Serra Club Vocations Essay

Teen learns from past saints to live well now, be a saint in the future

By Faustina Darnowski (Special to The Criterion)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that “filial piety and patriotism dispose us to honor and love our country.”

As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, we look back in our history at the people who made America what it is today, the patriots who built our nation.

Though at first glance we may appear to be a veritable child, in a historical point of view, compared to our European neighbors, we have our own wealth of history, especially our Catholic history.

The Catholic Church, through the heroic, patriotic men and women religious it raised, shaped history to make our nation what it is today. Some of the religious who first come to mind include St Elizabeth Ann Seton, who began the first Catholic schools in America; St. John Neumann, who founded the first parochial school system in the United States; and St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who founded countless schools for European immigrants.

Sister Henriette Delille and St. Katherine Drexel, who founded schools and orphanages to care for African Americans and Native Americans, also come to mind. Another heroic religious is St. Theodore Guérin, Indiana’s special saint, who actually walked in the town I live in and founded the school at the parish I attend.

The story of our past teaches us that simply doing the right thing for others, and living selflessly, has a major effect on the world around us and the future of the world. One act of courage and obedience to God’s holy will lead to generations of good, numberless other acts of courage and obedience.

As we enter our next chapter as one nation under God, beginning with our own self, every person needs to follow their own vocation and to live it out to bring God’s love to others. By doing our daily duty well, and doing it with great love, we will influence everyone around us for the better.

Frequent reception of the sacraments, and acts of sacrifice and love for others, is the surest way to strive to live in imitation of the great saints who have shaped our country and our world.

It is necessary to take time to reflect on what we are teaching to others through our example. We have to ask ourselves, “Are we teaching the truth as it was handed down to us, or are we teaching what is comfortable to hear?” Truth is the surest foundation for a society. The story of our past can teach our youth today to live for others by following the call of God to live their vocation. It teaches us to be unselfish, to live for others.

Young people are the hope for the future. We are the ones who are handed the torch from the last generation and who carry it to the next. In my own family, my siblings all have desires to follow a vocation for the future. One is thinking about becoming a monk, one wants to be a priest, three want to join a convent, the others want to get married and have big Catholic families.

I hope to be a teaching nun or to found an American order for women with Down syndrome. Right now as a teenager, though, I am called to strive to live heroically. When I study faithfully, practice patience in my family and treat those I meet at work, at daily Mass, at 4-H, at all the activities that my current state in life require with charity, in my own little way, I am carrying on the missionary spirit of the great holy men and women who built our country.

To all the young people, God is calling you right now to live your daily duty well to prepare for the future. By cultivating an interior life, doing our schoolwork, chores and sports, and doing them with the greatest effort, we are preparing to become a diocesan priest, a friar, a teaching nun, a contemplative nun, a hard-working mother or father.

You are called to be a saint and that begins right now with your daily duty. You are the hope for our country.
 

(Faustina and her parents, Douglas and Adelle Darnowski, are members of St. Michael Parish in Bradford. She recently completed the 12th grade as a homeschooled student and is the 12th-grade division winner in the Indianapolis Serra Club’s 2026 John D. Kelley Vocations Essay Contest.) †