Student Reflection: “Love”

By Matthew Kiernan, ‘11

As a senior, my career at Gonzaga has been filled with many amazing blessings and opportunities.  These include friendships, classes, retreats, sports, and many other surprises. I have spent time talking with several other friends about the crazy idea that soon we will be leaving our friendly confines and being challenged in new ways in the wider world. In doing so, I have found a common theme about what Gonzaga has meant to each of us. All of us and myself especially have expressed that we have grown in the virtue of love. This can be a passion or desire that we have found and want to pursue in the upcoming years. Others have found this love in their friendships and community. Even more have found it on retreats or spiritual endeavors. For myself personally these spiritual events have been the forefront of the experience of this love. While I will always remember cramming twenty people into a tiny freshman dorm room singing “Free Falling”  by Tom Petty, the love I have experience here is deeper than that. Our former president Fr. Spitzer in his latest book New Proofs for the Existence of God says that we have a desire to love and be loved. This desire comes from being created by a God who wants us to seek that joy and be fulfilled in Him who is love. This is the extent to which University Ministry aims, allowing the individual to have the opportunity to experience this incredible unconditional love. This love transcends our physical reality and gives us the strength we need to accomplish all that Gonzaga asks us to be. It is so much more than anything the world or our secular culture could offer because it is genuine and has our best interest at heart. Gonzaga has afforded me the opportunity to take my relationship with God to a deeper level and for that I will always be grateful.  My life and my career at Gonzaga have been transformed by this experience of real love and I hope others have the chance to share in something that is so meaningful to me.