Prayer and Work: a program that makes you feel like you matter

When I first came to St. John’s, I was eager to seek out opportunities to grow in my faith.

I never could have imagined that the biggest positive contributor to my faith life would be this lightly attended, barely advertised program called Prayer & Work.

The fact that it isn’t advertised too well is the reason I wanted to share my experience with the program in “The Record.” Prayer & Work is the perfect way for a Johnnie to spend a Saturday, in my opinion. (The SJU Campus Ministry staff always makes sure not to schedule it the same weekend as a football game.)

We go to the 11:30 a.m. daily Mass at the Abbey, go to the Monastic Refectory for lunch, then do some manual labor for a couple of hours.

That last part may sound intimidating, but I’m a short, scrawny guy, and I have never felt like the workload was too much to handle. Going to Mass with the monks is so different from student Mass on Sundays.

It is much quieter and helped me to really get into the mindset that I need to glorify God.

Likewise, lunch at the “Monk Reef,” as I have come to call it, is very different from eating at any of the other dining halls on campus.

I like the food they have, but the real difference is the people.

I feel like the monastic communities on our campuses can sometimes feel distant from us as students in our everyday lives. At Prayer & Work, I got to meet the monks.

Sitting at the same table and sharing meals with the monks has been a great experience for me both religiously and because I have gotten to know them as individuals.

It’s amazing how unique each individual monk is, and I never would have gotten the chance to know them the way I do if not for Prayer & Work. Likewise, I got to travel through the monastery and some of the outdoor areas that are usually off-limits for students, making it a unique experience indeed.

The work portion of Prayer & Work is undoubtably the main course of the experience. Picking up right after lunch, we typically finish up between 2 and 3 p.m.

I never know quite what to expect for the day’s work, but some of the things I’ve done include cleaning various spaces, moving supplies or artwork from one space to another, trimming the plants in the cemetery and changing out the hymnals in the Abbey, just to name a few.

In the hectic life of a college student, I’ve found Prayer & Work to be very beneficial to my mental health, because I can just turn my brain off for an afternoon and do some manual labor.

The craziest part is how good that feels, and I understand now why the Dignity of Work is a Benedictine value.

Most of the Prayer & Work sessions that I attended during my first two years here entailed cleaning the old Woodshop and moving supplies to the new one, so when the new Woodshop was up and running, I felt a sense of accomplishment.

Even though the work I did might seem small, it ended up having a big impact on the Woodshop and what they do.

This knowledge that every little thing I do matters is something that I think a lot of people of my generation are searching for; they want to feel like they matter.

Prayer & Work absolutely makes me feel like I matter, and I cannot stress enough that this program is something that any and every Johnnie could do and feel fulfilled doing.

When my friends and I leave after the day’s work, we often find ourselves asking, “why don’t more people do this?”

I hope that I’ve convinced a few readers why you should. I have many great memories with the program, and I pray for many more.