that God speaks very loudly there. I had always seen Europe as a way to escape. I thought that by going far away, I would be able to get away from everything and find whatever it was I was looking for in life. God, however, had other plans. Through Our Lady, He wanted to give me everything I was looking for, namely Himself, but not in the place or in the way that I ever expected to find it.

When I was in Spain, we went to visit the Pope in Valencia. At a Mass we had at a family’s home there, the reading was about Jesus calling St. Matthew. When I heard that, I felt as if God were calling me too. I started crying after Communion, but I told myself that everyone felt that way when they heard that Gospel. I was afraid because I thought I had a vocation.

That night, however, not only did I feel that I had a vocation to the religious life, but I also felt that God was calling me to be a Servant Sister. I couldn’t believe it. I respected the Sisters, but I didn’t imagine that I could possibly ever be one. I didn’t think it could possibly be true since I didn’t believe I could do that. I decided, however, to join the discernment program at Ave Maria. It wasn’t until February of 2007 that I finally accepted that I had a vocation to be a Servant Sister. I entered as a candidate in March of 2007.

For me, the Home was not something I was attracted to or even had the feeling of “this is my home” or anything like that. But I knew that this was where God wanted me and I am so thankful to Our Lady that she led me here. I have learned so much, not just about God’s personal love for me and His call of sanctity to everyone, but also just how to live a more fully human life. I love seeing how Our Mother works through people in the Home. It was ultimately through my vocation that I really came to appreciate all that I have received from God through the Home. It presented me with the tools I need in order to be able to abandon myself to the Heavenly Father out of love . . . the love I had always been looking for.

I can see how I really lived out a lot of this incorrectly and not the way I should have, but I know that it was through fidelity to prayer before Jesus in the Eucharist and always through Our Lady’s help that I have been able to keep going.

©HM Magazine No. 143 July/August 2008