The God Quest By Sister Norma Raupple Sister Norma with young adult volunteers and kids in Beatitude House’s Immigrant Outreach Program Some call it the God Quest. It’s our lifelong attention to our faith journey. Service is how it manifests itself. The gospel challenges us to make the marginalized our family, to love the larger Human Family. We make that a priority our whole life. When you live in community, you belong to something, and when you belong to something it gives you strength and support. It gives you the financial freedom of not having to support yourself. You’re freer to respond to the needs of the times, and it keeps evolving. In the times of St. Angela, she was totally other oriented — focused on others, available to others. Sister Norma with a group of medical students she led to the U.S./Mexico Border She was focused on the God Quest, on listening to the Spirit in her life, spending time with scripture and prayer. That enabled her to love the Human Family and discern how God was leading her. It’s a freedom, openness, availability and a listening to the Spirit and the gospel, and then just kind of overflowing or responding each day. So what is service? Some say the word is overused. I think of it as the opposite of being self-centered. For someone in approaching it through faith, its other centered, so that our eyes and ears and hearts are open to others and what’s going on in society. It doesn’t have to be hours of service or a service project. It can be being the face of St. Angela today and responding how Jesus would respond. As religious Sisters we don’t have our own families, but we do have our way of loving, which is lifelong, and it’s fulfilling and meaningful. It’s not that our way of life is better than how other people live, it’s different. Sister Norma and Mervat, a mom with Beatitude House who she helped to become a U.S. Citizen There’s something young adults are searching for that could connect to the faith journey of a life dedicated to others. Most find it through marriage. But some don’t sense that that’s where they’re their best selves. Be who God made you to be, and become your best self in some way of loving.