Watching Miracles

I often get asked the question “what is your favorite part about being a missionary?” Throughout my 5 years with FOCUS, my answer has only gotten stronger with each place that I serve & with each person I encounter. My favorite part about being a missionary is watching miracles take place every single day. Whether it be someone returning to confession for the first time in years or someone making a commitment to begin praying silently every day, the Lord has shown me that He is constantly pursuing His children & He will stop at nothing to bring them back to Himself. However, the biggest miracle I have seen take place over my last 5 years within FOCUS is the miracle that God has worked through my own heart in learning to love Him more. Through leading others, the Lord has continued to pursue my own heart & has deeply convicted me of my need for Him & my need to share Him with those who have forgotten who He is.

I think that it’s easy as “leaders” to forget that God wants to pursue us through the people He’s placed in front of us & through the people we are called to serve. The Catechism of the Catholic Church begins by stating “…at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength.” This has struck me in a deeper way recently. I have come to more fully understand that God doesn’t just want me to lead others to Him, but He wants those same people to lead me to Christ as well. Every person I encounter bears the image & likeness of God, so each person can teach me more about who God the Father is. This was radical news to me! When it was time for me to leave my first placement as a missionary, I was sad because I did not want to let go of the women I had grown in deep friendship with. Someone had suggested that I begin to give thanks to God for each of the women I had encountered. This set me off on a long journey of understanding how the women I lead can teach me about God.

Over the next couple of months, I was able to pray about a different woman I had walked with every day in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I began to see more clearly how each person showed me a different aspect of God’s personality, & this helped me let go & move on. I then wrote all these qualities and reflections of God down in a journal, so now when I am struggling to understand who He is, I can look back & clearly see based on the people He has given me to serve. This has been something I have done each time I move to a new campus, & I am always shocked at how much God has shown Himself to while leading others. As leaders in a Catholic community, it can be easy to become so focused on the people we are serving that we forget about our own relationship with God. However, God is at all moments drawing close to man, calling him to seek, know, & love Him. That means that even as leaders God desires to captivate our hearts & bring us more deeply into relationship with Him. The greatest miracle that God desires to work daily in our lives is our own personal sanctification, & while we set out into the battlefield of evangelizing and leading others, we cannot forget to allow God to lead & pursue us as well.
 

Hello! My name is Brittany Worthington & I am the FOCUS team director for Catholic Hoos. I am originally from Philadelphia (Go Birds) & I graduated from Temple University in 2018. A fun fact about me is that I still have 2 baby teeth!