USA

A Promise Fulfilled around that Dining Room Table
Three years ago, three Steubenville kids met for the first time. What had put them together was the desire to go deeper into their everyday reality. This led to a friendship that has spread and communicated itself to others.

by Sophie Lewis

Two years ago, three kids, practically strangers, met with CL responsible Chris Bacich for a GS brunch at our house in Steubenville, Ohio. The small number who turned out was depressing, because we had each invited many of our friends. But Chris challenged us, saying, “Christ gave you this particular set of circumstances. There’s a call here to look even more deeply into reality to discover His presence.” Though disappointed, we prayed to be able to see Him working in our new friendship.
One of the three, Bruno, had moved to nearby Pittsburgh from Palermo, Italy, five years previously, but had never been involved in GS while living in Palermo. It wasn’t until he went back to Palermo to visit family during the summer and some old grade school friends invited him on a GS summer vacation that he met the Movement and rediscovered his faith. Afterward, he returned to Pittsburgh with the realization that he had to follow this experience–but he also felt crushed by solitude and nostalgia. Despite these doubts, his desire led him to get in touch with my dad, Stephen Lewis, and we began meeting weekly on Saturday afternoons in Pittsburgh. At first it was just Bruno and me, until Bruno’s friend Catherine and her sister Margaret joined us; then Mark came, and after only one meeting decided to come on the 2009 GS summer vacation.
By fall 2009, our community had become five (one of the initial three never came back), and it was incredible to see the miracles Christ was working among us. Bruno began talking with his close friend Justin, a very vocal atheist at his Catholic high school, about his experiences in GS. Justin had been going through a lot of despair and frustration in his life, and was discovering that, in his words, “the things I did to try to deal with my constant dissatisfaction weren’t really working anymore. I couldn’t bury these feelings in intense workouts, or behind a wall of marijuana smoke.”
At first Justin opposed going on the winter vacation.  But miraculously, the weekend before the vacation, he changed his mind and decided to come and open his heart and mind to God. On the vacation, he felt immediately embraced by a love so different from what he had experienced before. He said, “I came to realize that this need I had gone to such lengths to run from was either God calling me back to Him through everything I do, or a sign that life is the cruelest joke ever told.”  By the end, he had made a judgment: “I truly believe I experienced God’s presence [at the vacation], and it was amazing and life-changing.”
Bruno and Justin approached their religion teacher and explained to him what had happened to them. Both of them were full of the desire to share their experience and to invite more kids from their school to GS. Their religion teacher was so moved by what they told him that he invited them both to give witnesses to his freshman religion classes.
Now, the table in Bruno’s dining room where we have School of Community is just about full. A promise was there in our first meeting, and we see that the promise is being fulfilled.