If you are a Millennial and a Catholic, chances are at some point, someone told you (be it John Paul II, Chris West, or your friend’s mom during confirmation class) that “man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”


The thing about this general statement is that it applies to the priesthood, to religious life, to the married, and to consecrated singles alike.  However, as neither a priest (which I am perfectly fine with), nor a religious (which I suspect most orders are perfectly fine with), nor married (which my father is perfectly fine with), nor a consecrated single (which isn’t going to happen), I have spent the better part of life after college trying to figure out what it means to give of myself when I’m not quite planted in an immediate relation with a clear designation of my role, and thus my avenue of self-gift.  This is a situation many young adult Catholics are in—we lack the desire to be consecrated singles, but we are in a position alike to that, albeit perhaps without a certain and marked desire to remain there.


This concern is not an idle one—in a world in which many of us will probably spend at least a few years of early adulthood single, we must discover how to participate in the Church’s role as gift to Christ, while living in an ambiguous way as we wait for God’s timing.  But sometimes life turns into a repetition of waking up, running out the door, commuting, working, exercising, meeting up with friends, crashing, repeat; or some variation on that theme, interspersed with weekend outings and sleep.


Now, none of this is bad, by anyone’s count.  But the amount of self-focus (which is natural when you are trying to figure out and set up your life on your own) can be damaging in its tendency to isolate.  When you live with yourself and for yourself because you have to do adult things like feed and shelter yourself, any further need of commitment comes with a certain level of fear.  Oh gosh, I can barely get up at 6 a.m., and now I’m supposed to go to India.  But it doesn’t have to be like that.


Looking to the past, St. Augustine offers the following advice:


But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you ... Since you cannot consult for the good of [all men], you must take the matter as decided for you by a sort of lot, according as each man happens for the time being to be more closely connected with you.



I know many people who have gone to serve their fellows around the world.  However, for many of us, that kind of commitment is both terrifying and a logistical impossibility.  What is much easier and far more feasible is to give of ourselves to the members of our own community.  There are plenty of opportunities to serve the Church directly by offering to clean the houses of parishioners who need assistance, running CCD classes, ushering, or working at the crisis pregnancy center.  We can also serve as tutors or mentors for kids and teens, by cooking for the homeless, by helping to deliver flowers to military graves, or the plethora of opportunities available.


When we break our isolation and take responsibility by allowing another to depend upon us, we give ourselves to that other.  We place ourselves at the service of their good, and integrate ourselves into a community.  The beauty of serving is that in this act, we can no longer remain the center of our own world—we enter into the complex web of connections that constitutes the Body of Christ.  And this freedom of service to the community is the particular role of single, young adults.  We have the freedom to engage the world particularly because we are bound to no one but God, in a sacramental or vowed manner.  This isn’t a consolation prize for “failing” to realize our vocations by 23.  Rather, this is a unique challenge that God has placed before us, a role that can be fulfilled in an especially vibrant way by the individual who can cook dinner for the homeless because she does not yet have a family at home; whose "domestic church" can, for the time, include the elderly and the very young of the parish; who can care for the children whose parents cannot.  We cannot be all things, but we can fill many immediate frontline needs for love in our community, needs that present themselves each day.


It can be difficult to wait.  But perhaps the concept of "waiting" is somewhat inaccurate.  Rather than waiting for our vocation, we ought to throw ourselves joyfully into opportunity to serve the Church in a very meaningful way.  God calls each of us into a radical love with Himself, and each journey allows us to touch a completely unique multitude, to love God in himself and through others in a completely individualized way.  By serving, we learn to rejoice and find God outside of ourselves; by offering ourselves in service to the Church, we will turn around one day and find ourselves far less alone than we first thought.  When we make a gift of ourselves to the least of these, we will find ourselves, in the embrace of the greatest One.


So, how will you give of yourself today?