Best of the Week 2022-2023: Holy Cross Values

STUDENT MINISTERS REFLECT ON HOW TO HAVE A GREATER IMPACT ON THE COMMUNITY THIS LENTEN SEASON

To begin the Lenten season, the St. Edward community gathered together on Wednesday for an Ash Wednesday all-school liturgy, celebrated by Fr. Robert Lisowski, C.S.C., a Holy Cross priest from the University of Notre Dame. Students, faculty and staff were reminded of the fragility of time and encouraged to go deeper in our faith and in our servant leadership. Student ministers have taken this message to heart by not only recording and sharing videos on their Lenten offerings and motivating their peers to do a daily good deed or act of almsgiving, but also kickstarting a new Lenten service initiative called, "40 days, 40 bins."

Centered around giving, student ministers came up with the "40 days, 40 bins" challenge to collect different everyday items each day of the Lenten season to donate and give to the local communities in need. "This project was a collaborative effort among the whole Student Ministry team, Mrs. McGee and Dr. Foster," says William Perrins '23. "It took the whole group to get this idea off the ground and move forward with the creation of a calendar to track our donation collections each day. A lot of the time, we start Lent with a lot of motivation to make a change and incorporate a Lenten act of almsgiving in our lives, but we often forget about our intentions and our attention shifts. We wanted this project to be a good reminder that each day, we can recommit ourselves to the larger ideals of Lent and almsgiving."

"This service initiative inspires my Lenten almsgiving by reminding me not to forget the marginalized and that, while many of us enjoy so many luxuries of everyday life, not everyone else can," says Jaden Stainforth '23. "The list of items we'll be asking the community to donate over the next 40 days range from a wide variety that seem little but will actually have a significant impact on those who need them most."

"The '40 days, 40 bins' challenge allows the entire student body to give up a little bit of themselves each day while helping those most vulnerable this time of year. Through this initiative, we are trying to show how service doesn't need to be a big time commitment, but rather a simple act of kindness by sacrificing things we own and donating them to greatly improve someone else's life," says Robert Torres '23.